Cave of the black devil in Khakassia. — Descent to the Borodinskaya cave in Khakassia

Kashkulak cave - the cave of the “black devil” or the cave of the “White shaman”

The Kashkulak cave is located in the north of Khakassia in the Shirinsky district in the massif of Mount Koshkulak (Kashkulak, Khoskhulakh), located in the northern spurs of the Kuznetsk Alatau, and is recognized as one of the most terrible places on the planet. Local residents call it the cave of the “black devil” or the cave of the “white shaman” and there is an explanation for this.

The cave has three tiers connected by vertical wells about 20 meters deep. The depth of the cave is 49 meters, the total length of the passages is 820 meters. In the upper tier (the complex of grottoes “Temple”, “Obscurantists”, “Dead Pagoda”) there are calcite sinter formations. The lower tier (the Obvalny grotto) and even partly the middle tier (the Skeleton and Enthusiastov grottoes) are periodically flooded during heavy floods. The entrance part of the cave has been used as a cult place by shamans for the last two thousand years. The floor of the cave is littered with bones of sacrificial animals, trampled into clay, and coal from sacrificial fires. The walls are covered with petrified soot. The main place for sacrifices was the Temple Grotto and the stalagmite located there.

There are many legends associated with the cave. For a long time, strange incidents occurred in the cave (there is probably a “psycho blockade” in the cave). When visiting the cave, many people experienced absolute horror and incredible fear. During the study, its dimensions and proportions were nevertheless established, and a geomagnetic anomaly was also recorded inside the cave.

The entrance part of the cave has been used as a cult place by shamans for the last two thousand years. The floor of the cave is littered with bones of sacrificial animals, trampled into clay, and coal from sacrificial fires. The walls are covered with petrified soot. The main place for sacrifices was the Temple Grotto and the stalagmite located there.

The lower tier (the Obvalny grotto) and even partly the middle tier (the Skeleton and Enthusiastov grottoes) are periodically flooded during heavy floods.

The electromagnetic field in the cave is constantly fluctuating. Even at the initial stage of the study, scientists noticed that among other signals a strictly defined impulse was steadily breaking through. Sometimes he was recorded as single, but sometimes he walked in “bundles”. And always with the same amplitude. It happened that the signal disappeared for two or three days, or even a week, but then invariably returned. Perhaps the creepy sensations and visions are connected precisely with this.

Since the beginning of the 2000s. Kashkulak cave is a tourist site. There are several travel companies operating here, regularly making flights from the Lake Shira resort.

Mysteries of the Kashkulak cave

In the spurs of the Kuznetsk Alatau, in Khakassia, on the southeastern slope of Mount Nash Kulan (“hos khulakh” translated from Khakassian - “two ears”) there is a cave, which local residents nicknamed the Cave of the Black Devil. Some encyclopedias call it one of the most terrible places on earth. And there are good reasons for this.

For the first time, the anomalies of the Kashkulak cave became widely known after a group of Moscow geologists accidentally stumbled upon this natural object in 1959. According to the memoirs of one of the participants in that expedition, Yegor Barkovsky, who two decades later organized a new expedition to Kashkulak. Geologists managed to stay in the mysterious cave for no more than ten minutes. Seized by inexplicable fear, they were literally pushed out of there by some unknown force. When the expedition returned to the nearby village of Shira, local residents explained to the geologists that the spirits of the cave did not want to see people in their stone sanctuary.

The old-timers told the guests that in ancient times, not far from Mount Kashkulak, the Golden Stream flowed, along which the souls of the dead floated from the world of the living to the world of the dead. Next to him lived the powerful shaman of the Golden Stream, who had accompanied the souls of his fellow tribesmen to the land of shadows for centuries. But the day came and the shaman died. According to local beliefs, the shaman’s body was set on fire, and his golden clothes were taken deep into the cave in which he performed his magical rituals during his lifetime. Since then, a gate to the other world has opened in the cave.

For this reason, in very ancient times, frail old people and sick fellow Khakass tribesmen went there to complete their earthly journey. Later, during the times of “endless wars” (III-VI centuries AD), the great priests of the Sarmatians lived in the Kashkulak cave, who sacrificed people and animals to their powerful gods...

The Legend of the Black Shaman

The most common legend among local residents and guests of the Kashkulak cave is the legend of the Black Shaman. One of the Khakass legends tells that at the beginning of the 20th century, not far from the Cave of the Black Devil, there lived an old shaman, whom local residents greatly respected and feared. It was said that this shaman was so powerful that he could revive animals, move giant boulders with the power of his gaze, and turn stones into gold bars. In the early 1920s, when the Civil War was going on in Eastern Siberia, a gang under the command of Ataman Solovyov appeared in those places.

One day, the cruel “father” grabbed the old shaman and demanded from him gold, which, according to rumors, was stored in countless quantities in the secret places of the Kashkulak cave. The shaman not only did not reveal to the ataman where the treasures were kept, but also predicted his imminent death. By order of Solovyov the old shaman was thrown from a cliff into a deep abyss. And soon the ataman’s detachment was ambushed by the Uzhur Chonovites (in whose ranks the future writer Arkady Gaidar served) and was completely destroyed. Since that time, as local legends tell, the ghost of the shaman appears every time. to uninvited guests of the cave, terrifying them, depriving them of reason, and sometimes even life.

The fact of the existence of the ghost of a shaman is mentioned by Konstantin Vakulin, an employee of the Novosibirsk Institute of Clinical and Experimental Medicine. who, as part of a group of researchers in 1985, visited the Kash-Local shaman kulak cave. Suddenly, at some point, he felt someone's gaze on him. The next moment he was overcome with heat, and then an inexplicable panic seized him. As if under hypnosis, the man turned his head and about five meters away he saw a male figure in flowing robes and a furry hat with horns. The shaman, whose eyes glowed with a bluish fire, beckoned Vakulin towards him with his hand. The researcher took several hesitant steps, when suddenly he suddenly remembered a prayer that he had known since childhood and began to whisper it. The shaman began to back away and soon disappeared into the stone wall without a trace...

Mysterious repeater

Since the late 1970s, numerous expeditions of researchers have been trying to provide a scientific explanation for the paranormal phenomena occurring in the Kashkulak cave. Every time, finding themselves in this mysterious place, scientists record a number of similar phenomena: a feeling of inexplicable fear and the feeling that there is someone invisible in the cave; visual mirages in the form of human figures and mythological creatures; auditory and tactile hallucinations. The first detailed description of these phenomena was made by members of the 1985 expedition. At the same time, researchers installed equipment that measured the electromagnetic field in the Enthusiasts Grotto, which is distinguished by the abundance of charred human and animal bones found there. To the surprise of scientists, the instruments recorded a strange pattern; As soon as a person stepped inside the grotto, a real electromagnetic storm arose there. In addition, impartial equipment picked up a certain single signal coming from somewhere underground.

Already in the early 1990s, a group led by Novosibirsk scientist Alexander Trofimov, using more advanced equipment, established a connection between unusual phenomena occurring in the cave and disturbances in the electromagnetic field. The researchers also made an unambiguous conclusion that strange pulses appearing at a certain frequency are clearly of artificial origin, and the source of these pulses may be a certain generator located deep underground.

In 2003, Abakan psychic Dmitry Ivanov, who visited the Kashkulak cave three times, stated that at a depth of 500 meters under Mount Kashkulak there is a repeater installed in this place approximately 400 thousand years ago by representatives of a highly developed extraterrestrial civilization .Nowadays, the device sends signals in the direction of the Orion constellation, in which some important information is encrypted. Also, according to Ivanov, the Kashkulak relay may well serve as a kind of beacon for alien creatures, with the help of which they navigate in near-Earth space.

Scary facts

Dmitry Ivanov believes that the complex energy structure of the information field of the Kashkulak cave is extremely dangerous for people who are at a low level of spiritual development and have bad thoughts and intentions. Evidence of this is a number of facts when uninvited guests of the Black Devil's cave went crazy. or even died under unclear circumstances.

In Khakassia they still remember the story of how in 1960 a group of twenty students visited the cave. Only two scared to death girls, who were picked up by local hunters, were able to get to the surface. Later, one of the survivors died in a psychiatric clinic; the fate of the second lover of underground travel remained unknown.

Already in 1996, five Kemerovo enthusiastic researchers disappeared without a trace in the cave. The only one
the young man, who then managed to get out of the cave, muttered inaudibly about some furry monsters and a fiery door in the stone floor, into which he almost fell. The guy was exhausted, and he was admitted to the hospital, where he died a couple of weeks later from an unknown disease...

Today, the Kashkulak Cave is a place of pilgrimage for followers of neo-pagan cults, who organize ritual performances on the slopes of the mountain with all kinds of sacrifices. According to shamans practicing today in different regions of Siberia, such behavior not only indicates a lack of true culture among self-proclaimed pagans, but also threatens many troubles that the angry spirits of the mountains can bring down on their foolish heads.

The Kashkulak cave (Khakassia), photos and reviews of which we will present in this article, enjoys controversial fame. Various esotericists and occultists call it a “place of power.” The upper tier of this natural karst formation was actually used in ancient times as a pagan temple where sacrifices were made. But the cave is primarily of interest to speleologists. It needs protection from those who want to burn ritual bonfires, because rare species of bats live in its depths. Soot harms stalagmites and other cave formations. But in Kashkulak, or, as it is called here, the Abode of the Black Devil, the folk trail is not overgrown. Both organized excursion groups and individual teams of speleologists come here. Let's take a virtual trip to the Kashkulak cave.

Location

The name of this natural formation comes from two Khakass words. "Hos Hulah" simply means "two ears." It is still unclear why such an incomprehensible name was formed. The Kashkulak cave is located in Khakassia (Russian Federation), on the northern slopes. In more detail, on the southeastern spur of the Nash Kulan mountain. This is the Kashkulak massif, in the Shirinsky district of Khakassia. The cave, in addition to the Khakass name Khos Khulah, has others. It is called the Abode of the Devil, as well as the Temple of the Black Shaman. There are many legends associated with this last character. It is believed that people with a “sensitive psyche” are faced with an invisible force lurking in the underground galleries. They are seized with panic and see hallucinations. Moreover, they are all the same: a certain man with burning eyes in a tall shaggy hat drives uninvited guests out. Scientists - paleontologists, geologists, speleologists - have a different opinion. They do not observe any devilry in the cave. Probably, these academicians either have an insensitive psyche or an insufficiently developed imagination.

Kashkulak cave: how to get there

There is a Shira station on the line between Achinsk and Abakan. This urban-type village is the administrative center of the region of the same name in Khakassia. Twenty kilometers from Shira the Kashkulak cave is located. Not everyone can explain how to get there. Not because he doesn’t know, but because local people want organized excursions to the dungeon, without burning fires and drinking vodka. Such trips will be readily accompanied by a guide from the local travel agency. The Kashkulak cave can also be reached from the resort village of Zhemchuzhny, which stands on the shore of a wonderful lake. From Shira you should get out in the direction of the city of Kommunar. A good asphalt road leads to Black Lake, but you only need to drive twelve kilometers along it. Further, at the crossroads, the main highway turns right, towards Maly Kobezhikov. And the path to the Kashkulak cave lies straight, following the road sign “Malaya Syya”. After six kilometers there will be the settlement of Topanov. In the village you should turn left and drive about nine kilometers south. The road is a country road, but after rain it turns into a swamp, which only an SUV can overcome. This is another argument in favor of an organized excursion from Shira. From the parking lot you will have to walk about two hundred and fifty meters along a clearly visible path.

Scientific point of view: what is the Kashkulak cave

Scientists have known where the entrance to the underground galleries is located since the beginning of the twentieth century. In the scientific literature, more precisely in the works of A.M. Zaitsev (1904), this cave was named Turimskaya - after the name of the Tyurim river flowing near it. From a scientific point of view, it is a typical karst formation. For thousands of years, waters eroded soft rocks until voids formed. In the underground galleries all forms of cave formations are observed - stalactites, stalagmites, growths, limestone flows. The total length of these labyrinths is eight hundred and twenty meters. The depth also does not bring the Kashkulak cave into the category of record holders - forty-nine meters. The underground gallery is very famous among archaeologists. The cave consists of three tiers, which are connected by almost vertical twenty-meter wells. The topmost one was used by people more than two thousand years ago.

Speleologists about the Kashkulak cave

In the fifties of the twentieth century, underground galleries were studied in detail by scientists. They revealed the presence of three tiers. There are excursions to the upper one. This is not to say that the route was difficult. This tier was used by the ancient Khakass for ritual purposes. The entire tier is heavily smoked from fires. And this only adds to the ominous glory that the Kashkulak cave already has. Cave of the Black Devil - this is the name given to the underground gallery by modern tourists. And they named the grottoes of the upper tier accordingly - Lost Pagoda, Obscurantist, Temple. The last name requires some clarification. In this grotto there is a light stalagmite in the shape of a phallus. Ancient civilizations revered this symbol of fertility and vitality. Probably, here in ancient times there was a temple where sacrifices (including human ones) were made. Until the seventies, archaeologists worked here and recovered many fragments of skeletons. In the upper tier you can see sintered calcite formations. Getting into the middle tier is difficult, as evidenced by the name of the grottoes - Enthusiasts, Skeleton. The difficulty category for these levels is 2B. During rains and high groundwater levels, being on the lower tier, in the Obvalny grotto, is also dangerous, since it floods.

Modern superstitions

The most surprising thing is that the Kashkulak cave began to enjoy the fame of “the most terrible place on earth” relatively recently. For so many centuries people hid here from bad weather, and none of them experienced hallucinations. Solovyov’s partisan detachment, which during the Civil War tried to defend the old government and made the Kashkulak cave its base, was also exterminated not by the Black Shaman. Until the fifties, none of the local residents who periodically looked into the cave heard the mysterious sounds of a tambourine rushing from somewhere below. The underground gallery gained notoriety along with scientific expeditions. Scientists tried to keep their research secret. And this atmosphere of mystery gave rise to a lot of legends around the expeditions. Now idle tongues will readily tell you about how “an unknown force threw the archaeologists” out of the cave. They will tell a story about a missing group of speleologists of twenty-nine people, from which only two girls got out, and even then they went crazy and died within a year in a mental hospital.

Business of the "White Sorcerers"

When the fashion for psychics came to Russia and the Kashkulak Cave (or the Devil’s Abode, as it is now more often called) gained great fame. They started talking about it as a “place of power” and a secret temple of Khakass shamans. The Russian “sorcerers” did not stay away from the gold mine that the cave has now turned into. Those who call themselves this proclaim that only they, “those with pure thoughts,” can perform their practices there. The local population, as well as travel agencies and spelunking groups, regularly have run-ins with these psychics and neo-pagan occultists.

Swami Baba's Cave

In the year 2000, tourists who came to the entrance to the underground galleries discovered signs of civilization in the surrounding forest. And what kind of one - Hindu, but with an admixture of Orthodoxy. Crosses were interspersed with figures of Shiva and mantras written on scraps of fabric. It turned out that the Kashkulak cave turned into the Sai Lingeshvara Ashram monastery, which is translated from Sanskrit as “The Abode of Universal Peace and Truth.” The brahmins of the new sect, the leader of which was Swami Sathya Sai Daas, claimed that this place was indicated to them from above so that they would protect it from the destructive influence of people. But for a certain fee, clergy could allow “vain tourists” to disturb the “Abode of Peace.” Most likely, the “brahmins” shared the box office proceeds with the local administration, since the authorities did not react in any way to the complaints of speleologists and local guides. It took three years for adherents of the new religion to be removed from the tourist site.

Modern myths

It's amazing how gullible modern man is. Legends are composed not only by local “shamans” interested in attracting more tourists to the cave, not only by occultists and psychics, but also by those who call themselves atheists. Fans of revolutionary romance claim that Arkady Golikov, the commander of the “red” Chonovites, received the nickname Gaidar in the Temple Grotto. According to faithful Leninists, the Kashkulak cave is the place where Kolchak’s gold is buried. And about the death of Solovyov’s partisan detachment, they say that the leader of the “whites” offended the shaman, for which he paid. All these new myths have one thing in common - the vagueness of information sources. The story about the horrors and secrets of the cave usually begins with the words: “The old-timers say...” or “A researcher who wished to remain anonymous said that...”.

The true value of the Kashkulak cave

These karst underground cavities are of interest to speleologists. The middle and especially the lower tiers have not yet been fully explored. In addition to the value of a natural attraction, the Kashkulak cave is of interest as an archaeological site. Excavations have revealed that the upper tier grottoes have been used by people over the past two thousand years. Of particular interest is the Temple underground hall. In it, archaeologists found not only many animal and human bones, but also several entire skeletons. It is now difficult to say who these people were: victims of pagan rituals, dead people buried in a holy place, or simply lost travelers.

Tourist site

The Kashkulak cave, the photo of which you see, has attracted curious people for a long time. But the inaccessibility of this place, as well as the difficulty of passing through the underground galleries, often became the cause of accidents. Of course, you can go into the cave yourself. But deep, almost vertical wells pose a danger to life. Since the beginning of the 2000s, organized excursions to this tourist site have been organized. The group is recruited in the resort villages of Shira and Zhemchuzhny. Tourists are accompanied by an experienced speleologist guide. The excursion includes transfer to the cave and equipment rental (flashlights, helmets).

Believe it or not?

What exactly is the Kashkulak cave in Khakassia? Reviews vary dramatically. Some tourists claim that this is an ordinary cave. There is a gloomy feeling only in the upper tier, where the walls of the grottoes are covered with soot from the fires and do not reflect the light. If you go a little further, you will meet other limestone formations. Other tourists, with a fine mental organization, claim that they experienced attacks of unreasonable fear and panic in the cave, heard the sounds of a tambourine and saw the tall figure of a man in a shaggy hat and with burning eyes.

Cave of the Black Devil

In the north of the Khakass Territory, in the Kuznetsk Alatau mountain range, there is one of the most terrible caves on our planet - the Koshkulak Cave, which scientists-researchers call the Black Devil Cave, and it unusually justifies the name given to it. Local residents, and the village of Shira is located 20 km from Koshkulak, and the small village of Topanovo is located nearby, have known about the cursed place since childhood and do not go to it. In addition, it is almost impossible to go down into the cave on your own - you will have to overcome a rather steep descent downwards, so you cannot do without special accompaniment. Nature, as if knowing about the dark energy of this place, deliberately made the cave inaccessible to people.

However, recently the local authorities have been trying to turn this terrible cave into one of the region’s tourist attractions, so today going down to the Black Devil Cave is not difficult. However, those who have visited it are not advised to do this; it is not for nothing that the cave is officially included in the top five most terrible places on earth.

What makes it so dangerous? According to local legend, this cave was once a ritual complex. However, the finds confirm that it actually served ritual purposes - this is evidenced by the altar built in the cave. Apparently, it was here that the shamans carried out ritual sacrifices: today it is difficult to say whether they were animals or people; rumor ascribes to black shamans both the murder of children and the murder of young women. For the dirty deeds done by the shaman, the locals killed him, but since then his soul began to take revenge for his treacherous death, appearing as he descended into the cave and beckoning him deeper into it. People who dared to succumb to the vision and go with it later went crazy or died, and the cave began to be considered a cursed place among the local population. However, this did not stop scientists from conducting detailed studies in the cave.

The Savchenko brothers were the first to descend into it in the mid-1980s. They managed to return from the cursed place alive, but they said in detail that in the cave they were seized by an inexplicable horror and both had a strange vision: a shaman playing the tambourine and calling for him.

This was not the first vision of the shaman to the people who descended into the cave. According to local residents, in the 1960s. A group of students went to the cave. Despite warnings not to go into it, the desperate youth could not ignore the adventure, but out of 20 people who went down into the cave, only 2 girls managed to get out.

Both of them, when they were discovered by a rescue squad, were insane, but in their own way. One behaved violently, so she immediately ended up in a hospital for the mentally ill, and the other was a quiet lunatic and quickly faded away in a regular hospital. Not for a minute did she part with some strange stone figurine, tightly clutched in her hand, and died of an incomprehensible illness. The next victims of the cursed cave were the pioneers, who persuaded the adults to walk through the halls of the cave. In one of the grottoes, everyone present was gripped by incredible horror and the children rushed to run towards the exit. When they came to their senses, they told what they had seen. It is characteristic that many again saw a shaman with glowing eyes, although many saw other pictures: some of a monstrous bear, some of a skull. The trip to the cursed cave did not pass without a trace: one of the sixth-graders hanged himself, leaving a note of incomprehensible content about the devil in a black hole.

Systematic exploration of the cave began in 1985; one of the researchers, who was the last in the group, also felt incredible fear just before leaving and saw a disgusting shaman calling him to him with gestures. The scientist was saved not only by his own determination to break the spell, but also by the rope with which he was tied to the rest of the group, who were already at the exit of the cave.

However, scientists did not stop before further studying the cave and conducted a series of experiments to study the causes of strange hallucinations and panic fear. They were able to establish that the source of the numbness and horror that gripped the people present in the cave was a geomagnetic anomaly, which consisted of a constant change in the electromagnetic field inside the cave; the impulse always arrived with the same amplitude and came from somewhere below, from the depths of the cave. It was not permanent, sometimes it could disappear for several days and then appear again. It was he who was the cause of the fears and horrors that gripped people, and gave rise to terrible hallucinations that drove them crazy.

In ancient times, when the Kushkulak cave performed ritual functions, it was called Ah-Chul, which translated into Russian means “White Cave”. According to surviving local legends, the shaman who meets visitors to the cave does not seek to kill them, but wants to pass on his valuable knowledge to them, but in exchange for this he will take their souls.

The studies carried out confirmed a strange fact: this anomalous emitter of waves dangerous to humans could not be of natural origin, it was created and installed artificially, but by whom and when it was not clear. However, this source was known many hundreds of years ago, and shamans then skillfully used the identified anomaly to instill terror during ritual actions; however, who could have created such an emitter thousands of years ago still remains a mystery.

It remains a mystery why most people see a shaman with a tambourine in their hallucinations caused by these waves. It is quite possible that this is how the energy that has accumulated for centuries inside the cave is manifested, and perhaps some images are preserved in its air, on the walls, ceiling and appear in the hallucinations of people who, in this case, see what once happened in the cave. Scientists have yet to unravel these mysteries.