Crimean Alexander Georgievich Paraskevidi keeps a tooth of some sea monster at home. About 6 cm long, red-brown in color, it was found sticking out of a piece of wood on the beach near the village of Stary Mayak. Turkish ichthyologist Arif Hakim, after examining and analyzing a strange find, considered that the tooth belongs to an animal unknown to science.
Traditions of antiquity deep
Official science does not recognize the existence of the Black Sea sea serpent. It is believed that such a large creature cannot live there, since a hydrogen sulfide layer begins at a depth of 100-150 m.
But the chronicles testify that the serpent lived in the Black Sea several hundred and even thousands of years ago. Even the ancient Greek historian Herodotus wrote that a mysterious monster lives in the waters of Pontus Euxinus (Black Sea).
According to his descriptions, the creature was dark, almost black in color, had a mane, clawed paws, a terrible mouth with huge teeth and burning red eyes. It moved on the surface of the water much faster than the ancient Greek ships.
In the XVI XVII centuries, the captains of the Turkish military and trade ships repeatedly reported on meetings with the Black Sea Dragon. Sometimes the monster even pursued small vessels. Don Cossacks and officers who served under Admiral Ushakov met with him and who went to distant sea hikes.
In 1828, an Evpatoriysk police officer reported on the appearance of a huge sea snake in the Karadag area of a huge sea snake. Emperor Nicholas I, known for his curiosity, learning about the Black Sea monster, sent scientists to the Crimea.
The participants of the Snake expedition never found, but they found an egg weighing 12 kg, in which there was an embryo, similar to a fabulous dragon with a crest on his head. Nearby found the skeleton of a giant tail with a shell structure. Then in the scientific environment there was even disputes: can sea snakes drop the tail like a lizard?
In 1855, the officers of the brig “Mercury” saw in the water a dark gray creature over 20 m long, which, making undulating movements, was moving in the direction of Cape Meganom, located in the southeastern part of Crimea between Feodosia and Sudak. As soon as the brig approached the monster, it disappeared under the water.
During the First World War, Oberleutnant Günther Prüfner, commander of the Kaiser’s submarine, cruising on the surface off the coast of Crimea, saw a strange, huge creature silently cutting through the waves. The officer took a good look at the monster through binoculars. The first thought was to torpedo the monster or shoot it with a cannon, but then he made a different decision and, fearing a collision with a giant reptile, gave the command for an urgent dive.
Fantasy or reality?
On May 17, 1952, Soviet writer Vsevolod Ivanov observed an unknown monster for forty minutes in Serdolikova Bay. Watching dolphins hunting for mullet, he saw a large, about ten meters in circumference, stone, overgrown with brown algae. The writer had repeatedly visited this place before, but saw this stone for the first time. Looking closely, the writer noted that the “stone” is slowly moving. Assuming that it was algae, he continued to observe. After a while, the “ball of algae” unfolded and stretched out.
“The creature swam with undulating movements to the place where the dolphins were, that is, to the left side of the bay,” Ivanov described this phenomenon. Everything was still quiet. Naturally, it immediately occurred to me: are these hallucinations?? I took out my watch. It was 12:18. The reality of what I saw was disturbed by the distance, the brilliance of the sun on the water, but, since the water was transparent, I even saw the bodies of dolphins that swam twice as far from me as the monster.
It was large, very large, 25-30 meters, and as thick as the tabletop of a desk, if you turn it sideways. It was under water and, it seems to me, was flat. The lower part of it is white, as far as the blueness of the water made it possible to understand, and the upper part is dark brown, which made me mistake it for algae. The monster, writhing in the same way as swimming snakes, swam towards the dolphins. They disappeared immediately.”.
Writer Stanislav Slavich also described something similar: “Eyewitnesses talk about meeting with a huge snake at Kazantip. The shepherd noticed something shiny under a thorn bush, similar to a ram’s skull polished by rains and winds, and just like that, having nothing to do, hit the gerlyga (a long staff with a wooden hook at the end) on this skull.
And then the incredible happened: a cloud of dust shot up, pieces of earth flew in all directions. The shepherd became dumb and numb, stopped understanding what was happening to him and where he was.
He saw only this cloud of dust, and in it his sheepdogs, as if enraged, and something huge, wriggling with monstrous strength and speed. When the shepherd came to his senses, one dog was killed, and the two survivors furiously tore the body of some huge reptile. What seemed to the shepherd a ram’s skull was the head of a huge snake. Shortly thereafter, the shepherd, they say, died.
The monsters are attacking
In 1961, another shocking encounter with a sea serpent took place in the Crimea. One day a local fisherman M. And. Kondratiev, director of the sanatorium “Crimean Primorye” A. Mozhaisky and the chief accountant of this enterprise V. Vostokov went fishing on a boat in the morning.
They moved some 300 meters away from the pier of the Karadag biological station towards the Golden Gates, when suddenly, fifty meters away, they saw an incomprehensible brown spot underwater. When you try to get closer to him, the stain began to disappear. When they managed to catch up with him, it became clear that something terrible and very impressive in size was under the water.
Two or three meters under water, the head of a huge snake, about a meter in size, was quite clearly visible, all dotted with brown hairs, resembling algae in appearance. Horn plates were visible behind the head on the body of the monster. A shaggy mane swayed in the water at the top of the head and dark brown back.
The belly of the monster was lighter gray. When people saw the monster’s small eyes, they were literally numb with horror. Mikhail Kondratiev still managed to quickly recover, and he, turning the boat around, rushed to the shore at full speed. Amazingly, the monster chased them. Its speed was very high, and it stopped chasing only not far from the coast, after which it headed for the open sea.
On August 12, 1992, a similar story happened to an employee of the Feodosia City Council V. M. Belsky. He swam in the sea, dived about 30 meters from the shore, and at some point, emerging, he saw a huge snake head almost next to him. Terrified, Belsky rushed to the shore, jumped out of the water and hid among the stones.
Looking out from behind the stone, he saw that where he had just swum, the head of a monster appeared, with water flowing from its mane. Belsky even managed to make out the skin and gray horny plates on the head and neck. The eyes of the sea monster were small, and the body was dark gray with a lighter underside. It is curious that a year before this, in the same place, a young man, a master of sports in swimming, died of a heart attack.
Nessie of the Black Sea
The Black Sea serpent has been exciting the human imagination for several thousand years. Nowadays, some enthusiasts spend days on the coast with the onset of warm weather, armed with video equipment. They hope to become famous by being the first to capture the mysterious sea dragon on film.
In October 2009, the Gusarenko spouses seemed to succeed, and quite by accident. Video footage is not of good quality, since it was taken from a great distance, but you can still see a huge serpentine body moving quickly in the water.
In the early 1990s, Crimean fishermen found dead dolphins with huge lacerations. One of the dolphins had their belly literally torn out along with their entrails. The bite size along the arc was about a meter, and the depth reached the spine. Along the edge of the arc, traces of sixteen large teeth were visible on the skin of the dolphin.
A few years ago, a dolphin bitten in half by some monster was taken out of the water by neighbors in the region Turkish fishermen. Scientists at Istanbul University concluded that the marks on the body were left by the teeth of a very large animal.
