The devil. Russia

Our life is full of mysteries and miracles, but you usually encounter amazing phenomena or creatures very unexpectedly. Going on a short trip to relatives in early November, I could not imagine that a mysterious forest monster could live in the quiet Ural hinterland. It turns out that a wild biped, either a beast or a man, has been fishing for several years in the Irbitsky district of the Sverdlovsk region.

After settling in my uncle's house in Zaikovo, my father and I spent a lot of time traveling, visiting numerous relatives living in the vicinity. Literally on the 2nd day, sitting at a festive table in the village of Bolshaya Nomad, we heard about a mysterious forest savage.

A certain furry bipedal beastman has already managed to get the inhabitants of many nearby villages. Then he will take a goat or a sheep into the forest, or even rob a person. The descriptions of eyewitnesses regarding his appearance were somewhat similar, in some ways they differed. According to some, the savage was tall, fat, covered with dark hair with gray. Others claimed that he was slightly taller than average, broad-shouldered, with dark brown hair.

In the village of Bolshaya Nomad, a forester was seen at least 5 times. Sometimes he just got in the way of people, immediately turning to flight, and sometimes he openly robbed. For example, in the spring of last year, he attacked a peacefully grazing goat and dragged it into the forest. This summer, a savage attacked a calf. A local resident Tatiana Shorikova saw him, wrapping his powerful arms around the animal, clinging to his neck with his mouth. Then it turned out that the forest robber had bitten through his victim's vein and, apparently, had drunk veal blood to his heart's content. The veterinarian had a lot of effort to save the animal. The calf survived, but was ill for a very long time: he barely moved and gained weight badly.

At the beginning of autumn, my second cousin, a huntsman, met a monster in the forest. That's what Anatoly told me.

- Can you imagine, I'm walking through the woods with a gun and suddenly I see this miracle yudo in a clearing 25 meters away from me, - says my brother. - Shaggy, bearded, with a dull look. I pulled the gun off my shoulder and, almost without aiming, hit it. It seems that a couple of buckshot got into the monster's hand. Anyway, he howled and took to his heels. Immediately behind the trees, the beastman disappeared as if he had fallen through the ground. I noticed a few drops of blood on the grass, but he remained alive: he was later seen in another village. He got into someone's yard and dragged away two chickens…

A couple of days after this conversation, a resident of the village of Sosnovka, Anna Bukina, informed me that recently a forest monster had openly robbed her.

- It was in the evening, I was walking along a forest road and carrying bags of groceries in my hands, - says Anna. - And suddenly a man or a monkey jumped out of the thicket in front of me: all overgrown with fur, scary as hell, and angry. I dropped my bag out of fear, backed away and stumbled. When I fell to the ground, I was so scared that I couldn't utter a word. This bastard put his paws in my bags, grumbled a little and ran away, taking all my purchases with him. The bags contained vegetables, meat and bread. Probably arranged a festive dinner for himself later…

There are rumors that the forest monster does not disdain killing. When the disfigured corpse of a man was found in the forest in the summer, suspicions fell on the forester: he allegedly ambushed the mushroom picker and lifted him up like a connecting rod bear. However, it seems to me personally that our mysterious hero has nothing to do with it and the deceased person most likely became a victim of extraordinary circumstances. He could have been attacked by a large animal or some kind of intruder.

After analyzing the testimony of eyewitnesses, you can make an approximate map of the habitat of the savage. His favorite territory is located south of Irbit, in a polygon between the villages of Zaikovo, Bolshaya and Malaya Kochevki, Sosnovka, Pyankovo and Krutikhinskoye. It is quite possible that the man-beast used to live in other areas, but he migrates and gradually expands the boundaries of his possessions.

I did not hope that fate would give me a chance to see the Ural monster, but literally the day before we left for Moscow, behind the village of Osintsevo, we noticed a strange man on the edge of the forest. Jumping out of the car, I had time to examine the stranger and realized that it seemed that it was about him that so many curious stories were being told in the neighborhood. The monster resembled a trained bodybuilder, his height did not exceed 2 m, and his powerful arms were slightly longer than human ones. His hair was light brown, his face had a thick, curly beard, wavy hair fell over his shoulders. But I could not figure out what the monster's body was covered with. At first glance, it seemed that the beastman was overgrown with fur, but it cannot be excluded that he could be dressed in fur clothes.

Unfortunately, I could not catch up with the amazing creature. His ability to disappear into the woods and evade pursuit could be the envy of any most experienced commando.  Even if I had a camera with me at that moment, I would hardly have had time to take a picture of it. The object was moving too fast. On the ground, the forest monster left several indistinct footprints of about size 50, but it was unclear whether this beastman was wearing something or not. In any case, the individual contours of the fingers on the prints are not visible.

In short, so far the forester remains a mystery to people. Perhaps the monster is just a runaway convict who settled in the forest and skillfully disguised himself from the authorities, or just a poor guy who got lost in the thicket and eventually went wild. It is also possible that an unknown monkey was brought to the Ural forests by someone. But it seems to me that the forester is the rarest kind of anthropoid, miraculously preserved in the remote taiga and, for reasons unknown to us, decided to move closer to people.