Scientists have confirmed the existence of mermaids. Mermaids exist: historical references and eyewitness accounts Mermaids are real evidence

Mermaid. It seems that even those who are very vaguely familiar with Slavic mythology have heard about mermaids. The image is recognizable, present in many fairy tales, literary works, and can be seen in paintings. In the North we believe that mermaids still exist to this day. There are so many stories told about them! But what are they, real mermaids?

The mermaid is a character from Slavic mythology who cares for fields, forests and waters. One of the most varied images of folk mysticism. The fact that mermaids existed was believed everywhere in Rus', but ideas about what kind of a real mermaid she was - differed in different places.

Rcreeping creaturescosiness! Authentic northerntales

It would seem that this character is so fantastic that he remains only in fairy tales. But our northern tales claim that real mermaids can be seen to this day.

Mermaids live in water, but can also go outside. They are not very favorable towards people, they should be feared:

We were little, so the old people told us that you can’t swim after the rain, the mermaid washes there. Her hair is long. She will carry away...

They told some pretty scary stories about them:

Mermaids? Yes, I heard. Now there is no one, but before there was a lot of things, they told all sorts of stories.

One woman's son drowned. He was a good swimmer, a good swimmer, and suddenly he drowned. And it was summer, of course. Well, the people: “The water guy dragged me away!” And then, a lot of time had passed, she went to the river to do laundry and saw a girl sitting on a stone, beautiful, but naked, with black, long hair. She scratches them. That [woman] saw her and her heart immediately sank. I was very scared, standing there, not even breathing. I was very scared. Why, it’s amazing! What you! This mermaid, no matter how she looks at someone, just as a person becomes frozen, she will stand, she can do this for a long time, yes. That's where it stands. Suddenly the mermaid turns around and says: “Your son is fine, go home and don’t come here anymore.” And she jumped into the water and left the comb on the stone. But my son’s body was never found, it hurt deeply.

There are still mermaids in the river. They are like a person, their hair is long, loose, they sit on a stone and scratch their hair. And there are breasts. They live in lumpy places. Comes out in the morning and evening.

There were mermaids too. They showed different types: women, men, and cattle. Like a dream. They see them and get sick.

Grandmother died. An uncle from Moscow arrived. I went to the river. In a suit, dressed properly. The girl seemed beautiful to him. He wanted to hug her, so he did so with his hands - and dived into the river. I saw a good girl, beautiful. And he came, it was pouring from him, and he was in a good suit.

We were little, so the old people told us that you can’t swim after the rain, the mermaid washes there. Her hair is long. She will drag it away.

There are still mermaids in the rivers. They say a cursed man turns into a mermaid. They are like a person, their hair is long, loose, they sit on a stone and scratch their hair. And there are breasts. They live in lumpy places. Comes out in the morning and evening. And a butt like a human's. Beautiful, her breasts are like those of a woman. She rinsed the linen and beat it with a hand stick to get the dust out. I see that her hair is long and loose. But they noticed, and she disappeared.

Shishikhas, mermaids, grab you by the legs and drown them. The grandmothers were planting svikla, and the woman went into the water. Someone pulls her, and then there are finger marks on her feet.

They told me that someone was serving in the navy, and she [the mermaid] came out and sang songs. And he liked her so much that he fell in love. And her love is real. And they had a child. What should the sailor do, how can he bring her with him, because she doesn’t know how to speak, and the child doesn’t know how to speak. And they sent him to another ship. She comes and looks where he is. And they show her: he left. I was very sad. And then she tore the child apart and threw herself into the water.

What does a real mermaid look like?Does she have a tail?

The image of a mermaid in books and paintings is quite recognizable - a beautiful girl with a fish tail. However, like many spirits of Slavic mythology, they can look different:

They showed different types: a woman, a man, and a beast. Like a dream.

But most often, real mermaids resemble beautiful young girls, naked, with long flowing hair of greenish, light brown or black color, which they constantly comb. Do mermaids have tails? In the North of Rus' it was believed that mermaids were completely similar in appearance to people. After all, they not only sit in the water, but also move on land, they can enter mills, run along the banks of a river or reservoir, and swing on tree branches. In the South of Rus' they said that mermaids live only in water, which is why they have a tail.

Although a real mermaid sometimes looks beautiful and seductive, her entire appearance suggests that she is an inanimate person. If you look closely, you will notice closed or dull eyes and pale skin.

There are stories in which mermaids look like real monsters: unsightly, with long saggy breasts, sharp claws, completely covered with hair. It immediately becomes clear that such a creature will not be at all favorable towards people.

How to become a mermaid?

Why are real mermaids so hostile to people? Because they themselves were once people, but they died too early or “wrongly” (became a victim of a crime, committed suicide, died tragically) and became “hostage” dead. They said that a dead (especially drowned) child, a young girl, a young woman, or anyone who died during a special week of the year - Rusalnaya - could become a mermaid. Mermaids drag people swimming to the bottom at inopportune times and without the blessing of people; when they meet on the shore, they can attack and tickle them to death, strangle them with their long hair, and lure women washing clothes on the shore into the water. Those who died due to the fault of these spirits also become mermaids. To prevent the souls of dead young children or girls from becoming mermaids, special rituals were observed during their funerals.

Why are mermaids dangerous?

Despite the rather romantic ideas about these spirits, they do not like living people and strive to destroy them in order to replenish their ranks. Mermaids are especially active and dangerous during Mermaid Week in May-June, during the flowering period of rye. That's when they most often show up to people. During this period, people were advised not only to refrain from swimming in bodies of water, but also to go near water in general and walk in the forest.

When meeting mermaids, it was necessary not to look at them - it was best to turn your gaze to the ground. There were also conspiracies against these spirits. They were also advised to pay them off - throw them some item of clothing, combs, jewelry.

Mermaids still exist today, and our ancestors knew this very well. The spirits of nature surround us to this day. All Slavic mythology testifies to this. By studying it, we rediscover the world of environmental spirits.

Memoirs of missionaries

The question of whether mermaids really exist has worried humanity since ancient times. Ancient memoirs of missionaries who tried to catch mermaids have been preserved.

A missionary of the Capuchin Order spoke of what he managed to see from a ship on the way to the Congo: mermaids and newts were collecting algae in shallow water. The sailors decided to catch the sea inhabitants in a net, but they were able to avoid capture.

Another missionary, Father Francis, from the Italian city of Pavia, who visited Angola in 1701, did not want to believe the stories of the townspeople about the mermaids who lived in their lake. Then the locals decided to catch one of them and show it to the man. He examined the capture and described it in detail, and a day later she died.

In 1560, the church came closer to answering the question of whether there were living mermaids. Not far from the island of Mannar, near Ceylon, seven mermaids were caught at once. The booty went to the Dutch sailors. They were examined by Bosquet, physician to the Viceroy of Holland in Goa. After anatomying the mermaids, he came to the conclusion that they are similar to humans, their internal and external structure is identical to ours. Apparently the doctor performed an autopsy on creatures that had already died, since according to the data, they were able to live in captivity for only a few days.

In 1682, near the town of Sestri in Italy, a marine inhabitant similar to a human was caught. Witnesses of the event reported in manuscripts that he could sit on a chair, which indicated the presence of joints, and that he lived only a couple of days, did not accept human food, but only moaned pitifully.

In another story about mermaids, a real portrait was preserved, belonging to “the illustrious Sue Gautier.” In Paris, in 1758, the mermaid was exhibited in an aquarium at the fair in Saint-Germain. According to the records of one fair visitor, she was given fish and bread. She was glad to be in the water.

In 1619, two advisers to the king of the Danish state, during their sea voyage from Norway to Sweden, noticed a creature that looked very much like a person. The sailors decided to throw a small bait into the water, and the mysterious creature was caught on it, but when they lifted it onto the deck, it began to scream terribly, then the sailors decided to let it go.

The same incident occurred when fishermen who cast a net near the Scottish Isles were able to catch a mermaid. This was reported in the Edinburgh Magazine. According to the description, she had gray skin and no scales on her tail. The fishermen, having examined the catch, decided to return it to the sea, because they thought that trouble might happen at sea, and they would be found guilty.

Mermaids in the lakes of Russia

Russian mermaids are interesting because they do not have tails. In Russia there are many legends about the existence of mermaids. These are river mermaids, some of them lack a tail. There is one interesting entry from 1891, in which one peasant says that once, in ancient times, according to the stories of old people, someone brought 2 mermaids to the village. They had long hair, they only grieved, and when they decided to set them free, they began to sing and ran into the forest.

Another mysterious story happened in July 1992, when a programmer from Moscow, Igor Peskov, and his dog Sakur decided to go fishing in the Tver region. Listening to the radio, he learns that the night ahead of him on the lake, near the village of Rozhdestvennoye, falls at the beginning of Rusal Week. With the arrival of midnight, the fire died down, the ringing of bells began to be heard from somewhere, but the church was not close. Suddenly a strange bluish light appeared over the lake, Igor felt as if he was being hypnotized. Igor was pulled straight into the lake, it seemed to him that the algae around him were pulling him to the bottom. There was no strength to resist, then the dog began to bark, which helped the young man escape. When he began to come to his senses, he saw human silhouettes. He was able to get out of the water, but now it was Sakur who was in trouble. The guy called out to him, and then he began to swim to the shore, when he was already safe, Igor saw that the dog’s neck was bloody.

Another story happened in Tolyatti on an artificial reservoir. D. Pogodin says that he and his friends arrived at the pond, and two ambulances stood near it. One guy who happened to be nearby told us about what happened there, says Pogodin. He and his friends wanted to go swimming. As soon as they began to enter the water, they immediately heard a mysterious voice that beckoned them. They noticed a well-fed woman, using the power of her voice, she bewitched one of her friends, and he began to head towards her. His friend began throwing stones at her. The woman hissed, making terrible sounds, and then disappeared somewhere. The guy who was bewitched fell with an epileptic attack, although he had previously been completely healthy, and the second one simply went numb, but recovered over time, but his friend spent a lot of time in a hospital.

They say that there are natural mermaids. They are immortal and are generated by evil spirits. Another confirmation of the existence of these mysterious sea creatures is a bronze statue of a mermaid (Middle East), it is more than 3000 years old.

It can be noted that the descriptions of sea creatures are generally similar to each other, despite the centuries separating their eyewitnesses. Today people have begun to see fewer mermaids, this may be due to the fact that modern man spends most of his time in the city, far from the depths of the sea. But scientific research on this matter also continues, since the question of the existence of mermaids still remains relevant.

There are so many mysteries, unsolved secrets and questions in the world, the answers to which have not yet been found. For example, do mermaids really exist? The image of this creature is present in both cartoons and movies. There are many folk tales about how a man met a mermaid. So what is this: reality or people’s imagination?

Popular beliefs

A beautiful woman with long green hair and a large fish tail, dressed in beautiful white clothes - this is what a real mermaid looks like, according to popular belief. It is believed that these creatures live in natural bodies of water and are the daughters of Neptune, the king of the sea. Another legend says that they become:

souls of dead unmarried girls;
children of murdered pregnant women born in the afterlife;
unbaptized cursed children;
representatives of the fair sex who committed suicide with water because of unhappy, unrequited love.

She has the gift of clairvoyance and is able to control the elements: cause rain, hail, wind and other natural phenomena. In fact the girl with the tail is very dangerous for an ordinary person.

Mermaids hunt young men, lure them into the water and drown them. They say that if she starts singing, the person who hears her voice instantly turns to stone and remains in this state for a very long time. Enchanted by her unearthly beauty and voice, the man falls in love, as they say, to death. Even if he avoids drowning, he will still not live later - he will die from an illness caused by lovesickness or he will commit suicide. A kiss from this girl also leads to an early death.

But for old people and children who find themselves in trouble in the depths of the sea, this creature will help them escape and get to the shore. It happens that a sea resident takes her child with her into the abyss to make her dream of motherhood come true. It is possible that the dislike for men is connected precisely with the reason why the girl died and became a resident of the water - unhappy love for a man. Whether this is true or not, no one knows.

According to the stories of sailors, girls with tails have a thieving and evil character, as they steal valuable things from fishing boats and ships. Having a desire to have fun, living mermaids spoil fishing gear, sink ships - they try in every possible way to annoy the person they meet on their way.

Mermaid image

Different eyewitnesses describe this creature in different ways: some talk about a beautiful girl, others saw a mermaid man. Therefore, no one knows exactly what mermaids look like in real life.

In the 19th century people distinguished between sea maidens and mermaids. The first were considered evil tailed creatures that killed any person they met. The second are the undead souls of drowned girls without tails, who pose no danger to people. At a later time, these two images merged into one.

Russian artists and writers dedicated their creations to these mysterious creatures. In Rus', it was believed that mermaids really exist in the world: in winter they are in the water, and in spring they come out of rivers, lakes and seas into the fields. All summer, people walked around the ponds in ten directions; they were afraid to swim in them, because they believed that girls with tails could kidnap them and drown them. The girls wove flower wreaths and hung them on trees in order to please the tailed ladies.

Facts and evidence

Exists plenty of evidence the existence of these marine inhabitants. They were collected all over the world and come from first-hand accounts of eyewitnesses:

It is difficult to call sea fairies with tails instead of legs a fiction, since they are depicted in cave paintings from the Stone Age. The drawings show scenes where ancient people hunted creatures in the water that looked like humans and fish at the same time.
And mermaids are also mentioned in Irish chronicles of the 12th century. It was about a creature caught by fishermen - half woman, half fish. There, in the 14th century, after a strong storm, a woman fish washed up on the shore, entangled in algae.
In 1608, the navigator Hudson and his crew saw a mermaid in the sea. A real, living woman with bare breasts, long hair and a scaly tail watched their ship with interest, and after a while disappeared from view. This fact was recorded in the ship's log.
In 1647, in the city of Las Arenas, a sixteen-year-old teenager swam in the sea and disappeared without a trace. They searched for him for a long time, but to no avail. 5 years after this incident, sailors found a strange creature in one of the bays: thin, pale and with red hair. He was identified as the same missing boy, only now he looked and behaved differently: there were scales all over his body, and membranes between his fingers, like frogs have. He growled and didn't say anything. For three weeks, the priests performed a ritual of exorcism from the teenager, but this changed little. The young man was left to live with his mother. For two years he ate only raw meat and fish, and then escaped by diving into the sea. No one else saw him.
In the USSR, this creature was encountered by our military personnel in 1982 on Lake Baikal, where combat swimmers were trained. When diving to a depth of more than 50 meters, people discovered terrible creatures: their height was about 3 meters, they were wearing something like a transparent helmet on their heads, and their clothes were very shiny. The movements of these strangers were very fast and precise; they did not have any equipment or devices to maintain breathing. The command decided to catch one of them in order to get a better look at the strange guests. Seven people descended to the depths, taking with them a large, strong net. When trying to throw a trap on a strange creature, all the swimmers were suddenly thrown to the surface by some unknown energy impulse. Subsequently, after some time, three people died, the rest remained disabled for life.
In 1992, residents of one of the US states discovered a half-fish, half-man a kilometer from the shore. He had a large head and long arms with webbed fingers. The fishermen swam closer to the stranger, but he, having made a couple of circles around the ship, went into the depths.

Such there are a great many eyewitness accounts, therefore, the existence of creatures with tails can rightfully be considered a reliable fact. Who they are, where they came from - questions to which there are no clear answers.

Maybe these are mutant people or evolving inhabitants of the seas, existing separately from humans. Perhaps these creatures are the creation of a parallel reality and end up in our world by chance, because we don’t meet them too often.

Modern data

Scientists around the world are trying to answer the question of whether mermaids exist in real life or are they just a myth. The fact is that in the basements of Japanese monasteries there are mummies that do not resemble human ones in appearance. Scientists suspect that these may be the remains of both alien inhabitants and mermaids. Also, according to them, skeletons of animals are stored there, the species of which are unfamiliar to modern science.

It is known for sure that the Sinai monastery houses a mummy of a female creature, which received the name “sea princess”, since her body is covered with scales and there are fins on her back.

In Poland, photographs were taken of a real mermaid, who is hidden from prying eyes by the military...

Mermaids are creatures whose legends can be found in the mythology of peoples living in all corners of the world. Wherever there are some bodies of water - lakes, seas or oceans, local mythology keeps stories about mysterious inhabitants of the depths. Even atheists and religious figures cannot call them fairy-tale characters with 100% certainty, because at least once a decade shocking evidence of the existence of mermaids appears.

Where do mermaids come from and what do they look like?

Siren, undine, naiad, Mavka - many names of the same creature, which in Slavic history was called the “mermaid”. The ancestor of this term was the word “channel”, denoting a path laid by a river flow. It was believed that this is where the lost souls of unbaptized baby girls who died on Trinity Week, girls who drowned or committed suicide before marriage, and those who decided to become guardians of the waters of their own free will live.

To this day, in some Old Believers villages there are legends that if a representative of the fairer sex does not like life on earth because of loneliness, poverty or the death of her parents, she can ask the forest spirits to take her to a swamp or lake, so that find eternal peace.

Popular beliefs attribute to mermaids the ability to transform into animals - birds, frogs, squirrels, hares, cows or rats. But what is more familiar to them is the appearance of a young girl or woman, in whom, instead of legs, you can see a long tail, reminiscent of a fish. In Little Russia and Galicia, people believed that the mermaid could turn him into legs if she wished. By the way, the Greeks had a similar idea: they portrayed sirens exclusively as beautiful maidens, no different from ordinary girls. The sailor could understand that it was a siren in front of him, and not a young charmer, only when he found himself face to face with his own death: the sirens lured men with seductive singing and killed mercilessly.

According to all nationalities, mermaids wear hairstyles made exclusively of loose hair. In ancient times, this sign made it possible to distinguish living girls from paranormal creatures. The fact is that Christian women always covered their heads with a scarf, so bare hair is a sign that a mermaid is standing in front of a person. In the church books of Ukraine there is a record of a girl who left home on the eve of her wedding and became a mermaid. Her father understood everything when he saw her at night near the house with her curls scattered over her shoulders and “wedded” her to a pillar so that her soul would no longer bother him.

Real eyewitness stories about mermaids

It is known that water nymphs choose exclusively men as objects of their hunt. In Scotland and Ireland, to this day, some of them always carry a needle with them in order to prick the mermaid, who is afraid of hot iron like fire, when attacked, in order to save their life. An encounter with it is life-threatening, because this creature will try to lure the victim into the depths and drown or tickle him to death. But history knows the stories of lucky people who miraculously survived after communicating with a mermaid.

The first documented mention of it dates back to the 12th century. The Icelandic chronicles Speculum Regale report a woman with a fish tail who was caught and imprisoned in a cage by residents of a coastal village. It is not known whether she could speak and whether she survived the meeting with the superstitious peasants, but eyewitnesses said that they managed to give her the name Margigr.

In 1403 in Holland, the author of the book “Wonders of Nature, or a Collection of Extraordinary and Notes of Worthy Phenomena and Adventures in the Whole World of Bodies, Arranged in Alphabetical Order” and collector of rarities, Sigault de la Fond, meets a girl whom people found on the shore when she asked for help. She had a fin, and she was thrown out during a storm, so she was given the name Nereid. The mermaid was brought to the city, taught to cook, do laundry and care for livestock. It is known that Nereid spent more than 15 years with people - and every day she tried to return home to the depths of the sea. One day she sailed away, never having learned to speak or understand human language.

On June 16, 1608, the navigator Henry Hudson, after whom the strait was later named, set off on a journey with a group of sailors. On the very first day on the open sea, far from civilization, they saw a girl rocking on the waves, singing in a charming voice.

“A young beauty with bare breasts, black hair and a mackerel tail, which we did not dare approach.”

This is what the sailors later wrote down in the logbook. Having learned about this case, Peter I asked the clergy from Denmark for advice on whether these stories could be believed. Bishop Francois Valentin answered him that the other day he personally saw the mermaid and there were fifty witnesses to it.

In 1737, the English newspaper for men, Gentleman's magazine, published a note about how, over the past weekend, fishermen, along with fish floundering in a net, brought a strange creature on board. Of course, they heard about mermaids, but they caught... a man with a fish tail! The strange creature frightened the poor people so much that they beat the prey to death. The monster's corpse was bought and displayed in the Exter Museum for several centuries.

Eyewitnesses reported:

“This creature was amazing and made human moans. When we came to our senses, we saw that it was a man with a white tail and a membranous fin covered with scales. The creature’s appearance was repulsive and surprisingly human-like at the same time.”

The year 1890 in Scotland was marked by the appearance of a whole family of mermaids near the Orkney Islands. Three girls swam in the water, laughed and fished, but never swam close to people. It cannot be said that they were afraid of the person; rather, they avoided them. In the absence of fishermen, the nymphs rested on coastal rocks. It is known that mermaids lived in these parts for more than 10 years. In 1900, a Scottish farmer managed to take one of the sea maidens by surprise:

“Once I had to go with my dog to a distant ravine to pull out a sheep that had fallen into it. Moving along the ravine in search of the sheep, I noticed the unnatural restlessness of the dog, which began to howl in fear. Looking into the ravine, I saw a mermaid with red curly hair and sea green eyes. The mermaid was as tall as a man, very beautiful, but with such a fierce expression on her face that I rushed away from her in horror. While running away, I realized that the mermaid had fallen into a ravine due to low tide and was forced to wait there for the tide to swim back to the sea. But I didn’t want to come to her aid.”

Throughout the 20th century, mermaids were sighted in Chile, the United States of America, Polynesia and Zambia. In 1982, nymphs were first discovered in the USSR, where they previously did not believe in stories about otherworldly creatures living in reservoirs. During training, combat swimmers on Lake Baikal encountered a school of fish with a female body underwater. After surfacing, they spoke about what they had seen and received orders to establish contact with the strange inhabitants of Lake Baikal. As soon as they swam to the mermaids, you threw them ashore as if by a blast wave, because of which the scuba divers died in a few days one after another, and the survivors became disabled.

The last mention of mermaids in the press were articles written by journalists from many countries after photographs from a military training ground in Poland appeared on the Internet in 2015. The photographs clearly show that people in protective suits are carrying something the size of a person, but with a fish tail. Their burden weighs quite a lot, because the stretcher was carried by six people at the same time.

The Polish government left the photographs without comment. And will conservative science be able to find an explanation for the existence of mermaids?