A ravine in Kolomenskoye that Moscow tells stories about as a place where time comes loose. In the best-known version, a detachment of Tatar horsemen vanished into it during Devlet Giray's raid of 1571 — and in 1621 riders in antique armour appeared at the tsar's gates. Questioned, they insisted they had gone down into the ravine to escape pursuit, hidden in a greenish fog on its floor, and stepped out of it a few minutes later. Fifty years had passed. Two enormous boulders lie at the bottom, the Goose and the Maiden Stone; people still come to make wishes on them, and the fog really does linger there longer than on the slopes.

Read next

Dyatlov Pass

Dyatlov Pass is a mountain saddle situated between unnamed Peak 905 and the eastern flank of Kholat Syakhl (Mansi for "Dead Mountain") in the northern Ural Mountains of Russia's Sverdlovsk Oblast. This remote subarctic wilderness became the focal point of one of the 20th century's most persistent mysteries following the tragic and perplexing deaths of nine Soviet ski hikers in the winter of 1959.