Dmitry Semenov · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

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The Patomskiy Crater

added29 August 2026

A cone of shattered limestone forty metres high in the remote taiga of Irkutsk Oblast, found by the geologist Vadim Kolpakov in 1949. The Evenks called it the Fire Eagle's Nest and kept away. Every explanation has been tried: meteorite, volcanic gas, an underground nuclear blast, a uranium deposit. None is confirmed, and the leader of the 2005 expedition died of a heart attack on the way to it, which did the reputation no harm.

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59.28486, 116.58933

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The Valley of Death on the Vilyuy

A stretch of the upper Vilyuy known to the Yakuts as Elyuyu Cherkechekh, the valley of the dead. Tradition places metal hemispheres in the ground there, warm inside, in which one can shelter from the cold — but whoever spends the night falls ill and dies soon after. The first written mentions of the cauldrons date to the nineteenth century. No expedition has found anything, including several in the 2000s with metal detectors; explanations range from outcrops of trap basalt to spent rocket stages.

764 km away

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Cape Ryty on Baikal

One of the most closed stretches of the Baikal shore: the Buryats hold it to be ground one does not set foot on — spirits live there, and the penalty for trespass is illness or death. Women were forbidden to approach at all. A stone wall of unknown age and purpose survives on the cape, and a compass behaves unpredictably here because of a magnetic anomaly. It lies within a nature reserve, and getting there legally is next to impossible.

799 km away

FolkloreGreen

Lake Baikal

The deepest lake on earth, holding a fifth of the world's unfrozen fresh water. Buryat tradition fills it with spirits, and Cape Burkhan on Olkhon is one of the nine shrines of Asia, which not every shaman may approach. A separate body of stories concerns the Baikal mirages, in which non-existent shores and ships are seen above the water; the effect is physically real and comes from temperature layers in the air.

831 km away

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