Luchistoe

The Valley of Ghosts on Demerdzhi

A slope of the Crimean mountain Demerdzhi scattered with hundreds of stone pillars up to twenty-five metres high — conglomerate from which the rain has washed the softer rock. In mist and at sunset the shapes read as people and animals, and the outlines shift with the light. A Crimean Tatar tradition explains them by the curse of a blacksmith who settled on the mountain; the name means blacksmith. In 1966 the mountain slid and buried part of the village of Lavanda.