“The Serpent Is Gone,” Villagers Say

Until recently, no one willingly entered the forest beyond Khutyn.

Woodcutters stopped at its edge. Hunters turned their dogs around before reaching its deepest paths. Parents warned children never to wander toward the hill overlooking the Volkhov River.

“The Lord frees us from many enemies.”

Ask anyone in the nearby villages why, and the answers are remarkably consistent. “The serpent.” Whether described as a monstrous snake, a dragon, or something far more difficult to explain, the creature has long been blamed for keeping this corner of the countryside shrouded in fear. No one wished to test the stories. Until one monk did.

Months ago, a solitary ascetic named Barlaam arrived carrying little more than an icon, a Gospel book, and the determination to live a life of prayer in the very place everyone else avoided. The villagers thought he would return within days. He never did.

Instead, reports soon spread that the hermit had encountered the fearsome creature itself. Witnesses claim that Barlaam neither armed himself nor fled. Standing before the beast, he made the sign of the Cross and, in the name of Christ, commanded it to leave this place forever.

Whatever happened in the forest that day, the stories since have all pointed in the same direction. No one has seen the serpent again.

This correspondent walked the woodland paths yesterday alongside several villagers who admitted they had not ventured here in years. “It feels different,” one farmer said, pausing beside a newly cleared field. “I cannot explain why.”

Where tangled undergrowth once covered the hillside, neat gardens now surround a small wooden church. Smoke rises peacefully from a cluster of monastic buildings. The sound once said to haunt these woods has been replaced by the chanting of monks at prayer.

Barlaam himself seemed uninterested in discussing the serpent. When asked directly about the encounter, he smiled only briefly. “The Lord frees us from many enemies,” he said. His attention quickly turned to the day’s work.

A group of brothers was repairing a roof damaged by recent rains. Others were harvesting vegetables to feed both the monastery and the poor who increasingly arrive seeking help. Travellers now come not because of frightening rumours, but because of the monastery’s growing reputation for hospitality and holiness.

One elderly woman recalled refusing to walk this road for nearly twenty years. Today she carried bread to the monks. “My grandchildren play here now,” she said. “That would have been unthinkable.”

As evening fell, the monastery bells echoed across the valley. The forest remained quiet. Not with the silence of fear. With the peace that follows when fear has finally lost its home.