Murom ( Russia )
Researcher of local history Aleksander Epanchin says that there was village Rusaki having 2 monasteries for men and for women. The monks started committing sins with the mermaids from the nearest deep place of the river. The Heaven became indignant with the monks' debauchery and punished them. In the beginning of XVIII century, village Rusaki and its monasteries went underground, and Svyatoe (Saint) Lake was created on the spot. At night or early in the morning ringing of bells and motet is heard over the lake, and during full moon a gold cross is well-seen on the lake's bottom. One day a fisherman put his nets into the lake, and pulled out a rope. He pulled the rope, and a church dome appeared on the water surface. The fisherman was so stunned, that he fell down into the water from his boat, and sank. Elderly people say that mermaids pulled the man into the depths of the lake. In 1960s divers explored the lake's bottom, and they found a wooden deck with a door in it, a long chain was attached to the door. Local residents believe that the water will go down some day, and both the monasteries will be brought to light again.
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While sailing the ocean near Haiti, Christopher Columbus in 1493 reported seeing three mermaids from a distance. The Genoese explorer was not impressed.
Up close, the sea maidens were "not as pretty as they are depicted," he wrote in his journal, "for somehow in the face they look like men."
Many scientists now think that what Columbus probably saw was a manatee, an aquatic mammal that resembles a flippered hippo.
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A mermaid (from the Middle English mere in the obsolete sense 'sea' (as in maritime, the Latin mare, "sea") + maid(en)) is a legendary aquatic creature with the head and torso of human female and the tail of a fish. The male version of a mermaid is called a merman; the gender-neutral plural is merfolk or merpeople. Various cultures throughout the world have similar figures.
Much like Sirens, mermaids in stories would sometimes sing to sailors and enchant them, distracting them from their work and causing them to walk off the deck or cause shipwrecks. Other stories would have them squeeze the life out of drowning men while trying to rescue them. They are also said to take them down to their underwater kingdoms. In Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid it is said that they forget that humans cannot breathe underwater, while others say they drown men out of spite.
“In appearance it more resembled a human being than a fish, having a face frightfully like that of a man or woman, with body and breasts exactly resembling the latter. The lower part terminated in a fish tail.”
