Which of us in our childhood was not
interesting in adventure stories? Islands in boundless oceans, filibusters, riddles and
mystery - all these 
are
necessary attributes of this genre. And certainly treasures in dark caves. We could not
even think that there is no need to go hundreds of miles searching for unexplored and
unknown. However, the Podolian land has many riddles and mysteries. Among them can be
mentioned underground passages which remind of themselves with precipices. Practically all
localities of 300-400 years history have such evidences of the past. Who have built those
catacombs and what for? Where do they lead to? Our story will partly give the answers to
this questions. …Some years ago during the repairing works in the building of the
department of internal affairs and extraordinary situation took place. The corner of the
building suddenly collapsed and the surprised workers saw the opening to the underground
catacomb. Some of the people
went down but it was impossible to
investigate anything. The over-head cover could fall any minute. In order to make
everything save the opening was bricked up. But the problem was not solved. The alike
catacombs could appear any time and any place. This catacombs exist for hundreds of years.
Statistics testifies: there are nearly 800 localities on the territories of Khmelnitskiy
and Vinnitsa regions were the testimonies of our history have been found. We think, that
it is only a small part of what have to be examined. The systematic studying of the
ancient caves of Podillia have begun more than a hundred years ago. The famous experts of
regional history took part in that process: V. Antonovich, V. Guldman, U. Sitsinskiy and
others. By the way, they did not consider that problem to be non-topical and many of their
works were 
devoted
to it. Ukhim Sitsinskiy described the memorable places in Teplik and mentioned that
"the underground passages in
the town are made on the whole territory of the ancient settlement which was situated on
the banks of both rivers. Now these galleries remind of themselves with the help of
downfalls". Nowadays regional ethnographers have partly reconstructed the ancient
catacombs of Teplik. As it appeared, the passage is orientated to Turchinsk forest and
there is a legend about this forest. It says that in deep ravines Turks hid treasures
amassed by robbery. Maybe all this had sense because ancient silver Turkish coins were
found there rather often.
