The mystery of an abandoned building
On the outskirts of Ukhtomsk there is a seemingly unremarkable empty house. The windows are boarded up with wooden panels that are dark from time to time, the plaster has remained only on a small part of the facade. There are no old-timers who remember this house well-groomed and inhabited, but rumors around it, one more fantastic than the other, only multiply over time.
The history of this abandoned house is as dark as its exterior. The last owner of the house, Vladimir Nikolaev, died at the end of the 19th century. He was a prominent man who lived in grand style: delicious food, beautiful women, hunting in the surrounding forests. But the day came when he was fed up with entertainment and wanted a quiet family life. The girl he liked was from a peasant family, incredibly pretty.
To the chagrin of the relatives, the girl flatly refused a profitable party, and then Vladimir by force took her from her home to his estate. They say that from the time Anastasia crossed the threshold of the mansion, no one saw her again. And Vladimir has changed a lot since then: day by day he grew gloomy, overgrown with a black beard, began to treat his servants unfairly and cruelly. A month later he was found dead in his bedroom. They did not find any visible injuries on the body, but such horror froze in the wide open eyes that the servants had no doubts: the master died of fright. But Anastasia was never found - neither alive nor dead.
There were no direct heirs, and over time the economy fell into decay. The house began to be infamous. In the windows at night, at times, they saw light, although all the servants fled, and the house had long been empty. None of those who tried to enter the building returned.
More than a hundred years have passed since those terrible events, but even today the only residents of the mansion are only cats. They, unlike people, are not disturbed by the ghosts of the past.
Dismantled church
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Back in the 17th century, a wooden church of the Archangel Michael stood in Kaluga. 1687 - instead of it, a stone church with five chapters and a chapel of John the Warrior was erected. And in 1813, with the money of the Kaluga merchant Yakov Bilibin, a bell tower was attached to the temple.
The church was closed in the early 1930s, when the authorities wanted to demolish the building and erect in its place a dwelling house for nomenklatura workers. The temple was dismantled, part of the brick was used for the construction of a kindergarten, and part for the construction of the same house. It was decided to leave the church basement, which stretched along Darwin Street, and to arrange a boiler room in it. During the arrangement of the latter, the burials of priests were found in the basement. Their remains were taken to an unknown destination.
According to the current residents of the house at 100 Lenin Street, ghosts appear here with enviable regularity. This usually happens in late October - early November. Mysterious dark silhouettes are seen in various parts of the building. At this time, pets behave anxiously, and people in the apartments are "covered" with freezing cold and a feeling of fear …
Land of Sorrow and Suffering
In the north of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, there is an amazing place that has attracted hunters, travelers and adventurers for centuries. But the criminals - both criminal and political - ended up there, in prison and settlements, without any desire.
In the harsh lands of permafrost, the northern lights and the polar night, located between Turukhan and the Yenisei, from time immemorial, Selkups and Evenks lived, who professed paganism. According to legend, the name of the Turukhan River and the adjacent region came from the tradition of local shamans to have a staff with them, which depicted the magic tree of tura - a symbol of shamanic power. Old-timers said that with the help of this staff, some of the powerful shamans in past times caused a storm and stopped the flood of the great Yenisei, commanded rain and fire.
When the Cossacks settled in these parts and the clash of interests of settlers and local residents became inevitable, the shamans used all their strength to protect their own people. In the chronicle Cossack sources dating back to the beginning of the 17th century, when a fortified winter hut was founded on the site of modern Turukhansk, and then a small town called New Mangazeya appeared, there is a mention of this case: once an Evenk shaman, enraged by the dues imposed on his people, threw his staff over the wooden wall of the fortress, and a violent fire broke out in the Cossack settlement.
An active struggle against the pagan beliefs of the Turukhan peoples in the 18th century was started by monks who built their monastery on one of the Yenisei islands. The monastic possessions were repeatedly burnt and raided by local residents who resisted the alien faith.
Death-rock, a high cliff located 18 km from modern Turukhansk in the upper reaches of the Podkamennaya Tunguska, is associated with the sinister rituals carried out by the Selkups and Evenks until the beginning of the 20th century. Unfaithful wives and caught thieves were thrown from this rock into the river. Weak old people came here to voluntarily give up their lives. It was here that shamans sacrificed young beautiful girls, children and prisoners to their gods. And later, when Russian settlers came to these lands, the Cossacks executed the recalcitrant natives on a gloomy rock.
Even in the 20th century, the terrible cliff maintained its ill-famed gateway to hell. Death Rock accepted its last victim in 1954. At that time, after the amnesty, according to which tens of thousands of recidivist criminals were released, a gang appeared in the north of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, which hunted robberies, robberies of shops and savings banks. The police attacked the trail of the gang, whose lair was in the Turukhan taiga. After several days of pursuit, the criminals were pushed to the bank of the Podkamennaya Tunguska. Fearing imminent retribution, the bandits jumped from Death Rock into the whirlpools of the river. According to legend, out of 23 members of the gang, only the leader, the famous bandit Fyodor Kuklachenko, managed to survive.
Before the revolution, the Turukhansk land supplied large quantities of valuable furs and fish delicacies to the European part of the Russian Empire and abroad. According to the recollections of the revolutionaries who spent their young years in exile in that region, hunting and fishing were their favorite pastime. Even now, the Turukhansk taiga attracts hunters like a magnet, among whom there are many legends about unusual inhabitants and terrible secrets of this land. One of them is associated with a dead Evenk hunter, whose ghost allegedly appears in the evening and before dawn, demanding that the hunters share their prey with him. Despite the gloominess of such a legend, it is considered a great success to meet a ghost among the fishermen: it promises rich booty.
Another legend that has come down to us from the time of the first Russian settlements tells of a “bloody winter quarters”. As if in the Turukhansk taiga once every three years, in the most severe snowy season, an old dilapidated hut appears from nowhere. Woe to the hunter who enters it and stays for the night. This hut, like a bloodthirsty predator, swallows unlucky travelers looking for shelter, and when it is full, disappears without a trace, taking its victims with it into oblivion.
The real prototype of the "bloody winter quarters" devouring people was the many forts and camps that arose at different times on the Turukhan land. Since the 17th century, criminals and free-thinkers have been exiled to these lands. Here the robbers from the troops of Stenka Razin and Emelyan Pugachev found their last refuge. In the XX century, the famous historian and poet Lev Gumilyov and the equally famous surgeon and priest Archbishop Luka, in the world Valentin Voino-Yasenetsky, and many thousands of unknown victims of the GULAG served long sentences in the Turukhan camps.
From 1949 to 1953, in those places in incredibly difficult natural and climatic conditions, another "construction of the century" took place - the Igarka - Salekhard railway line was laid, on which dozens of prisoners died from overwork, hunger and disease every day.
1950 - in the village of Kureyka, a pavilion-museum of Comrade Stalin was built - as a reminder of the pre-revolutionary exile years of Joseph Dzhugashvili. But the impressive pantheon managed to receive not a very large number of visitors. 1961 - it was closed, and the statue of Stalin was thrown into the Yenisei. 1994 - under unclear circumstances, the pavilion-museum, which had fallen into desolation, burned down. It was rumored that shortly before this, the Kurei boys saw, next to the museum, a short figure of a mustachioed man in boots, a jacket and a cap, who was looking at the empty building and was intently smoking a pipe.
Nowadays, only an abandoned railway line that goes to the northwest - into swamps and permafrost - serves as a reminder of the dark past of the Turukhansk region. But local hunters assure that from time to time somewhere in the distance, no, no, and the sad whistle of an invisible steam locomotive will be heard …
The evil spirit of the cherepovets swamp
Russia can be considered the birthplace of swamps - nowhere else are there such numbers and volumes. And a person who lived surrounded by swamps, from generation to generation, formed certain character traits.
The Cherepovets bogs are a poorly studied area in the Vologda region. Nowadays, they speak of it as an anomalous zone, because there have long been observed mysterious disappearances of people from the roads, quite frequent suicides, an incredibly large number of crazy people in nearby villages and strange behavior of seemingly completely healthy people.
According to the statistics of the 19th century, in the places of the Cherepovets bogs, the number of people who committed suicide was 4-5 times higher than the all-Russian indicators, and the crime rate was 9 times higher. And it is not surprising that the old swamp in the vicinity of Cherepovets has overgrown with its own myths and legends.
“In ancient times, people began to disappear on one of the Belozersk roads - as a rule, nonresident merchants. The merchants left one city, and did not get to the purpose of their trip, - says Pavel Gryaznov's notes. - At first, people thought that robbers appeared in the vicinity. However, over time, this version was discarded … Once, people from the city with weapons combed the surrounding area and found on the bank of a large swamp a thrown cart. The cart had no horses, no merchant, no guards. And the goods remained intact … And in each case, the traces of people riding on carts went into the swamp - there were no signs of a struggle or any anxiety … Both one person and a large group could be lost. No one returned from the swamp. Except for one person ….
This happened in the 16th century - the merchant disappeared for ten whole years. Of course, not all these years he wandered through the swamps, but the horror he experienced was so great that for a long time he did not have the strength to return. After showing up a decade later, the merchant said that he had taken, as always, the goods for sale, but for some inexplicable reason, he unexpectedly changed the route and went to places unknown to him. Having approached the edge of the swamp, he almost drowned himself - such a terrible fear possessed him, horror and a desire to kill himself as soon as possible. Keeping a small particle of consciousness, he rushed away from this place, not even remembering the product and not thinking of returning for it.
The locals reacted to the merchant with distrust, and he agreed to show those who wish that place. His words were confirmed: on the bank of the swamp they found carts with trade goods, abandoned many years ago, already collapsed.
Most researchers of the anomalous phenomena that took place in the Cherepovets swamp define these places as "possessed by a dark spirit." What is the nature of this spirit, no one can say. The spirit is the hero of local legends, a kind of elemental dark force that brings evil and suffering without any motive.
According to Slavic mythology, the kikimora, the evil spirit of the swamps, lives in the swamps. He rarely appears to a person, prefers to remain invisible and only shouts from the swamp in a loud voice. Likes to dress up in "furs" made of moss, weaving forest and marsh plants into her hair. Kikimora marsh drags a gape traveler into a quagmire, where it can torture to death. Therefore, they did not go to swampy places one by one. It was believed that only sorcerers and witches could walk there fearlessly.
“The spirit appeared in the swamps long ago,” wrote the healer Gryaznov in 1879. “No one knows what could have given rise to it: the dense swamp nature, the dark forces of the earth, the sins of people living in these places, or in general the spirit itself, having settled in this area, created for itself swamps convenient for its life and denseness.”
The ancient Celts called the swamps "gates of spirits" - where the seemingly solid soil instantly leaves from under their feet, the gates to the world of mysterious spirits of nature and deities open. Therefore, the Celts revered the swamps and came there with sacrificial gifts.
And here is an entry from another Cherepovets source, made even earlier, in the middle of the 19th century: “He howls, this spirit. Once you get there, he will stay with you forever. It sucks the brain. He thinks and makes you keep silent ….
“He can be scared away,” says a letter from a certain Perfilyev, a local resident who was undergoing treatment for his “swamp blues” by Dr. Gryaznov. “Don't talk about him, don't show him the way, he lives in the very center, where forest growth surrounds a small redhead a place that looks like an elongated circle. Our forester calls him a witch. He is afraid, afraid, and invites others to listen. He began to walk into the forest without a gun. Everyone knows: his predecessor shot himself at home. He served the elder and shot himself, but did not leave the city. I didn’t have time. Or I couldn’t … Or better yet, be silent. Go and be silent. And it will not be able to steal a voice."
“My father drove me out of the city,” says another eyewitness and victim of the Cherepovets bog in the middle of the 19th century. - I got my education and came back. From now on it is no longer possible to leave. These swamps are found everywhere. How is it possible to deal with such a colossal smelly peat? And how wonderful this swamp is when you find it for the first time! And there are almost no berries, and few birds. This is not a swamp at all. And how you can hear him in the city! I already knew three people who hear him …”.
This is confirmed by Perfiliev in a letter written in 1905: “All the best people actually leave Cherepovets or die here … This is not a mental one - some other illness. A person stops waiting for the best … and as if hears in the morning how somewhere in the north the Lake sighs. And that water lives someone else's life. She subjugates people who fulfill her will. Two years later, Perfiliev himself was already suffering from this mysterious disease …
“I took samples of peat from this mysterious place,” Gryaznov says in his notes. - He sent samples to St. Petersburg and led all the scientists he knew to bewilderment: in addition to plant residues in the peat, there were traces of a more highly organized life, which (traces) had never been encountered or observed anywhere else. Colleagues wrote to me that the swamp is rare and unusual."
We do not know any other details and “material evidence” that shed any light on the story of the Cherepovets bog. Presumably, the swamp, in the form in which it terrified the entire district, died somewhere in the 1920s-1940s. Rather, the swamp itself did not die - it simply stopped showing itself, at least openly. Surrendered … Or lurking?
Y. Podolsky