About old Stavropol houses and mystical stories that hover around them.
Like a beast, she will howl …
An old mansion in Stavropol at 100 Komsomolskaya Street, not far from Central Park, is called the "Haunted Castle".
The once beautiful two-story building with a three-story tower and an elaborate balcony has been empty for many years. People from all over Russia come here for thrills. Those who spent the night there talk about strange shadows, howls and moans.
They say that a certain Georgian princess lived in a beautiful mansion. She often invited men to visit, but at dinner she poisoned them with wine, and then buried them right in the courtyard of the mansion. With the full moon, you can still see the restless souls of deceived men.
The hostess of the house often invited men to her place and poisoned them with wine, and then buried them right in the courtyard of the mansion
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Photo: AiF / Anna Maksimenko
“We have not been able to find direct documents about the history of the house,” says the historian German Belikov. - I collected information from excerpts from the works of local writers and poets of those years, from newspaper clippings, preserved letters. It was possible to find out that the house belonged to the merchant Sergei Derevshchyakov. Then the building was sold to Agi Bali Guliyev, the “flour king”. Before the revolution, he rented out the mansion. At first, it was filmed by one of the abbess of the St. Mary's convent. Then - representatives of the Armenian Church. Their specific clothes with pointed hoods even then gave rise to eerie tales. During the revolution and during the Civil War, a hospital was located there. On one fateful day, almost 30 Red Army soldiers were killed in it. After the Civil War, there was a children's library on the ground floor. Then a tuberculosis dispensary settled here. For fear of getting infected, they tried to bypass the house. At the end of the last century, the "castle" was given for the needs of a medical hostel, but after a while it was recognized as emergency and closed for restoration."
Grave in the garden
Another building where ghosts are rumored to be is the mosque, which now houses the art gallery of the Stavropol artist Pavel Grechishkin.
They say that Prince Biberdov's 17-year-old daughter died, and next to the grave he began to build a mosque in her honor. Therefore, on the balcony of the minaret on the holy holiday of Ramadan, at midnight with a full moon, a silhouette of a young girl in white appeared.
“At the beginning of the 20th century, the famous architect Pavel Kuskov built a mosque along Morozova Street (as it is now called),” says German Belikov. - The Muslim society in Stavropol was small and not rich. It was headed by Prince Davlet-Girey Biberdov. The house was built, but the interior finishing work was not completed to the end. Then the First World War began, there was no time for the mosque. It was during this period that Biberdov's 17-year-old daughter died, for some reason she was buried in the garden, next to the unfinished religious building, although there was a Muslim cemetery in Stavropol (next to the current Danilov cemetery at the intersection of Lermontov and Dovatortsev streets). This gave food for imagination. In the eighties of the last century, the premises were given to the Grechishkin art gallery."
A silhouette of a young girl in white appears on the balcony of the minaret on the holy holiday of Ramadan
Photo: AiF / Anna Maksimenko
House with jewels
An abandoned but once luxurious three-story haunted mansion can be found in the resort area of Pyatigorsk.
They say that the mistress of the house, Elsa, abandoned by her husband, grieved for him so much that she died of melancholy (according to another version, she was immured alive in the wall during the revolution). Until now, the ghost of Elsa roams the house and guards the jewels hidden there.
The ghost of the mistress will still leave the house and guard her jewelry
Photo: AiF / Anna Maksimenko
“Arshak Gukasov built this house for his wife Elizaveta Vlasyevna,” explains Olga Polyakova, a researcher at the Pyatigorsk Museum of Local Lore. - Elizabeth - the name in the Russian version, in fact, her name was Elsa. When the mansion was built, she settled there and divorced her husband. The house was turned into a luxurious hotel, with well-trained servants and excellent cuisine. In 1922, the building was nationalized, made of it the "Proletary" sanatorium, then the "Krasnaya Zvezda" sanatorium. Elsa moved to another house, also built by her ex-husband. But she was evicted from there, and the families of the NKVD members settled there. And Elsa … disappeared. There were rumors that she was killed. But when the Great Patriotic War began, in 1942 during the occupation of Pyatigorsk, she returned, hoping that the Germans would return her home. After the liberation of Pyatigorsk, an elderly woman asked to leave her to live in this house, promised to give back the jewelry hidden in the house. But she was refused. According to various sources, she left to live out her life either in Nalchik, or in Stavropol. Nobody else saw her in Pyatigorsk."
Anna Maksimenko