What do you think is the most mysterious and creepy place in any house? No, not a basement, but an attic! It is there that heirlooms, antiques and rare documents are found. Incredible treasures have been kept over the heads of residents for decades, and sometimes even centuries. On this occasion, the world celebrates the day of mysterious attics every year on April 29.
Remember your childhood when you climbed into attics in a noisy company in search of something mysterious. And it doesn't matter what the attic is: a city high-rise building or the creaky attic of a country grandmother's house. And the kids frightened each other by the fact that in the attics there are brownies or ghosts who move old rubbish on the roof at night. However, mysterious and creepy stories are just the fruit of a child's imagination, but really unique things were found there.
Hitler collection
Immediately after the fall of Nazi Germany and the end of World War II in 1945, Lev Aleksandrovich Bezymensky, a captain of Soviet military intelligence, arrived at the captured Nazi party headquarters, the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. Among other things, he found boxes of personal belongings of Hitler, which were to be transported to his mountain fortress in southern Germany. The military took some of Adolf's accessories as souvenirs for himself. Ask, what does the attic have to do with it? Almost half a century later, the captain's daughter, Alexandra Bezymenskaya, climbed into the attic of her father's house in order to find a badminton racket. However, instead of her, she came across a souvenir from the Reich Chancellery - a personal musical collection of Adolf Hitler, among which were recordings of works by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Alexander Borodin and Sergei Rachmaninov - "subhuman",as the Nazis called them.
Order of Nicholas II
Why are attics good? You can find really unique things there! Don't believe me? But in vain! If suddenly you are dismantling your grandmother's attic, then do not rush to throw out seemingly unsightly things.
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Thus, the heirs of the late owner of an art gallery, George Davis, found an amazing find in the attic of his New York mansion - a beautiful figurine in an inconspicuous wooden box. The more carefully the heirs found out the fate of the statuette, the more their eyes widened. It turned out that it was made in the workshop of Carl Faberge by order of the Russian Tsar Nicholas II, who presented it to his wife, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. The figurine was decorated with gold and sapphires.
In 1912, Nicholas II ordered 50 more of these statuettes - several years before the start of the revolution, which led to the death of his family. George Davis bought a Faberge statuette for $ 2,250,000 from industrialist Armand Hammer in 1934. At an auction that lasted only 15 minutes, it sold for $ 5.2 million.
Money bags
Probably, this only happens in the movies. American Josh Ferrin bought his own house. While inspecting the new housing, he went into the garage, where he noticed a small removable panel in the ceiling, from under which a piece of carpet was sticking out. The man decided to take a closer look at this place and, to his surprise, found a small hollow space behind it. The more he examined this place, the faster his heart beat. The eight old ammunition boxes that were in this space were filled with money. A total of 360 thousand dollars!
At this moment, Josh envied himself, but was a very conscientious person and returned the entire amount to the relatives of the recently deceased former owner of the house, Arnold Bangerter.
Souvenir from Africa
It seems that such things belong in a museum. For example, in the museum halls of Ancient Egypt. True, the acquaintance with the history of the ancient world for a ten-year-old boy from Germany, Alexander Kettler, happened earlier than he thought. And not in a museum, but in his grandmother's house.
A scene from the movie The Mummy: Resurrection.
The child was quietly playing in the attic, when at some point he did not find the sarcophagus with the mummy! It turned out that his late grandfather had acquired the mummy as a souvenir while traveling in North Africa in the 1950s. Now the artifact is in the research center of Hamburg, where scientists have to establish its origin. Inside the mummy's skull, researchers found an arrowhead. A death mask and a canopy (a ritual vessel in which the Egyptians kept organs removed from the bodies of the deceased during mummification) were also found in the sarcophagus.
Unsigned masterpiece
In 2013, a resident of Norway in the attic of his house found an unknown painting by Vincent Van Gogh, which he considered a fake for many years! And that's why.
The painting "Sunset at Montmajour" has remained hidden from human eyes for over 100 years. In 1991, curious owners contacted the Vincent Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam in order to hear expert opinion on the authenticity of the painting. They were informed that it was a fake, since it did not bear the signature of the great artist.
A reproduction of Vincent Van Gogh's painting "Sunset at Montmajour".
Many years have passed, technologies have changed, and after chemical analysis, X-rays and careful study of the letters in which Vincent Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo about "Sunset at Montmajour", experts came to the conclusion that the masterpiece really belongs to the great artist. If the painting is put up for auction, its owner will receive a considerable amount of money for it.
Ksenia Efimkova
