Mystical stories related to the death of shamans inspire fear. According to legends, the resting place has mystical power, and all living things try to bypass it. In Soviet times, paranormal phenomena were treated with skepticism, but history knows a case when the spirit of the shaman even took revenge on the NKVD workers.
The shaman's funeral is a whole ritual that must not be violated in order to avoid trouble. If the spirit of the sorcerer does not rest in peace, then there will be no peace for the living, especially for his relatives. According to tradition, the body of a shaman is not buried after death. First, a special structure made of wooden planks - arangas - is arranged on the trees. It is installed on four pre-cut trees, which form a kind of props. The body of the shaman has been in arangas for a hundred years, and the family of the deceased passes on to the descendants the date of the next reburial. For the repeated funeral ritual, a new arangas was constructed, and only 300 years later the body was buried.
Air burials have always been used for shamans in Yakutia.
It should be noted that air burials have long been the norm in Yakutia. Being pagans, the Yakuts believed that in this way the ashes of a person retained a connection with the spirit of the forest. There was also a more prosaic reason: it is almost impossible to dig a grave in the frozen ground. The ancient way of life changed only with the arrival of Christianity in these lands, then mandatory burial was established, but exceptions were still made for shamans. Everything finally changed with the establishment of Soviet power in Russia.
Arangas in the forest.
One of the most unexplained stories in Yakutia happened in 1937. Then the spirit of the shaman Oyuun Monnyogon, buried according to all the canons in the arangas almost 200 years ago, was agitated. He began to appear to descendants in a dream, complaining that he was extremely uncomfortable lying. Firstly, during the rains, he gets too wet, and, secondly, his tendons have decayed, and one of his fingers rolled under his back, so that the shaman was extremely uncomfortable lying.
The descendants of Mongnogon understood that the local authorities could convict them of superstition and repress them, but they could not ignore the shaman's request, they knew that he could be angry and then displease everyone. The collective farm chairman was persuaded to carry out the ritual as soon as possible. After Mongnogon's grave was opened, his finger was indeed found, which rolled under his back. When reburial, it is necessary to sacrifice a black stallion, the tendon of the killed animal was used to tie the fallen phalanx. The entire ceremony was led by the shaman Omokun, through him Monnyogon asked that one of the guys become his guide.
Arangas is the burial place of a shaman.
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At the moment when Mongnogon voiced his wish, everyone present in horror recoiled from the arangas. No one was ready to become a guide to the kingdom of the dead. And only Omokun immediately began to wheeze and gasp: apparently, due to the lack of volunteers, Mongnogon decided to pick him up. The volunteer Grigory Fedorov saved the situation. The man was already 70 years old, and he volunteered to accompany the spirit of the deceased shaman. Mongnogon accepted his decision, but shouted that he was angry at everyone, and would send trouble at everyone, however, everything would end well.
On the same day, Grigory Fedorov actually died. Soon an inspector arrived in the village, seeing the costs of the reburial, and arrested the collective farm chairman, the shaman, and their assistants. It seemed that the trial was inevitable in this situation. However, everything turned out differently: for some unknown reason, the prosecutor of the republic personally insisted on closing the case due to the fact that there was allegedly no corpus delicti. The NKVD workers were surprised, but the order was carried out, and the villagers decided that it was the spirit of Mongnogon that saved the accused, as promised.
Air burial is practiced not only in Yakutia, but also in the Philippines, where coffins with the dead are hung on rocks. And the locals have a good reason for that.