Researchers of the paranormal say that evil spirits are common for Odessa, and especially in the historical part of the city. Ghosts are found in both old buildings and new ones, especially if these new buildings are built on the site of cemeteries, massacres or prisons. However, abnormal manifestations are not uncommon for all cities with a rich and eventful history.
Paranormal researchers say that there are a certain kind of ghosts that appear in the same places where they lived during life. In their opinion, individuals with strong biofields and energy, even during their lifetime left an energy trail on some object or place, for example, with a glance, and such a "mark" is quite durable and even after a person's death, his ghost can come here again and again …
Cursed houses
In November 1941, not far from Tolbukhin Square, the Germans burned several hundred Soviet prisoners of war alive in barracks. After the war, private houses began to appear in that place. However, after a while, the owners of the houses asked the city authorities to relocate them to another place. People gladly moved from private houses to communal apartments, just to be undead with ghosts. A five-story residential building on the corner of Krasnova Street and Admiralsky Prospekt is also considered a haunted house. In that place there was a prison cemetery, and now the souls of rapists and murderers roam there. Moreover, there is an incredibly high concentration of murders in the house, as if people are going crazy there: twelve domestic murders in just nine years.
Another such damned house is located on Vorontsovsky Lane. “My grandmother lived there for two decades after the war and cannot remember anything otherworldly. But her friend from the same house, constantly talked about the ghost of a sad woman who wanders around this house, and other residents of the house talked about it,”says student Olesya.
Mishka Yaponchik and Sonya Golden Handle
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Shevchenko Park is one of the most mystical places in the city. Once upon a time Zhukovsky and Gogol, Chekhov and Akhmatova walked here, and also the legendary criminal Sonya Zolotaya Ruchka. Sonya walks along the paths of the park to this day, sometimes residents of the surrounding houses notice a sullen woman wearing a hundred-year-old clothes. Lowering her head, she walks along the alley towards the seaport and not by chance. After all, it was along this path that a talented thief, in shackles, was led through the park to the harbor, from where they were sent to be executed.
There is a legend among Odessa taxi drivers that once a strange woman dressed in the old fashion got into the car. “The client gave the address, and when the car drove up and it was time to pay, she took out a diamond from under her nail and gave it to the driver, got out and left. But it was Sonya Zolotaya Ruchka who had the habit of hiding precious stones under her nails,”says Vadim, a connoisseur of ghostly places.
Another famous ghost is the shadow of the criminal authority Moisey Vinnitsky, the king of the underworld Mishka Yaponchik. In Moldavanka, in the old courtyard at 9 Tikhaya Street, local residents still meet with the legendary bandit and recognize him by his striped suit. The waitress of one of the bars, who lives nearby, once almost agreed to a date with a dead criminal. “Late at night I was returning home, noticed a handsome young man, though he was dressed strangely. He turned to me and offered to take me home, but I was in a hurry and refused. I walked a few meters and looked back to look at the guy in the funny striped suit again, but there was no one there,”the girl says.
Clown Pencil and sailors from "Potemkin"
On the embankment in Arcadia, a nightclub security guard met a ghost sailor. “I went home from work at night. A guy came up to me and asked me for a cigarette, he just said “cigarette”. He was in a torn and wet sailor's uniform. He took the cigarette and immediately disappeared into space,”says the man. It is believed that the spirits of several sailors from the battleship Potemkin, whose bodies have not been found, are still being visited alive.
They also meet the ghost in the city circus. Comedian Vladimir Komarov says that he met the deceased stars of the arena in the Circus's subsidiary institutions, more often than others he saw the famous clown Karandash in the post-war years.
The ruins of the old building behind the Tairovsky cemetery are notorious. “Young people constantly come here, the guys wander around the house and look for the ghosts promised to them,” says an employee of the service station, which is located nearby. The two-story building has survived several fires. Local residents say that sometimes a mysterious light is seen there at night, rustles and groans are heard.
Recently, Odessans have met ghosts on the Kulikovo field, in the very place where tragic events took place in May 2014. And at night, in the house of trade unions, people passing by pay attention to how the lights in the windows turn on and off by themselves.
