There are many legends about haunted houses. In England, they are inhabited by almost all more or less significant castles and estates. Even the most seedy poltergeist is a great tourist attraction. But on the territory of Russia, and indeed of the entire former USSR, ghosts and ghosts are more likely to belong to an endangered species - so negligible are they recorded.
In this light, the history of the Chadinsky house in Perm looks unique - anomalous phenomena in it were not only described by several local historians from the words of eyewitnesses, but also recorded in city documents. True, it is very difficult to understand the number of versions with which this dark story has grown.
P. E. Razmakhnin. View of Perm. Fragment of watercolors from 1832. Chadin's house is visible on the upper left
First owner
The two-story stone house was built by the advisor of the Criminal Chamber Elisey Leontyevich Chadin near the Main Square at the beginning of the 19th century. The place was very prestigious, and the house itself promised to be solid during construction.
Two floors, brickwork, solid iron roof. It would seem, live and enjoy. However, construction of the house suddenly stopped and the building remained unfinished. The first owner was in trouble.
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There were a lot of rumors about Elisei Chadin in Perm, and bad ones. His stinginess, cruel treatment of courtyards and hired workers, with whose hands the house was rebuilt, became a talk of the town. Elisha did not disdain usury either.
The Chadinsky servants made bricks for the house themselves - the owner spared money for the purchase. Driven by greed, he sent his courtyard men to cemeteries for cast-iron tombstones. Stolen tombstones were placed in the stove instead of slabs, and they also lined the floors in the premises. Of course, the slabs were laid with inscriptions down, but misinterpretations could not be avoided. Bad fame spread about Chadin and the house under construction.
Time passed, but the house remained uninhabited, without decoration. There is a version that Elisey Leontyevich was simply afraid to finish building the building: according to legends, new housing was always "laid on the head", that is, on someone's death.
Most often it meant the death of a sacrificial animal, whose head was buried under the structure. But Chadin, knowing about the hatred of serfs towards him, had every reason to fear for his own life.
And rumors spread throughout the city at an extraordinary speed.
Several people witnessed how someone walked around an abandoned construction site and rattled tools, beat dishes and moaned.
“The dead are looking for their property,” “Just like the kikimora Chadin called,” they began to whisper in the corners.
And then Chadin died. And not only died quietly, as expected, but under strange circumstances. Elisey Leontyevich gave a dinner party in honor of his name days. There were many guests, and few people of this rank risked refusing the invitation.
When the time came to serve the pastries, the courtyard men brought in a dish on which lay a large pie. On it, according to custom, the name of the birthday man flaunted.
Looking closely, the guests were dumbfounded: in addition to the name, a distinct outline of Adam's head appeared on the cake - an emblem for decorating graves, which was a skull and bones crossed under it. In combination with the name of Elisei Leontievich Adamov, the head made a copy of a tombstone from ordinary baked goods. The guests immediately went home, and Chadin himself fell ill from what he saw and soon died.
His death did not arouse any special proceedings or suspicion among the authorities. The stories about the birthday cake suggested that it was the revenge of the courtyard people, who, having suffered from the cruel owner, baked a cake on one of the stolen cast-iron gravestones, only this time with the inscription upside down.
One way or another, Chadin died, but the house remained standing. And it stood for another fifty years, causing anxiety and foreboding among the surrounding residents.
Doesn't burn on fire
The summer of 1842 was extremely dry. News of terrible fires came from everywhere. After Kazan flared up in August, rumors quickly spread among the local population that Perm would be next. Whispers were heard everywhere about the discovered anonymous notes informing that the city was on fire on September 14.
They talked about the capture of villains in which there were flammable substances. Then there were rumors about fences smeared with a flammable substance. The townspeople began to look closely at their fences and even cut down suspicious places.
Moreover, a solar eclipse happened - also a sign not of the good. Residents established patrols and shifts, tried to stock up as much water as possible in their houses for extinguishing.
However, preventive measures did not save the city. The fire began on September 14 in the sennik of one of the inns. By evening, all of Perm was already on fire. The sheer number of wooden structures made fighting fire useless, if not dangerous. The entire city center was completely burned out, the damage from the fire was enormous.
The only building in the center that survived the fire was the Chadinsky house. Thanks to some mystical power or just by a lucky coincidence, the flame did not affect the house at all, although a landscape black with soot spread around.
According to eyewitness accounts, immediately after the fire, one pious-looking old woman said that on the day the city was on fire, she ran just past the cursed house. All the buildings around were already on fire, but the house was untouched.
And the old woman swore that she saw a woman in a white cap leaning out of the dormer window of the house and waving the fire from her abode with a handkerchief. It was thanks to this creature, which the people called kikimora, that the Chadinsky house was not affected by the fire.
The story of the old woman was picked up by rumor, adding a cloud of gloomy details, one more terrible than the other. Popular unrest began. The Governor of Perm, concerned about the situation, ordered to find the source of the rumors. The old woman was found and taken to the police, where she literally repeated her story about the woman in white.
At the same time, the old woman swore that she had no reason to lie and take on her soul at such a respectable age, practically on the threshold of the grave, she was not going to sin of perjury. Having held the grandmother in custody for a couple of days, the police released her, forbidding to embarrass the people with delusional tales.
End of the legend
After the fire, the Chadinsky house was sold to a large businessman, who handed it over to the city society in exchange for an equivalent building. Until the 1860s, the house again stood empty, until someone took a liking to this piece of land, and for so many years the monument of Chadin's greed that had frightened the whole city was not demolished to the ground.
In the place of the ill-fated house at the end of the 19th century, the building of a women's gymnasium was built, which now houses the Perm Agricultural Academy.
This establishment is solid, and no one has yet seen a kikimor in it.
Perm State Agricultural Academy Academician D. N. Pryanishnikova
Those who studied the urban legends of Perm a hundred years ago disagree. Some are convinced of the veracity of the legend of the kikimore, summoned by the disadvantaged dead to defend themselves. They say that the mighty evil not only took revenge on Chadin for stealing the tombstones, but also lived with impunity in his house for half a century, intimidating the district.
Others are inclined to believe that both the ill-fated cake and strange sounds in the house are the work of the hands of the serfs offended by the master. And the miraculous salvation of the house during the fire is nothing more than a consequence of the combination of several circumstances: the favorable direction of the wind and attempts to defend the neighboring buildings belonging to the city authorities.
These collectors of legends have left us scrupulously recorded rumors, links to archival documents and the still unresolved secret of the Chadinsky house.
Yana ROGOZINA