Kazan, which is in dispute with Nizhny Novgorod for the title of the "third capital" of Russia and the main city of the Volga region, has a rich centuries-old history, in which there are many dark and bloody pages. In addition, it is related to St. Petersburg by the fact that it was built in a swampy area with many anomalous geopathogenic zones. In such places, all kinds of devilry inevitably start, including ghosts.
A dead bride
You can meet the first ghost, which has become a kind of "visiting card" of the city, on the way from the airport. You will be told that near the village of Stolbische, where the highway turns into the city, a wedding car once crashed, and the bride died. Since then, her ghost has frightened residents of Kazan and guests of the city from time to time. The bride was seen by many, someone even tried to photograph, but the pictures did not work.
True, they say that once a young couple from Kazan went on a picnic. On the way, the girl took pictures of landscapes. When she began to take a picture near the Column, the camera for some reason malfunctioned. After the walk, the young people began to look at the footage and suddenly found a black frame, in the center of which was a girl in a white wedding dress. But perhaps these are just rumors. In any case, none of the Kazan journalists who knew the author of the article saw this picture.
Syuyumbike
Of course, the head of the local ghosts is Queen Syuyumbike. When her husband Safa-Girey died, she ruled the Kazan Khanate as regent from 1549 to 1551, since her son Utyamysh, the heir to the throne, was an infant at that time.
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If you visit the Kazan Kremlin, the guides will certainly tell you a poetic legend about how the Russian Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich the Terrible, having heard about the beauty and wisdom of Syuyumbike, demanded her portrait - and fell in love with a beautiful Tatar woman. He decided to marry her and make her the queen of all Russia. But Syuyumbike refused the formidable ruler of the neighboring state. Then the annoyed tsar in love went with an army to Kazan.
He decided by all means to master the proud beauty. After a long siege, Kazan was taken by the Russian army. And now Syuyumbike inevitably had to become the wife of Grozny. But a cunning and clever Tatar woman put forward a condition to the Russian tsar: she will marry him if he builds a tower as tall, slender and beautiful as she is, Syuyumbike in seven days.
Ivan Vasilyevich summoned his best masters, and they, working day and night, built a tier in a day and erected a seven-tier tower in a week. Then Syuyumbike climbed to the very top, looked at her possessions for the last time - and rushed down. She preferred death to betrayal of her people and faith.
You will be shown the Syuyumbike tower, which is as iconic for Kazan as the Eiffel Tower is for Paris, and the place where the queen fell. It doesn't matter that in fact the tower was not built earlier than the end of the 17th century, that Grozny was not in love with the khansha, but took Kazan for another, more prosaic reason.
It doesn't matter that Syuyumbike did not fall from the tower at all, but lived quietly and peacefully to old age in Kasimov, where her third husband Shah Ali took her. But a beautiful legend lives on, transforming reality, and now the ghost of Syuyumbike settles in the tower, and many see him on the territory of the Kremlin and in the vicinity.
A Kazan friend of the author of the article, Dmitry, told how one day, returning after midnight from the guests and passing by the Kremlin, he saw at the very top, on the watchtower of the tower, a female figure watching the city at night. Although it was impossible to see the details of appearance and clothing at such a height, Dmitry is sure that it was Syuyumbike. And who knows what she really looked like ?!
The most punctual ghost
This is how the ethereal shadow living in house number 14 on Gorky Street, almost in the very center of Kazan, was christened.
Kazan, Gorky, 14
Once the employees of the pharmacy, which is located opposite this house, at five o'clock in the evening went outside to get some fresh air (and maybe fresh nicotine). And suddenly someone noticed a ghostly figure in a dark robe, rising above the roof of an old mansion, and drew the attention of colleagues to her. It happened at exactly five o'clock in the evening. After staying over the roof for two or three minutes, the ghost disappeared.
Since then, many residents of nearby houses and bystanders have seen him. A ghost can appear anywhere: inside a building, and on the street next to it, and most often on the roof. On one condition: the hands of the clock must show exactly 17:00. Such is the punctuality! Moreover, unlike most of its "brothers", this ghost is not afraid of either people or daylight.
Ghost with his pants down
On the same Gorky street, near Kekin's house (a local landmark known to every city dweller), you can find a foggy figure of an oriental-looking gentleman with some disorder in his clothes, namely, with his pants down, which, you see, is indecent even for a ghost.
House Kekin
Before the revolution, this building housed the workshop of the watchmaker Ibrahim on the ground floor. He was known for his great love of life, he loved to eat sweetly and abundantly, and he was especially eager for women. Kazan mazuriks caught him on this bait. They hired two women of easy virtue to rob Ibrahim.
They lured the poor man into one of the distant storerooms, where they killed him at the most pathetic moment. And now the shadow of the unlucky voluptuous wanders the street in such an obscene form, frightening late passers-by.
The secret of the Arsk cemetery
Every self-respecting cemetery can boast of its ghost. One strange and very sad story is connected with the Arsk cemetery.
Arskoe cemetery
Once upon a time there was a poor woman who raised her son alone. She had to cope with odd jobs, and they lived from hand to mouth. And so the boy, when he was seven years old, fell ill and died. His mother buried him at the Arsk cemetery. She bought a piece of white marble for the tombstone, but there was not enough money to make an inscription on it.
Of course, it was possible to install a tombstone made of a material cheaper than marble, but with an epitaph, but what to take with a grief-stricken woman! Finding himself in an unmarked grave, the young deceased seemed to be offended and began to take revenge on all people indiscriminately. And therefore, those who come to the cemetery knowing this story try not to read the epitaphs. And then inadvertently on someone else's grave you can see your name.
Or, for a moment, the amazed visitor of the churchyard will see the inscription: “Die!”, Sometimes seasoned with obscene language, and immediately disappear. They say this hooliganism will end when someone finds out the boy's name and carves him into white marble.
Bad garden
The area of the Hermitage garden is not well known among the citizens of Kazan. In the first half of the 19th century, this was the estate of the landowner Vorozhtsov. He definitely suffered from a mental disorder that manifested itself in pathological cruelty.
For the smallest offenses, he personally beat his serfs to death or ordered his servants to do it. Those killed were deprived of their burials according to church custom: in order to cover up the traces of the crime, they were simply buried without a funeral service somewhere in a secluded corner of the garden.
Staircase in the Hermitage garden
Moreover, the monster spotted his own son to death and also ordered to bury him in the garden. For acquaintances, the landowner came up with some kind of tale explaining the disappearance of the boy. Allegedly, he was sent to study either in Moscow or in St. Petersburg. But rumors about this terrible murder still leaked beyond the walls of the noble estate and for a long time excited the city. And since then, many have heard the groans of the innocent murdered, whose shadows roam the garden at night.
In 1848, when Vorozhtsov was no longer alive, the house burned to the ground. And the garden became a public resting place. A summer theater was built here, where famous artists from the capital toured. But many of them, and even ordinary visitors to the garden, felt a kind of heaviness on their souls, it was uncomfortable here. And when the circus tent performed in the Hermitage, accidents happened to several artists. The garden has a reputation as a lost place.
Residents of nearby houses, in particular the Matrosov family, also felt negative energy. Once Galina Matrosova bought a bottle of wine and champagne for her sister's birthday and put it in the closet. The next day, she suddenly heard a loud bang. Liquid spilled onto the floor from the cabinet. When the door was opened, the bottles were empty.
It turned out that absolutely identical cracks in the form of a sinusoid appeared on both of them … When Galina decided to check this place with a washer hung on a thread, the homemade pendulum spun at a breakneck speed.
Later, Galina's sister Lyudmila saw the ghost of a tall, thin man in a white robe in the house. And then three men in dark clothes appeared; one of them loomed outside the window, and two perched at the writing table.
When Lyudmila told her family about her visions, they doubted her mental health. But examination by specialists showed that the woman is completely normal mentally, which cannot be said about physical health. Lyudmila began to feel worse, as if the ghosts were drawing strength from her.
Currently, wooden houses in this area have been demolished, and they were going to build modern housing here. But many Kazan residents believe that only a temple can be built in order to somehow cleanse this cursed place.
Sergey SOSNIN