It happened one night in early September 1993. And there was no more terrible incident in my life. And it is unlikely that there will be more. I am sure the other seventeen boys of the RO, ROYASH and OJ groups of the philological faculty of YSU in 1993 will say the same. People who, after that night, are unlikely to be impressed by any films like The Blair Witch …
Yes, I just counted up, there were seventeen boys, four girls - cooks and a young teacher who was the leader in our group. And our group had just been enrolled in the first year of YSU and went to the remote village of Salbantsy in the Namskiy ulus. They said, "for potatoes," but at first we broke some abandoned farm, then for some reason we insulated it from above, and then we were sent to fence a vegetable garden in an open field (I think, just not to sit idle).
We went to Salbantsy in an old ZIL-130. We rolled in its metal body all the way, like peas, fortunately, the track was just for the sake of the uneven. We arrived only in the evening, barely alive from the shaking. We are going down, which means that the "meeting committee" is approaching us: the foreman and several local old people. They are standing, looking at us, the leader introduces us to the foreman. And then one of the local aksakals asks him: "Son, where are you going to place this shobla?" For some reason, he looked at us intently, then said in a low voice: "In the old club."
The old people will shudder!
- In the old club? !!! - they asked again, as if they could not believe their ears.
The foreman dropped his eyes: "Yes, in the old club." And we, too, are all confused: “In the old club? What an old club?”, But he quickly cut off our conversations and led us to some ancient house.
The house turned out to be with two outbuildings, with solid walls on the sides. Moreover, one of them could only be accessed from the street, and the door to the other was in the middle box and was boarded up with plywood. We tore it off and saw what was going on there. Nothing interesting - the entire floor is torn off and the boards are laid out on the sides, in the middle the ground turns black.
About the house itself, we only learned that it was built before the revolution. Right in the middle of the room was a stove made of two connected iron barrels. And we were ordered to lie down all in a row on common bunks that stretched along the entire far wall.
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We were just starting to get to know each other, so we got into conversation, could not fall asleep. Then someone broke the window, throwing a stone, shards of glass fell right on us. "The locals have come!" - we jumped out into the street, but did not see anyone. We decided to appoint officers on duty just in case.
They lay down again and began to talk, to find out mutual acquaintances. By that time it was already very late, probably, it was three o'clock in the morning … When the unnaturally loud and clear sound of nails being ripped out, we just fell silent for a minute. But then the sound was repeated. We began to ask each other who was making noise. And they did not immediately notice the comrade who began to call for silence: “Quiet you! Can't you hear the steps ?! " He had to repeat his call several times before someone confirmed: “Exactly! What are these steps so heavy? " Finally, we all calmed down and listened.
And it was then that I heard something that sometimes makes me wake up at night in a cold sweat: in the very attached room where the floor was smashed, someone incredibly heavy was walking around. We immediately looked at the attendants, because only they could get there, but they sat there and also listened. I must say, they were sitting by a single candle near the very door that led to the annex. I am still amazed at their calmness.
He seemed to be walking on the logs on which the floorboards were laid. And they literally groaned under his weight. I can’t say exactly how long this lasted, but suddenly the guys who were closest to the outbuilding were alarmed. "He's here, he's here!" they shouted. I caught movement in their direction, it seems that they all recoiled against the wall and pressed against it. How IT could penetrate into our half through the capital wall, I can't imagine.
Then Roma Kutukov said to Dima Safroneev: "Shake his hand!" Dima refused, although, as far as I remember, they managed to find out from someone in the evening that they had placed us in an unclean place and Dima promised to meet the ghost by the hand.
IT, walking just as heavily that the floorboards creaked as if they were about to burst, slowly went along our bunks. And where IT passed, everyone froze in horror. The strangest thing is, he walked past those guys who were lying in the middle and could see him with a candle flame - IT should have blocked the light, at least. Nobody saw anything, although footsteps were heard at arm's length. And further they could not be heard, there was another wall - a partition.
I was lying on the far edge and my steps came almost later than everyone else …
I heard this unnaturally loud, chilling creak of floorboards, which gradually approached me, and then the steps stopped right in front of me. I had already managed to push up against the wall, picking up my legs, for which, it seemed, from impenetrable darkness, someone was about to grab me with a stranglehold. I stared into the darkness with all my might, trying to make out something. And he discerned …
I don't know if it was an optical illusion, but suddenly something big, denser, darker, more hopelessly dark than the darkness itself loomed in the darkness …
I heard him breathing. As if a large animal was leaning towards me, looking at me point-blank and breathing. His breath was like that of a cow or a horse. It was so incredible that out of all fifteen boys, the "brownie" stopped in front of me, it was me who was looking at me and was about to grab me by the collar, that I was simply paralyzed with fear.
I don’t know how many seconds the hostile darkness stared at me, but suddenly the floorboards groaned again under heavy steps. IT went back. Halfway down the road it stopped again. We heard a knock on the barrel (as I said, there was a stove right in the middle, made of two welded iron barrels). IT knocked on the barrel several times. Then we heard a low whistle. Quite a long, quiet whistle. Then the sounds of heavy footsteps resumed. They went to the side of the cubbyhole, which we made especially for the group leader …
And suddenly both of our attendants, sitting by candlelight, jumped up shouting: "Here he is!" We all jumped up from our seats, some of us managed to run out into the street. Galina Sergeevna was awakened by the head. They interrogated the attendants, they said that something like a white mask suddenly appeared in the air in front of them, then they screamed.
Nobody could sleep anymore. In the morning they demanded from the brigadier to be accommodated in another place. But he said that the floor in the new club building had just been painted, and there were no other large rooms. I had to stay at the old club. They jumped on the floor in front of our bunks, but the floorboards were fitted very tightly and creaked in only a few places and very quiet.
Thank God, whatever it was, it didn't bother us anymore. And the locals asked us all the time, they say, nothing bothers you in this house? It was said that this place from time immemorial was considered unclean, a daredevil was the one who could go there at night and, as a proof of his courage, brought from there a thing left behind during the day. Sometimes, they said, they saw a gray-haired old man on the roof.
At the end of the practice, Styopka and I somehow lingered after a disco and took a drum from the new club. We returned to the base and entered the annex, naturally, not the one from where the terrible night guest came to us. Through the cracks in the wall, we saw the attendants who, by the light of a candle, were cutting into cards. We hit the drum. How they were startled, poor. We began to beat the drum regularly, forcing the watchmen to wake everyone else up. Styopka and I didn’t play for long - suddenly something cracked loudly behind us … I don’t remember how I ended up on the street. None of us could even tell who slipped out the door first, but I hurt my leg a lot. We went to the guys and tried to calm them down. They talked about the drum, but they don't believe: “You are saying this to calm us down. Galina Sergeevna told Sashka to do this. If so, show the drum. We didn't have the heart to go back there. Only in the morning they took him out and got a couple of slaps for an unsuccessful joke …
Twenty years have passed since then. I often come across people who have heard something about the poltergeist in Salbani. A few years after that incident, the famous journalist Sargylana Kychkina wrote about him in the Yakutia newspaper. She told me a story similar to an ordinary “horror story”: “During the civil war, on the site of the old club there was a chapel where the priest lived. When the Bolsheviks came to arrest him, he grabbed onto something and refused to leave the chapel. Then they shot him on the spot, tore off the floorboards and buried him right there with the words: “If you want to stay here, stay!”. Then they nailed the floorboards back. Later part of the chapel was destroyed and a club was made. It was then that a brownie appeared, which rose from under the floor, tearing off the floorboards.
The lower logs of the house were really very thick. In pre-revolutionary times, such larches could hardly be found in the Namsky ulus. I saw almost the same thick logs at the base of the Cherkekh Church in Tattinsky Ulus. Nowhere else.
Some say that the spirit of an old murderer who killed his wife lives there. But all this is from the realm of stories that begin with the word: "They say." I wrote about the case, which turned out to be almost two dozen people.
When we are going on a course, we always for some reason start to argue. About everything in the world, from politics to the parameters of quality beer. But when someone drops the word about the "Salbanian old man" and someone expresses mistrust, we forget all the disputes and begin to ardently convince of the existence of a poltergeist.
The existence of something unknown that can seep through walls, whistle, has enormous weight, judging by the creak of the floorboards and is not visible even by candlelight …