In the memoirs of M. Gorky, it is told about the old man Yermolai Makov, an antiquities dealer, who for more than 20 years suffered from rather peculiar and very persistent visual and tactile hallucinations. They began to arise in him after an unsuccessful suicide attempt.
• - I was frightened, - E. Makov recalled, - went to the attic, made a noose, tied it to the rafter, - the washerwoman saw me, started to make noise - they took me out of the noose. And after that an incongruous creepy creature came to me: a six-legged spider, the size of a small goat, bearded, horned … about three eyes, two eyes - in the head, and the third - between the breasts, looking down into the ground, at my tracks. And wherever I go, he relentlessly follows me, furry, on six legs, like the shadow of the moon, and no one sees him except me - here he is, but you can't see him, here he is!
M. Gorky writes:
“And stretching out his hand to his left, Makov stroked something in the air at a height of 10 vershoks. Then, wiping his hands on his knee, he said:
- Wet.
- What are you, so 20 years and live with a spider? I asked.
- 23. Do you think I'm crazy? After all, my guards, here it is, the spider …
The old man stroked again, touched the moist air with his hand.
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I was silent, not knowing what to say to a person who lives side by side with such a strange creature, lives, but is not completely insane."
• My old friend, police colonel A. Litovko lives in Rostov-on-Don. Once he handed me an interesting document drawn up "for the information of the authorities" by a lady - a junior police officer Tatyana Viktorovna Ignatova, who 10 years ago worked in a medical and labor dispensary of the Internal Affairs Directorate of the Kaluga Regional Executive Committee.
“I was on an internship in Kharkov,” the document says. - It was in 1986. I lived in a 2-bed room in a hotel with another intern of the Ministry of Internal Affairs named Tatyana N. That night, when everything happened, Tatyana and I talked for a long time and turned off the light only around midnight. We went to bed. The room was brightly illuminated by the light of a street lamp hanging outside the window. In the hotel corridor, there was the sound of a wall clock hanging somewhere there. They beat off midnight.
With the last - 12th - strike of the clock, my roommate started screaming wildly. She felt invisible male hands grip her wrists tightly. The next moment I saw with my own eyes something wild, impossible: someone invisible lifted Tatyana up into the air, and then threw her into the corner of the room. Tatyana's body did not reach the floor a little - the invisibility did not let her fall, again picked her up and threw her to the ceiling.
So the woman, screeching with horror, flew up and down, as if thrown by a tightly stretched, invisible net, for at least 3 minutes. Then she, like an airplane, made a smooth pirouette under the ceiling and plummeted right on me! That was the end of it. Brutally frightened, we grabbed our things and rushed out of the room. They demanded from the night attendant at the hotel to move us to another room … In the morning Tatiana found numerous bruises and bruises on her body.
• In Rostov-on-Don, I wrote down from the words of Liya Shvedova, a middle-aged woman, a story about how she was attacked twice by an unknown creature in the summer of 1989.
The woman woke up at three o'clock in the morning, awakened by a feeling of irrational fear that came from nowhere. Shuddering all over, she sharply opened her eyes.
“I'll never forget what I saw,” Leah said in a conversation with me. - Obliquely across the room, from the ceiling down to my bed, I see something black, covered with thick wool, the size and shape of a billiard ball, is planning. I got a good look at this creature in the moonlight falling into the room from the window.
Drawing a curved arc in the air, the hairy flying monster plopped down on my shoulder and then rolled onto my neck. And then just below the neck - on the chest. And it began to crush and choke me! I was terribly rushing about at that moment on the bed, trying to get up from it, to throw the "billiard ball" off my chest. Alas, all my attempts to free myself from his suffocating "embrace" were in vain. It was as if a heavy concrete slab was piled on me.
After about a couple of very long minutes, the "ball" itself jumped off my chest. I don’t know where he went … Exactly two days later, the hairy strangler appeared again. Again I woke up, seized by an irrational fear coming from the depths of my consciousness, and again I saw something black, round, overgrown with wool planning at me. Planned and - come on, just like last time, crush and choke!
• The story of Anatoly Zubashev from Krasnodar:
- It happened in 1991. I wake up in the middle of the night feeling that they hit me on the head with a log. Well, I throw myself up, clenching my fists, intending to fight back asleep. I look around. And my jaw drops when my gaze is stuck in the one who, apparently, cracked my forehead. I looked - a hefty hairy monkey was moving away from my bed, stooped, with his arms hanging below his knees.
As she walked on her hind legs past the window, the light of the street lamp hanging outside that window illuminated her. It was the most natural monkey, but … 2 meters tall! Her footsteps were clearly audible. The beast went out through the door into the next room, and there the steps died away. Armed with a chair raised over my head, I cautiously followed her. I look into the next room - it's empty. I go through that room, go out into the corridor - it's empty. I scan the kitchen, open the toilet and bathroom doors - the monkey is nowhere to be found. Where did she go? Dissolved, or what, in the air ?!
• The historian and ethnographer of the Kolyma Territory E. Ustiev in the book "At the Source of the Golden River", published in 1977, talks about how gold was discovered in the Kolyma basin.
During the First World War, a certain Tatar Safi Shafigullin, nicknamed Boriska, escaped from being drafted into the army and moved to the distant Kolyma lands. This illiterate wretch found the first grains of precious metal here.
At first Boriska was looking for gold alone. Then he picked up an artel of the same hicks as himself, but a few years later he moved away from his comrades and again began to hunt alone. He came across only insignificant "golden traces" here and there. The poor man did not know the laws of the formation of gold deposits and therefore he washed in the wrong place, and in the wrong way.
But somehow Boriska was fabulously lucky - he did find the richest gold placer. Our prospector began to fill a bag with golden sand and … suddenly gave up his breath.
In the winter of 1917/18, Boriska's body was accidentally discovered next to a shallow pit he had drilled into the ground. Apparently, none of the people have approached this body to this day. A sack full of gold lay on the ground next to the dead prospector. A gun, cartridges, foodstuffs also lay here.
There were no signs of violence on the body of the deceased. Boriska, of course, died a natural death, and he died just suddenly. He was squatting dead near the pit.
The people who discovered the dead body were in awe of the local Kolyma "demons" who, according to their assumption, threatened the man who found the richest gold placer. For hundreds of kilometers around - not a single living soul. There are absolutely no traces next to Boriska's body indicating that someone has visited this place. And - here's a miracle: the whole pit, punched by a prospector in the ground, was tightly, densely braided with thick, harsh threads. The threads were pulled in the pit like strings, filling it from top to bottom like a spider's web. Clinging to the branches of the bushes, gray threads stretched up from the pit. They reached for Boriska's body, tightly braided him too.
E. Ustiev wrote in his book: "Like everything devoid of visible meaning, this delicate openwork thread weave seemed sinister and full of some secret meaning."
What killed Boriska? What unknown forces pulled the entire pit like a cobweb with harsh threads? By the way, where did these forces get the threads of factory production in the Kolyma wilderness? And why, one wonders, did they braid not only the pit, but also Boriska's body with threads?
Perhaps, having tied him up in such a strange way, and after killing him, they wanted to prevent this prospector from spreading the news that he had finally discovered powerful deposits of precious metal in the Kolyma basin?..
We will never find out the truth about the reasons and, most importantly, the mysterious circumstances of Boriska's death … But the history of the development of gold deposits in the local area began precisely with a shallow hole drilled by Boriska right above one of the richest gold placers in the Kolyma basin.
• Peru, the famous metropolitan journalist Y. Rost, owns the most charming everyday sketch "Baynichek", which I reproduce here almost in full:
“Throughout the evening, Anna Timofeevna, the wife of grandfather Semyon, told stories about devils and goblin.
Grandfather Semyon was preparing for tea at this time. He settled down by the samovar, took from the bench a shoebox containing everything he needed, looked sternly at Anna Timofeevna and said:
- No devils!
Grandmother fell silent in mid-sentence and started to arrange cups at the table, but grandfather stopped her with a glance and began to drink tea. I poured tea leaves, then boiling water, but did not sweeten, but poured crackers into a glass and, when they softened and absorbed moisture, laid them out on a saucer … Anna Timofeevna grew bolder, seeing that grandfather was distracted, and, clattering, began to tell me a terrible story, how Vaska the rafter, having celebrated Petrov's day, rode horses through the forest.
Goes, goes, like a bridge ahead. And already in the morning it's business. The forest does not make noise and the water does not run - it is quiet. The horses ran to the bridge and steel rooted to the spot. Vaska whipped them with a whip. Those stand. He got down from the cart, pulled at the bridle: "Come on!" And the horses are shaking their heads - they say, we will not go to the bridge. “Then I'll go,” Vaska told them as an example. I went to the bridge and looked into the water. And from there ka-a-ak buzzed! Only in the morning the raftsmen found him - unconscious. "What was it?" - they asked, and he: "The mermaid scared me."
The grandfather looked up from the matter, straightened up and thundered throughout the hut:
- There are no mermaids!
Anna Timofeevna froze.
The owner took out the bag, rolled up the edges neatly, scooped up granulated sugar with a spoon, sprinkled it on the rusks steamed in a saucer and began to eat slowly.
Anna Timofeevna poured tea for me and, froze, watched her husband. Once upon a time, back in the First World War, Semyon's grandfather served in the artillery. Since then, he became a materialist and often frightened his kindest mistress with the word "derivation", from the artillery lexicon, refuting her stories.
And now, having finished drinking tea, he carefully put the sugar, crackers, the cup, spoon and saucer washed by Anna Timofeevna into the box from under the shoes and concluded:
- All this is derivation. Let's fall asleep.
The hut fell silent, the lamp was extinguished, the northern moon illuminated the village of Yubra, which scattered gray houses on a green hill covered with short dense grass.
Sleep…
Suddenly I heard a thin squeak, then the sound of soft steps inside (!) The stove and sat down on the bed, listening.
- Do not be afraid. This is a bachelor, - explained grandfather Semyon calmly. - Brownie. He is gentle. Naughty, it happens. We haven't drowned the bath for a long time, he moved to the hut …
I went to bed: well, here's a bachelor … And I said: derivation, derivation …"
• The famous astronomer I. Shklovsky told in his memoirs about an extremely strange incident in the life of one innocent victim of Stalin's repressions. Nikolai Aleksandrovich Kozyrev, who became a world famous astronomer in the post-war years, received 10 years in prison in 1938 for anti-Soviet activities, which, of course, he did not engage in. For the first two years Kozyrev was in the famous Vladimir prison in a solitary confinement cell. I. Shklovsky recalled:
“An extraordinary incident happened to him there, which he told me about in Crimea, when, after serving a term, he worked with me at the Simeiz Observatory. You should have seen how he walked on the wonderful Crimean land, how he relished every breath! And how he was afraid that at any moment they would take him away again. Let's not forget that this was 1949, the year of re-plantings, and Nikolai Alexandrovich's fear was more than fundamental.
And the incident with him actually happened amazing! Alone, in unthinkable conditions, he pondered one strange idea about the sources of energy of stars and the ways of their evolution. Let me note in parentheses that a year after the end of his term of imprisonment, Kozyrev defended his doctoral dissertation on this topic … And in prison he thought it all over.
In the course of thinking, he needed to know many specific characteristics of various stars, such as diameters, luminosities, and so on. Over the past two terrible years, he naturally forgot all this. Meanwhile, ignorance of stellar characteristics could lead the winding thread of his reasoning into one of the many dead ends. The situation was desperate!
And suddenly the warder in the cell window hands him a book from the prison library … the 2nd volume of the Pulkovo Astronomy Course! It was a miracle: the prison library had no more than a hundred storage units, and what a unit they were! “For some reason,” Nikolai Aleksandrovich later recalled, “there were several copies of the now forgotten concoction of Demyan Bedny“How the 14th Division went to Heaven…”.
Realizing that fate should not be tested, Kozyrev spent the whole night (the cell was dazzlingly light) absorbed and processed information that was invaluable to him. And the next morning the book was unexpectedly taken away, although as a rule they were given books for a week. Since then, Kozyrev has become a believing Christian … By the way, this story with the "Pulkovo Course" is perfectly reproduced in the "Gulag Archipelago". Nikolai Alexandrovich met Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn long before the loud glory of the latter."
A. Priyma