The Yakuts have been afraid of the dead since ancient times. Of course, any living person is afraid of them, however, according to Yakut beliefs, if the deceased is seen by you in reality or in a dream, then this means one thing: a dead spirit is trying to drag you to the next world. Especially if it is the spirit of a deceased relative. That is why the Yakuts are not at all happy when they dream of relatives who have gone to the grave.
There are, of course, exceptions. There are cases when the dead came in a dream to someone from their relatives and reported about the treasures hidden in a secret place. However, such stories are extremely rare. As a rule, seeing deceased loved ones in a dream is not good. By the way, these dreams are quite the same type: the dead is trying to lure a person somewhere into the darkness, or even drags him there by force. A similar incident will be discussed in the next story.
Breathing outside the window
In Soviet times, a lonely pensioner lived in one of the Yakut villages. His house was spacious, and there were no relatives left - his only brother died twenty years ago. Therefore, the man decided to rent one room, and soon a young girl who was doing an internship in a rural hospital settled in with him. The owner and the lodger got along well with each other and, it happened, had long conversations in the evenings in the kitchen.
One winter evening, a trainee was returning from the hospital and, approaching the house, she heard the crunch of snow around the corner, as if someone was shifting from foot to foot. It was dark and the girl could not really see anything. She decided that it was her master, but it was embarrassing that the man puffs and groans, and sometimes even wheezes and gasps. "Who is there?" The puzzled tenant asked, and the fuss around the corner stopped immediately.
Sensing something was wrong, the girl entered the house and saw an old man who was habitually preparing dinner. Then, under some pretext, she again went out into the yard and walked around the house, but did not meet anyone. In order not to frighten the owner, the tenant decided not to tell him about the strange sounds. We sat down to supper, and then the girl noticed that the old man looked very sad. When asked, he replied that he lay down after dinner to take a nap and saw his younger brother in a dream. He called him with him, but the man refused to go and woke up, constrained by an oppressive melancholy feeling. “This is a bad omen,” he concluded, and, after finishing his supper in silence, went to bed. Soon the girl went to her place.
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Some time after she went to bed, a crunch of snow was heard outside, and then - the already familiar breathing, wheezing and intermittent, as if someone had been running for a long time and now cannot catch their breath. Covered with a blanket over her head, the girl was terrified of what to do if a stranger wanted to enter the house. Meanwhile, judging by the sounds, he went up to the window in the master's bedroom - and he turned, muttering anxiously as he slept. However, soon everything calmed down, and the girl herself imperceptibly fell into a dream.
The next morning the tenant first went out of the house and examined the snow around it. Seeing no trace, she breathed a sigh of relief. But the awakened owner was even more sullen than yesterday. “At night, my brother dreamed again. Now he did not persuade me, but knocked me down and, like a beast, dragged me into the darkness,”the old man shared the sad news. Gathering up her courage, the girl told about how she twice heard the creak of steps and terrible breathing. After that, the owner became even gloomier than a cloud and said resignedly: “Well, yes, that was my younger brother. He just died of tuberculosis. I still remember how he wheezed and gasped in bed. Now I am not a tenant either."
Indeed, the old man soon fell ill with pneumonia, from which he could not recover. The tenant looked after him with care, and the owner bequeathed his large house to her. After his death, nothing supernatural happened in the girl's life.
Chest evening
Even more than the dead, the Yakuts are afraid of otherworldly entities that may be among the living after the death of a loved one. There is even such a thing as a "chest evening". This is how the Yakut villages call the evening of the day when someone died.
It is believed that with the onset of dusk, spirits come to the house, which need to accompany the soul of the deceased to the next world. The border between our and the subtle worlds becomes thinner, and uninvited guests may appear from that side. Therefore, in order not to attract their attention to yourself, you cannot have fun, laugh, talk loudly and make noise on chest evenings. This tradition still exists in many Yakut villages.
Our story begins with the death of an ancient old man who had children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren. Naturally, numerous grieving relatives came from the surrounding villages to the house of the deceased in order to arrange a decent funeral for him. The children quickly rallied, and since it was summer outside, it was impossible to drive the children home. Their games were accompanied by laughter, shouts and noise. The busy adults from time to time pulled back the children, demanding silence, but this did not help.
When it got dark, the game of tagging was over, and it was time for hide and seek. The children fled to different nooks, and one boy began to drive. He found several of those who were hiding, and then entered the winter house, which was used as a warehouse in the summer. The boy examined all the rooms and found no one. As he was about to leave, he noticed a large wardrobe in the hallway, where, if desired, several players could hide at once.
The child opened the door and saw jackets and coats hanging on the hangers. After rummaging among things, he suddenly came across something cold, slippery with his hand. Then someone in the closet stirred - and all the hangers collapsed at once, and behind them the boy saw a tall, bent man with glowing red eyes. A disgusting cadaveric smell immediately hit my nose, and the child rushed headlong outside. The rest of the children came running to his desperate cries. They burst into the winter house in a crowd and opened the closet, but they did not find anyone there - even the hangers with clothes were hanging in place …
It is not surprising that they did not believe the driver and continued to play. Soon, another boy went in search of those who had hidden. At some point, he entered the barn and saw in the far corner a man squatting in the shade. "I see you, come out!" The boy exclaimed happily. However, the stranger pressed his hand to his mouth, as if asking to remain silent, and then began to giggle softly in some disgusting, clearly inhuman voice. Coming closer, the boy saw a short and plump man with huge shining eyes on his forehead, a round belly, thin limbs and a long tongue hanging from his mouth to his chest. The little man stopped giggling, took his hand away from his mouth and reached out to the boy with his tongue, as if wishing to lick him.
Squealing heart-rendingly, the child flew into the yard like a bullet. He told the adults everything, and then the first boy "for the company" confessed to his parents that he had seen evil spirits. The adults, of course, got angry, saying: "We told you to be quiet and not have fun!" And the children were immediately driven home.