The Obvodny Canal, especially its section from the mouth of the Volkovka River to Borovoy Bridge, has long been considered a bad place. Both gloomy buildings and dark, foul-smelling water, in the depths of which some kind of evil force lurks, attracting to itself like a magnet, pressure on the psyche of a passer-by. One of my acquaintances, a sensitive person with some extrasensory abilities, admitted that somehow, stopping on Borovoy Bridge, he had the imprudence to look down - and only by some miracle he resisted the jump. But not everyone is so happy. In the third year of every decade, the Obvodny Canal is overwhelmed by a wave of suicides, and so far it has not been possible to cope with this disaster. And the fault is an ancient curse.
Rite of black magic
The mystery of the ancient curse is revealed by an episode from the chronicle of Erik Abossky - a Swedish literary monument of the 13th century. It tells how the Swedish troops invaded the Neva banks. In 1300, Torgils Knutsson founded the Landskrona fortress at the mouth of the Okhta River. From here, the Swedes began to convert Karelian pagans living in settlements on the Kema (Fontanka) and Sutilla (Volkovka) rivers to the Christian faith with fire and sword. Near the mouth of Sutilla, the "missionaries" stumbled upon a temple where, in their opinion, wicked idolaters held vile sabbaths, sacrificing not only animals, but also innocent babies to their gods, who are devils. In a rage, the zealots of the true faith began to chop wooden statues of pagan gods with axes and throw them into the fires. And then a disgusting old man appeared from a dense spruce forest and began to cast spells,calling upon the heads of the thugs the vengeance of all the powers of darkness. The soldiers killed the madman in passing, so as not to get underfoot and did not interfere with the holy work, but still terror crept into their souls - in those days, terrible stories about the formidable strength of Karelian sorcerers circulated in Scandinavia, making weak hearts tremble.
The instigator of this pogrom, Knutsson, who, although he was reputed to be an adamant zealot of the faith, was uncomfortable, was a superstitious person, like all his contemporaries. He did not know peace until a certain subject appeared in Landskrona, knowledgeable in forbidden teachings and even, as they said, knowing with evil spirits. He proposed to conduct a magical ceremony, which should deprive the spell of the Karelian sorcerer. Knutsson reluctantly had to agree in order to somehow calm the excitement of his subordinates.
And on a place sacred to local residents, a terrible bloody act took place. By the order of the dark magician, five young Karelian virgins were sacrificed to the devil. Their blood was sprinkled on granite slabs with magic words and signs engraved on them, and the corpses were thrown into the same hole as the body of the sorcerer. At the end of the ceremony, the dark magician desecrated the holy crucifix. As soon as this sacrilege was accomplished, a terrifying laughter spread through the night forest, suddenly a whirlwind flew in and uprooted a huge spruce.
Give me a heating main
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In the winter of 1923, while laying a heating main in the area of the Obvodny Canal, workers came across granite slabs laid out in a circle. Their surface was mottled with incomprehensible letters and signs. Having lifted the slabs, the workers found human bones under them. By order of the authorities, the work was stopped, and the archaeologist Gvozditsky was summoned to the scene. At first glance, he determined the uniqueness of the find, which is an ancient burial, most likely of Scandinavian origin. The archaeologist demanded the immediate cessation of all work on the construction of the heating main. However, the head of the project, Sdobny, categorically disagreed with him, who got into the chief's chair directly from the deck of a Baltic ship, where he served as a simple sailor. He advised the old-regime specialist not to breed sabotage.
At the suggestion of the former naval brother, the next day, an article titled "Give us a heating main!" The article ended with an appeal "not to pay attention to the trash of the past, but to write history from the 17th year."
After that, no one paid attention to the demands of the old archaeologist. The granite slabs were taken on carts of draft cabs to the Svobodny Trud stone-cutting artel, where curbs were cut from them for the pavements of Ligovsky Prospect. The bones were put in several sacks and taken to a landfill.
Comrade Myasopatamsky's embarrassment
The spirit of the Karelian sorcerer broke free, the consequences of which were not slow to affect. At noon on April 12, 1923, a laundress rushed from Borovoy Bridge into the Obvodny Canal. It was not possible to save her. Then a whole series of suicides followed. The unfortunate ones threw themselves into the dark waters of the Obvodny Canal from the railway viaduct near Volkovka, from Novokamenny, Predtechensky, but most of all from Borovoy bridge. As a reporter for "Krasnaya Gazeta" wrote, "people drown themselves here often and even willingly." The peak of suicide was in the fall of 1923. A police post was even set up on the bridge in order to prevent irresponsible citizens from committing suicide. Nevertheless, 89 people drowned themselves in the canal that year. Only one was saved. Ironically, he turned out to be a respected man, a party functionary, a member of the RSDLP since 1903, Comrade Myasopatamsky, personally acquainted with V. I. Lenin. Perhaps the latter circumstance was the reason that he remained alive. Jumping in broad daylight with a wild howl from Borovoy Bridge, the honored party member landed in shallow water and got off with only broken buttocks. There he sat until the firemen pulled him out.
The failed suicide became a patient of the psychiatrist Efimson. He explained that he had thrown himself off the bridge against his will: the eclipse had found, as if some irresistible force had dragged him down.
Once a decade
By the end of the year, the wave of suicides began to subside, and in the next year, 1924, there were almost none.
A new suicide epidemic swept the Obvodny Canal in 1933. On the section from Borovoye bridge to the railway viaduct, the 28th police station recorded 107 cases of suicide, which was very unhappy with the head of the department, Comrade Tovstukha, who lost the rolling red banner for poor performance.
However, some of those drowned this time managed to be saved. One of them, by the name of Tutyshkin, was severely blown up by the police before being sent to the hospital so that such a fantasy would not enter a bad head anymore.
The psychiatrist Efimson, who examined the failed suicides, was seriously interested in the Obvodny Canal phenomenon. It was he who established that the peak of suicides falls on the third year of every decade, when the ancient curse of the Karelian sorcerer is working at full power.
It is not known how many people sank into the waters of the Obvodny Canal in 1943. War, blockade, famine - not counting. Who will determine whether a person himself threw himself into the water or threw him off, who died by starvation, are the same goners, since there is no strength to take him to the cemetery ?! But there were a lot of corpses in the Obvodny Canal, according to the testimonies of those who survived this terrible time. It is also known that Efimson, obsessed with his discovery, managed in 1943 to get an appointment with the first secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee and the City Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Comrade Zhdanov, in order to warn of the impending wave of suicides, but the convinced Marxist and atheist did not heed the words of the “reflective intellectual . It's good that the psychiatrist himself did not turn into a psychiatric patient.
Efimson continued his observations. He established that suicides that occurred at different times on the Obvodny Canal cannot be considered as common cases of suicide. “These are murders, but inaccessible to neither the perception nor the understanding of those around them, which is the worst,” the psychiatrist wrote in his notes. Those of the rescued, whom he examined in the hospital, ended up in the canal against their will. Some were pushed there by a voice from outside, so fierce and terrible that it was impossible not to obey his order. Others were suddenly caught up by a terrible invisible force and thrown into the canal, like helpless puppies.
Three dozen of these patients, examined by Efimson, turned out to be healthy people, later they did not show any mental disorders.
Meanwhile, a wave of suicides regularly swept over the Obvodny Canal every third year of the next decade. Thus, the words of Efimson remain relevant: “A dark nightmare, turned into reality, hovers over the city. The number of victims is growing steadily. The nightmare must be stopped."
Nikolay VALENTINOV