In the "Oryol Bulletin" for 1895, an interesting story about a ghost was reported and it was described that the violent death of a teacher from the village of Morozov in the Volkhov district and the subsequent numerous appearances of the ghost of the murdered were the pretext for popular riots.
The teacher was stabbed to death and robbed in the Suryaninsky forest at a time when he was carrying a large amount of money belonging to the master A. D. Yurasovsky. In a strange way, a certain Karneev was involved in further events.
Local historian E. Nugard, in his book "A Story from the Time of Serfdom in the Oryol Province" (Oryol, 1901), tells in detail about the uniform nightmares that began soon after the brutal murder of the teacher.
He's writing:
“One clear, wonderful night, but not for Karneev, he had to go from Karachev to Volkhov alone, without a coachman. In the Suryaninsky forest, in the very place where the teacher was stabbed, Karneev's horse began to snore, shook and stopped rooted to the spot. Karneev looked ahead, and suddenly … his heart sank … he sees that a man in a dress of German cut, all covered in blood, is walking towards his carriage.
Karneev looked at him and gasped.
Before him stood his late son-in-law - a stabbed teacher. Having stopped Karneev, the teacher began to demand from him a testimony according to the judgment of God, where he called him to go to heaven with him immediately. At the same time, the teacher, bowing to Karneev, took off his severed head like a hat. A terrible shiver pierced Karneev. Snapping his teeth, he was about to cross himself, but instead fell senseless into the carriage. What happened to him next, he does not know. I came to my senses in my own house, in the bathhouse, where his wife almost with all her relatives poured cold water on him, wanting to revive him."
The story with the teacher's ghost did not end there.
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Soon Karneev began to meet the ghost everywhere, wherever he happened to be, even in the church. Unable to withstand this incessantly lasting nightmare, he committed suicide! Of course, long before his suicide, he notified all his family and friends about his encounters with a ghost, who bowed to him, thrusting his own severed head under his arm.
After Karneev's death, the ghost did not calm down. He began to appear on the Bolshaya Volkhovskaya road and pester the road and passers-by. He complained to them, quietly howling with fear, about Karneev, who, they say, refused to appear with him, a ghost, to heaven - to the judgment of God. At the same time, the ghost bowed and took off the severed head like a hat. It called on all passers-by and passers-by “to go with him to the judgment of God” and to confirm there that the stabbed teacher was precisely stabbed, killed, and did not commit suicide.
Then the dead man with his head under his arm began to appear in other parts of the district, which caused a terrible confusion among the people. The police intervened, but they could not catch the ghost and put it in the jail … Five angry men dug up the body of the slaughtered teacher in the cemetery at night with the intention of driving an aspen stake into his heart. But the cry of some bird for some reason greatly frightened them, and they fled from the cemetery, leaving in panic the grave they had dug.
Soon someone invisible began to come to one of the grave-diggers at night and whisper in his ear: “Say! Tell me! Following this, he fancied a terrible scream, squeal, gnashing of teeth and satanic laughter … The peasant could not bear this terrible obsession and rushed to the police chief. He confessed that he was among the robbers who stabbed the teacher and stole money from him. The guy betrayed all his accomplices.
The killers were tried and exiled to an eternal settlement in Siberia. Apparently this satisfied the ghost of the teacher. He stopped appearing to people.