In Russian folk stories, called bylichki or past (that is, about what actually happened), they often talk about special places in which the evil spirits “live constantly”.
For example, such a place was mentioned by Afanasyev: “The goblin comes to sleep at night in some machine, a gatehouse. If his chosen forest hut is occupied by a belated traveler or hunter, the goblin tries to send him out: it will sweep over the hut like a whirlwind and shake its roof, then the door will open.
Folklorist Balashov gives a whole series of such stories.
Vasily Kuznetsov from the village of Strelna, for example, told a folklorist about his meeting with evil spirits in a roadside forest hut. For some reason, Kuznetsov set off on a sleigh in deep winter on a long trip through the forests.
For the next night I stopped in an empty, squat hut without windows, a poor shelter for travelers. I had dinner and had just lay down on the couch when he hears that someone rode up on deer to the hut. Bells rang, the sled stopped at the very doors of the hut, and someone who jumped off of them put the trochee (the stick used to drive the reindeer) against the wall.
Kuznetsov was waiting for the guest, he was waiting … He did not wait.
- It doesn't. I left the house: no deer, nothing. And my deer are, as they should be, four deer. I went up the hill, I think: he took the deer over the hill. Nobody there. “Ah,” I say, “I started scaring you!”
Kuznetsov ran back to the hut, closed the doors, extinguished the oil seal. And suddenly, he recalls, the doors opened by themselves.
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- It was then that I felt worse! And other doors were opened, huts. I ask: "Who ?!" Nobody here. I lit a match, closed the doors. Just went to bed - again, both doors opened! Another time I lit a match.
At the same moment, someone ran from the door to the stove, sort of like a rat, and under the stove - into the baking slot - sucked in, sucked in, dived.
By the way, one of the popular nicknames of the brownie is Zapechnik. The ethnographer A. Baiburin, commenting on the tricks of the evil spirits in Russian villages, states:
- The baker lives behind the oven.
And again, in the forest hut in the Chita region, the peasant Fyodor Trofimovich met with evil spirits. Here is his testimony:
- I was going hunting. Late. I went to the winter hut. I decided to spend the night. He lay down on the bunk, put the rifle near the door in the corner and had not yet managed to fall asleep, when I heard: they were going with an accordion, they were playing … We drove up to the winter hut, as if we had dismounted. And you can hear the door being opened.
I look: a man, about thirty centimeters high, walks into the doorway, followed by another. I got a frost on my skin. Quietly, so as not to hurt them, he jumped off the bunk, stretched out his hand to the rifle, grabbed it - and into the door! And run.
In the same area, but in a different winter quarters, an equally ominous meeting took place. Hunters Abakum Tonkikh, his brother Yegor and their friend Dmitry, that is, this time a whole group of witnesses, settled down in a forest hut for the night.
They hear that a man seems to be walking through the snow towards the winter quarters. He came up and began to wander back and forth around the house. The hunters jumped out of the hut, ran around, swearing: “Who is here? Where does he go here? But no one was found.
We went to bed again. Just went to bed - in the window glass with your fingers caught. They jumped out into the street again, ran around - there was no one. They returned to the house. The next minute the door of the hut opened by itself, as if it had been hit by a boot.
Well, here the nerves of our hunters broke down. They grabbed their sheepskin coats from the shops and rushed out of harm's way from the hut into the taiga. We ran away across the river five hundred meters away from it, built a fire there, and so we sat by the fire until morning.
Another example is from the notes of Onchukov. The hunter Ivan Chudinov stopped for the night in an empty roadside hut. As soon as Chudinov fell asleep, some force pulled him by the legs from the trestle bed. The man swore hard. He climbed onto the trestle bed and only stretched out to his full height when he was again grabbed by the legs and thrown to the ground.
This was repeated several times. Chudinov, according to him, "swore and could not bear it" - he fled in fear from the hut. He had to while away the night in the open air.
As we can see, the evil spirits in all cases achieve their goal - people leave the winter hut in horror. Uncleanness survives them from the place it has grown, most likely.
And here is a more modern message - from Siberia: a resident of the village of Byankino by the name of Volozhanin rode one summer in a cart along a forest road.
- I drove, drove, it was already late, I did not reach the village and decided to spend the night. Here, - explains Volozhanin, - the road goes. And I turned away from her a little, unharnessed the horse. I lay down under the cart. As he pulled the bed from under me - and pulled it out. I jumped off: no one is there! He took cover again, dozed off. And again: one! What is it? No one is there! Let me roll the cart away from the road. He pulled it back and lay down. And he slept calmly until morning.
If you believe bylichki, the evil spirits sometimes even come into verbal contact with a belated traveler in order to drive him out of his chosen place. So, for example, another old-timer from the village of Byankino happened to hear the voice of the goblin.
The initial situation here is the same - as in the "case of Volozhanin": night, road, a late traveler unharms his horse, goes to bed - though not under a cart, but on a cart. But further events develop somewhat differently. The peasant heard a voice from under the cart:
- Get out of here! Step back at least twenty meters from here!
The man recalls:
- I was shaking all over. He jumped off the cart, grabbed it and rolled it under the yura. There he lay down again on the cart and slept normally.
Are there any indications in the stories about the characteristic signs of a section of the road on which such contact with evil spirits occurs? Imagine there is. Most often, evil spirits wield at the convergence. Or at the Rosstani (crossroads).
There is a separate article about evil at crossroads.