The life and adventures of treasure seekers are covered with eerie legends. In them mystical, sacred, all sorts of devilry are closely intertwined with wild criminality.
Who can't sleep at dark night?
Russian folklore, replete with stories about buried treasures, often considers the ghosts of the once famous robbers, leaders of thieves' gangs, to be their invisible keepers. Moreover, literally every Russian region has its own "hero". In the eastern provinces of Russia, this is the famous leader of the rebellious peasants and Cossacks, Emelka Pugachev, in the Volga regions and republics - Stenka Razin, who walked along the Volga with a huge gang, in Central Russia - the forest robber Kudeyar.
Each of them became the owner of countless plundered riches and, undoubtedly, some part of them was buried somewhere. Beliefs say that the owner of the treasure, who has left the vale of the earth, is simply doomed to eternally patrol his caches and attack anyone who encroaches on them, by all means dissuading the uninvited burrower from continuing the search, even driving him to madness, or even death.
The head is good, but a hundred is better
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Connoisseurs know that secretly burying a treasure in an inconspicuous place is only half the battle. So that no one except the owner or his confidant could unearth the treasure, he certainly had to speak. Sometimes not even to scare the treasure hunter to death, but to lead him away from the cherished place, to direct him along the wrong path.
The best conspiracy in famous circles was considered the one when the process of burying a treasure under the secret spells of a sorcerer (or sorceress) was accompanied by the execution, and not one, but several people. Their heads were buried in the ground along with treasures, so that from that moment on, the ghosts of the slain would closely guard the buried wealth.
And to get to it, regardless of how old it is, it will be possible only at the cost of a monstrous atrocity: having killed in this place as many innocent people as the severed heads lie in the ground above the treasure. In folk legends, there are frequent references to treasures "laid on a hundred heads". This meant that for one hundred treasure hunters the search for someone else's wealth ended in death, but the one hundred and first got to it safely.
The search for treasures, like their burial, was closely associated with black magic. And to this day, the belief is widespread that anyone who is trying to take possession of hidden treasures, not knowing magical conspiracies, is doomed to a serious illness or even untimely death, and the inexorable fate can touch his loved ones. But another belief: if a treasure hunter does without a conspiracy, then the treasure will never show itself, it will either go deeper into the earth, or turn into clay shards, just withered foliage.
Often, treasures were buried for greater safety in cemeteries, especially in rural ones, where there were no watchmen at night. Cemeteries have long been considered, perhaps not without reason, mysterious and very dangerous places where evil spirits are especially strong. Not every seeker of other people's riches dared to disturb the sleep of the dead, knowing that here he could destroy his immortal soul and even lose his life.
In different regions of our country, tales about a mysterious blue fire over a treasure buried in a lonely churchyard, about treasure hunters who died because they neglected the mysterious blue glow, about the dead with swollen faces of an unnatural blue color are still popular, especially among youngsters who are greedy for horror stories. … By the way, special dowsing studies carried out on the territory of the liquidated cemeteries have shown that there is a purely negative energy there, which has an extremely negative effect on people's mood and well-being.
Passion ineradicable and unquenchable
At all times and throughout the world, the thirst for other people's wealth has been truly insatiable and ineradicable. There have also been periods in the history of Russia when the "gold rush" seized entire villages. For example, in lean years, when from hunger and hopeless despair, men, in order to feed their families or feed themselves, gathered in mobs and went out on the high road and in search of "charmed" luck.
Even the highest persons did not shun treasure hunting. Ivan the Terrible, having received news from a certain unnamed libeller that an immured treasure of gold coins was hidden in the stonework of the ancient St. Sophia Cathedral in Novgorod, descended into the cathedral late at night and ordered to mercilessly torture those ministers who could know anything about the treasure. Terrible agony did not snatch recognition from anyone. Then the emperor ordered to tear down the ancient walls without mercy.
After several hours of this destructive work, as the chronicle says, "great treasures were waking up: ancient ingots in the hryvnia, and in half a dollar, and in the ruble." Several carts of old coins were sent to Moscow. However, these riches did not last long in the treasury: the ruinous Livonian war consumed all the financial resources of the Russian state.
The half-sister of Peter I, Ekaterina Alekseevna, was no stranger to the passion for the search for hidden property of others. She relied primarily on the help of God. Women-sorcerers, of whom were found in abundance under the princess, were obliged to see prophetic dreams about treasures! If any of them confessed that she had such a dream, she herself was sent in search of wealth, of course, under the guard of soldiers. It usually ended in nothing. But the princess's failures did not discourage her, and she continued to play such a kind of roulette with other people's dreams, and for more than one year …
By the way, her crowned brother Pyotr Alekseevich, noting that during his reign, treasure hunting became almost a universal hobby (such were the dramatic consequences of the severe Northern War, which stretched for two decades, peasant and Cossack uprisings, an exorbitant tax burden, the imposed recruitment and final enslavement of farmers), decided that strict order should be introduced in this matter. The king announced that all the treasures found become the property of the state, and whoever dares to appropriate something for himself, the death penalty.
Catherine II, who was looking for any ways to win and maintain the confidence of the nobles, abolished the state monopoly on treasures. She declared the owners of any treasures to those of her subjects on whose land these treasures were located, that is, the noble landowners. This continued until the death of the empire and the coming to power of the Bolsheviks, who abolished private ownership of everything, including land. The Soviet government re-introduced the state monopoly on treasures. True, later this rule was significantly relaxed: the one who found the treasure was supposed to pay a quarter of its value.
A scarlet flower and a black cat to boot
The night from 23 to 24 June (from 6 to 7 July according to the new style) in the annals of church holidays precedes an important religious event - the annually celebrated Christmas of John the Baptist (7 July). Treasure hunters in our country have considered it especially successful since ancient times. Popular beliefs (since pagan times) say that on the enchanted Kupala night, trees, under the influence of some mighty mysterious force, move from place to place, between themselves in their own language, unknown to people, and animals speak, and even herbs, which are filled with a special one, miraculous power.
Slavic healers on the Kupala night collected medicinal herbs, stocked them up for a year, until the next holiday. On such a night, treasures are opened. It is not clear why, but they are revealed only to naked people. Believing in this, the dashing men and women, having thrown off even their undershirts, at the dead of midnight looked for the cherished places and until the morning dawn searched them, looking for the hidden treasures.
On Kupala night, according to legend, the weeping grass and the fern, and not all of them, but only its flower, have a special power. The fern indicates the place where the treasure is buried, and the weeping grass (another name is the tear-grass) drives away the evil spirits protecting it. But for the tear-grass to work, it is important at the right time to utter a secret conspiracy that breaks the spell cast by the sorcerer. This must be done over the fern flower. The fern, according to the belief, blooms on the night of Midsummer Day and opens the bud only for a few moments. Exactly at midnight, the bud bursts with a crash, and a flower bright like fire appears to the gaze of the initiate. It shines so much that it is even impossible to look at it.
The flowering is allegedly accompanied by a voice coming from the depths of the earth, almost human - this is an unclean force trying to drive a person, God's creation, from a miraculous flower. Therefore, finding such a flower is more difficult than obtaining the treasure itself. The lucky man who overcomes all devilish obsessions will receive a rare gift as a reward: to see and find any treasure, no matter how deeply they are buried.
Another ancient rule of a treasure hunter said: when you take a treasure, do not look back, dig, maintaining complete silence, no matter what you dream. These dreams happen often, and they are also the work of the unclean. It happens that the treasured treasure itself reveals itself to those lucky ones who did everything according to the rules and knows the correct conspiracy.
The sign indicating the exact location of the treasure appears most often in the guise of a black cat, which invites you to follow you. Its appearance means that the unclean has had mercy on the mortal and that one must follow the animal, because it leads the right path. Where the cat stops and meows, you also need to stop and exclaim: "Scatter!" - and then, without delay, dig in this place. The treasure is hidden there.
Beliefs are beliefs, but even scattered historical facts incline to the idea that the conspiracy treasures really exist. In any case, only this can explain that some treasures, the existence of which even serious researchers do not doubt, do not lend themselves to the most stubborn treasure hunters after centuries.
Alexander Pronin