On a July night in 1950, a young cadet stood at his post at the Konstantino-Yeleninskaya tower of the Moscow Kremlin. It struck midnight when he noticed a small dark spot on the tower wall. The guy could have sworn he was gone five minutes ago.
Taking an interest, he came closer, touched something - something sticky. Raised his hand to his eyes, peered: What the hell, but it's blood! Wiping his stained fingers with the grass, he did not take his eyes off the wall. The blood that stood out on the bricks slowly flowed down …
However, by dawn there were no traces either on the wall or on the ground near the tower. Having leafed through the books on the history of the Kremlin, the cadet learned about the terrible past of the tower. In the Middle Ages, it served as a prison, and in its dungeons, eminent prisoners were tortured and even executed.
Nowadays, bookstores and stalls are littered with translated Gothic novels and thrillers, and TV makes us happy with Western horror films every day. Count Dracula and Kruger, Baron Frankenstein and Eric Westler became relatives for our youth. Meanwhile, the undeservedly forgotten domestic ghosts are no worse than foreign ones.
In Europe and America, ghosts are treated with care and respect. All of them are taken into account, described in guidebooks, the legends about them are lovingly told by the owners of castles-palaces and guides. What they are doing with ours is incomprehensible to the mind! To the Canterville ghost - remember the funny old man, to whom the nimble children arranged all sorts of small dirty tricks? - and in a nightmare he never dreamed of what trials his Russian brothers went through.
I'll start with the Novodevichy Convent. Here in the 16th century, under the cover of the central cathedral, the first abbess of the monastery, Elena Devochkina, and her assistants, Dominicia and Theophania, were buried. Here is what the librarian scientist I. F. Tokmakov wrote in the 19th century:
“Schema-nun Elena and her two cell attendants still appear now on the church porch, then on the monastery walls. They pray for their beloved monastery and, in difficult times, more than once came to her aid. And in 1812, the enemy only crossed our border, every day after sunset, holy women began to appear on the fence of the monastery. Their groans shook the gravestones, and such grief was expressed on their weeping faces that the sisters of the monastery looked at them with fear and, expecting the coming troubles, knelt and prayed until dawn.
They are sometimes seen in peacetime, but now they leave the graves only to admire the monastery. It happens that on light nights, as soon as midnight strikes on a slender bell tower, a massive stone quietly rises, covering all three graves. Elena and her cell attendants leave their coffins, looking for the places where their cells stood and the small wooden church in which they prayed so fervently several centuries ago. Bowing to all four sides, they rise to the fence. The schema abbess is easily recognizable by the golden cross glittering on her chest and by her long robe. And all night long, like incorruptible sentries, they walk along the monastery walls."
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On Easter night in 1927, the union of militant atheists arranged a buffoonery procession around the monastery. As old-timers Muscovites said, when a fire of ancient icons flared in front of the monastery gates, the ghosts of the nuns melted into the air. Since then, no one has seen them again …
The Sukharev Tower, from which not a trace remains now, was visited in the old days by the ghost of the sorcerer Bruce. Former associate of Peter I first went to the roof. Frightening rare passers-by, he watched the planets. Then he slowly and majestically descended into the gloomy tower dungeon - there, shortly before his death, he hid a mysterious "black book" in a cache. In the late 1920s, the tower was demolished and Bruce was forced to abandon his studies in astrology. Then he was dealt another blow: part of the underground of the Sukharev Tower was turned into a utility room at the Kolkhoznaya metro station (now Sukharevskaya). Brooms and mops with floor rags stinking of bleach were lined up against the wall, which contained a cache with a book.
At night, screaming cleaning women scurried about the back room, preventing Bruce from concentrating. And once, when the sorcerer was making intricate passes with his hands (apparently to open the cache), fat Aunt Grusha, dragging a broken down heavy scrubber drier, angrily pinned poor Bruce to the wall with it. Unable to bear such humiliation, the sorcerer grabbed the "black book" and disappeared in an unknown direction.
“Here is a house in Moscow itself, it is beautifully built, but half a century has passed, and no one has lived in it. There in the house they saw how the blue people danced, how thousands of oak coffins rolled into it every night."
This house - one of the oldest on the Arbat - somehow did not like the Moscow City Council. It was demolished. In 1992, commercial kiosks were built in its place. The blue people, tired of lugging around with heavy coffins along the Old Arbat, rejoiced. At night, they looked with curiosity at their new home and dreamed of how they would invite to housewarming a deaf damn grandmother, and charming swamp kikimors, and the unsociable Mal Yutu Skuratov. Alas, their dreams were not destined to come true. The booths were stuffed with foreign rags so that you can't squeeze even one coffin, what kind of balls are there. The blue people decided to make do with the gatherings. But at the very first attempt to enter the premises, the alarm went off, the police arrived … It is not known where these wretches have found refuge.
On Chistye Prudy, in one of the side streets, there is a mansion that once belonged to a wealthy merchant. The rich man had a beautiful daughter. Somehow a young hussar was assigned to them. And when the hussar moved out, the red maiden remained in burdens. Dad, in anger, immured his daughter in her room. The unfortunate woman went blind, went mad and died during childbirth. The merchant also did not live in this world. And forty days after his death, a ghost with a bell began to roam the house. This merchant was looking for his daughter, hoping to beg her forgiveness.
Perhaps this would have happened, but to his misfortune in the late 1980s a public organization and a youth theater studio settled in the mansion, and each of them wanted to become the sole owner of the house Until late in the evening - disputes between tenants, sometimes turning into loud scandals, and from midnight to dawn - rehearsals of young talents. Here, shake, do not shake the bell, hardly anyone will hear. And the ghost vanished.
A hundred and fifty years ago, the family of Prince Blokhitsyn lived in Moscow. His daughter was dying of consumption, and the prince ordered a home artist to paint her portrait. After the funeral of the girl, on the very first night, the ghost left the canvas and, with a candle in his hands, began to slide around the house as a light shadow …
After 1917, the house was requisitioned, and the portrait ended up in the warehouse. Then he was sent to one of the Moscow museums as an example of the work of a talented serf artist. They say that the ghost of the princess was seen there more than once. And this must happen so that one of the nights thieves would run into him. The unlucky kidnappers rushed to their heels, and the princess, trembling with horror, somehow made her way to the canvas. And for several years now, without risking to resume her walks, she looks at the visitors of the museum with frightened eyes.
Another house in the capital, in the Sretenka area, was famous for a terrible ghost. Once upon a time the count and his wife lived there. The wife ran away with the lover, and the count shot himself. The Count's ghost usually took the form of people who lived in the house, but it happened that it was transformed either into a half-decayed corpse, or into a skeleton with burning eyes. The count's house, an architectural monument that was under state protection, was boarded up for a long time due to accidents.
In the early 1990s, it was rented by a firm called "something there, invest." The building was quickly restored, chic Italian furniture, faxes were brought in, paintings by Russian artists were hung on the walls, wonderful orchids were placed in huge vases. The next night, a ghost appeared among this splendor. The count, pretending to be a corpse with a Turkish dagger in his chest, lay down in the office of the head of the firm on a wonderful leather sofa, anticipating the horror of the owner of the office. And when his footsteps were heard, from the wound of the corpse, red blood still flowed picturesquely …
“Where did this blind man come from here ?! So-so-so-so-so!.. In the morning I have a meeting with Western entrepreneurs, and then some kind of tra-ta-ta mutilated a Spanish palace! How many times to say, tra-ta-ta, to carry out all the showdowns in someone else's territory …"
The puzzled ghost did not have time to come to his senses, as he was rolled up in plastic wrap and pushed into the trunk of a car, painfully hitting the trunk lid on the head. The count woke up in a garbage dump when some homeless man tried to pull a Turkish dagger out of his chest: "A dead man does not need a knife, but it will come in handy …"
In the 18th century, Count Sheremetev ordered from Germany a magician - a sorcerer and alchemist. Nobody knew why Nemchura did not please, only he drove his count out into the cold in one shirt. The German caught a cold and died. And the magician's mirror went to the count. And pretty soon the count realized that the mirror was not simple, that everything that was said at the mirror was coming true, but only had no time to use this miracle. Looking at his reflection in the mirror, the count, without thinking, said: "Damn me!" Well, he took it …
Then the mirror passed from hand to hand, until in our time it was bought at an auction by one of the "new Russians". At first, the ghost of the mirror did not have much difficulty in fulfilling the wishes of the owner. Removing a dangerous person, blowing up a car, setting fire to a competitor's house is a piece of cake. Difficulties began after the magical transformation of the owner, to which, by the way, the mirror had nothing to do.
One fine day, the head of a criminal group became a banker, chairman of a joint-stock company, and a little later, the people's choice. Operations with fake advice notes, fraudulent actions with fake shares, lobbying in the Duma of the interests of financial circles brought the ghost to the handle, and he shamefully fled where Makar did not drive calves.
Almost four hundred years ago, the harmless ghost of Ivan the Terrible appeared in Izmailovo. At night, a heartbreaking female scream was heard in the old park, after which the king arose with a staff in his hand, making his way somewhere between the trees. Except for the chills on the skin from this ghost, no one did any harm. In 1989, Gotsu Grozny was spotted by a mounted police patrol. The young law enforcement officers considered the ghost to be someone's prank and decided to catch the joker. Each watch they organized real round-ups.
At first Grozny was amused, then it began to weigh him down. Escaping once again from the police, he grumbled in irritation: “The guardsmen are accursed, wherever your voivode looks. Seven days ago by the lake someone was violent, and the third day they cleaned the pockets of a drunken man. I wish I could look for you tates and adversaries, and not cling to the old man, there is no cross on you …”Having evaporated to run, the years are not pink, Grozny stopped visiting Izmailovo.
Under Catherine II in Tsaritsyn, a groom hanged himself in a small pavilion. His spirit quietly and peacefully showed there once a year. Having learned about this, the ufologists decided to add the groom to their rich filing cabinet.
They tracked him down, and then all night they molded sensors on the spirit and wrapped him with multi-colored wires and carefully wrote down the readings of the devices in notebooks. The spirit liked the respectful attitude of people who called themselves people's academicians so much that the whole next year he was preparing for a new meeting. Having decided to please the academics, he learned to change color and emit a chilling cry. However, a year later the ufologists did not come to Tsaritsyno. Instead, people with cameras and microphones were hovering around the gazebo. It turns out that the nimble Moscow journalist, having found out about the ghost, sold it to his Western colleagues.
When the spirit appeared, vanity began. Some tried to interview him, pestering him with stupid questions, others twisted the spirit in all directions, filming him either in profile or in full face. The groom endured for a long time. But when the overseas operator began to persistently ask him to make a more terrible face, he was offended: “What am I bought for you?..” And - remember the name.
And finally, I will tell you about the sad fate of the Red Devil, who lives in the near Moscow region.
Many years ago there was a greedy capitalist. Before his death, he ordered all his treasures to be put with him in a coffin. In the mid-1990s, the robbers-marauders who dug up the grave found the coffin empty, there was only a note in it: “I took the treasures where they do not return, you will be pursued by the one whom you released from the grave”. It was then that the Red Devil appeared in the district. A filthy, I must say, creation. Either he will scare the shepherd to death, then at the ladies in the gardens he will crush all the cucumbers with his hooves.
People were even afraid to drive past the cemetery at nightfall. In short, the devil kept the area in fear. But not far from the cemetery, radioactive waste was buried. The devil turned from red into a gray-brown-crimson, the wool from it crawled in shreds, the horns fell off. Now you can't look at the devil without tears.
Hopefully everyone is now clear about the dire plight of our ghosts, ghosts, and spirits. I will not deny that some ghosts have already received offers from their Western counterparts to move to a permanent residence in the cozy castles of France and England. And if in the near future they do not create tolerable living conditions, I am afraid we will lose this part of the national treasure too.