You've probably read Gothic stories about how treasures or people were walled up in the walls of buildings? It turns out that this can actually happen! Various things are found in the walls, as well as the bodies of people and animals, the age of which may be several centuries. Of course, more often they get there by someone's intention, and not by accident.
In the old days, there was a belief that a building would stand firmly if a living person was immured into its wall. There is even a legend about the wife of a medieval bricklayer, who was sacrificed during the construction of the castle, but was allowed to feed a baby through the hole … They also say that Ivan the Terrible used to walled up the unfortunate, killed and tortured by his order, within the walls of the Kremlin. Well, of course, not by himself, but by the hands of the servants …
One way or another, but the corpses were actually found in the walls. One such incident happened in 1850 in Paris. In one of the apartments, during the renovation work, a child's mummy fell out of the space between the walls. The owners of the apartment were charged with murder, but the doctor later established that the child had died many years ago.
In 2008, the remains of a woman and her son, who disappeared a year ago, were found in the United States. After the divorce, Rikki Chekevdia and his mother settled in the house of their grandmother, Diane Dobbs. The old house had many secret passages that the boy loved to play. In one of these passages, in the space between the walls, both corpses were found. The investigation revealed that Mrs. Chekevdia was a very unbalanced woman and often behaved aggressively towards her son. Presumably, she killed Rikki in a fit of anger, and then dragged his body into a secret passage and committed suicide there …
In the 17th-18th centuries in Great Britain, there was a ritual of walled up cats in the walls in order to protect the house from evil forces. Today, during construction work, mummified animal corpses are often removed from the walls. For example, a cat's mummy was found in the wall of a medieval cottage in Lancashire, where witchcraft sabbaths were held in the early 17th century. Apparently, for protective purposes, shoes were also bricked up in the walls. This tradition existed in Europe, Asia and America. So, within the walls of the Gothic Liedberg Palace in Germany, a whole collection of shoes was discovered, which is 300 years old.
All over the world, during renovations, people find the clothes of the previous owners in the walls. Sometimes it is dirty laundry. Sometimes there is a note next to the clothes, which is a friendly message to the one who will get the find … This is also a tradition, although already modern: people tend to leave a memory of themselves where they lived before …
Finding various kinds of magical paraphernalia within the walls is by no means uncommon. For example, in 2009, during the renovation of a 17th century house in the UK, builders found bottles filled with urine, feces, hair and nail clippings inside the walls. One of the bottles contained a heart-shaped piece of human skin pierced with a long fingernail.
We managed to find out that 400 years ago a woman who was called a witch lived in the house. For this reason, her husband divorced her - divorce papers were even found. After the death of the woman, the building stood abandoned for a long time, as the locals believed that a curse lay on it …
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Finding walled up treasures also happens. For example, there is a legend that in 1502 the Italian statesman Piero Soderini hired the great painter Leonardo da Vinci to paint scenes from the famous Battle of Anghiari on the wall of his mansion. Subsequently, after the death of Soderini, another artist, Giorgio Vasari, was asked to paint over the fresco, but he did not want to destroy the masterpiece of art and simply disguised it.
In 1970, art critic Maurizio Seracini found traces of old paint on the wall in the same mansion. In addition, on the fresco painted by Vasari, there was an inscription in this place: "Cerca Trova" - "Seek and find." The researcher was not allowed to break the wall, but he believes that the wall with the painting is false and was built by Vasari in order to hide da Vinci's fresco …
While renovating a house in Ohio, builder Bob Keats found $ 182,000 during the Great Depression. Apparently, they were hidden by a former homeowner, businessman Patrick Dunn. As a result of long legal proceedings, the treasure was divided between Keats, the current owner of the building, Amand Rees, and Dunn's relatives.
In 2007, the house of gangster Frank Calabrese (Oak Brook, Illinois) was searched. It was known that he hid a large amount of money, jewelry and weapons somewhere in his home. Indeed, after breaking the foundation and dismantling the partitions, the legal agents found about a hundred firearms, a mountain of ammunition, and more than ten million dollars worth of money and jewelry.
Margarita Troitsyna