What can a meeting with an old woman from Ostankino lead to, and why do telecentre employees often have headaches?
The area of the Ostankino TV tower has long enjoyed a bad reputation. The mystics assure that it is not only the notorious electromagnetic radiation - first of all, the ancient past makes itself felt, in which there were many dramas, blood and tragedies. Many consider Ostankino to be a cursed place.
Do not disturb the soul …
Ostankino was first mentioned in the middle of the 16th century. Then it was called Ostashkovo (it got its usual name in the 1710s, before that it was called Ostankovo for some time). Today, several versions are being put forward as to where the name came from - perhaps from the word "remains", they say, there were pagan burials on this place for many centuries, or perhaps simply on behalf of the first settler, who could be called Eustathius.
The land was then owned by the boyar Alexei Satin. In his time, the terrible legends about Ostankino originate. Say, it was then that a hunched old woman, all in black and with a stick, first appeared to the boyar, persistently recommended not to build on this swampy land, not to disturb the souls of the dead. But Satin did not obey - and soon paid with his head: he fell out of favor and was executed by Ivan the Terrible.
By the way: One of the legends says: as early as the 13th century, a prophet named Agafya settled in the vicinity of the modern Ostankino district, expelled from the city for sending damage to people and playing tricks with evil spirits. After death, they did not dare to bury her in a Christian way - they simply threw the body into a ravine. Since then, the spirit of Agafya has been wandering the area, demanding new victims. To meet with a witch is a big disaster. Many mystics believe that the famous Ostankino old woman is that very Agafya.
In troubled times, the village was ruined and burned more than once, its owners changed, almost none of them could boast of a happy and long life. The famous "Ostankino old woman" also reminded of herself. So, according to legend, she warned one of the "owners", the German oprichnik Orn (Orta), famous for his outrages and violent revelry, so that he would not abuse the villagers and, moreover, would not loot, would not rob ancient graves. The foreigner did not obey - and soon disappeared in the local swamps, either he was drunk himself, or they helped.
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Ostankino Estate today
Prophecies to Emperors
In 1743, Count Pyotr Sheremetev became the owner of the Ostankino estate. His son Nikolai thoroughly rebuilt the mansion and put the ponds in order. Thanks to Nikolai Petrovich, the Ostankino Palace became famous for its magnificent receptions. One of them was once granted by the emperor Paul I. And again there is a place for the legend of the Ostankino hunchback-witch, they say, she appeared in the palace - and told the emperor that he was unlikely to live until spring. Almost exactly what happened - in March 1801 there was a coup, Paul I was strangled.
Nikolay Plyuknikov. View of the Ostankino estate. 1833 year
They say that the meeting with the old woman fell to the lot of Alexander II. In August 1856, together with the empress and the children, he arrived in Ostankino, visited the church, went to the palace - and then the ghost of the hunchback appeared again. She said that the sovereign would rule for exactly a quarter of a century, and the atheist would destroy him.
Several assassination attempts were made on Alexander II - in March 1881, one of them turned out to be successful: the life of the emperor was carried away by a bomb thrown by the revolutionary Narodnaya Volya practically at his feet.
Where there are two deaths, there is a third
Thanks to Nikolai Petrovich Sheremetev, the Ostankino estate became very beautiful, but many of its guests complained that visiting this estate was catching up with an incomprehensible melancholy. Several serf actresses of his theater tried to commit suicide by drowning in the surrounding ponds - some succeeded, which only consolidated the sad and fatal "glory" of this place.
House of the Sheremetevs in Ostankino, XIX century
According to legends, the count's beloved, the star of his theater, the serf actress Praskovya Kovaleva-Zhemchugova, did not escape the meeting with the famous ghost. While pregnant, she met a sinister old woman in one of the corridors. Then Zhemchugova rehearsed the roles of Ophelia and Cleopatra. The old woman advised the actress to abandon the roles of the "dead", explaining that where there are two deaths, one must wait for the third … The actress died at 34, three weeks after the birth of her son.
It was said that after her death a new wave of suicides began in the theater troupe. And some people still believe that people take their own lives in Ostankino more often than in other districts of Moscow.
And although statistics (of recent years, for sure) refute this, in Soviet times the famous Ostankino skyscrapers on Argunovskaya and Tsander really often got into reports of such a chronicle.
Who builds like that ?
A large number of cemeteries, which were here in different centuries, also added to the gloomy glory of the area. "The terrible past" and "the remains of Ostankin" could not but surface when the construction of the television center began.
Work on the construction site started in 1960 - and there were eyewitnesses who claimed that a huge amount of human bones lay at the bottom of a huge pit dug under the TV tower.
View of the Ostankino estate from the TV tower
The construction of the Ostankino TV tower was overgrown with many legends. They talked about a bulldozer “walled up” at the bottom of a former pond, which for some unknown reason got bogged down in the sand in a matter of hours, that building materials “moved” in the absence of workers in the most amazing way, and some builders fainted or even died - for inexplicable reasons or at the sight of the next terrible finds (the latter, however, disappeared without a trace as quickly as they appeared).
The most notorious is the hardware and studio complex (ASK-3), a small building on Akademika Korolev Street. Many there complain of frequent headaches, depression and fatigue, and they also talk about strange footsteps, sounds and sighs heard in its corridors at night. Well, and, of course, the famous confused corridors of the television center - it was not the designers who tried, but the old woman "leads" and "circles".
Parties of the dead
The ghost of the Ostankino thing, as they say, appeared more than once in the twentieth century - in particular, on the eve of the storming of the television center in 1993 and shortly before the fire on the TV tower in 2000. They said that she also appeared to Vlad Listyev - shortly before he was killed.
Fire at the Ostankino TV tower, August 2000
Young people who have just come to work in Ostankino are frightened with stories about "energy holes", ghosts and nightly "parties" that are arranged in the 13th studio by the celebrity dead - Talkov, Belousov, Tsoi and others. Moreover, some experts on paranormal phenomena have their own logical explanation - audio and video recordings of these people are in the archives of Ostankino, so it is not surprising that their souls are attracted here.
To believe or not to believe in mysticism - everyone decides for himself. Interestingly, specialists in geopathogenic zones, who some time ago examined the buildings of the television center and neighboring houses, recognized the very high-rises on the site of the old Sheremetev ponds and the main building of the television center as absolutely safe. However, under ASK-3, they discovered a kind of "ancient darkness", a negative entity, which is more than eight centuries old. Perhaps we are talking about that very ancient cemetery. Or is it all the work of the black sorceress Agafia?
AYGUL SAGITOVA