In Soviet times, in pioneer camps, children told each other scary stories at night. This is how a whole folklore genre was born, the authorship of which is no longer possible to establish and which today are called "pioneer" or "camp" horror stories. What were the most popular stories?
Scary artifact or phenomenon
For example, there was a horror story about a girl who once heard on the radio that a coffin on wheels was coming to her. The girl did not obey, and when her mother returned from work, she found her dead, and there was a coffin wheel lying nearby.
Or a story about a black piano: parents bought their daughter a black piano, and from there a skeleton began to crawl out and demand blood from the girl, which made her sick and almost died. But after her dad, on the advice of her grandmother, hacked the piano with an ax, the girl recovered.
There were similar stories about black and red curtains, red gloves, a black or bloody hand … I remember in my childhood they often told a story about a red spot that appeared on the floor of the apartment where my mother and daughter lived. The girl tried to wipe off the stain, and every day her mother came home from work paler and paler, and when she finally managed to erase the stain, her mother never returned home …
Horror stories about the pioneer camp
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There were scary stories that took place directly in the pioneer camp. For example, how two pioneers in a quiet hour decided to call the Queen of Spades. We drew a house with steps on the mirror with soap and recited a spell. After that, they saw in the mirror a black spot that was climbing the steps to the house, and both fainted. So they were found, and in each hand there was a card with the image of the Queen of Spades clutched. Then the counselor said that it was necessary to erase the drawing from the mirror, then the Queen of Spades would not cause any harm.
There was also a legend about a drummer and a bugler. They say that at the central gate of the camp there were once two plaster statues - a drummer and a bugler. One day lightning struck the bugler's statue and it shattered into pieces. Since then, the statue of the drummer has been wandering around the camp after lights out and looking for its comrade. If he sees a similar boy, he turns him into a plaster sculpture, and in the morning they will find two statues at the gate … And if he meets a boy who does not look much like a destroyed bugler, then he rips out his heart.
Another variation of this story: on the territory of the camp, where there used to be a noble estate, there is a ghost of a servant who was killed by her master for dropping her shirt on the ground. The master chopped off the woman's head and buried it under a tree. Since then, a ghost of a headless woman has been walking around the camp at night: if she meets a pioneer in a white shirt, she will certainly strangle him. The moral is the same: you can't wander around the camp territory alone at night.
Children and aliens
Oddly enough, in the Soviet era, fantastic events sometimes took place in some camps. In the post-perestroika period, when the topic of ufology and anomalous phenomena was "discovered", they even began to write about it in the press.
Here's a prime example. On July 6, 1989, in the Festivalny pioneer camp near the town of Rakov (Belarus), during a walk with a counselor, a fourth-grader Ruslan Lutsky went into the forest to pick blueberries. He returned, frightened and pale, and told that he saw in the forest a monster of enormous growth, covered with thick gray-brown wool.
The rest of the children also wanted to look at the monster and ran to where Ruslan had returned from. They came running back screaming that they had seen the monster and were now afraid.
Soon a reporter from one of the Minsk publications arrived at the camp. He interviewed eyewitnesses and published interviews with them.
A group of children claimed that they had met an "alien". Someone claimed that they saw him in full growth, someone - only his head, which protruded from the trees. But everyone agreed on one thing: the monster was gigantic, overgrown with blond hair, it had no nose, and it also roared like a bear.
The respondents also said that something “squeaked” in the sky and a black plate appeared over the monster's head (some described it as a round mirror). It was glowing with yellow lights and smoke was pouring out of it.
In the same July 1989, unusual creatures were repeatedly seen in the Solnechny pioneer camp near Perm. Not only children, but also adults were eyewitnesses of anomalous phenomena.
There were also classic flying saucers over the camp, a strange glow over the forest. Creatures similar to the "Bigfoot" sometimes entered the chambers of the junior squads. Poltergeist phenomena took place. For example, one boy woke up at night because an unknown force lifted him up and put him on his feet in bed. In the girls' ward, drawers in the bedside tables were automatically pulled out. On an empty playground, someone's invisible hand was swinging a swing, spinning sports equipment …
The local press wrote about the incidents in the camp. What happened next with these guys, whether the mysterious events were repeated later - there is no information about this …
