At the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries, it was difficult to find a person in Moscow who did not know Uncle Gilyai - this was the nickname of the famous publicist and everyday writer Vladimir Alekseevich Gilyarovsky (November 26, 1855 - October 1, 1935).
Huge, more like a circus wrestler than an ever-hurrying reporter seeking to unearth something sensational, he seemed to know everything about Moscow.
He wrote about the events in the capital for the newspapers Izvestia, Vechernyaya Moskva, Prozhektor and Ogonyok magazines. Readers were waiting for his publications, especially those with a touch of the unknown and the supernatural, which was a lot. But the greatest interest is caused not by those mystical events about which he wrote "from someone else's words", but those that happened to him personally.
So, once Gilyarovsky decided to describe what is happening not in the capital city, but "under the city": he went down the catacombs into the underground communications under the Kremlin. I dreamed of finding some treasure or finding something valuable from an archaeological point of view, but instead … I met a ghost.
“An old woman in a raincoat and antique glasses,” the author described her, “a hat along a long tunnel. At first I shouted at her - I thought that someone was lost or was living here, because at all times there were rumors about some kind of race of underground inhabitants who live in the bowels and are afraid of the sun. But she didn't stop.
I ran after her, approached, wanted to put my hand on her shoulder so that she turned around (suddenly she could not hear, suddenly lost her hearing from old age), but my hand went through her body. I was taken aback, but meanwhile she turned around and looked at me angrily. It suddenly seemed to me at that moment that she had not a face with eyes and lips, but a naked skull. And then I realized that this old woman is a ghost."
Similar meetings in the life of Gilyarovsky met later, he very relishly described them in the heading "Do you want - believe", since the editor refused to put materials in other sections of the newspaper. Meanwhile, Vladimir Alekseevich spent several years proving the existence of ghosts.
He interviewed hundreds of people who saw such entities, visited all the places where they go and even made a map of the capital's ghosts. On it were marked the places of appearance not only of ghosts in the form of people, but even of ghosts of animals - more than once he had to see cats with kittens and dogs that cannot be caught and even touched.
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Already in old age, Gilyarovsky writes a scandalous article about prostitution, in which he tells how poor girls provide services for wealthy gentlemen, and even gives the address at which all this happens.
After a while, the girl, who recognized herself in the publication, because of which she was publicly disgraced and forced to move, sought out a reporter to look him in the eyes and express her curses.
As eyewitnesses said, she said: “Since you are writing and thus earning your bread, I curse you. Let you go blind so that you can't write anything!"
Gilyarovsky only laughed at her. But the curse came true - a month later he fell seriously ill, the disease gave complications to his eyes and he went completely blind.
