Numerous Belarusian towns are famous for their colorful spirit, fueled not only by the remnants of ancient ruins and picturesque pristine nature, but also like a carbon copy of the copied fables about ghosts wandering here for no reason or why, but with enviable regularity.
Legends about a young lady who died from unrequited love, or about a noble princess who fell at the hands of robbers, here and there are superimposed on our reality, feeling with stories of a new kind. Now both the princess and the lady are quite real characters, they migrate from collections of myths and legends to specific objects in the area and further inflame the interest of tourists and curious people.
Ufokom, together with the NZP group, conducted research on August 2-3 in a rural school in the village of Grabovka (Gomel region, Belarus). This educational institution became known this year thanks to several publications in the press, which claimed that a real ghost had settled here for a long time.
Grabovsk school.
The school building is quite modern (built in 1997 to replace the abandoned Grabovskaya Ascension Church), and the first eyewitness accounts also date back to the same years. Despite this, it was only in 2014 that the legend matured, acquired characters and hit the pages of newspapers.
This is rather strange, since the locals we met have never heard of anything like this. However, the irrational fear of some places in the park has been present for a long time. Tatiana Matyushenko, the director of the Grabovskaya school, recalls that her sister also told how her grandmother as a child did not let her into some parts of the park, as if fearing something.
The village of Grabovka has been known since the end of the 17th century as a village in the Belitsky district of the Mogilev province. Later, Grabovka was mentioned among the first fourteen settlements founded in the 17th century by Old Believers from Russia [5]. From the second half of the 18th century to the beginning of the 20th century, the village belonged to the Fashchei family family. According to the privilege of the king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth August III in 1762, Alexander Fash received 2 houses in Gomel, including Grabovka.
Promotional video:
Later, the estate was known mainly for its park, founded by Fascami in the 19th century. The central part of the park was an apple orchard. A long linden alley divided it into 2 parts: west and east. It was on the territory of this park that a kindergarten and a secondary Grabovskaya school was then built.
Old plan of the park. 1 - manor house, 2 - mound, 3 - apple orchard. The school was built next to the mound.
At the end of the 19th century, the village belonged to the minor heirs of the landowner Karl Fasch, sixteen-year-old Otto, whose guardian was the landowner Osip Lyashkevich. From the family tree of the Faschei clan, it is clear that the family had a tradition to call boys by the names of their great-grandfathers: Otton, Felix, Karl.
According to the memoirs of old residents and from some other sources, it is known that one of the last owners of Grabovka were Karl, Felix, Otton, Ludwik. Old-timers claimed that after the October Revolution of 1917, Ludwik committed suicide, and some members of the family moved to Kiev.
Eyewitness accounts
In Grabovka, we met with direct eyewitnesses of mysterious meetings and tried to restore the approximate chronology of the appearance of the night visitor.
As the school director Tatyana Matyushenko told us, the ghost story surfaced by accident. Several performers from Grabovka, together with the Deutscher Volkshochschul-Verband eV Foundation (FRG) in the Republic of Belarus, carried out the project “Living history of my land”, studied the history of the village and the Faschei clan. Then the scattered facts about meetings with a ghost at school began to be remembered. Soon, the first article on this topic appeared. However, most of the evidence, including firsthand, was collected by us for the first time.
Tatyana Matyushenko with archival records about the Fascha family.
One of the first strange events in this place happened back in 1997. Soon after the opening of the new school building, Tatyana Matyushenko's father, Igor Yakovlevich Ponomarev, worked as a watchman. One night he heard a blow and the sound of broken glass. Igor Yakovlevich walked around everything, thinking that someone had thrown a stone from the street, but found nothing unusual.
However, when he was already returning, he saw that a large mirror, usually hanging on a pillar in the foyer, this time stood on the floor. In this case, the glass itself was completely intact. Sounds similar to the impact of a stone on glass or a wall as a result of a throw were described to us by other watchmen who worked here in subsequent years.
Yulia Galynskaya (from the Faschey clan) with her daughter Yulia.
Sofia Galynskaya (married to Fash). Born in 1851. Buried in Grabovka.
It seems that the very first story directly with the observation of a phantom is already at least 10 years old (i.e. it happened around 2004). A young unmarried guy (Valery Prikhodko), who was about 30 years old, was then working as a watchman at the school. During recess, several children ran up to the teacher and began vying with each other to shout that there, in the corridor, was some kind of "transparent woman." A crowd gathered near the teacher's room, everyone began to vividly discuss what had happened. Valery was just passing by, who heard about this event and told about his meetings with, apparently, the same "transparent woman."
The school has an ecology room with a TV. The administration allows the attendants to watch it, since it's still better than just sleeping on the couch. And then one day the watchman, while watching it, saw a young woman who was trying to close the picture tube with her hands. At first, they began to make fun of him, they say, he had already sat up as bachelors and women began to appear.
And then in the summer the administration took a replacement watchman for two months - Alexander Efalov. It happened about 5 years ago. He describes the figure as a woman's, with white hair and black clothing. She flew over the floor and laughed, giving the impression that the stranger was calling for her.
“Several years ago I worked as a school watchman. At night, I walked around the entire school, the courtyard, went into the teacher's room, lay down on the sofa and began to read a book. There was no sleep as such. The next moment, a woman in a black robe and with white hair [appeared] above me and above the book, as if the wind was developing it. She hung over me and laughed. Her face was not old, but I did not remember the features. Then she turned around and began to fly away from me. I wanted to catch up with her, but it was difficult for me to get up, as if something was holding me.
This was repeated three times. And the third time I ran after her the farthest. And yet, what is interesting, when I did run after her, I suddenly woke up on the bed. I told my mother about this, who works at the same school, and she confirmed to me that I was not the first to see this woman. I didn’t know before that the school was located on the territory of the landlord’s estate, my mother told me all this later”. Alexander Efalov, former watchman of Grabovskaya secondary school, village Markovichi (recorded by IS Butov, "Ufokom").
One of the last (around 2011) the watchman Ivan Igorevich Ponomarev met a mysterious figure:
“About three years ago I was sitting on the couch in the teachers' room. I saw someone's figure and tried to catch up with it, but it was as if I was being pressed by two hands and held … I heard the steps clearly - this is a woman's heel, and a high one (it is believed that the heel, as a separate part of the sole of a shoe, appeared in the XIV century and was at first a privilege almost exclusively men - I. B.). And there was either laughter, or something …
But I clearly had the meaning of this exclamation: "I am the mistress here and what I want, I do it." They kept me until I started swearing. And after that I was "released", and the steps were immediately cut off. In five minutes, however, they went up another staircase and up the second floor […]. Sometimes you sit - it seems some kind of stone has fallen. You don't know where to run. " Ivan Ponomarev, watchman of Grabovskaya secondary school (written down by I. S. Butov, Ufok).
The guy who replaced one of the watchmen walked several times near the school with a shepherd dog. He said that the dog was very afraid of this building. The teacher living next to the school also had a dog that behaved strangely at school, at first it looked around restlessly and barked, and then fell and instantly fell asleep. However, Ivan Ponomarev's dog did not show any strange behavior at all.
You can also learn from the media that “one of the teachers who was on duty at the school claimed that she also saw a ghost at night: a blonde woman was walking along the corridor with a lantern in her hand,” but we did not confirm this in the course of interviewing eyewitnesses. Moreover, not a single watchman even mentioned any oddities during her shift.
According to the assumption of the watchmen, the phenomenon may be associated with the lunar phases, at least on the full moon, the entity is more violent than usual. The building was consecrated twice by an Orthodox priest. When nothing stopped, someone suggested that it was necessary to invite a Catholic priest, since all the Fasci were Catholics.
Conversation with the watchwoman
Thus, the girl's figure is seen mainly by young and unmarried guys. Female watchmen do not see or hear anything unusual at all. The strange sounds of heels that men seem to be, they explain by good room acoustics, fiction and other factors. After his marriage, Ivan Ponomarev also stopped seeing the ghostly figure, and began only to hear her.
We also found out that the "outfit" of the ghost is not always old-fashioned, but modern - sometimes even something like underwear and high-heeled shoes. Obviously, the lady is by no means old-fashioned and actively uses modern means of seduction.
Legends and toponymy
Before turning to the results of our research, let us consider briefly the "generally accepted" legend about the Grabow ghost. In the course of preparing this article, it turned out that the first publications about him appeared in May 2014, which is interesting, in materials telling about the Gomel region as a very attractive place for tourists. The legend is also cited in a special tourist booklet published in the same year as part of the Living History of My Land project.
Here is what journalist Inna Gromyko writes about this:
“There is one legend connected with the Grabov estate of Fascha, about Panna Yadvisya. The young woman limped slightly, experienced unhappy love and died unmarried. It is a known fact that, having fallen in love, Panna Yadvisya agreed to secretly marry her lover, but they were caught by their own girls and brought her back. So she passed away without knowing family happiness. That is why her spirit still wanders on dark evenings and nights through the corridors and surroundings of the school, which was built not far from the place where the estate was located. And it is better not for unmarried men to meet with Mrs. Yadvisi …”.
According to the stories of local residents, Yadvisya could be either the illegitimate daughter of one of the members of the clan, or his peasant mistress. In the space of popular consciousness, Yadvisya (Yada) was also not quite physically complete - with a hump or limping, but she could heal people, had a certain gift. There is also a version that in the end the woman hanged herself.
Representatives of the Faschey clan. Photos were found on the site of the former estate in Grabovka.
The study of local microtoponics can also provide irreplaceable assistance in the study of modern cases of the paranormal. Analyzing the stories about ghosts, sometimes it turns out that the first appearances of, say, the Mother of God, could take place in nearby tracts and after a long time "infect" other buildings. And in this respect, the surroundings of Grabovka turned out to be extremely interesting.
According to prevailing ideas, the best surrounding lands were occupied by the daughters and sons of landowners, which could be preserved in the names of objects in the area. According to one of the versions, one "landowner from the Faschey clan" had a daughter and a son - Yadviga and Karl. Oral sources testify that the Yadvino tract is allegedly named in honor of Yadviga Fash in Grabovka.
Our group could not establish its current location, moreover, no archival documents about this girl have survived, which rather indicates her semi-legendary nature. Nevertheless, it was Yadviga who for some reason became a contender for subsequent existence in the form of a local restless soul.
It can also be recalled that it was Ms. Yadwiga Lyubanskaya, who died under similar circumstances, that she was “accused” of being responsible for the appearance of a ghost in Loshitsa Park in Minsk. The very origin of the name "Yadvino" is consonant with the toponym Yazvino, which is available in the Drogichensky and Shumilinsky regions of our country, it may come from the word "ulcer" - a polynya in a swamp, a river.
Much more interesting, from our point of view, is the Babeyka hayfield located nearby, which is believed to have such a name "because this hayfield belonged to a family that was a woman (woman), and therefore began to be called" woman - baba ". However, such a name can often indicate the presence of a swamp, swamp or bog (black place) there.
These names reflect the echoes of very ancient times, when there were cults of deities (demons) with the name Baba - Baba Yaga, Zhitnyaya Baba, Leshaya Baba, etc. In Ukraine, the word Dika Baba is called "the spirit of a pullet that tempts young husbands." In Slavic mythology, the White Baba is also known - an ancestor living in reservoirs, guarding the water, which could also be a harbinger of death. Sometimes a tract with this name may mean that there was a temple here earlier and an idol - a stone woman - was installed.
In the vicinity of Grabovka there is a hill, which is called Klemzikova Gora and they say that “it was high among the swamps, but now it has smoothed out from the wind and became much lower. There is a legend that it was dug up as a fortification during some kind of war. But with whom and when is unknown. Probably, we can talk about a hitherto unknown burial mound. Not far from the village, in the Zmeinom tract, there are also three round barrows, 2-3 meters high.
Here, according to the stories of the old people, “there was a battle between the Russians and the French in 1812” (a common motive inherent in the folklore of ancient burial grounds). According to old-timers, a meter-long human shin bone and a huge skull were found here in 1925. There are also several similar references in the Ufokom archive, for example, near the village of Barbarov, Mozyr district, Gomel region (but this is a topic for separate studies).
In 4-5 kilometers from the village there is the Knyazhchina tract, where deep ravines have been preserved. It is said that "there were tar workshops here, where the local residents drove tar and made tar." Places of ancient fortified settlements and fortified settlements were most often called by the place name Knyazhchin. In Belarus, such names as Knyazhya Gora, Knyazheskie graves, Knyaginka, Knyazevo are common. The images of boyars and princes in legends associated with archaeological sites personify distant ancestors who once owned certain settlements and burials in the corresponding burial mounds.
Bones of people were previously found near the old school building on elevated places, it was believed that there was a "battle site", but no one knows who and with whom. And in the place where Khutor Street was located, there is a hill where a huge five-hundred-year-old oak used to stand. There was a cemetery of "Muscovites", as it was called.
Kurgan located in the immediate vicinity of the school.
There is no clear data on the origin of the hill next to the school, even in the historical literature. So, it is believed that in the second half of the 19th century, a park and an apple orchard were laid in the Grabovsky estate of Fashchei, a house was built, and a mound was poured in the western part of the park. At the same time, according to the Code of Historical and Cultural Monuments of Belarus for the Gomel Region, “there is an ancient burial mound on the territory of the western part of the park” without specifying the archaeologists who opened it.
According to the testimony of local residents, the hill is not at all ancient and was used by the Fascha family as a theater stage. Despite all these contradictions, a memorial sign has been installed near the hill: “Historical and cultural value. Kurgan burial ground. Bronze Age.
Not far from the school are the family crypts of Faschei. In one of them, the remains of a woman and a man were found: Fascha Otton Karlovich and his wife (whose name has not yet been established). The crypt was cleared and ennobled by the students of the school, students of the history faculty of the Skorina Gomel State University, members of the "Vakolitsa" circle and other volunteers. There are plans to install a commemorative plaque at this place, since the inscriptions on the gravestones are already poorly readable.
Volunteers inside the crypt
The famous Gomel toponymist professor A. F. Rogalev in the village of Grabovka recorded a legend according to which robbers hid here in a dense forest in a ravine in ancient times. Once they managed to rob a cart with the royal treasury and even take possession of a barrel of gold, which they hid in a ravine. A. F. Rogalev concludes that such legends, as a rule, "signal" about places where there are archaeological monuments, especially mounds.
The author also writes that “ghosts and mysterious shadows are often mentioned in connection with“robbery”ravines […]. The image of the robbers and the motives of violence in legends may be evidence that in the corresponding places were buried not those who died of natural death, but killed people.
Research
Traditionally, it is not known in which part of the spectrum something anomalous can be detected. On this score, the researchers do not have a clear and substantiated answer. In the sector for the study of poltergeist at "Cosmopoisk" in recent years, they came to the conclusion that it is worth paying closer attention to ultra-low frequencies (3-300 Hz) and fields of moderate intensity (100-5000 nT), which can cause paranormal experiences.
But this does not mean that the rest of the field should be written off, which is why we traditionally use various tools, ranging from cheap household appliances to professional ones used to certify workplaces (see figure).
Some of the instruments used in the measurements at the Grabowski school, indicating the operating frequencies.
In addition to measuring the levels of the electromagnetic background, radio and thermometry of the premises was also performed, the levels of infrasound were determined and the sources of modulated infrared radiation were identified. Due to the extremely large size of the object, we focused only on those parts of it where the appearance of unidentified figures, sounds, flashes of light, etc. had already been noted.
Previously, it was revealed that miracles here begin with the onset of darkness and continue until dawn, so we took up the "shift" immediately after sunset, which fell on August 2, 2014 at 20:47. In addition to direct measurements, video surveillance cameras (CVPU-DC15) were installed that react to movement.
Also at our disposal were several recordings of a camera installed even earlier at night, covering the space of the very corridors where the largest number of meetings with the ghost was recorded. When reviewing these recordings, unexplained knocks, clicks and bumps were revealed, as well as spontaneous operation of autofocus, at the same time, nothing unusual was found in our videos.
Measurements of the electromagnetic field (EMF) using various equipment, including the EMR-20 meters (frequency range 100 kHz – 3 GHz) and ME 3951A (5 Hz – 400 kHz, ± 2% error) did not show any electrical or magnetic field on the school grounds, with the exception of one classroom, in which the appearance of a ghost was observed.
Here, the magnetic field induction, according to the ME 3951A meter, was many times exceeded compared to the background. If the latter was close to zero, then in this office the magnetic field induction reached values from 44 to 70 nT. There were no natural reasons for such increased readings, the school administration was notified of this.
Measurement with ME 3951A in the ecology office.
A characteristic feature that distinguishes Grabovskaya SS from similar structures "infected" with paranormal activity is the almost complete absence of sources of increased values of geophysical radiation. Well grounded wiring, the absence of powerful household appliances and WI-FI networks leads to normal background EMF values almost throughout the entire territory of the building.
With all this, the question arises: why did the ghost choose the new building? After all, there was a much more successful alternative - the Grabovskaya Ascension Church with an interesting fate: the Ascension Church burned down and a school was rebuilt on the ashes in the post-war years. In 1997, due to the completion of the construction of the new school building, the old building was returned to the diocese.
The most interesting results were obtained by us using an infrasonic detector MAK-14i (operating frequencies 5–20 Hz, measurement range 40–100 dB, signal accumulation time - 1 s). In the foyer of the school, as well as on one of the stairs leading to the second floor (that is, in places where the ghost was most often seen), we recorded infrasound levels of 60–70 dB, which, according to the SanPiN of the Republic of Belarus, is the maximum permissible threshold the value of this type of impact on humans.
At the same time, we did not identify any obvious sources of infrasound. On this day, there was no strong wind, the presence of electrical household appliances working at night was not established, although, according to SanPiN, sources of infrasound can be "security and security fire detectors" and even exhaust pipes of ventilation systems.
Determination of infrasound levels in the school hall.
The influence of infrasound on a person is well described in the specialized literature, but our group has encountered such high sensor readings for the first time. A series of experiments on dozens of people have established that the impact of vibrations with a frequency of 2-15 Hz and an intensity of 95-105 dB causes a slowdown in the visual response, increases the number of errors when tracking measuring instruments, and disrupts the functions of the vestibular apparatus.
W. Tandy and T. Lawrence (1998) provided evidence that a standing wave of 18.9 Hz was present in a factory, where several workers reported seeing a ghost in the peripheral vision. W. Tandy (2000) also found that infrasound at a frequency of 19 Hz was present in the basement under the Tourist Information Center in Coventry. Several visitors to this basement have previously reported their anomalous sensations, including a sense of someone else's presence.
Tandy and Lawrence further suggested that visions could be a direct consequence of infrasound, which vibrates the human eyeball due to resonance. The latter can be only if the intensity of the infrasound coincides with the oscillation frequency of one or another organ, for example, for the eye it is 19, 40-100 Hz (two ranges), for the head 20-30 Hz, and for the vestibular apparatus, which is suffers most often - 0.5-13 Hz.
Continuing these observations, K. French (2009) from the laboratory of anatomical psychology at the Goldsmead University in London, together with the architects of Haque Design + Research, designed a specialized haunted room, which made it possible to experimentally study the possibility of EMF and infrasound to cause abnormal experiences and visions of a person.
Volunteers (79 people) were exposed in such a chamber to alternating or combined exposure to EMF and infrasound for 50 minutes, or were not exposed to any radiation at all. At the same time, the total noise level at those moments when infrasound was fed into the room (at frequencies from 15 to 25 Hz) did not exceed 75 dB, which is below the threshold of conscious perception. Thus, the subjects clearly did not feel when exactly the infrasound was fed into the chamber, but were warned in advance of possible abnormal experiences.
As a result, more than 90% of the volunteers reported that they had unusual experiences in the "ghost room", 70% of the subjects reported three or more unexplained episodes. Despite this, with the help of statistical analysis of the data obtained, it was established that in reality there are no significant differences between the number of abnormal experiences when radiation is fed into the chamber and when they are not fed at all. In this regard, the authors suggested that infrasound can "provoke" vision only in the aggregate of the simultaneous influence of a number of factors: neurological, psychological and physical, but not by itself.
It is worth mentioning the good acoustics at the school, which was repeatedly mentioned by the caretaker and the director. At the same time, it was noted that even "the slightest rustle can respond very loudly at night." For example, throughout the school there was a sharp sound from the dial clock that hung in the foyer. At the same time, the sound day and night, as we were told by several guards, "behaves completely differently."
conclusions
We found that the school in Grabovka is located not only on the site of an old manor house, it is surrounded on all sides by burial mounds, ancient cemeteries, ancient settlements and places of worship. The fact that earlier a "prototype" of the ghost of Grabovskaya secondary school could be observed here is evidenced, for example, by the microtoponym Babeyk.
As a result of instrumental measurements, increased values of the magnetic field induction (44–70 nT) were revealed in the very room where one of the eyewitnesses observed the ghost of a woman. It is important to note that in the rest of the building space, the excess of fields in different ranges was not recorded, the background values remained stubbornly constant. In the foyer of the school and on one of the stairs, quite high levels of infrasound were recorded - about 60–75 dB at frequencies of 5–20 Hz.
It can be assumed that the levels of EMF and infrasound recorded by us play the role of additional factors that can cause abnormal experiences, as there are corresponding references in the specialized literature. Although recent laboratory studies indicate that the relationship between visions of ghosts and elevated levels of EMF and infrasound is still not clear.
One way or another, the recorded levels of infrasound lie below the threshold of conscious hearing and can cause bouts of irrational fear, anxiety, an increase in lower blood pressure, etc. Such psychological and physiological effects can increase in resonance with brain waves and vibrations of internal organs.
When viewing videos made at the school earlier, extraneous knocks were found on them. According to our specialist's assumption, this may be technical noise, similar to the operation of either a tape drive mechanism as when recording on a cassette, or to the operation of a microphone when it is not set to autosensitivity in manual mode.
Typical "clicks" just indicate either a defect in the pressure rollers of the tape drive, or the microphone adjustment, when the automation brings the sensitivity to maximum and then abruptly resets it (as the microphone begins to hear itself or the operation of the camera's internal mechanisms).
The good acoustics of some school premises may also have caused unusual noises in video recordings. The included "autofocus" function, apparently, caused the camera to periodically adjust, even when aimed at an empty corridor. All this does not yet give grounds to consider the obtained video recordings as proof of the presence of some extraneous noise in the school.
But even if there were no ghosts, the Black Lady of Grabovka would be worth inventing. It fits too well into the legend, as well as into the ecotourism development plan being developed by the Gomel District Council of Deputies. In the meantime, we must take it for granted, as a revived fairy tale, which, however, lends itself to objective methods of control.
Author: Ilya Butov