Ghost. Russia

Looking through an old file of the Belgorod Truth, for 1929, preserved in the regional archive, I came across a curious note entitled "A ghost is terrifying." Its author, a certain I. Antipov, called for the Belgorod Museum to be placed in an empty house in the city center. And what kind of house is this? 

In 1929, at the corner of Vorovsky and Budenovskaya Streets (the so-called part of modern Frunze Street, now Slava Avenue) there was a "large two-storey house with tightly closed shutters" built before the revolution. As follows from the note, only one room in it was occupied by some "desperate man", the rest of the building was empty. 

A fact, in general, worthy of surprise, because in the 20s, as far as we know, Belgorod was experiencing a housing crisis. According to the stories, the owner of this house either fled with the whites (units of the Volunteer Army left the city in December 1919), or was shot by the Reds - for counter-revolution. 

 

"And since then, the soul of the "martyred servant of God" has been wandering around the house like a ghost, scaring the people living in it and the city communists so that they would not populate his nest with anyone," the author of the note wrote.

Alas, nothing is known about the continuation of this story: who moved into the "bad" two-storey building, did the communhozov and the new owners manage to drive away the ghost, or did he continue to frighten the tenants? Today you can't even tell at which corner of the intersection the house stood.

(Konstantin Bityugin. 2003).