Ghost Hunt: Where to Find Mysticism in Novosibirsk Region
A spooky legend warns against giving a ride to every hitchhiker, especially if it is raining outside.
Scary and simply mystical stories can be found in any city and its surroundings, and Novosibirsk is certainly no exception. The relatively young age of the settlement is no obstacle to the emergence of such tales. On the contrary: where no real interesting history can be recalled, people are even more eager to invent mystical legends. Sometimes they grow out of thin air, but often — on the basis of real events that occurred. NGS spoke with Novosibirsk travelers and local historians and learned what tales Novosibirsk tourists are told around the campfire and what grandmothers tell their grandchildren at night. And also — where some of these mystical stories come from and whether there is any use in them.
A cross commemorating the Irmen battle of 20 August 1598 was installed on the reservoir shore in the early 1990s, likely making locals aware of their historically rich land.
True Stories That Cannot Be Silenced
The person who first claimed a companion of Khan Kuchum was buried seated on his horse clearly never tried digging deep holes in the local rocky soil.
NGS journalists are sure: ghosts do not actually exist, but our love for stories about them — as magnificent examples of modern urban legends — is not hindered by that.
The gorge of the Kamenka River looks picturesque even without legends.
The Phantom Horse
The highways of Novosibirsk Region could not be called one hundred percent safe during the heyday of such legends.
According to locals« stories, a huge animal with an empty saddle and a golden bridle took to running out of a forest near the villages of Verkh-Irmen and Novopichugovo in the mid-1990s. At least, it was in 1995 that a correspondent for the journal Sibirskaya Gornitsa recorded it, and later writer and local historian Igor Maranin found and cited it in his book Mythosibirsk: Tales, Secrets, and Real Stories of Novosibirsk.
River vessels on the Ob sometimes met with various misfortunes: collisions, sinkings, or sailors simply abandoning decommissioned ships.
According to the legend, local residents tried to catch the handsome horse, but it easily tore the reins stretched to stop it. The air allegedly darkened, and the sounds of clanging weapons, horse neighing, and Russian and Tatar speech echoed around the unlucky catchers. The uncaptured horse eventually galloped away and vanished into impenetrable darkness, and collectors of mystical legends concluded: the phantom horse became a visible expression of the last battle between Khan Kuchum and the Russian detachment of Andrey Voyeykov that took place on this spot.
The Verkh-Irmen horse, supposedly ridden by Khan Kuchum«s warriors or Cossacks, likely originated in the 1990s, as no earlier mentions exist.
At the same time, Igor Maranin is sure that behind the mystical story there was certainly some real, living horse or something else real. But the ends of it are impossible to find now.
«It»s like with UFOs: a person saw something, a satellite or a probe, didn«t understand what it was, but remembered it. Started retelling it to other people, and like in a game of telephone, the story began to change and acquire details. And here is also a place significant for Novosibirsk Region and the entire history of Siberia,» the writer listed the perfect conditions for the emergence of a future legend. «So, in the end, the story is not just about a horse, but about a steed that participated in the ancient Irmen battle.»
The Warrior on the Golden Horse
Horses in Novosibirsk Region generally possess rich phantom potential. Another one, already accompanied by a rider, settled in the mountains of the Maslyaninsky district, near the village of Suenga. Unlike the Verkh-Irmen horse, it doesn«t run around aimlessly but is engaged in business: guarding its master»s rich burial from treasure hunters.
«According to the legend, one of Genghis Khan»s warriors is buried there. Some people say he was buried mounted on his horse, like a rider, others — that he was buried on a horse statue cast from pure gold,« described the burial Igor Maranin.
The ancient warrior could not rest in peace: the wealth supposedly hidden in his grave regularly attracted gold hunters. But as soon as a lucky treasure hunter opened the burial, he would discover a huge rider on a golden horse galloping at full speed towards him. According to local legends, some Suenga residents went mad or died on the spot from such a meeting, while others simply fell ill for a long time.
«Here everything is quite simple,» commented Novosibirsk traveler Vyacheslav Karmanov on the tale. «This is a gold-bearing region. In Soviet times, the fact that gold mining was conducted there was classified, but the people living nearby knew and understood that gold was nearby, but it was impossible to obtain it. All this transformed into a story about the burial of either a commander or a noble warrior.»
Vyacheslav also noted that over the years the amount of gold in the enchanted grave only increased: if at the beginning of the 20th century Suenga residents told that some parts of the buried rider«s harness were gold, then by the 1950s–1960s the saddle and stirrups turned out to be cast from pure gold.
«By the 1990s, a story appeared that the rider was in golden armor, and the entire grave was crammed full of gold,» described the evolution of the legend the traveler.
The Boy with the Glowing Pot
The ghost «inhabiting» the Tërtiy Kamen (Rubbed Stone) waterfall near the village of Nizhnekamenka is one of the few that does not try to harm the living or even scare them. On a moonlit night, an attentive ghost hunter can see a boy no older than eight, who with a glowing clay pot in his hands walks straight into the cliff.
According to the legend, the child was given the valuables of the entire village, which was attacked by Tatar-Mongol warriors. The boy could not escape the riders without supernatural help. What higher power helped him, the legend does not say, but the boy ultimately walked straight into the cliff.
Novosibirsk residents familiar with the legend may suspect that this is not a real story but a «modern concoction for tourists,» and traveler Vyacheslav Karmanov is in complete agreement with them:
«This legend has a continuation: if on a moonlit night you go to that very spot when the light falls on the cliff, you can see a certain mysterious arch. This is taken exactly from the film »The Lord of the Rings,« which was released in 2001,» noted Vyacheslav Karmanov.
Beware of the Car
Highways in Novosibirsk Region are also very dangerous places from an esoteric point of view. In the direction of Iskitim, Igor Maranin said, a driver can be unexpectedly overtaken by a phantom Zhiguli, at the wheel of which a bareheaded gray-haired old woman laughs madly. It«s hard to say whether a meeting with Baba Valya — that»s what the storytellers nicknamed the racer — foretells misfortune and a car accident, or whether drivers were simply so frightened by her that they lost control of the road. But, if you believe the tales, traffic accidents due to a ghost on the Iskitim highway are not uncommon.
«According to the legend, in Stalin»s times Baba Valya was unjustly convicted, she served her term and, when she got out, started working as a taxi driver in a Zhiguli. And then one day the person who had her imprisoned got into her car. Then the woman allegedly went mad, and all these «phantom appearances» began,« said Igor Maranin.
On the Kolyvan highway, if you believe the myths, it«s even more dangerous to be: a ghost also dwells there, but, unlike Baba Valya, it, or rather she, leaves her victims no chance of survival. The sinister entity takes the form of an attractive young girl who, in rainy weather, stands on the roadside and tries to hitch a ride. You must not stop and pick her up, warns the legend, otherwise both the person and his car will disappear without a trace.
«This legend was born in the 90s, perhaps after some real criminal events,» suggested Igor Maranin.
If this is correct, the scary fairy tale performed the same function as the folktales of centuries past: it told about rules of conduct and the inevitable consequences of not following them. And rightly so: you shouldn«t pick up a stranger in a deserted place.
One in Three Places
Another «transportation» ghost is a paddle steamer that on moonlit summer and autumn nights slowly goes with and against the current of the Ob River. There are many variations of this legend: according to the tales, the ghost may look like a rusty hull drifting downstream, or like a quite well-kept steamer, with lights burning in its windows and silhouettes of dancing people visible. Smoke supposedly does not come from its funnel, but river fog, and woe to him who noticed the phantom steamer not from the shore but from the water: those who went fishing on the path of the mystical vessel on that fateful night were never found, dead or alive.
The most interesting thing about this legend is that to create it, they seem to have used as many as four quite real steamers. It is no coincidence that the ghost was «seen» both in Novosibirsk, and near the village of Dubrovino, and near the border of Altai Krai near the village of Antonovo.
«I was told this story in the village of Dubrovino, where in the twenties some steamer really sank, and it seems to have merged with another real story, when the steamer »Kollektivist« sank (this happened in 1945. — Ed.), — said Igor Maranin. — There is also another legend, also about a paddle steamer. In 1926, when there was no automobile bridge across the Ob yet, in the evening a passenger ferry was going along the river, and a steamer was crossing its path. It was deep autumn, dark. People waved their hands, tried to attract the attention [of the steamer»s crew], but nothing worked. And then a huge phantom figure of Rasputin rose above the steamer.«
This story, he noted, happened in reality, but later became overgrown with mystical details. The ferry and the steamer in Novosibirsk really did collide, and on the steamer, which was launched from the shipyard back in the Russian Empire, the notorious elder (the ship was then sailing along the Irtysh) supposedly once traveled. But the phantom figure was clearly invented by people after the fact.
To Believe or Not
On the question of how to treat mystical legends, every Novosibirsk resident answers for themselves, and among city local historians there is no common opinion on this matter either.
Konstantin Golodyaev, an employee of the Novosibirsk Museum, has a sharply negative attitude towards mystical tales: they have neither historical meaning nor artistic value.
«There can be legends about people who really lived in some territory, performed real deeds and even feats. There can be legends about treasures, about gold,» explained the local historian. «Stories about ghosts do no credit either to the city [where the events from the legends allegedly occur] or to the tour guide who tells them. For everything concerning life after death, we have the Museum of Funeral Culture — that»s the one that connects the city with ghosts.«
Traveler Vyacheslav Karmanov generally agrees with Konstantin Golodyaev. Moreover, he is sure that Novosibirsk residents became fascinated with mysticism quite recently and not exactly of their own free will.
«It seems to me that the majority of local legends and, so to speak, myths around Novosibirsk arose at the turn of the late nineties — early 2000s, and, in my opinion, this is not accidental. In Soviet times we had a large layer of popular science literature, films, the journal Vokrug Sveta was published. In the nineties, all this [on such a scale] ceased to exist, but a person still strives for knowledge — this vacated niche was filled by films, newspapers and magazines of a completely different level: about UFOs, about yetis, about pharaohs» tomb curses,« suggested the traveler.
At the same time, for a certain category of people, an abundance of «phantom legends» can even become dangerous, he believes. First they retell stories about ghosts and monsters at the bottom of Lake Chany, and then they become adherents of pseudoscience and sincerely believe that the earth is flat and Novosibirsk Region is located on the territory of the ancient state of Tartaria (for the record, such a thing never existed).
Unlike them, writer Igor Maranin is sure that there is nothing bad in mystical legends, as long as both the storyteller and the listeners understand that it«s about an interesting, but still fictional story.
«Through legends about ghosts, about mysticism, one can come to completely different [more serious] stories. This is another side of the area we live in: human creativity, a kind of ethnography,» the writer is sure.
In Novosibirsk itself, there are plenty of mystical stories too: we collected a whole selection.
Last week, NGS discussed with local historians another, no less important question: where in Novosibirsk Region Kolchak«s gold is hidden. Historians almost unanimously assure that it»s definitely not in our region… but the legends continue to multiply.
