Scary stories about the cemetery. One night in the cemetery

My parents and their parents are all from Vorkuta. But I didn’t see this city until I was fifteen, because they didn’t take me there and in every possible way dissuaded me from visiting the old people - my grandparents - who lived there until their death.

“Why do you hate your city so much?” - I pestered my mother in surprise. And she said that next to the mine, where almost all the men from the area worked, there was an old cemetery that terrified the local inhabitants. Allegedly, they saw the dead leaving their graves right in front of the eyes of Vorkuta residents who came to visit the deceased relatives.

My grandfather, my mother’s father, who lived next door to this cemetery as a boy in the 1930s, swore that he himself saw “people from the other world.” One day, literally the day before Epiphany, on a frosty January night, the risen dead marched in a column through the miners' village - so he claimed. And the cadaverous smell lingered on the street all day.

Of course, I didn’t believe these stories, believing that my grandfather was out of his mind, and the little girl—my mother was ten years old when he told her this nonsense—was easy to scare. However, my mother insisted that all this was true. And she claimed that her brother also witnessed the terrible incident. Once they were walking with the guys from the neighboring house in the evening near the fence of the cemetery, and at that time a man came out of the gate - a strange, even scary, bearded man in rags: he walked past them, shuffling with some tattered cast-offs that resembled felt boots, and turned behind them. corner.

The children rushed after him - they began to tease him, the fools. And he looked around, threatened them with a stick and simply disappeared into thin air, disappeared. At that same moment, the children felt a terrible gust of wind, as if a hurricane had begun... They were scattered along the road, one boy seriously injured his leg, another had his face scratched with blood by a torn off tree branch, and the girls rolled on the ground like peas and squealed from fear.

"So what? - I shrugged my shoulders in response to my mother’s attempts to impress me. - Just think, a strong wind! This happens. And a man in rags is not necessarily a dead man. And when he disappeared, he got scared of you, the brats, and hid.” But, according to the mother, there was something eerie about that figure and its disappearance - a person cannot simply melt into thin air. “Yes, and many of us have seen these walks of the dead. If you don’t believe me, ask whoever you want!” -Mom didn’t want to give up. “Why are you always bringing me some eyewitnesses? And you yourself? - I deliberately angered her. “No, I didn’t see it, thank God! - Mom crossed herself in fear. But I know many people whom I trust and who have encountered this evil spirits. And one boy from our yard went crazy from horror - forever! He never recovered afterwards... Such a dead man waylaid him and attacked him...

And here’s an interesting coincidence: on the very night when the dead man attacked him, I noticed an unusual bright light in the sky - something like the northern lights, but not quite lights. Wonderful! It never existed in our area. Still, we don’t live at the North Pole... And strange things happened at our school: at night, in the echoing corridors, someone’s shuffling steps could be heard, inarticulate muttering and plaintive moans were heard. The watchman, Baba Manya, told us this.”

“That old woman Manya of yours must have been a drunkard!” - I egged my mother on. “Fuck you... She fought in the Night Witches squadron! Has an order. What a drunk she is to you!” It is not surprising that when my mother married my father, she immediately left the “bad” village in Vorkuta forever. I never tried to visit my parents. My grandmother and grandfather often came to us, but my mother never visited them. And they didn’t let me visit the old people on vacation.

I was terribly envious of my classmates: well, everything is like summer - they go to their grandmothers in the village. Their stories fascinated me: there were adventures, fights and overnight trips, swimming and complete freedom! In a word, freedom! And I sat like hell all summer in the city, at best they took me to the sea, and then only for a couple of weeks...

When I turned fifteen, I made a terrible scandal and demanded that I be released to the old people. The parents resisted for a long time (or rather, my mother resisted), but in the end they gave in. Somewhere in mid-June I was sent by train from Kirov to Vorkuta. I enjoyed the journey for a day, then I found myself at the Vorkuta central station. Small, old, provincial, but quite clean. From the city center I took a minibus to the village of Severny to visit the old people. I found Vorkuta a dull, gloomy city. There is no need for a cemetery with zombies crawling out of the ground here - without that the landscape is apocalyptic.

My grandparents greeted me joyfully - after all, they were the only grandson! I, too, was very happy with the old people, however, when they took me to a neglected two-story house, surrounded by some rickety sheds and rusty garages, I became somewhat sour: I didn’t know that people still live like this in our time - well, I didn’t see barracks! This city, it must be said, is surrounded by a whole system of suburbs - mainly mining villages. There used to be a dozen and a half of them, but at the time I arrived in Vorkuta, only five remained; the remaining villages looked like gloomy ghosts among the bare tundra...

Honestly, I was no longer glad that I came. What can you do here? How to relax? How can you even live?! At least write to your parents: “Take me!” The next day, however, I found company - a couple of guys my age, and the prospect of spending two weeks here no longer seemed so gloomy. Moreover, I confess to you that I dreamed of going to the cemetery, about which I had heard so many “terrible” things.

I was dying to go there and, most importantly, take pictures! Suddenly I’ll get lucky, I thought, and someone from the other world will appear to me! These pictures will make me famous! A fool, of course, but I was only fifteen years old. I wanted thrills, like any boy. I asked my new friends to give me a tour of the cemetery: they say, I’ve heard about all sorts of miracles! They shrugged: it was a three-kilometer walk to get there. Don't be lazy, let's go...

And so we came to that same Lithuanian cemetery. Actually, it is not only Lithuanian, although its most noticeable grave is a monument to some prince with an inscription in Lithuanian: “Mother Lithuania is crying for you.” Yes, there were many of them in the local “Vorkutlag” - sons for whom Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Western Ukraine cried...

Tens of thousands of people went through this hell from the territories occupied in 1939, and then the Germans began to be sent here - no, not prisoners, but completely loyal to the USSR, only with the beginning of the war they all turned into enemies. Among my grandfather’s friends, by the way, there was a Lithuanian named Edgar - his ancestors ended up in Vorkuta in a convoy, and when they were freed, they stayed to live there. Edgar himself was born in Vilnius, but every year he came to these harsh lands beyond the Arctic Circle to lay flowers on his native graves.

There are hundreds, thousands of such stories in this city... But these prisoners still had graves, and how many people were left simply abandoned to lie in the frozen ground under snow and moss! What's strange about it, if you think about it, is that these souls do not know peace. And their ghosts walk around the dying city, looking for their executioners... Or maybe those who remained from their relatives to remind them of themselves? At the cemetery I saw many Orthodox crosses next to Catholic ones. And as an adult, I read so many tragic stories of ordinary Russian men, priests and teachers, workers and doctors, buried here!

Then, at the age of fifteen, I listened with rapture as one of my new acquaintances talked about how they were expanding a mine in the village of Yur-Shor. They simply dug up the neighboring cemetery, crushing the skulls and bones of the unfortunate people buried here with an excavator bucket. Here are the people! They don't care! They are ready to throw the dead in the trash! But there lay not only political prisoners, but also civilian and local prisoners - quite possibly, relatives of those who crushed these bones into dust with the wheels of trucks.

That's when the cemetery was disturbed, and the locals began to have visions. Or rather, the dead began to come out... Presumably, in this way they demanded peace, and maybe justice. From time immemorial there has been a tradition of burying the dead away from housing and treating graveyards with respect. Our ancestors knew that the destruction of a cemetery could bring disaster. And we forgot. And therefore we must blame ourselves, and not the ghosts that frighten us.

In the late 40s of the last century, a local miner received a prison sentence for talking about ghosts that came to him underground. He was immediately sent to jail for trying to sow panic and spread a hostile ideology. But what is the ideology of those ghosts?! They certainly did not create a counter-revolutionary group, did not find out secret information about the mine tunnels and did not prepare terrorist attacks...

That miner's name was Ivan Khrapov, he was the grandfather of one of the guys who told me this story. And he served until 1953, until Stalin’s death. And the last case of the appearance of dead people happened here in the early 60s of the last century, at a dance in a local club. When the watchman, having escorted all the young people home around midnight, began to lock the doors, suddenly someone began to strangle him.

The watchman, despite his age, was a healthy man. He dodged and grabbed the attacker himself: but immediately pulled his hands back. Moreover, the blow almost hit him! In front of the man stood a corpse as pale as a sheet - just a corpse! He had empty eye sockets and almost rotten skin on his cheeks. The dead man grinned threateningly with his empty mouth.

The poor old man ran away with a wild cry, and in the morning he quit his job and never went to that club again - neither at night nor during the day. But the young people, having heard his story, began to be on duty there almost around the clock - brave souls! Let's drink for courage and let's walk around the club with jokes and jokes. On the third night, perhaps, one of these guys saw the translucent figure of a man, but the others did not have time to notice it, and therefore decided that he had simply had too much port wine.

Why don’t dead people come to scare Vorkuta residents after 1960? I think because around that time, a former political prisoner of Yur-Shor installed the first memorial sign in the cemetery, common to all the victims. My mother, in any case, said exactly that: “Guests from the other world stopped coming to us, they calmed down, apparently they liked this sign of respect.” By the way, I saw this simple wooden pillar, reinforced at the base with a concrete pad, on which the numbers “1953” are embossed.

And later, in 1992, I think, the Vorkuta “Memorial”, together with former political prisoners from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, erected another wooden memorial cross at the cemetery with a sign: “Eternal memory of those who died for freedom and human dignity.” This certainly pleased those who lie in the frozen ground here: memory and dignity are exactly what they were deprived of for so long.

The Grave Digger's Tale

In the 90s, when the Union collapsed, a bunch of research institutes were closed. The researchers scattered in all directions. Some joined the shuttle trade and began transporting consumer goods from China, others simply drank themselves to death, and others radically changed their work profile. My friend Oleg Petrovich Dementyev settled down in the cemetery. Digging graves. I must say, not the worst profession for that time. It was he who told me this strange mystical story. I just processed it literary. Here is his story. For many months, the small, quiet woman flinched at every call on the door of her apartment. Cautiously she asked: “Who’s there?” and waited with bated breath for a short answer: “Police!” And only then, opening the lock to the voice of a neighbor or friend, she could not come to her senses for a long time. I drank valerian and corvalol. But they helped little. It was especially difficult on sleepless nights. Memories came flooding back, and it seemed that her terrible secret would certainly be revealed. Then they will come for her. Tamara Petrovna committed her rare crime because of him, Sergei.

If suddenly trouble comes

Only now, fifteen years after her desperate act, did she finally calm down. It's too old. All that was left of him were heavy ones and even a bad heart. Tamara Petrovna had a chance to lose close people since childhood: in 1935, right before her eyes, two younger brothers died of hunger, then her parents died, and even later her husband. The only joy in her life was her children.

She devoted all her free time to her daughter and son, which, unfortunately, was always in short supply. A conductor is a traveling profession. Today - here, tomorrow - there.

When her daughter Svetlana got married and left with her husband, a young scientist, for Novosibirsk, Tamara Petrovna took it for granted: her daughter was a cut-off piece. And the youngest Seryozha, a cheerful fellow and guitarist, remained nearby. Her favorite, her support and hope in her coming old age. But everything turned out differently...

Sergei Volsky went to jail due to his youth and stupidity. The Sortirovochny microdistrict, which is located right next to the railway, is a restless, hectic place, there are often fights here in the evenings, drinking and injecting drugs.

The guy got into bad company and got into trouble. In a brutal fight with passing truckers, the big-faced guys almost kicked two half-asleep drivers to death, taking their money and belongings with them. Although Sergei did not participate in the fight, he was in the company of the pogromists, and so he was accused along with the “activists” for hooliganism and robbery.

The article is serious. First he served his sentence in a Nizhny Novgorod prison, then he was transferred to one of the colonies in the south of the region. According to Tamara Petrovna, he asked to go there himself. The mother was terribly worried. Apparently, with some sixth sense she guessed evil.

But after some time, Sergei sent a letter from the zone. He wrote that he was satisfied. He is about to be transferred for good behavior and conscientious work to the duty company. Then you can visit him often.

Tamara Petrovna calmed down and even rejoiced. She counted the days until the next letter. But the son was still silent. This . To disperse the melancholy, the mother was thinking about what gifts to buy for Seryozha in Moscow, imagining a warm meeting with her son after a long separation.

How to bring back a dead son...

Instead of the long-awaited envelope, inscribed in his native handwriting, the postman brought an urgent telegram. It reported that prisoner Volsky died suddenly.

Tamara Petrovna, blackened and lost, rushed to her friends. Thank you, they supported me, advised me to somehow pull myself together, and told the bad news to my relatives. Volskaya's sister and daughter Svetlana urgently flew to Nizhny Novgorod.

All together they went to this damned zone. Then Tamara Petrovna said: “If he hanged himself, I won’t come!”

For some reason, it seemed that the son had committed suicide without even thinking about his mother. Sergei Volsky was killed in his sleep with two blows to the head with a stool. During a short investigation, it turned out that his cellmates thought that he was an “informer” and had become a duty officer too quickly. For this Sergei paid with his life.

At the trial, eleven witnesses did not want to provide any details. Some “fell asleep”, some “forgot”. And the killer turned out to be a particularly dangerous criminal, a repeat offender. Eight years were added to his sentence for murder. But this did not make it any easier for the mother. You can't bring your son back.

Then she wanted only one thing: to bury Sergei in a cemetery in Nizhny Novgorod. The thought that her boy was buried somewhere like a vagabond without a clan, without a tribe was unbearable.

Other orphaned mothers are consoled, albeit a little, by caring for the grave. They talk to the photograph on the monument, plant flowers in the tomb, light funeral candles on religious holidays. She didn't even get that.

Instead of the long-awaited envelope, inscribed in his native handwriting, the postman brought an urgent telegram. It reported that prisoner Volsky died suddenly

But, despite all the requests, entreaties, demands to give her the remains of Sergei, the police officials answered: “It’s not allowed!” Some weakly referred to possible exhumation if the case went on for further investigation. But they clearly had no intention of following him up.

Desperate, Tamara Petrovna reached the highest ranks of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation. At that time she was still working as a conductor on Moscow trains and, when she came to the capital, she went to receptions with big bosses several times. Some cursed, some promised to look into the matter. Meanwhile, six months have already passed.

Tamara Petrovna promised one colonel from the Ministry of Internal Affairs all her savings for decades of traveling around the country in rattling carriages. He said: “We’ll decide.”

And then an acquaintance turned up to her on the street. She listened to Tamara Petrovna's complaints, her story about the ordeal and advised Sergei... to steal. Otherwise, they say, you won’t get your problem resolved. Prisoners are never given a proper burial. Volskaya understood what she had to do.

Lord, give me strength and patience

“Lord, give me strength!” - Tamara Petrovna asked and on her day off she went to the caretaker of the cemetery at Sortirovka. He listened carefully to the woman, who had turned gray with grief.

You can help, but it will be expensive...

How many?

He named the amount.

Two times less than what she offered to the capital’s officials!

The woman took administrative leave from the Passenger Services Directorate and began preparing for the operation. After the death of her brother, the energetic daughter visited the zone again. There were people there who, for a certain fee, indicated the exact location of the burial. The daughter visited the outskirts of a rural churchyard.

On the unmarked grave, compassionate local old women laid out a brick cross. Leaving for Novosibirsk, Svetlana drew a diagram for Tamara Petrovna, on which she indicated the place where her brother lay. Now a piece of paper with a drawing is very useful.

Despite all the requests, entreaties, demands to give her the remains of Sergei, the police officials answered: “It’s not allowed!” Some weakly referred to possible exhumation if the case goes on for further investigation.

How to rebury a person...

The cemetery caretaker turned out to be a man of his word. At the appointed hour, Tamara Petrovna and four strapping men (among whom was my acquaintance) left the city in two cars.

It turned out that one of the drivers had once served in this zone, so he knew the way there well. Already after midnight they finally reached a small grove among the fields. Four highlighted simple fences, tacky plastic flowers, monuments, and not far from them, a red mound with a brick cross that had spread from the rains.

The mother's heart sank painfully, she frantically grabbed the pills. It took an unexpectedly long time to dig up the grave. Sticky clay stuck to the shovels. Tamara Petrovna volunteered to help. It was feared that they would not make it before dawn. The men sent her to the cars, away from them: “And if you feel bad, then what do you tell me to do?”

Finally, the spades clattered dully against the wood. All that was left to do now was to move the coffin into and fill the hole. But a hastily put together house that had lain in the ground for more than six months could fall apart. It was necessary to get it out by tying the boards. The ropes were prudently taken with them. Suddenly one of the conspirators felt ill.

And then it struck me: what if it wasn’t Sergei? – recalls Tamara Petrovna. - After all, prisoners, they say, are often placed in mass graves. I started asking the men: “I’ll give you another thousand rubles, just let’s see if he’s there or not.”

They hesitate and are afraid. And time flies. Then we see that the board at the coffin has come off and I immediately recognized my son’s face by the scar and dimple on his cheek and chin. At dawn they dug the hole and laid bricks so that no one would guess what was what.

And then some old woman appeared at the cemetery. Either she came to visit her family early in the morning, or for some other reason... My nerves rose again. What if he notices, guesses, reports? What then? But nothing good, because the matter is under jurisdiction. But the grandmother turned out to be somewhat blind; she couldn’t figure out what was what in the fog.

Sergei Volsky was reburied on the same day at the Sortirovka cemetery. Now Tamara Petrovna herself can’t believe that she decided to take such a desperate step.

But she simply could not do otherwise. If you couldn’t live together with your living son, then at least let him be there when he’s dead.

Sergei Volsky was reburied on the same day at the Sortirovka cemetery. Now Tamara Petrovna herself can’t believe that she decided to take such a desperate step.

Now cemetery guards often see this woman near a well-kept grave, on a bench next to the monument behind an iron fence. She has a long, leisurely and quiet conversation with her son about something.

Some of the rare visitors, looking at her, shake their heads and twirl their fingers at their temples, but the cemetery attendants know that the woman is completely normal, sensible and always gifts them with delicious homemade pies, sweets, and gives them money for vodka.

And most importantly, she found some kind of peace when visiting her “native hill”, there it always seems to her that her son’s soul is nearby, that he hears everything, that one day she too will be close to the closest soul in the world.

And she stopped being afraid of the police a long time ago. A mother's heart is truly omnipotent and fearless.

Supernatural: A Call from Beyond

It was on one of these visits that the same grave digger, my acquaintance Oleg Petrovich Dementyev, met her. This is how he remembers this meeting.

The woman was sitting on a bench near the grave, twirling a key in her hands and looking very pale. You feel bad? - I asked. “She looked at me with a strange look, then recognized me, smiled timidly and handed me the key.

What is this? - I asked in surprise.

I see it's from your apartment?

The woman nodded.

I found it under the bench.

And then she told how it happened:

I lost him a week ago. I searched everything in the house. There was no key. It's good that there was a spare one. But I decided to order another one. Although the money is small, it’s still a pity. You can't buy an extra carton of milk. In the evening I went to bed. I couldn’t sleep for a long time, I kept thinking about something, some minor worries were depressing me, then I dozed off. Woke up to a phone call. It was past midnight. For a long time I couldn’t figure out where I was or what the call was, then I picked up the phone. The voice was male and terribly familiar.

I stood and was silent, there were no thoughts in my head. There was no fear or surprise. Then again:

Who is this?

But I already knew who. It didn’t even occur to me that this could be someone’s evil prank.

Can you hear me?

I hear you, Seryozha...

You lost the key at my grave. It's under the bench. So don't order a new one. And one more thing... He hesitated, sighed, it was audible through the receiver, - thank you and goodbye.

Short beeps. I woke up when it was dawn outside the window, and the birds were already singing with all their might. The receiver was in my hand, and short beeps squeezed out tediously. I came here half an hour ago and now...

She handed me the key again. It was old, from English locks that slam shut when you leave the apartment. Nowadays they don't install them like that anymore.

I took it in my hands, turned it over, then handed it back to her. He kissed the gray hair that smelled of shampoo, turned and went to his thirtieth station. By 12.00 we had to dig another grave.

Now cemetery guards often see this woman near a well-kept grave, on a bench next to the monument behind an iron fence. She has a long, leisurely and quiet conversation with her son about something.

VIDEO: 7 mystical phenomena in the cemetery, captured on camera

During my life, I have heard various real stories about the dead and the cemetery. I decided to tell mine too. This story happened to me in my youth. A strange man who showed up at night asked to correct the tombstone inscription

It all started with a visit to the large old city cemetery. No one has been buried there for many years. The abandoned necropolis struck me with some kind of solemn, albeit somewhat frightening, beauty. Many inscriptions were in Latin, others in pre-revolutionary Russian. Some were erased by merciless time... But from that moment on, I became deeply hooked on the topic of epitaphs and tombstones. And then an idea came. I talked to my supervisor at the institute.
- And what? Interesting topic! Go for it, Roman! - said the professor. - At first, let it be a coursework, and then we’ll see, maybe it will grow into a thesis!

There are several cemeteries in our city. I visited one of them almost every day after class to work with epitaphs. There was one thing I didn’t like: I had to get from the hostel across the whole city. One day I saw an advertisement that a watchman was needed for one of the cemeteries. And since there were holidays at that time, I decided to get a job: to improve my financial situation, and to continue working on my coursework. My partner San Sanych, a frail little man of about sixty who clearly liked to look into a glass, handed over the shift.

You, guy, the main thing is not to be afraid of anything! Don’t let anyone stranger into the guardhouse, if someone comes at night, God forbid! And the undead - they are mostly normal, quiet, and don’t roam around the alleys! - he chuckled.
- In the majority? Are there people who wander around? - it is impossible to understand whether he is joking or not.
- Anything can happen! I’m telling you: don’t open the door! Well, you can read the “Our Father”, if anything... Yes, I almost forgot: Andrei Nikolaevich, well, the one who worked before you did not take some of his things. Maybe he'll show up for them.

Grandfather drowned, and I took a camera and went to photograph interesting monuments and epitaphs on them.
I don’t like working with photos on the computer, so I ran to the nearest store that provided printing services. And in the evening I started looking. To save money, I took all the pictures on plain paper; some of the inscriptions turned out to be difficult to read. Soon he lay down on the trestle bed in the guardhouse and dozed off...

In my sleep I heard someone persistently knocking on the door. To be honest, I felt a little uneasy: I immediately remembered my partner’s words about uninvited guests at night. Looked out the window. In the light of the bright full moon I saw an elderly man of an intelligent appearance.
- Young man! Open, please! Don't be afraid, this is not a stranger, but a local!
I thought that this was probably the previous guard who had come to collect his things. Why he appeared in the middle of the night, I had no question. I opened it for him and let him inside.

Come on in. Are you Andrey Nikolaevich? - asked the stranger.
- I? - he asked absentmindedly, did not give any intelligible answer and stepped towards the table on which my papers lay. And then he began to delve into them in the most brazen manner.
- What are you doing? - my indignation knew no bounds.
- I?! Looking for...
- Why are you rummaging through my papers? - I screamed. - The exit is there! Nobody invited you here!
- Me?! - the man seemed to mock me. - Found...

He picked up one of the photographs, the one on which he could not read the epitaph:
“Such pain cannot be expressed in words, it is all in my wounded heart. How cruelly fate dealt with us, not allowing us to remain on earth together. But in my longing loneliness, under the hot sun and when it rains, I remember about you, I love you! My most faithful husband! See you... Wait!”
The uninvited guest tiredly sank onto the trestle bed, his shoulders shaking with sobs.
- I beg you, remove this inscription on the monument! That husband was a very bad person and does not deserve such flattering words from the woman whom he betrayed all his life!
- What nonsense? How do you imagine that? Are you delusional, or what?

I turned away from the crazy man for a minute to add wood to the stove.
- Do me a favor! It hurts to realize that Maria suffers and continues to love this scoundrel! When you destroy the old inscription, make another one: “Wife, forgive my sins, for which I now suffer in hell.”
- How do you imagine that? There is a watchman in front of you, and it is not his responsibility to spoil the monument! Are you crazy? - he barked at him, turned to the guest, but there was no trace of him, as if he had never been.
The fact that this crazy guy did show up was evidenced by the scattered papers. I went to the door, but it turned out to be locked. “Hmm... How did the guy get out? It probably just slammed shut...” Soon he fell asleep again...

In the morning San Sanych came, I told him about the night incident.
- Ah-ah... Then the professor appeared again! - Grandfather was not surprised. - And Andrei, well, the previous watchman, survived from here. I started going every night! I’m not afraid of him, Ivan Antonovich is peaceful, I’ll say a prayer, and he’ll disappear!
- What kind of professor?
- So he’s buried in one of the alleys. His missus kept going to his grave and was overcome with grief! People said that this same dead man was still a reveler during his lifetime, he didn’t miss a single skirt, but Maria, well, his wife, I mean, knew nothing about it! She sent all well-wishers who intended to enlighten her to a well-known address. And recently, the children took the woman to live in another city. So, I’m thinking, maybe I should still respect Antonich and redo the inscription? Will he suddenly feel better?

“Another crazy one!” - flashed through my head. Before leaving, I decided to look at the professor’s grave. Imagine the surprise and fear when I recognized the night guest in the photograph on the monument...
I never went back to work as a night watchman!

My mother and I live with my grandmother, but we are building a house completely on the other side of the city. I'm 12 and have been living with my grandmother since birth. Her house is very close to the cemetery and school. When I bring my classmates to visit, they are horrified when they realize that our house is located opposite the cemetery. But I answer them with mockery. Like, what's so scary about that? I spent my whole life here and nothing happened... Looking at the cemetery I have no feeling of fear. I don’t look at a cemetery with the conclusion that the ground there is saturated with corpses. For me, this is just a place with crosses.. But for a long time, my grandmother told me that when passing by a cemetery you need to say hello to *spirits* Like, they look at you and wait, will you say hello to them? But I completely forgot about it..
One fine day.. My best friend Tanya and I agreed to go to the cinema in the evening, to the cartoon *Shrek 2* We are Shrek fans and didn’t refuse this) It was winter then.. The days were short and already at 8 pm it was getting terribly dark. It's like 12 o'clock at night. The movie ended, as we feared at 8. We lived nearby. But on different streets. There was not a large forest near the school. And behind this forest there was a street *Lesnaya* and my friend lived there.
When we got to school we split up. *we were separated by the damn forest* She’s going home, and I’m going home... On my own way. I walked quickly. Strangely, the lamp standing on our street did not turn on. But I didn’t attach any importance to this.
I was about 70-80 meters from the house when I heard slow footsteps behind me. I quickened my pace until I was almost running. Soon I heard the voice of an elderly grandmother. The voice was trembling, but in some places it was angry. Grandmother said that she could not find her mother’s grave. Buried in this very cemetery. I have already seen the burning light of a chandelier in the windows of my house. But my grandmother suddenly grabbed me by the hand and dragged me to the cemetery. I wanted to scream, but my voice seemed to have disappeared... Grandma was weak, so in the cemetery gates I grabbed the fence and didn’t let go. Grandma has disappeared...
I wiped the sweat of fear from my forehead and went home. Having reached very close to my house, I saw the silhouette of my grandmother at the gate. And she was waving her cane at the gate. Knocked. I felt terrified. I called my mother and told her to kick this grandmother out. Grandma either heard what I said and immediately disappeared.
Mom came out, there was no one there, only I stood scared at the gate. Mom asked what happened. Out of fear, not understanding what I was saying, I said that there was a grandmother there... Mom answered me that it seemed to me and did not believe me.
In the morning, it turned out that a grandmother came to everyone on our street and asked if they would help her find her mother’s grave. And upon hearing the answer, she disappeared, one might say evaporated into thin air.
A month later we moved to a new house. At the end of the city. A year later, they started burying people there and made another cemetery. Right opposite our house. It's a shame and disgusting. Now I am afraid of cemeteries, I do not advise you to walk near a cemetery in the dark. You never know...

.................................................................................................................................................

This story was told by Sofia Kazhdan. I present it here in the form in which it was told.

That evening I saw off the mother of my friend, who had lived in our small town for more than fifty years. I came home late in the evening and could not sleep.

Evgenia became a widow five years ago and lived literally a ten-minute walk from my house. Her daughter, Yulia, my childhood friend, begged her mother to move to live with her in another city.
- Mom, I want you to be close. I don’t want to wake up every morning with just one thought that you are there alone, a hundred kilometers from me and my grandchildren.

As luck would have it, my eyes were literally drooping, but there was no sleep. Several times a night I turned on the TV and picked up a book.
Then I decided to overcome myself. She turned off the TV, put down the book and, turning off the light, began to count.
“One... two... three... ten... eighty... one hundred thirty... two hundred and fifty...”

And then... Then the action unfolded according to the script of a science fiction film. Lying in bed, almost asleep, I heard a soft knock on the window in my sleep. Lazily getting up, she went to the window and, opening the curtain, was horrified.

On the road near my house there was a funeral home bus with a black stripe down the middle. From it, my acquaintances who had left this world and moved to the “OTHER” looked at me through the windows.

I felt my hands and toes getting colder, sweat forming on my forehead and nose, my legs becoming wobbly, and my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth. Goosebumps began to run throughout my body.

Near my window stood the father of my childhood friend Yulka and the husband of Evgenia, who had to leave our town early in the morning, Uncle Lenya.
- Sonya, why are you looking at me so scared? - he asked and, smiling at me, continued, “I won’t do anything bad to you.” Get dressed and go outside... We need to talk...
I continued to stand and looked at the street through the window glass in horror.

People began to get off the bus. I personally saw many of them in the coffin. They were wearing the same things that their acquaintances and friends saw them in when they saw them off on their last journey.

Tamara, a former colleague of my sister, who died of cancer, leaving behind a two-year-old son, approached Uncle Lena.
- Why don’t you come out to us? - asked Tamara, - Don’t be afraid of us... We won’t do anything bad to you... You need to be afraid of the living, not the dead...
- What are you doing here? - I asked in fear, thinking that DEATH had come for me, - I don’t want to die! Don't want! It's bad there, it's scary and it's dark...
“Look at me,” Uncle Lenya said and smiled again, “Look at me carefully... Do I look bad?”

And in fact... Uncle Lenya was very often sick for the last ten years of his life and was very overweight. In addition to asthma, he had a bunch of other side diseases. Now standing in front of me was a fit, lively man with clear eyes.

“I live in a wonderful place,” he said, “in a pine forest... This place is ideal for my health.”
- What are you doing here? - I asked slurring my tongue, - You are all dead.
“We came to visit you, earthlings,” one of my good friends, who died in a car accident, intervened in the conversation.

I don’t remember what happened next... and how many minutes or seconds I stood with my mouth open. Then... Then I asked them:
- What's there? On the other side of life? Is it scary there? Badly?
“No,” said Uncle Lenya, “THE DAMMIT is not as scary as you paint him... There’s a different life there... Other concepts about life...”

- Do you want to go back... to us... to Earth?
- We want peace... We want the Earthlings not to touch us, not to offend us and to remember that we are always with you, we are watching your life...
- Are you following? - I asked in fear.
- So, I came to see how my wife would leave our house... It’s hard for her to do this... It’s hard... So I came to help her, to support her...

“Uncle Lenya,” I asked after a short silence, “Do you want to come to us?” In our lives?
- My mission on Earth is over... I did everything I could... Now I’m home.
- At home? - I asked in bewilderment, - How is it at home? I’m at home... And you’re not at home... You’re in a coffin...
“Ha-ha-ha,” the dead laughed merrily.

“Sonya,” said Tamara, “You are the guest... The earthly guest... And the coffin... So we are leaving your world...”
“Just don’t try to tell me that it’s good there... That there is an afterlife there, and everyone lives happily ever after, like in a fairy tale.”
- Why does everyone live happily ever after, like in a fairy tale?! No... Life there is not heavenly... There you also need to work and live... There is eternity... And here there is a stop...

I no longer remember what I asked, what they told me, I only remember that I asked several questions that to this day make me think about a lot.
— How often do you visit us, and how often do you want to see us?
“Almost none of us are drawn to Earth... But there are exceptions... Grandparents who have little grandchildren behind them want to see the kids... They come to them at night when they are fast asleep,” said Uncle Lenya.
“I want to see my son... Hold him close... I left him so small, so helpless... I left him when he needed me so much... I don’t visit him very often... I don’t have time for this,” with annoyance in his voice said Tamara.

“We have our own lives, and don’t bother us over trifles... Don’t come to the grave whenever you want... Don’t disturb us... Don’t torment us and don’t torment our souls... There is a church for that... Go there... Pray for the repose of our souls,” Uncle Lenya said.
- Why?
- You are invading another world... A world incomprehensible to you... The time will come, and you yourself will understand everything...

- Who feels bad there, in this OTHER world?
- Who feels bad? To the one who sentenced himself and took his own LIFE?... This is scary... This is very scary... WE, our world, do not accept these people, and in yours they are already dead... They try to move in with the dead, but this is impossible... God gave man life , and only God can take it away from us.
- Uncle Lenya, don’t scare me. Are you saying that a murderer... A person who took the life of another lives better in your world than one who decided his own destiny?
- Probably yes... These people are slaves... They accept newcomers... They work with them... They undergo adaptation with them... They teach them to live according to our laws...

The alarm clock rang in the room...

I stood in the middle of the room in my clothes and was shaking all over with fear... To this day I still cannot understand what it was: A DREAM OR...

And if OR...

Stuttering, I began to talk about the night aliens.
After the story was told, there was silence in the accounting department. An elderly woman interrupted her.
“What a miracle,” she said, “Previously, those people who took their lives were buried outside the gates of the cemetery and they were not buried in the church...

A year later, my friend comes to me and says:
- I had such a life situation... I didn’t see a way out... My mother died, my husband left for another... I didn’t want to live at all... I decided to cut my wrists... I filled the bathtub with water, took a knife and... At that moment I remembered your story about the night guests... I felt scared... Scared that in that incomprehensible world I would suffer even more. Two days later I met Sashka... Now we are expecting a son... There are simply no hopeless situations... If you can’t fight, then you just need to wait out this unfortunate period.

I WANT TO BELIEVE THAT WE ARE NOT DYING FOR ALL...
THAT THE SOUL WILL LIVE AFTER OUR DEATH... BUT THAT WORLD is unknown to us... And no one gave us the right to invade it. If it exists, THAT WORLD, then people there live according to their own laws...