Our ancestors were just as interested in the spirit world and everything related to it as we are today. According to Professor N. P. Wagner, by 1853, séances were taking place not only in Moscow and St. Petersburg, but also in the provinces—in Kherson, Voronezh, Ufa, Kharkiv, and other cities, where they were practiced by individuals who were quite prominent in their social circles.
The ideas of spiritualism themselves had a profound influence on Nikolai Petrovich Wagner and his creative work. Indeed, many of Wagner’s fairy tales are characterized by a distinctive blend of mysticism, symbolism, and allegory. For example, these elements are particularly prominent in his most famous book, *The Tales of Purr-Cat*, which continues to be reprinted to this day.
The mysterious incidents that occurred during that period were covered in considerable detail by the media. In the newspapers of that time, we can find the following:
In 1886, in the Kharkiv suburb of “Kholodnaya Gora,” in the home of a peasant named P., loud thuds began to echo through the ceiling at night, so loud that the walls shook. They thought the roof had collapsed. An immediate inspection of the attic revealed nothing. The same bangs occurred on subsequent nights. Then the owner locked the attic, sealed the skylight in the roof shut, and scattered ashes throughout the attic. That night, loud thuds rang out against the ceiling. Everyone rushed up to the attic—everything was fine. The loud thuds repeated while everyone was gathered there. The owners left the house.
In another article from the same year, we read:
In the village of Annovka, near Kharkiv, the ghost of a deceased peasant has repeatedly appeared to his widow; he speaks with her, brings her medicinal herbs for healing, and so on; other peasant women in the hut can also hear and see him. This was reported firsthand by the landowner of that village, M. L., who also saw the herbs.
There was also a rather amusing incident that I simply cannot fail to mention:
In a very old club in Kharkiv, the following occurred: Every five years, the circle’s guardian spirit would give various instructions to one of its members—chosen at random and, evidently, in turn—regarding a radical change in that person’s material circumstances.
And throughout the club’s entire existence, which was quite a long time, those members who were fortunate enough to receive these happy instructions acted in all things according to the spirits’ counsel, and everything turned out so well for them that they, as the saying goes, blessed the day they joined the circle. But it must be noted that all these suggestions to change one’s way of life—as was later observed—almost always fell to those who were in circumstances where they had nothing to lose. And, as they say, things couldn’t possibly be worse than they already were.
Finally, the fortunate guidance came to a man who enjoyed not only a comfortable but downright splendid standard of living; he had a small nest egg, earned a good salary, and was the head of a wonderful family.
The guardian spirit advised the lucky man to wrap up all his affairs as soon as possible and travel to the Far East, where he would take up the carriage business in a specific location.The lucky man was on top of the world. Everyone around him congratulated him and envied him.
Seeing the happy fate of his predecessors, who had found favor with the spirits, he immediately wrapped up all his business affairs, took all his savings—fortunately leaving his family behind in Kharkiv—and set off for the remote corner of Siberia that had been indicated to him; and—a year and a half later—he returned to Kharkiv, almost on foot, without a penny to his name…
Of course, there were also tragic situations. In his book *Spiritualism on Trial Before Science, Society, and Religion*, published in 1914, Vladimir Petrovich Bykov recounts the following horrific incident:
Among spiritualists, there are also cases of suicide, such as the one that occurred several years ago in a wealthy landowning spiritualist family, the A. family, in the Kharkiv Governorate. The mother’s only son, a 17-year-old young man who was, as they say, the apple of her eye, was found hanged in the attic of his own home, leaving no note behind; and in his diary, on the day before the fateful event, there was an entry that read something like this: “Today I received an astonishing message from my guardian spirit (Nero). The spirit says that, through the way I have lived my life, I have attained the highest form of perfection, and if I were to find a way to end my existence now, in my immediate reincarnation I would be given the mission of a great preacher of truth on our sorrowful earth…”
Bykov goes on to write words that remain relevant to this day:
And, unfortunately, very few people remember that one of the most scandalous incidents involving the spirit world—one that drew not only the close attention of the entire empire at the time but also an official investigation—took place just a few dozen kilometers from Kharkiv. But that’s a whole other story…
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