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Ivan Nikolaevich Ponomarev

...continued from part sixteen.

15. In “Memories of the Polish Rebellion of 1863” by Mr. I. N. Ponomarev, in the September issue of the “Istorichesky Vestnik” for 1896, the author recounts the following inexplicable fact, which he himself witnessed, together with the officers of the Uhlan Regiment, where the author was released from the corps shortly before the start of the 1863 uprising.

The author tells us:

The third squadron, in which I was, was assigned to camp in the village of Kvitki, located ten miles from the headquarters that remained in the city of Korsun (Kiev province). The large village consisted of several hundred houses, and since in Little Russia almost every house has a garden, Kvitki, buried in greenery, occupied several miles in circumference. The quartermasters who met us announced that there were no comfortable apartments for the officers, and the only tolerable premises were allocated for the squadron commander, adding that there was a good private residence, but they did not dare to occupy it either.

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Yelets Monastery in Chernigov

...continued from part fifteen.

14 . Mysterious Phenomena in Chernigov in the 1840's*

The following took place in 1843 or 44 (I don’t remember exactly), in Chernigov, in the house of my uncle (on my aunt’s side), the priest Father John Gerasimovich Menailov.

Father John was known and revered in Chernigov as a priest of the strictest life, always ready to be there and with those to whom he was needed; he was considered a saint.

At the same time, I was in the district theological school and was a singer in the Yelets singing choir (the rector’s choir of the seminary), which lived in the Yelets Monastery in Chernigov.

As a nephew of Mother Menailova, I went to them every Sunday and feast day and spent the whole day with them until evening. The Menailov family consisted of a husband, wife, two sons, two daughters, and a niece, my cousin, Anna Emelianovna Kornukh, who lived with them temporarily. There was one servant, a tall, healthy girl, not in her first youth, a local native.

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Ponetaevka Monastery

 

...continued from part fourteen.

13. Strange Phenomena in a Russian Peasant's Hut

A good friend of mine, under whose command I served in Nizhny Novgorod, in the Chamber of State Property, P. L. Betling, now living in retirement on his estate in the Ardatovsky district, Nizhny Novgorod province, informed me in January 1889 of a remarkable incident that occurred quite unexpectedly in the village of Silino, located 15 versts from him. This incident caused some noise in the area, especially since the peasant family, an involuntary witness to these phenomena, was brought to criminal responsibility and almost paid for a matter that was incomprehensible to them.

The essence of the matter is that in the village of Silino, in the house of the former village elder Chekanov, from September 23 to November 1, 1888, strange phenomena began to occur: knocks were heard, things were thrown and - which is the main feature of the phenomenon - various voices were heard, which entered into conversation with members of the Chekanov family and strangers who came to inquire. It is remarkable that these phenomena, as in mediumistic séances, occurred in the dark, and were revealed only in the presence of Chekanov's ten-year-old daughter. There is no reason to assume deception here, for these phenomena soon became a source of trouble for the owner, and he did not know how to get rid of them until he accepted the advice given to him to resort to prayer, which we will discuss below.

Now let's move on to the details.

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...continued from part thirteen.

12. Stories About Phenomena on the Farm of A. V. Shchapov (Ural region) in 1870–1871

All this (set forth in the above-mentioned letter of Shchapov) was nothing to us, compared to what we had already endured, if only that had been the end of it; but imagine our horror that as soon as we moved to the farmstead in the first days of March, this force began to roam the house again from the very first step. And this time the phenomena occurred even without the presence of my wife. Thus, once, before evening, a large heavy sofa began to jump on all four legs before my eyes, and what's more, at the time when my old mother was lying on it, frightened, of course, in the most terrible way. This incident has a special significance for me because before that I seemed not to be able to check myself in many things that I had seen and heard, since there were strangers around all the time, and I could have been under someone else’s influence, although, I repeat, there were no doubts even then, but here, after all, the entire sofa was in full view, since it was daytime, there was no one and nothing under it, my old mother was lying on it completely calmly, in the room, except for me and the boy at the door in the hall, there was also no one, and meanwhile the five-six pood sofa, with the old woman lying on it, jumped up three or four times, as I said, on all its legs at once - it is clear that this is in no way a hallucination.