Heck

 Olka and I have been friends since school. Then they went to university, got married. Olya's parents are rich — when she got pregnant, they gave her a three-room apartment, so to speak, to kick into the future. A wonderful boy was born, named Vitaley in honor of Olga's grandfather, we affectionately called him Vitka. When the baby turned one year old, Olya and her husband moved into a renovated new apartment to start a happy life for a young family. But the baby immediately began to get sick there often, to be moody, to cry. Later, the tantrums reached such a point that the child somehow climbed over his crib and ran to his parents in the bedroom. Olya complained that now they had no peace from their son. He didn't want to stay in the room at all. Vitka was a completely normal child among his grandparents, but at home he seemed to be replaced.

One day, the mother gave the baby felt-tip pens and paper while she was cooking lunch. When I came to look, I was horrified: the son drew a perfectly clear scary devil sitting next to the bed, the whole sheet was covered with black lines mixed with yellow and red. Vitka couldn't really explain what he had drawn, he said the word "damn" and pointed under the bed.

So a year passed. The boy was still restless. At night, he consistently ran to his parents and lay down between them. He had already started talking pretty well and was constantly complaining about some devil in dark corners. Psychologists and psychiatrists unanimously argued that the boy sees negativity on TV and projects it into reality. Naturally, neither the experts nor the parents wanted to believe in mysticism. The mother was punished by any means to wean the child from the parental bed.

And so Olga took an extreme step. I read somewhere on the Internet that the child was put down and locked up, he cried, and then got tired and fell asleep. After talking to the child that there was no damn thing, that he had made it all up, she went out the door without turning off the night light and locked the boy.

It was quiet for 20 minutes, but then the boy started crying. Olga suffered, but somehow it is necessary to wean the child. With tears in her eyes, Olga sat and waited for the baby to calm down and fall asleep. But Vitka started shouting. Thinking that the neighbors would come running to swear, the mother opened the room. His son was sitting on the windowsill, pressed against the glass, his eyes were wet, and he was sobbing nervously. There were fresh bruises on his son's arms and legs. Stuttering, the child continued to say that a terrible devil was coming out from under the bed, which wanted to bite him and drag him along. The mother, exhausted by her son's phobias, ran to the doctors with the boy again tomorrow morning. Vitka saw nothing but cartoons, which were taken away by his son's parents. He also didn't look at the scary pictures. Where did this terrible fear come from in the child's head? The doctors were already throwing up their hands. Some believed that the parents were beating the baby, but he said that mom and dad had never beaten him, the neighbors described the family as positive — in general, there was no evidence except bruises. Mom and baby went to a sanatorium for a week to relax. There the boy was calm and slept on his own without shouting and scandals.

Upon arrival, everything resumed again. And then Olga couldn't stand it. On the advice of an elderly neighbor, she decided to consecrate the apartment. When the priest came, he immediately said that they lived in an unclean place, and that the boy should be taken care of.

It was a quiet evening after he left, and nothing foreshadowed trouble. Olga was preparing to meet her husband from a business trip, she put her son in her bedroom, and she was cooking. It was late when she discovered that there was not enough flour. She went out to the neighbors. As they were talking, suddenly there was an inhuman terrible scream, and immediately silence fell. Olya and her neighbors quickly returned to their apartment. What my mother saw left a deep impression on her whole life. Her dead little son was lying on the bed with his arms outstretched, his whole body covered with bites, his eyes rolled back in horror. Running up to the child, the mother discovered that the boy was not breathing.

The examination revealed multiple human bites on the baby's body. The investigation concluded that the parents were innocent of his death, and the woman had an alibi, because the boy was screaming right when she was talking to the neighbors from above.

Then Olya and her husband told me a big secret that they later found out about the apartment. Ten years ago, a man shot himself in it, who also suffered from nighttime meetings with the devil. Olya now believes in mysticism, she has not found any other explanation for the death of her child. They did not find any in the police either.

My friend says she still cries a lot for the baby. They sold the sinister apartment, and they sold it to people who didn't have children.

Forgotten children

 I'm going to Pskov to pick up my car from customs. It's a sunny summer day, not a cloud in the sky, and there's food, drinks, and a sleeping bag in the trunk. You may have to spend the night on the road. I stop for a smoke break, sleep for about thirty minutes, have sandwiches, and get back behind the wheel. Stable at 150 km/h. A smooth, straight highway.

I arrived at the customs office in the evening. Paperwork. Boring faces. A photocopier. Payment of the fee. Drivers of huge trucks. Smoke breaks, queues, waiting hours. Only after midnight – on the way back. The road is almost clear at this time. Oncoming drivers politely switch the high beam to the low beam. Suddenly, the headlights pick out a grandfather sitting on the side of the road with buckets, apparently selling something. I stop the car and get out. There's nothing in the buckets. Grandfather sits on a stool, giggles and looks somewhere into the forest, does not answer questions. I throw twenty rubles in a bucket, get behind the wheel, and drive on.

Fatigue affects, sleep takes its toll, I know that in this case it is impossible to continue moving. After a couple of kilometers, I carefully turn off the highway. A dirt road leads to a strange wasteland. There is a forest around the edges, and the playground is covered with asphalt with deep potholes. I park the car in the center, lay out the seats, spread out the sleeping bag. There's silence all around. For some reason, I don't want to turn off the lights in the car. I finish my cigarette, lie down, turn off the lamp and the headlights. I toss and turn for a few minutes, but then I fall into oblivion, a dream as dark as the forest around me.

I wake up to the sound of the car rocking and laughter. Children's laughter, cheerful and sinister at the same time. The windows had fogged up by then, and nothing was visible from the inside. I lean against the window, trying to see something. Suddenly, a child's palm hits the glass from the opposite side and slides down, leaving a clean trail behind it. I screamed with all my might and, without stopping shouting, I got behind the wheel. I frantically search for my keys, slap my pockets, but I'm nowhere to be found. The laughter doesn't stop, the car is rocking harder and harder, and the smell of burning has started to come from somewhere. It turns out that the key was in the ignition. I turn the key. The engine roars. I automatically turn on the headlights. There are children standing in front of the hood in a tight row. There are about fifteen of them. They were dressed in old, still Soviet-style, official pajamas. There are black spots on their faces and clothes. I'm putting it in reverse gear. I'm flying over potholes, engine whining. The children's figures are moving away, one of them waved her hand.

I hit the highway, gas up to the stop, rushing like crazy. It's only now that I'm noticing that it's raining heavily. A traffic police post appeared ahead. I drive up to him, almost crash into the wall, jump out of the car, rush to the surprised guard, confusedly tell him what happened. He laughs and doesn't believe it. Conducts an alcohol test. Then he takes me to his place, offers to rest. He pours tea, lights a cigarette, and asks where it happened. I'm telling you. He listens attentively, then darkens, exchanging glances with his partner. Then they tell me a story that there was a boarding school in that place, and in the late eighties there was a fire and it burned down, almost all the students died. Despite this, the police assure me that I just had a nightmare. I agree. Here, in the warmth, in the company of armed traffic cops, everything really seems like a dream. After a while, I thank them, pack up, and go out to the car. On the hood, almost already washed away by the rain, the prints of small children's hands stained with soot are visible.

A strange apartment

 This happened quite recently — about three years ago. At that time, I lived with my parents in a three-room apartment. My dog was constantly looking at something, as if he saw something that we didn't see. She was barking at something in the doorway and growling.

After some time, I spent the night at home alone. I watched a movie and went to bed. I hadn't had time to turn off the lights everywhere and get under the covers when someone knocked on the bathroom door three times (probably anyone knows exactly how knocking on every door in their apartment sounds). I quieted down — there was a deathly silence. I started to reassure myself that it was my imagination, but then there were three more knocks on the front door. I jumped out of bed, picked up my phone, called my boyfriend, and started explaining to him what had happened. He told me not to panic and calm down, reminded me that I had definitely locked the door when he left me that evening. He advised me to go and look through the peephole. I did just that — I walked down the hall to the front door, simultaneously turning on the lights everywhere. When I got to the door, the lights in the whole apartment went out. I was just dumbfounded by the shock. Through the peephole, it was visible that the light was on on the lower floor. I started crying into the phone and begging the guy to come to me. He said he was on his way out, but before he could finish the last sentence, my phone went dead. He couldn't discharge in any way, as he had been charging all day. I pulled myself together and resolutely went to the pantry to get candles.

She lit a candle, took it in her hand and went to her room and began to pray that everything would stop. And then I heard footsteps IN THE APARTMENT RIGHT DOWN THE HALL — slow at first, and then someone seemed to come running into my room and stop next to me. And then I just started vomiting out of fear — I ran to the bathroom and threw up. Then I heard the bell ring. I had no time to run to the door when suddenly there was a STRONG KNOCK ON THE FRONT DOOR again! I froze, but then I heard my boyfriend's voice outside the door. With a sigh of relief, I opened the door. At the same moment, the lights in the entire apartment turned on, and I heard the beep of the phone turning on in the room. The guy also saw how the lights were turned on all over the apartment, and looked at my face, pale as whitewash. We spent the whole night in the kitchen.

After this incident, everyone at home constantly began to hear someone walking around the apartment. Dishes were breaking, wires were flying through the air by themselves... Family relations became strained — we were always fighting. Soon we decided to move out of this apartment. They sold it, and new residents moved in.

Just a month later, the tenants called us early in the morning and mockingly asked if we had noticed anything unusual in the apartment. We answered in the negative with a shudder, and they told us that they had heard their baby daughter screaming and crying at night. We ran into the room, and there the child was hanging in the air, as if someone invisible was holding her by the throat. When the adults entered, the "hand" abruptly released its grip, and the girl fell to the floor and suffered a concussion...

What it was, and how these people are now, I do not know. But I am very glad that we left this apartment on time.

THE BASTARD

 Leah was the first woman I couldn't break

up with for a year and a half. No, it wasn't love, but insatiable madness.  My late grandmother

told me: this is sexual selection, what in fairy tales is called the other

half of the apple. The most, the most. You can't get away.

     Lia was probably really a sexual match for me.  I

was stupefied by it, more than by vodka.

     As an ardent Latin American, he wanted her at any time of the day or night.  And

this is despite the fact that she was already over 30, and she had two children from

different husbands. The latter, I mean the children, had almost no effect on Leah.

     It was so good to be with her... And how scary it became at the end.

     On that memorable day, I sat at my desk and hammered out paragraph after

paragraph of another piece of my scientific routine.  It was summer, and the

boys were playing soccer outside.  Pavlik and Vadim, Lisa's sons, went

swimming on the beach. Lia lived on Leningradskoe Highway, near the Vodny

Stadion metro station. I was in agony, writing jerky phrases, but my real thoughts

were far away. I'll sigh, then I'll think about something, but God knows what.

When I wake up, I find myself looking at the sofa and her body flashes before my eyes, melting

. The elevator door slams, I listen. I'm languishing...

finally she came. When I heard the key turning in the lock, I

rushed to the door. He picked her up in his arms and carried her to the sofa. She was laughing.  But

not for long. I had just unbuttoned my blouse when the doorbell rang,

banging so hard that it immediately became clear that trouble had happened.

     I opened the door: a mustachioed guy in a yellow T-shirt was standing behind it and holding

Vadim, Lia's youngest son, in his arms. Vadim sagged in his arms.  How

a wet rag, throwing back a deathly white face.

     Leah screamed, clapped her hand over her mouth, and was thrown against the wall.

     The guy stepped over the threshold and said softly:

     "Your boy drowned." They pumped him an artificial one, nothing helps...

the men wanted to run - to call an ambulance, but my brother says: it's nearby...

call.

     And he carried Vadim into the room.

     It was already strange: why hadn't an ambulance been called to the scene?

     The guy put Vadim on the floor. Pavlik is whining nearby. They were very different

: Pavlik was black-haired and broad-shouldered, and Vadim was light-haired and skinny.

     Everything is in front of my eyes, as if it just happened.

     Pavlik sobs:

     "Uncle, uncle, make him some more." He'll come alive.

     And Vadim is lying dead, in a gray T-shirt for some reason, with his mouth agape.

     The guy glared at me, at Leah - she rushed to the phone, shaking

all over, not getting her finger in the holes.

     The guy didn't say a word, got down on his knees and started doing

Vadim was given artificial respiration. But it doesn't do any good to be dead

.

     And Leah can't get through, she's on the verge of hysteria.  I her

He pushed me away, started typing himself - busy!

     Pavlik knelt down next to his brother, muttering something through his tears, unable

to make out anything. I can only hear it out of the corner of my ear:

     "Darling, darling, come alive...

darling, come alive."  He opened his eyes, closed his mouth, and stared at

the ceiling.

     And there was silence, like in a silent movie.

     A cold wave washed over me from the top of my head to my heels. The dead don't come back to life!

And his eyes were not alive, even though they looked.

     I was so scared that if I had the strength, I would have run away headlong.  But

I feel like I've been nailed to the spot. I stand there and repeat to myself:  "It

can't be, it can't be..." And it's so unusual and scary: like a dog, I smell

a dead man, but my mind refuses to believe.

     Lia and Pavlik rushed to hug Vadim, but I couldn

't control myself. Thank God they didn't even think about me.

     But he remembered: he looked at me with his dull glasses, like

a cobra, and turned away.

     Lia took Vadim to the nursery, I saw the guy off and sat down at the table.  He picked

up a pen, made a squiggle, and froze over the sheet. I sat and sorted it out

in my feelings. Well, I can smell it like a dog! But God, you can

't really believe that. During our lifetime, having 5 years of college under our belt.  Rave!

Rave! To believe this is to admit that it's time for me to go surrender to

Kashchenko.

     "I have to run away from here," I thought, and at that moment Leah came in.

     "They're asleep," she whispered, and snuggled up to me.

     I flinched.

      I

squinted at her hands and I thought

I saw an intangible, noticeable trace of dead flesh on my palms.

     Leah sank into a chair, leaning her head back helplessly.

     "Oh, my God! God! "What is it?" she whispered. - Why do I have to suffer so much, well,

now I have to lead him by the hand all my life. After all, he's going to go somewhere

now, and I'm going to go crazy...

"You need a drink," I said, getting up quickly.  - Otherwise

, hysteria will begin. There is no need to injure children after such a thing.

     I got a bottle of cognac from the bar and poured half a glass for Leah and a whole glass for myself.

     And from that day on, we began a kind of ghostly life.

     It will accumulate during the day and I was already making up my mind - I'll leave tomorrow,

pack my bags and quietly leave. And during the night, in Leah's arms, all resolve will melt away.

I can't! I can't!

     And I can't stay. At night, through closed doors, in the craziest

moment of passion, I feel his snake-like gaze. And what's terrible: under the gaze

of a dead man, my pleasure increased! I stabbed into Lia's body, raped her.

violently, he strangled her in his arms and all the time he thought: she is the mother of this

dead man, a werewolf. Ah! Ah-ah-ah! Ahhh!!!...

and what is he waiting for, I began to think.  I'm the only one who knows about him, so

waiting for him concerns me.  If he's waiting and watching, then I have

some kind of power that he can't overcome yet. while.  Because it really hurts

He's calm. It's like he knows what I'm going to do and when I'm going to fall under his

power.

     We must run! Run away! We must run!

     I CAN'T!..

     Days passed, a week passed. And the image of him from those

last days was imprinted forever in my memory - deathly pale, with dull eyes, always wearing a gray

T-shirt in which he was brought, as if it had grown to my body. And what's under it?

     As soon as I asked myself this question, I began to notice: his figure

It's changing. Day by day, but I'm the only one who notices it. The flesh flowed from his shoulders,

from his back to his lower back, gathering into a fat, loose fold.  Trembled when

walking like jelly. That's with his thinness! It seemed... no! That's

what really happened- he's decomposing alive.  His spine showed through

his T-shirt like the gnawed spine of carrion. But no one noticed it except

me.

     At night, I would sniff Leah before taking her. But she usually smelled

like perfume, body.

     How do I find out? How do I know for sure?! If I know for sure,

I will break these nets.

     And then the thought occurred to me: if Vadim is dead, then he

shouldn't be breathing! All you have to do is sneak up on him at night and listen.

     The parquet creaked softly under his bare feet, his heart was pounding in his throat,

sweat trickled down his sides from fear, but he no longer had the strength to live in

the unknown. He's not going to kill me after all. In front of my brother, in front of my mother.

There are people all around, thousands of people, thousands of apartments. Shout and they'll come running right away.

Vadim was lying on his left side, facing the wall.  The moon shone on his skinny

shoulder, his arm lying on top of the blanket.

     I stopped two steps away from the bed and listened. I can't hear you!  

Pavlik is snuffling very loudly. One more step, my legs refuse to walk.

     I lean over him. I hold my breath...

and suddenly his hands are trapped on the back of my head. The mouth grins

horribly - teeth, dazzlingly white in the moonlight,

grow unnaturally large in front of the eyes, stretching out with curved fangs.

     I screamed wildly. He broke away. With one mad leap, he dashed through the room and

A moment later, he was already sitting up in bed.

     Leah, blinking often, asked in a frightened voice,

"What happened?"

     "I had a nightmare," I say. - And I hear a quiet malicious laugh

from behind. And I'm thinking: He was the one laughing at my back when I escaped from his

arms. And immediately a foul stench hits me in the face. A spasm catches

my throat.

     The smell gets into my nostrils, clogs my lungs, and I run to the bathroom. I'm vomiting.

     After washing and rinsing my mouth, I come back and collapse on the bed.

     Pavlik looks in on us. For a moment, I tense up, thinking, you bastard

I came to enjoy the effect. But no, the one standing in the doorway

has dark hair. Leah gets up, waves at her son:

- Go, go. Nothing interesting. I need to sleep. Otherwise, you won't be able to get to school tomorrow

.

     He slams the door and cuddles up to me.  I lie there blankly, with

cold hands and feet, only my body is shaking all the time.

     For the first time, I did not respond to her caresses, for the first time I did not want to.  And finally

I decided: I'll leave tomorrow.

     But I couldn't leave in the morning. The boys didn't go to school in the morning.  Pavlik

He coughed, sneezed, and had a fever. Vadim also tried it on, and it

turned out to be elevated.

     I remember: he gives his mother a thermometer, and he grins at me out of the corner of his mouth.

     "37.5," says Leah.

     It's from a week-old corpse! But I couldn't get through it.

I have already developed a plan in my mind. I'm sending Leah to the pharmacy, and during this time

I'll pack my things and run away.  The boys are in one room, I'm in the other -

it's not difficult. I'll shout from the door:

- I won't be long! They're being called to work.

     That's all.

     But that was not the case. Leah did not go to the pharmacy, but called a doctor.  Sits,

He's waiting. The doctor is not coming. I tell her to go, I can manage here perfectly well alone.

She's not in any: how can I leave, and suddenly the doctor. He will tell me everything, I answer. And

she says, "men can rely on you," and waves her hand. I waved too. I'm waiting.  But the doctor

doesn't come and doesn't come.

     The boys dragged a sleeping bag into our room and sprawled on

the floor, fooling around. Leah sat, read, and occasionally shouted at her sons

so that they wouldn't get too mad, otherwise they would catch up with the fever.

     And then the bastard made a joke.  He came up and stood in front of me,

grinning nastily.

     "Go, go!"  I waved at him, and he got even closer.  I instinctively

put my hands out, and he turned his back and pressed it against my palms.

Just that fat crease above the small of my back. And I felt that his body

was soft under his T-shirt, like badly frozen jelly. My vision blurred.

     I came to my senses: They're messing with the bag again.

     I'm sitting here completely dazed. That's when it all happened.

     Vadim pinned Pavlik under him and, biting into his throat, pulled

him sideways like a wolf. Blood gushed from the slit throat.  Face

the corpse was blackened: only the eyes were white on it and the teeth glistened pink with

blood. The nails stretched out like yellow claws, and the little bastard began to tear

his brother's chest with them, howling. I don't remember anything else. Then everything is from hearsay.

     It turns out that a doctor rang the doorbell seconds later.   He heard

an inhuman howl, wild heart-rending screams, and ran after the police.

     The door was broken down and two teenage corpses were found in the apartment. One hasn't

had time to cool down yet, the other was a long time ago, about two weeks old.  

I was found unconscious near the sofa, covered in blood. The main thing -

I also had blood on my lips. And in the armchair, a crazy woman was sitting and howling, swinging from

side to side like a pendulum.

     I have a lot of time, and I often wonder about two unsolvable

mysteries: where did Pavlik's blood come from on my lips, and how did Vadim become

a ghoul, because for this it is necessary that another ghoul bite through his throat and drink his blood

. It's not transmitted that easily, it's not the flu, it's two.

     Maybe I'll get out of here someday, maybe not. What if I'm a ghoul now,

too, and I'm just hiding and waiting to be released?  Why bite

Idiots? They're already good: whispering, making signs in the air,

looking around. Those who are already attached to the invisible world, see it half-blindly, it

torments them already now.

     And who am I? A lurking creature?..

     They say I'm completely gray-haired. I don't know if it's true.  I don't have a mirror.

My hands are shaking-yes, I can see that.  Sometimes I whisper out loud, make faces,

look around, and when I remember everything, I whine in fear.  Then they come and

calm me down with an injection. And I'm dreaming, blissful. The only time I

'm human.

Leningrad metro

 The metro is one of the fastest ways to get to the other side of the city. There is no need to stand in traffic jams, it is enough to orient yourself in which direction to move and make the right transfers if necessary. Very convenient mode of transportation.

At the same time, the subway is a place with which many legends are associated. Ghost trains, mysterious underground inhabitants, changing mothballed tunnels, moaning sounds, and the disappearance of people without a trace – all this can be found in urban legends related to the subway.

In 1979 and 1982, Leningrad residents twice encountered something inexplicable while traveling on the subway. Both cases were recorded in the tunnel between the stations Nevsky Prospekt and Mira Square (today Sennaya Square).

On March 3, 1979, at 18:55 local time, passengers heard a strange howl. No one could figure out what was going on until they peered through the train windows. Distorted faces could be seen against the background of the reflections on the glass. The grimaces depicted horror and suffering. The train was moving, but the terrible vision did not disappear.

Soviet people were inherently well-educated and not particularly superstitious people, but what they saw and heard left a serious imprint. At the same time, rumors began to spread that these were souls from the Underworld or disturbed ghosts.

Particularly impressionable women switched to ground transportation after the incident. In total, about 80 people in several carriages witnessed the incident. The incident was quickly forgotten and, I believe, if it had not been repeated in 1982, it would not have been remembered.

Summer of 1982. June 16 – white nights, tourist season. The subway was working as usual, and nothing foreshadowed trouble. But it did happen. At 16:30 or so, a train braked sharply between Nevsky Prospekt and Mira Square stations. The driver later said that blurred human faces began to cover his entire view.

From what he saw, he literally lost his concentration and understanding of what he was doing. The second driver also saw everything that was happening, but he had more experience and self-control. He took control of the train and, upon reaching the station, announced an unforeseen situation.

In addition to the drivers, strange screaming faces, distorted as if made of smoke, were seen by about 40 people in the first three carriages. The situation almost ended in tragedy, so this time it was impossible to turn a blind eye to what had happened.

A group of Soviet specialists went to study the subway tunnels. The main reason is the release of underground gases that can affect perception. But it has not been confirmed. Unfortunately, the so-called "ghostbusters" were not allowed to participate in the study.

These are specialists who, already in those years, studied cases of poltergeists and ghosts, measured levels of negative energy, and generally investigated such phenomena. Since they were not allowed to take, let's say, field measurements, we can only assume what exactly happened in 1979 and 1982.

Nevertheless, they tried to study the case and even came to some conclusions. A survey of eyewitnesses suggested that gas really had nothing to do with it. The train was moving, and physically neither the driver nor the passengers could receive a dose that would lead to such consequences. A group of Leningrad and Moscow researchers came to the conclusion that we are talking about a geopathogenic zone.

There is such a thing as dormant anomalies. They rarely wake up, and they may be active at all once every few centuries. For example, a timeline in the Mediterranean Sea showing naval battles at the dawn of our era. He is seen once every 60-70 years. And what exactly is the cause of the phenomenon is unknown. Maybe there is a sleeping anomaly in the Leningrad metro, which it is simply impossible to identify without certain conditions when it "wakes up".

However, most people do not take such stories seriously, considering them urban tales, legends and horror stories. Let's be honest, if I took the subway every day and hadn't seen anything like this in decades, I would also be skeptical. But since there are so-called "dormant anomalies," nothing can be ruled out.

Night metro

 My father-in-law told me this story. He stayed with friends one day for some reason. It was late at night, but the subway was still running. My father-in-law was not far from Belorusskaya station and decided to take the subway to get home faster (although it was only a short drive to the avenue). When I got down, I was surprised that the station was empty at all. Usually there's always someone at the station, at least some kind of drunk, but here it was empty at all. I stood alone, and soon the train arrived. The father—in-law just wanted to enter, as he felt something was wrong. He says it felt cold from inside. He took a closer look — and the passengers, it turned out, were all looking at him. The faces are frozen, as if in grimaces, the eyes are glassy. The father—in-law was completely scared when he saw his dead friend inside, and he nodded to him in greeting, saying, come in. He took a closer look and noticed his dead wife in the crowd, who waved at him. My father-in-law says he ran screaming from the station. I believe him because I saw how his body hair stood on end when he told me this.

Mobile phone store

 At that time, I was a student at a Moscow university, and, naturally, like many students, I had to get a job in order to earn extra money. For three weeks, I was looking for a job through advertisements and constantly noticed that girls were needed in one prestigious mobile phone salon. Then I thought that there must be very high selection criteria, since they couldn't find anyone in almost a month. At the end of July 2007, I finally decided to go there for an interview. Imagine my surprise when the HR department immediately offered me a job with a one-week probation period. At the same time, the head of the department immediately said: "Don't be scared, no matter what happens." At that time, I didn't attach any importance to these words, I thought it was moral support for a worried intern. But how wrong I was…

On the very first day, I was introduced to the work schedule and my workplace. It was a dusty job — I had to come in after lunch to replace the senior operator of the salon, arrange rooms, look after the windows with cell phones, accept requests from subscribers to resolve technical issues. The salon itself was small, with only three rooms. The furthest room was a storage room with a single door and no windows. The second room is the main operating room and the third room is the security room.

For the first couple of weeks, I worked quite diligently and smoothly, thinking that I was lucky like no one else. However, soon inexplicable things began to happen in the building. Coming to work early one morning (it was a day off, and I wasn't studying), I started turning on the lights in all the rooms and was a little surprised that the door to the warehouse was wide open, while I clearly remembered that I had closed everything the previous day before leaving.

Soon, customers poured into the salon, and I forgot about this incident. By lunchtime, a subscriber came who needed a replacement SIM card. I immediately went to the warehouse to get a duplicate of the plastic... and fell into a stupor when I saw the door slam shut in front of me. A draft? This couldn't be happening. I was scared, but overcoming my fear, I still entered the room for some reason. And then it all started. Banners with the company's logo hanging on the walls began to sway, and flyers began to fly out of the boxes, as if under the pressure of a geyser. I ran screaming into the hall. Cold and terror gripped his body. When I returned to the room with the guard, I looked like a complete fool — the warehouse room was in perfect order, as if nothing had happened.

A week passed, during which I had to experience all the bullying of the poltergeist. On the last day of my internship, I was wiping the display cases before leaving when a small child's palm print appeared on the worn glass in front of my eyes. I quickly closed everything and went home. The next morning, I demanded an explanation from my boss, who arrived to inform me that they were hiring me at the end of the probation period.

The story he told surprised me very much. The fact is that four years ago there was a slot machine salon in the building of the communication salon. One evening, a gambler came here with his son to pass a coin, so to speak. Fortune smiled on him, and he won a huge amount of exchange tokens. There were so many of them that one of them fell out of the stand and rolled under the slot machine. The eight-year-old son reached out to get a coin and, apparently, accidentally touched the pallet bare wires. The child died.

I no longer wanted to stay at my workplace, and I refused the offer of my superiors. Today I work for another company, but every morning I pass by this salon. In three years, in my memory, six organizations have changed in this building. I do not know how things are going there now. But I will never forget what I experienced.

My friend Anechka

 It happened when I was about 8 years old, probably. I grew up as an ordinary child in an ordinary Soviet family. Every summer, I, a pale urban wretch, was sent to my father's grandmother in the countryside. I didn't really like going there, there was no company for me there — all the village guys were much older, and I wasn't interested in my peers myself. As a result, I just spent the whole summer hanging around the yard, helping my great—grandmother, a strong, wiry old woman, drinking fresh milk and counting the days until my parents arrived.

In early August, a monster appeared on our property. Uncle Seryozha, the neighbor on the right, dragged him and put him not far from the fence. I call the old Soviet refrigerator "ZIL" a monster, it's so huge, with a snap-on door. It was in pretty decent condition, though the latch on the door was broken. Why my grandmother needed it, I can't imagine, maybe she was going to grow seedlings in it, who knows? I was wary of going around the refrigerator, because grandma had strictly ordered me not to get in or hide in it, and generally stay away from it. Two days later, I stopped paying attention to this bandura, because it was completely uninteresting, and I just got a girlfriend.

Her name was Anechka, a pretty little girl with blonde pigtails, dressed in a plaid sundress. I noticed her from the window when she was standing by the fence and looking at our plot. Naturally, I immediately went out to get acquainted, hoping that the girl, like me, was brought here for the summer and she was bored alone. And so it was. Anya was brought from the city by her parents, she didn't know anyone here and she was lonely. I was happy, I called her into the house, but Anya refused, saying that her grandmother did not allow her to visit strangers and offered to play near the fence. I took out my dolls, cups and plates, and we started playing. Grandma looked out of the window several times, but when she saw us at the fence, she hid in the house again. I liked Anechka very much; I hoped that she would become friends with me and we would spend the rest of the summer together. When it got dark, Anya abruptly got up and said that it was time for her to go home, and she would come back to me tomorrow.

That night I didn't sleep well, for some reason it was hard for me to breathe, I turned around and pulled off the blanket. I got up in the morning sluggish and sleepy, but the thought of Anya made me perk up. I ran out into the yard. She was already waiting for me at the fence, again dressed in a plaid sundress. We played until lunch, then Grandma called me to eat. I was surprised why she didn't invite Anya — in the village it was customary to invite guests to the same table with the hosts, but Anya waved her off and said she would come tomorrow.

The next day we played again, I told Anechka about my parents and school friends, and she sat sad and depressed. I asked her what was the matter, and she told me that her parents quarrel all the time, dad offends mom, and Anya always hides during their quarrels. She doesn't have any girlfriends, and she's very sad and scared. When I was little, I almost burst into tears from her story, hugged her and said that I would always be friends with her, and if mom and dad would let us, we would take her home and live like sisters.

Anechka looked at me strangely and asked if I really wanted to be friends with her forever. I fervently began to convince her that she was my best friend, and I would always be there for her. She smiled and offered to play hide-and-seek. It fell to me to drive. I started counting to ten, closing my eyes. There was a noise, a thud, and then silence. I opened my eyes and went to look for Anya. There's nowhere to hide on our property, except in the bushes or near the chicken coop. Anya wasn't there. I was wandering around the site in confusion, and then my gaze fell on the refrigerator. "Aha!" I thought. That's why I heard a noise — it was the refrigerator door opening, and a thud — the door slammed shut. I hurried to the ZIL, but suddenly my grandmother's warnings came back to me: do not climb inside! I hesitated by the door and timidly pulled the handle towards me. The refrigerator opened with difficulty. I pulled harder, opened it and saw Anya. I reached out to lure her out when she grabbed me and yanked me towards her. The refrigerator door slammed shut, and I was in the dark. I screamed and started banging on the door, but it wouldn't open. I started crying loudly, then I felt movement near me and turned around...

My grandmother found me. She came out to invite me to dinner and saw that the yard was empty. Knowing that I would not leave without permission, she searched all the courtyard buildings and froze when she realized that I could only be in one place. They pulled me out almost suffocated, unconscious, because those old refrigerators couldn't be opened from the inside, and they didn't let air in. If Grandma had come out half an hour later, they wouldn't have saved me...

At the hospital, when I was recovering, I told them how it was. I told her about Anya, how she dragged me inside the refrigerator. Grandma just shook her head in disbelief and told her parents that there was no girl on our property, all these days I was playing by the fence alone. My parents decided that all my stories were just hallucinations from oxygen starvation.

But these are not hallucinations. I remember Anya, even though it's been almost 20 years. I remember her face there, in the darkness of the refrigerator, her eyes bulging, her mouth wide open, her face blue from suffocation. I remember that I promised to always be friends with her and be by her side. I remember.

Car Dealership

 I work in an ordinary Moscow car dealership, of which there are more than two hundred in the capital. There is nothing particularly remarkable about it, the salon is like a two—story glasshouse with lighting and signage. However, it is not located somewhere in the center, but somehow on the outskirts, on the outskirts of the city. On one side is an oil products factory, on the other is a prison, and there is only one road passing by. The salon has been open for six months, and there are always a lot of people during the day — the staff is bustling, customers are pacing. After 8 p.m., the salon empties abruptly, although sometimes it happens that customers stay until midnight when they take a long time to process the documents for the car, but this rarely happens.

I was really late a couple of weeks ago. While I was doing my quarterly report, I didn't notice how night had fallen. I looked at my watch, and it was after midnight. It's not surprising that the guards didn't notice me: our office is on the second floor in the farthest corner, with a magnetic key. The guards don't even approach him when they go around, and we never turn off the light in the office. So, I saw the time and got ready to go home, deciding that I still had to go to the bathroom before going out, because it would take at least an hour to get home... I went downstairs, did all my chores, and came out of the bathroom, and then the next door opened and a man came out. I glanced at it briefly, but I thought to myself that, apparently, the design was too late. And he happily declares to me like this: "Oh, and I thought no one would notice me and let me out of here! Girl, won't you walk me out?" I forced a smile, said something like, "Well, yes, of course," and walked away, all in my own thoughts, the guy was wandering next to me.

We walked through the entire salon, approached the guard, and I said to him, "Well, will you open the door for us?" He jumped up, opened the door, the guy muttered to me, "Thank you!" and got out in front of me. The guard, a young boy, looks at me, smiles and asks: "Are you going to your place too?" I did not pay attention to this remark. I went out over the fence, stood at the bus stop, looked in one direction — not a soul, in the other — not a soul... I was surprised, I think, why did this guy leave so quickly? About ten minutes later, she caught a taxi and left.

There would be nothing surprising in this story if there wasn't a single "but".

I got into a tangle with that security guard guy a couple of days later, and he blurted out something like, "You've got a lot of ego, take it out on yourself!" I didn't understand, I asked him to explain, and he said to me, "Well, when you were late from work, you asked me to open the door for you (that is, "us")." I explain that, they say, to me and to the man-client, and he just twirled his finger at his temple.…

A couple of days later, it turned out that someone had scratched the car in the hall that day. The head of security and I sat down to watch the video from all the cameras, who left when, who went where… How horrified I was when I saw myself walking out of the salon alone that night! I broke out in a cold sweat. The head of security saw it, let's ask what and how. I was impressed and told him how it was, and he replied, "Well, now I understand what the guys were telling me. Everyone says that at night someone seems to walk around the salon, slaps his feet, goes to the first post (exit from the salon), stands, stands, and goes back towards the toilets. Why do you think we had such a turnover? Everyone who was smarter quickly left, there were no living guests, and this one was constantly prowling at night. And after a week, they say, everything stopped, as if someone had released him..."

Wardrobe

 I am a seventeen-year-old girl who dropped out of school in the ninth grade and moved to live separately. Personally, I think it's humiliating to sit on your parents' necks at that age, and it's time to start building your own life. I'm renting an apartment from my mom's friend. It's not much of an apartment, but because of the ridiculous price the landlady asked, I agreed without hesitation. But in vain.

The apartment is one-room, small. And because of the huge cabinet with glass doors standing in the room, it generally seems tiny, there is nowhere to turn around. But I'm not complaining, I'm rarely at home. Either at college or at work, because you need to pay for accommodation somehow. I wake up and walk the dog, then go to college, either to work part—time, or go home, walk the dog, and sleep. And so it is every day.

From the moment I moved in, the landlady asked me not to touch the closet, not to put things there, supposedly she would take him away soon, he was here temporarily. I've been living in this apartment for three months now, and she hasn't taken out the closet in all these three months. Although he didn't bother me, there was a place to put things; it was worth it, let it be. I can't complain at all, for such a ridiculous price.

That's what I thought before. Until Hachi (that's my dog's name) started looking at this closet strangely. Once he even watched, watched, and then jumped back as if scalded, barking at the same time. I just laughed, but I didn't pay attention.

One day I was so exhausted that I came in and went straight to bed. I woke up at about three in the morning to a strange noise. The apartment is on the second floor, so the idea of a thief came into my head. Unlikely, but quite real, especially since I couldn't find any other decent explanation at the time. I was about to get out of bed when my gaze fell on the closet, which was right in front of me. Oh my god.. I still clearly remember how a chill ran down my back, and there must have been a grimace of horror on my face. There were two bloody handprints on the cabinet doors, and a terrible, most terrible face looked right at me, absolutely white, without hair, as if clean-shaven, with red eye sockets without pupils and a wide-open toothless mouth. At the same time, it "slapped" the glass with its bloody palms, leaving traces on it.

I jumped out of bed, and the next second I was outside. As it is, in a nightgown. What was that?! Where can I find an explanation for this?! As I write this, I recall the events in detail, and my hands are shaking involuntarily. I'm still scared.

I returned to the apartment only the next day, when it was already light and there were people outside. I called the landlady, begging her to take this closet, that I would pay extra if only it would be taken away from here. She asked me in a worried voice what had happened, but in order not to sound sick in the head, I mumbled some nonsense. It seems that she suspected something, because she didn't find out anything, even though I didn't answer anything intelligible. On the same day, in the evening, this cabinet was taken away.

Hachi's strange glances at the place where the cupboard stood stopped. His barking into the void and his strange behavior stopped. I still can't figure out what happened, but I don't want to think about it too often.