A case study from a psychologist's practiceAt the end of April, a colleague and I were sent to a refresher course, and we had psychology classes taught by practicing specialists

. One of them, let's call him Valery Vasilyevich, told me a story from his practice.

I once had a patient, Marina, a girl of about 15 or 16, a failed suicide attempt. She tried to hang herself, like her mother. Her mother had been holding her by the collar, grieving over her failed love life, then fell ill, and unwilling to solve her problems, so she took her own life. My daughter came home from school to an unpleasant surprise. Of course, it was stressful, a shock to a child's psyche. She couldn't recover for a long time, attempted suicide, and was brought to me.

Therapy helped, and Marina began to return to life, but I don't take credit for this—her youth took its toll. The girl started walking with her friends through abandoned houses and cemeteries. It somehow calmed her down, perhaps even reconciled her with the thought of her loved one's death.

And then, during one session, she hands me her cell phone, as if to say, "Look, that's me and my friends at an old holiday home last weekend." The photo shows her, two kids, and a dark silhouette of a woman on the threshold of a ruined building. "Who's that with you?" I ask. "Mom," Marina smiles sadly.

It turns out her mother started coming almost immediately after the funeral, which is what drove her daughter to suicide. After she was discharged, her grandmother took her in, and with the help of psychotherapy, the girl pulled herself out of depression. But from time to time, her mother appears next to her, no matter where Marina is. And in the apartment, people started bumping into her almost every day. The hanged woman looked just like she did in life; she simply walked silently through the rooms, suddenly appearing and just as suddenly disappearing.

 The apartment was rented to a young family, and the wife, with a twitching eye, moved out a week later to live with her parents. But the husband reacted calmly to the ghost, saying, "Well, let it wander around, what can she do?"

As a psychologist, I don't really believe in all this, but since they're seeing things... they're so fed up with their everyday lives that they're making up all sorts of poltergeist stories. Even though the husband seems sane.

When we asked what happened to them next, Valery Vasilyevich dismissed it:

"That's none of my business." I advised them to see a priest, let him sort it out. My job is to help someone, and that's what I did, and then they'll figure it out on their own."