An Apartment in a Yakut Settlement

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Before moving to Yakutsk, I lived in a small settlement, in a three-room apartment in a relatively new stone building. I emphasize: a *stone* building, not a wooden one—meaning strange sounds and voices couldn’t simply “settle” into its walls the way they supposedly do in wooden houses.

The things that happened there weren’t outright terrifying, but they were deeply unsettling and made you feel uncomfortable.

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### Incident One

I was in the fourth grade and slept in the same bed with my mother because she was very ill. At night she suffered from nightmares, and my role was to be her “alarm clock,” waking her up, since she rarely came out of those nightmares on her own. That night everything was as usual: Mom was asleep, and so was I. But suddenly I woke up. It felt as if I had been yanked out of some space where time didn’t exist—it was such a strange sensation. It was nothing like ordinary drowsy awakening.

As soon as I opened my eyes, I involuntarily looked toward the hallway (my parents’ room opened directly onto the corridor). It was as if something was pulling my gaze there. It was winter, very dark, and in that pitch-black darkness I saw eyes staring at my mother and me—bright red, narrow, without pupils, just solid red eyes. Only eyes—no body or silhouette at all. The moment I looked at them, they vanished.

I was seized by chills. Trying to calm myself, convincing myself it had only been my imagination, I pressed my forehead against my mother’s arm and closed my eyes, intending to fall asleep. My mind simply refused to accept what I had seen. But the moment I closed my eyes, something hit me on the forehead, as if someone had thrown a small ball at me. For some reason I immediately understood it was a small, round object. My heart nearly jumped out of my chest. What’s more, the object bounced off me, and I expected to hear it hit the floor—but nothing happened. No sound, no rustle. Absolute silence.

How I managed to calm down and even fall asleep after that—I don’t know. If something like that happened to me now, I’d scream the whole house awake.

Later, I fell and hit the very same side of my forehead where that object had struck me. I got a concussion and increased intracranial pressure, which later affected my eyesight—I was diagnosed with progressive second-degree myopia. My vision has worsened year after year.

I have no idea what that was, and honestly, I don’t really want to know. Later, by the way, I saw those eyes one more time—this time they were directly above our bed.

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### Incident Two

This one wasn’t as scary as the first (thank God). I loved listening to rock music and, when my parents were away, played it at full volume through my speakers (thankfully, the walls were thick). One evening, as usual, I turned on some punk rock—and literally a second later I heard a heavy, soul-crushing sigh very close to my room.

At first I didn’t pay attention, but the second sigh made me uneasy: I was home alone. I turned the music off and listened—silence. Fine, I turned it back on—and again, someone sighed. I turned it off once more and checked the front door—maybe I’d forgotten to lock it and some neighbor was sighing in the hallway? But no: the door was locked, and there was no one outside.

Feeling uneasy, I went back and turned the music on again, purely as an experiment. And once again, someone started sighing. That’s when I truly got scared. I turned off not only the music but also the computer, turned on the light, and started reading a book. After that, I didn’t risk playing loud music anymore.

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### Incident Three

I increasingly felt that something was wrong in the apartment. In my peripheral vision, I saw black figures that disappeared the moment I tried to look directly at them. Once, again while I was home alone, I was cleaning my room and listening to music with headphones when I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, something small and black dart behind my chair and hide there. I quickly turned my head—nothing was there. And this happened almost every week: something running, something flying past, sometimes even a black shadow standing still…

Later I learned that people most often see otherworldly beings with their peripheral vision.

I also had a habit of waking up at five in the morning and lying awake until dawn. One morning, waking up as usual by my internal clock, I heard the creak of a chair from the kitchen—the kind of sound you hear when furniture is dragged across the floor. I was surprised and thought: why are my parents up so early? In the morning I asked them what they’d been doing in the kitchen at five a.m., and they both insisted they were asleep and hadn’t gone near the kitchen. The only thought I had was: “Well, that’s strange.”

My friend and I heard similar sounds when she stayed over—once, while we were laughing and joking loudly, we suddenly heard the clinking of dishes from the kitchen.

My brother heard things too. Once our five-year-old sister was visiting, and we foolishly decided to scare her, saying that a babayka (a kind of boogeyman) would come and take her away. We even started knocking on the door, saying, “Hear that? That’s him knocking.” The child, of course, burst into tears, and we stopped our stupid prank—when suddenly someone really knocked on the door.

My God, I’ve never run so fast in my life. My brother, my sister, and I vanished in an instant—we bolted onto the balcony and locked ourselves in there, because we knew for sure that no one else was in the apartment (we were all in the living room at that moment).

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### Incident Four

The fourth incident involved a spirit séance. Many people know the fortune-telling ritual with a saucer. You take a shallow plate without a pattern, blacken its bottom with soot, draw an arrow, light candles, and so on. Many claim that physics explains why the plate moves. That’s complete nonsense.

My friend and I decided to try it out of pure curiosity. We had no soot, matches, or candles. Instead, we used eyeshadow to blacken the bottom of the plate (it even had a gold rim), drew an arrow with a pencil, and used our mobile phones as candles by turning the screen brightness up to maximum.

Now imagine our horror when the plate actually started moving on its own—without any assistance. At first I thought my friend was messing with me and asked her to stop. She took her finger away, and with wild fear I realized that no one was joking—the fortune-telling was real. The plate kept moving by itself.

We should also mention the mistakes we made: the ritual was supposed to involve an odd number of participants (there were only two of us); in our haste we forgot to write out the Yakut alphabet, and one spirit—a long-dead Yakut—angrily searched for Yakut letters; such séances are traditionally held only during the Tangha period (Yuletide); and participants are not supposed to touch the plate. And yet, spirits reliably came when we called them and spoke to us.

We got carried away and completely lost our sense of caution, until eventually spirits we hadn’t called at all began to appear.

With great difficulty we said goodbye to them and threw the cursed items into a ditch (except for our phones). For the next two or three days, it felt as if dark shadows were watching us. I still can’t forget that reckless act we committed out of boredom and curiosity—especially since it was my idea.

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### Incident Five

In that house—and generally throughout the time I lived in that settlement—I was plagued almost every night by strange, frightening dreams. I’ll give a few examples.

When I was eight, my grandmother died. A year or two later she began appearing in my dreams often, asking me to go with her or let her stay with me. For some reason, I absolutely refused to go with her, but often allowed her to stay. This continued until one of our relatives committed suicide due to a serious illness. On the night of his death, I dreamed that my grandmother was fussing at the stove, frying pancakes. My old dog, Sokol, was beside me.

“Hurry up, dear granddaughter, we’re having guests today!” my grandmother said.

Why I should hurry and what exactly I should do, I never understood. I remember running around carrying out her requests, with Sokol nearby.

The next day I learned that Sokol had died a year earlier. After that, my grandmother stopped appearing in my dreams so often—and stopped calling me to go with her.

Another time I dreamed that I and a friend had robbed someone’s house. The police quickly caught up with us, and we tried to escape. For some reason I ran home, locked the door, and begged my father not to turn me in. He lazily brushed me off, saying it was my problem. (Strange, because in real life my father cares deeply about me.) Then furious knocking sounded at the door. I ran to it and peeked through the peephole—the entire stairwell was full of police officers. I remember thinking in terror: “Good Lord, have I really committed so many crimes?!”

I ran to the window, intending to jump out, but as soon as I opened it I realized it was useless: outside there was total darkness and a raging, icy blizzard. While I was trying to decide what to do, the police broke down the door and arrested me. Later I learned that my accomplice had also been caught, and we were sentenced to execution. The last thing I remember was the black muzzles of rifles and deafening shots…

That same morning I found out that my classmate had been arrested. Together with a friend, he had robbed a house, carrying things out through the window, and the owner had caught them in the act and called the police. Since my classmate already had a history of violent behavior and other offenses, everything was held against him. He received a long sentence and is still serving it.

And of course, it couldn’t all happen without evil spirits. Whenever I saw a tall black figure in my dreams (I don’t know if it can even be called a man—it looked more like a shadow), troubles followed in real life: quarrels, illnesses, misfortune.

I hope you understand why I dislike my settlement and that apartment. After moving to Yakutsk, I think I experienced peaceful, deep sleep for the first time in my life—without fear of seeing some new horror in my dreams. Since moving, the visions and strange dreams have stopped. But whenever I go back to the settlement, everything starts again. I also noticed that my health improved in the city, whereas in the settlement I often stayed home with terrible headaches due to intracranial pressure. At times I slept for two or three days straight, waking only to eat and use the bathroom.

I truly hope that here everything will be good and calm.