Ghostly Communication: Tales from the RuNet
Ghost stories – one of the little things that unites every culture, but sometimes the language barrier keeps us from hearing each other’s stories. Which is a shame, because that sort of thing can be fun. The stories brought to you here today have been culled from the part of the Interwebs that speaks Russian, the RuNet, and the theme for today is communication from the dead. Because it’s always good to know how to communicate, whatever language you speak.
These stories are all purportedly true, little blips of strange in otherwise ordinary lives, and have been kept as true to the originals as possible.
Of Telephones and Dreams
This happened at the beginning of January 2009. My 17-year-old daughter drove to the next district over with her girlfriends to celebrate the New Year with friends. At three in the morning, they were taking the driver’s sister home and got into an accident. My daughter and two other girls were killed. My daughter died at the scene, while her friends passed in the emergency room of the hospital. Thus, she was taken to the local morgue, and the other girls ended up in the hospital morgue. When one of the deceased was brought home, I went to pay my respects. A little before that, my daughter’s phone had been returned to me by an investigator. I put it in the pocket of a coat and hung it in the closet at home. I took my own phone with me.
My phone went off during the wake, and I had to step into the hallway. When I got out my phone, it turned out that the call was coming from my daughter’s number. But her telephone was in a jacket at my house, and she herself was still in the morgue. I answered the call, but I wasn’t able to make anything out clearly due to crackling and noise on the line. Then the call dropped. I still think – what did my daughter want to say to me?
That same year on the Pentecost, I had a dream in which I was heading in the door at home, and in the foyer is my daughter. I hug her, naturally, and ask her to tell me how things are ‘there.’ She told me a lot, but I didn’t remember everything in the morning. I only remembered one thing she said, that they’d have a newcomer soon. I asked who. “Sergei,” my daughter answered. She also said that he’d hang himself. Imagine my surprise when a 16-year-old boy in our neighborhood named Sergei hung himself two weeks later. Even more surprising, he’s buried behind my daughter’s grave. That means the dead already know beforehand what a person will do with themselves… It should also be said that my daughter bought herself a cheerful outfit for her final New Year, but prior to leaving, she dressed all in black, as if she was preparing for death.
Whistle from the Train
My grandmother and grandfather lived together almost sixty years. This was a lifelong love, if not without some skeletons in the closet. But Grandma loved Grandpa to no end, and he loved her in turn. They were a really tight-knit pair, despite all the hardships they had to endure.
But one black day, misfortune struck, and Grandpa died. He passed suddenly, quickly, and with ease. A blood clot broke off, and Grandpa left this world in practically half an hour, maybe even less. What this was like for my grandmother, I can’t, of course, even describe. But she survived the loss; she was pretty tough, my grandmother. But nevertheless, she missed him like crazy, and she couldn’t live without Grandpa, like a flower can’t live without water. Therefore, she went to the cemetery as if it were her job, first every other day, then every couple days, and then faithfully no less than at least once a week, as her health allowed.
Then she was able to go less and less. But every time she was there, she would tell me afterward that she heard a train whistle greeting her.
Whenever she went, at different times, she would hear a single, distant train whistle. Not so far from the cemetery, there were, indeed, train tracks, so this was perfectly reasonable. But there was just one thing – there was always just the one whistle, no matter how long she sat by his graveside. I never went with her, so I wasn’t able to check this out myself, but I thought maybe she was just imagining things.
But then my grandmother passed on. And then one day, I go there, to the cemetery, to visit them both. I greeted them, as it happens. And suddenly I hear in response the far-off whistle of a train – twice. Grandma and Grandpa were saying hello to me.
Warning from a Dead Man
A young man turned up in our friend group, brought around by a friend of ours. We got to know him some, and we all went out together into nature some. He was always on his own. We weren’t particularly friends, but he came over some.
I have a dream, my husband’s grandfather. He had already died by this time. He comes up to me, and he was 208 centimeters tall [6’8”], descended from Cossacks, and had a build and impressive physical appearance right up to old age, and he lays hold of me underneath my armpits and lifts me up to eye level. He says –
“This fellow is a bad person! Dangerous! Take care!”
After that, he lets me down, and I land on the floor, waking up immediately. I asked to have this young man checked out; I had an acquaintance in the federal sector. I met with him after, and he thanked me for the information on this young man and said that I turned to him in time, but who this guy was and what exactly was up, he didn’t say.
Farewell, Grandpa
I was five years old, and I had a dream that I was playing hide-and-seek with my grandfather. Little children usually hide how? With their head behind the curtains and their rear end sticking out. I hid behind the door in the kid’s room. The kid’s room is right across from the front door to the apartment. And I’m standing and waiting for my grandfather, waiting for him to find me. My grandfather comes up to me without his usual ‘boo!’ He looks at the front door, which suddenly opens. It was dark there, with no light or hallway, and he says that it’s time for him to go and he loves me very much and that I should wait for him. He’ll always be there and will find the opportunity to return! When I woke up, I was told that my grandfather had died in the night. The feeling I got from his promise was so strong that I waited for him for many years.
Dream Notification
A dream, when I was in the eleventh grade. The forest. Snow up to my knees. A motley sleigh in a glade like in a painting. Someone is sitting in the sleigh, but due to the bright light that is shining from this someone, it’s impossible to make him out. A male voice asks –
“How do you feel about Grandma Liza?”
We lived in a communal apartment in Moscow when I was a child, up until I was four. Two old women were neighbors of ours, Katya and Grandma Liza. As young brides-to-be, they saw their fiancés off to war, but they never came back from it. These old ladies never got married after that. They didn’t have children of their own. All of their love they gave to me and to my cousin, who lived in another room of the apartment with her family. Katya became a grandmother to her, and Grandma Liza became one to me. We didn’t lose touch after moving.
I answer that I lover her very dearly. The voice says that she had died that day. I woke up and ran to my mother. We called the hospital where she was being treated and were told that, yes, she had passed that morning. We buried her. A lot of snow fell that night. Absolutely everything was covered in snow.
Good Neighbors
My mother told me that her neighbor passed away, an old lady, and in the morning on the ninth day after her death, my mother had a dream that the home phone was ringing. She goes to answer it, and on the other end is the voice of her dead neighbor. Her neighbor says –
“Tell my daughters that I’ve settled in fine and everything is okay, or they’ll worry otherwise.”
And the line cut off. That same day, my mother ran into one of the neighbor’s daughters and passed on the words of the deceased. The daughter broke into tears, saying –
“We’ve all been praying that at the very least she would appear to a loved one in a dream; we’ve been worrying about how she’s settled in there…”
