From the history of sacrifices: Immured secrets that archaeologists find in old castles. Construction Sacrifice: The Most Creepy Rite in History Immured Alive Young Guy Scary Castle Legends

All the castles in Transcarpathia were once built as guardian fortresses of this land. Each of them for centuries of existence - even non-existence! - overgrown with legends. And no matter how successful historical science has been, many of these myths still cannot be substantiated or refuted ...

Immured virgins and underground groans, bloody traces of the Dracul family and the mountain of torment - all the legends of Transcarpathia cannot be listed. Moreover, the history of all countries and authorities that have been here, the myths of castles-palaces, the secrets of fortifications that disappeared in antiquity, were added to the castle passions. So over the centuries, dozens (if not hundreds) of mystical tales have been formed, which still haunt the imagination of contemporaries.

Uzhgorod castle, Uzhgorod

The legend about the Uzhgorod castle tells about the cruelty of Count Druget towards his daughter. The girl was immured alive in the castle walls for unconscious treason - the issuance of castle secrets to her beloved, who turned out to be an enemy governor. According to another version - because she did not want to become the wife of a prince, but gave her heart to a simple guy. And the worst thing is that in the 17th century, when the Drugets ruled and when the Poles attacked Uzhgorod, there really was a custom to wall up people in the fortress walls. Allegedly in order to increase the defense capability of the structure ...

The castle in Nevitsky is shrouded in legends about the insufferable filthy girl and daughters-in-law, whom he allegedly protected. The rotten girl, as folk legends say, was called the Turkish princess, who ruled in the castle. She ordered that eggs and milk be added to the defensive walls for strength. The walls were fortified, but hunger began among the people ... Another story tells about the Nevichanskaya maiden, the young mistress of the castle. Running away from a forced marriage, she threw herself into the abyss right here.

Knights Templar monks, monks of the Order of St. Paul, feudal lords, Uzhgorod magnates... The Serednyansky castle could not resist all its owners and those historical collisions that over seven centuries fell on its fate. The ruins of the fortress could tell us, for example, about a beautiful and cunning young lady: they say she once lived here. But even cunning did not save the girl from the murderer-father, who walled up people in the castle dungeons. By the way, Transcarpathians still say that some underground passages connected as many as four castles of Transcarpathia - Uzhgorod, Nevitsky, Serednyansky and Mukachevo.

Mukachevo Castle, like a living fairy tale, rises on a large lonely volcano that has long since fallen asleep forever. Nevertheless, they still talk about him as a "mountain of torment" poured by the hard work of the peasants. Another story about torment says that people suffered during construction because of the steep mountain, on which stones had to be pulled. There are also many legends about the castle well, where, they say, the devil himself found water in order to later destroy Prince Koryatovich.

About the castle of Saint Miklos they say that a walled human skeleton was found within its walls. It seems that in the Middle Ages, people thought that a person immured in the castle walls becomes the patron-keeper of the fortress and did not consider this case to be murder. But a more romantic history of the castle is connected with lovers - Count Imre Tekeli and Princess Ilona Zrini. It was here that they first met and fell in love... At least, that's what the legends say, thanks to which the fortress was dubbed the "castle of love." Now the fortress is being actively revived and receives guests.

The most interesting legend about the Khust castle has certain historical roots. It is connected with the family in which the notorious Count Dracula was born. Dracula's mother - Vlad Tepes - really comes from these lands, which are now divided between Ukraine and Romania, and were once called Maramorosh. And Dracula's grandfather, Bogdan from the Sas family, the Maramorosh governor, could well live in the castle. But is it true that his grandson then hid his treasures here and did evil deeds? Unlikely, although the version is intriguing.

The Vinogradov fortress is now just a fascinating memory, little of it remains. The ruins and the cross stand alone on the Black Mountain, but you still want to touch them. Vinogradov legends say that the castle was built during the time of the glorious Hungarian king, whom we know as St. Stephen. But over time, this castle became only an object of struggle and wars - and then it fell into decay.

The royal castle also did not know the mercy of history. Its powerful walls did not even retain their outlines. But the legend about him is among the most romantic, because it is about King Vladislav and the beautiful Caroline. It is surprising that the legend is not tragic - a meeting, love, marriage and kids follow one after another in it. It is only unknown what happened to the royal family next - the tragedy befell them during one of the Tatar invasions. They say that the noble couple with the princes somewhere under the castle walls fell asleep forever.

This non-existent castle in Vyshkovo (a village not far from Khust, famous for its unique architectural monument - a wooden Reformed Church) had a certain common feature with the fortresses of Khust, Vinogradov and Korolev. It was also a "salt" castle - designed to protect salt mining in Transcarpathia. Castle legends are associated with twelve robbers who once occupied the mountain where the Vishkovskaya fortress stood. The robbers mocked the peasants, and a daughter was stolen from one owner and brought to the castle. She cursed, and prayed, and asked ... And suddenly such a storm covered the castle that it destroyed it. Only ruins remained of the fortress.

To see the remains of Minta Castle in Kvasovo over the Borzhava River, you should hurry. A few more years and there might be nothing left of him at all. People say that once there lived one unfortunate rich man. Dying, he cursed his good. And no one could either get it or capture the castle ... So the stronghold disappeared for centuries.

The remains of the Borzhava castle in the village of Vary are located a 25-minute drive from the town of Beregovo, famous for its healing thermal waters. It is almost on the border with Hungary. According to legend, Batu Khan destroyed the castle in 1241. Legends tell the tragic story of the unhappy marriage of the Borzhavian prince Chernohor and the Galician princess Milota. The unfortunate princess loved another - and in a tragic combination of circumstances, she died during the Hungarian attack precisely at the hands of her beloved.

The castle in Bronka (28 km from Irshava) has almost not been preserved at all, only barely noticeable ruins of walls and foundations have remained from it. Nobody knows the time of its appearance. It could also be the period of the ancient state of Dacia, which later became part of the Roman Empire. The treasures of the Bronetsky castle are shrouded in tragic legends, its fate and death, even about why the fortress fell, only its ruins know for sure. Not without tragic love: the knight-robber Brinda allegedly died here, cheating on his beloved with another. The unfortunate girl took revenge by denouncing him to the authorities. Together with Brinda, the secret of the treasures he stole, which the Transcarpathian Robin Hood hid somewhere in the armored dungeons, perished.

The remains of the Slavic settlement (8-9 centuries) on the outskirts of the village of Belki, Irshavsky district (this is one of the largest villages in Ukraine with a rich history, located 10 km from Irshava), only a folk legend has remained. The peasants built a castle on the mountain to escape their enemies. They called that mountain Gorodishche. When the village was attacked by a powerful Tatar horde, women and children dug an underground passage under the castle while the men held the line. So everyone was saved - but the castle, they say, fell into the ground, now even traces of it are no longer visible.

In addition to the classical fortresses of Transcarpathia, well-known similar architectural structures, but of a different type, are of interest - in particular, the Dolzhansky castle-palace and the hunting castle-palace in the Beregvar tract (Shenbornov Castle).

Countless legends have been preserved about the disappeared and mythical fortresses of Transcarpathia. These are, for example, the mysterious Cat's Castle near Chernecha Mountain (Mukacheve region) and the Owl's Castle in the village of Antalovtsi near Uzhgorod. There are legends among the people about the Castle of the Gentile on Mount Stremtura near Irshava, the Beylev Castle (Beylovar) in the village of Belovartsy, Tyachevsky District. They also talk about the Galaborsky kashtel (that is, the castle-palace) in the village of Galabor near Berehove and other settlements, castles and fortifications in Ardanov, Malaya Kopan, Vyshkov, Dedovo, Velikiye Beregy ... Transcarpathia is shrouded in legends, like in a cradle - and it is they were and are an indispensable feature of this mysterious land with a magical unique charm.

In the folklore of many peoples there are terrible stories about people immured alive. Why did they suffer such a terrible death? It was believed that some were punished for crimes, overt or imagined. And others were to forever remain watchmen and guardians of the place in which they found their death. And everything could be considered just folk tales, if builders and archaeologists in the course of work would not sometimes stumble upon such terrible finds.

From the history of sacrifice

But let's start in order, from the very beginning. The peoples of antiquity (and some almost to this day) believed that the gods and spirits should be propitiated properly if you want to get something from them.

Everything is logical: after all, people also prefer not to work for free. Also spirits, if you want to get something meaningful and valuable, you have to pay accordingly. And what do spirits and gods prefer? And this depends on the "specialization" and the nature of the invisible entity.

Good spirits and gods will accept flowers, oil, incense, wine as a sacrifice, while more serious ones also want serious gifts, often in the form of bloody sacrifices. Such serious invisible helpers have always been considered stronger. Therefore, in order to appease them, they sacrificed the living: animals, and in the most serious cases, people.

Human life in ancient times was not considered particularly valuable, and not only among some wild tribes, but also among the civilized peoples of Europe themselves. Fairy tales and legends reflect long-gone harsh realities. Remember the tale of the Thumb Boy? In a hungry year, the family simply left the children in the forest, but there was nothing to feed them.

There is a Belarusian legend that frail old people were supposed to be taken to the forest to die. In his literary fairy tale, the classic of Belarusian literature V. Korotkevich wrote about this. Jack London has a story on the same topic, how the Indians went to more favorable places, leaving the old people behind.

There was such a time, they got rid of extra mouths without regret. Therefore, in order to ask for a crop, prosperity or deliverance from danger for the tribe / people, people were sacrificed. A lot has been written about the Aztecs, who massively slaughtered captives to please their god of the Sun.

But it wasn't just the Indians who did this. And not only then. One of the Indian tribes lost in the jungle practiced a similar custom back in the 20th century. They took a child, someone else's, stole or bought - it doesn't matter. The child was raised for several years, without refusing anything. And then, on the right day, they were sacrificed in the fields, and in the most brutal way.

It was believed that the more the victim suffers, the better the harvest will be and the more favorable the spirits. So, as we see, the custom of sacrifice was everywhere and even quite recently. Over time, however, morals softened and people began to be replaced by animals. Particularly valuable. By the way, everyone remembers the fairy tale about sister Alyonushka and brother Ivanushka.

But hardly thought about the origins of the tale. According to one version, brother Ivanushka is a substitute victim. Often, in necessary cases, human sacrifices were replaced by a horse or a cow. These were very valuable animals in antiquity, there were few of them, they were protected.

And they were sacrificed only as a last resort, for example, at the funeral of princes. Or during the construction of especially important buildings. In Europe, by the way, horse skeletons are found .... under the old churches! Amulets made of horse bones were generally valuable.

Horse skulls were hung over Slavic dwellings. It is unlikely that the horses were specially killed for this, rather, they took already “ready-made”. But they also killed, at the most crucial moments. As a sacrifice in the construction of buildings, bridges, etc. used pigs, roosters.

Sometimes they were slaughtered, and sometimes they were buried alive. Apparently, it was believed that in this way they would better guard the building entrusted to them. And the local spirits will be happy and will not harm. Apparently, the logic of the ancient builders was like this.

Golshany Castle in Belarus

And so we finally got to the victims of capital construction. Judging by the legends, human sacrifices were more often brought not “just in case”, although this could happen, but when the construction did not go well. Since construction is not going on, it means that the spirits are angry, people reasoned. And they need to be appeased by a suitable victim.

A similar legend exists about an ancient castle in Golshany, Belarus. Once the owner of the castle ordered to build a tower. But, no matter how hard the workers tried, the walls were constantly crumbling. The prince hurried the construction and began to get angry, and the anger of the prince in those days, you understand, is not a joke.

Then they decided to make a sacrifice, they decided that it would be the first one who came to the construction site in the morning. The first to come running was the young wife of one of the workers. I wanted to quickly bring breakfast to my beloved husband ... The tower was completed and stood up to our time. The castle has been badly damaged over the past centuries, many parts were still intact.
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I really liked both visually and with its pathological plot design, the film Immured in the Wall, based on the work of Les Emmurés by Serge Brussolo. Lonely and majestic, unusual, unique residential building, located somewhere far from conventional civilization, gives the impression of a hangar-industrial and, at the same time, a gothic formation. As the heroine Sam herself said, the building is the place in the famous urban criminal area Gotham City.

The picture is preparing a story of gloomy and terrible secrets hidden by this very house, which can always look very colorful with the proper approach to their disclosure. And this kind of films certainly occupy my attention their secret passages; incomplete architectural plans, which can hide both empty spaces intended for far from good purposes, and the occult location or correlation of something; erasing lives and incidents that existed here, and so on.

It was in the walls of this structure that 16 bodies were walled up by a certain killer, whose fate in the final is revealed, albeit in a completely predictable way, but therefore does not change his pathology. The design of the building was carried out by a crazy genius, as he was called, Malestrazza, whose buildings are still standing and nothing portends their fall and oblivion. Malestrazza was extremely knowledgeable in architecture, having a huge specialized library, having found refuge in the building ideas of the ancient Egyptians and their pyramids.

15 years have passed since the discovery and rescue of 16 bodies from the house. The government decided to demolish the building, for which a demolition team was organized, led by a young and attractive girl, engineer Samantha (Mischa Barton). For Samantha and her family, demolition is a family business and tradition. She arrives at the site of the exaltation of the building and is soon amazed at the genius of Maestro Malestrazza (here they picked up a surname to sound mysterious and gloomy). Here she meets the boy Jimmy, who has been here all his life, having as a close friend only a dog left after the immuring of the girl Julie. It was that dog, sniffing the location of the body, and helped to uncover a series of terrible disappearances of people. Jimmy a young and outwardly pleasant boy is imbued with feelings for a beautiful girl and falls in love with her, slowly revealing the secrets of the building and the stories that took place here. But feelings are an insidious and far-reaching thing, especially love. Jimmy gives Samantha personal notes of Malestrazza with draft plans for the building, based on which the girl fully delves into the essence of the structure, correlating it with the Egyptian pyramids. This means that in the center there should be a large hollow space intended for burial. It is in this secret room, which can be accessed through the roof, that Jimmy lures Samantha, hoping to awaken her love for himself in this way. And in this receptacle lives the very same Malestrazza, who was considered dead, whose person has been living here for more than 5 thousand days under the supervision of Jimmy and his mother. But it turns out that Malestrazza planned this way from the very beginning, in the finale digging his own grave and giving Samantha the opportunity to kill herself, thereby giving life and eternity to the building (according to the legend of the Egyptians, the resilience and eternal youth of their pyramids are justified by the infusion of human lives and souls into their skeletons, and the maestro himself will now become the final touch to his brilliant creation, giving his soul to it).

Attention, of course, first of all, draws the house to itself, although it is a computer special effect. Perhaps not even a house, but its image, which creates an atmosphere of an unusual hidden and a certain hoax, when there are secret corridors, passages, hatches, and so on. The idea with allusions to the Egyptian pyramids, coupled with the madness of Malestrazza about timing his pharaonic burial to the eternal life of the building, in general, look great. And in general, it can be said that there are not any normal people in the house: Malestrazza killed people and walled them up in walls in order to realize his ideas; Jimmy a boy going crazy with loneliness, madly in love with his first young lady; the mother covers up the whole affair with Malestrazza and knows, periodically talking to the ragged wall from which her dead husband was taken out; the Negro sits on some kind of oxygen cylinders that support his functioning in moments of stress (and he behaves impulsively); The old tea-maker keeps a collection of Malestrazza's architectural books, knowing the exact number of them (not surprising if she has read all this; and something is hidden from her nervous).

A gloomy film, devastated by its surroundings, exalting the madness of a brilliant architect and ending in a tragedy of love. It seems that all the heroes have come to their correct logical end, and even Jimmy, who instantly fell in love and could not cope with such a heavy burden, seemed to have done the only right thing.

There is a small town of Golshany in Belarus. It is famous for its famous castle - the residence of the Sapieha family, built in the first half of the 17th century. At the moment, the main attraction of the castle are ... ghosts.

white lady

Many lovers of mysterious stories know about the White Lady from the Golshansky Castle. According to the legend, one of the walls of the castle could not be erected for a long time: it constantly collapsed. Then someone remembered an ancient custom: in order for a building to be durable, a living person must be walled up in its wall, preferably a young girl or child. After thinking, the builders decided that when choosing a future victim, it would be fair to rely on chance - let the woman who was the first to bring dinner to her husband die ...
The young wife walked very quickly to her husband, almost ran - she could not help it: she loved him too much, she missed him, and she wanted to bring hot lunch.
But her husband greeted her gloomily, the faces of other builders were also gloomy. Some versions of the legend say that after the last stone was put into the wall, the woman's husband committed suicide, and his corpse was immured next to her.
This story would have remained one of the many gloomy medieval legends, if in 1997, during the repair work, the builders did not stumble upon the skeleton of a woman. Her posture allowed us to conclude that, most likely, she was walled up in the wall alive. Also, this was evidenced by broken fingers, with which the unfortunate scratched the wall in vain attempts to get out.
The skeleton was buried, but without observing the Christian rite. The workers who found him soon died one by one, all under strange circumstances.
The ghost, which is called the White Lady, now and then appears in the castle, terrifying the employees of the art museum located there.
The story of a girl who was sacrificed during the construction of a building is not at all a unique plot. Soviet ethnographer D.K. Zelenin (1878-1954) in his work "Totems-trees in the legends and rituals of European peoples" gives many examples of legends about a construction sacrifice, the most significant of these stories will be given below.

Curious Alena
In the book of A.A. Navrotsky "Tales of the past. Russian epics and legends in verse" (1896) has a ballad called "Koromyslova Tower".
The basis of its plot is the legend that during the construction of the Novgorod Kremlin, a certain Alena, the wife of the merchant Grigory Lopata, was buried alive in the ground. On that day, the woman woke up too late and, in order to have time to do all the housework, decided to go to the river for water in a short way - along the path that goes along the mountainside.
Returning, near the city wall, the woman saw a hole. Curiosity made her come closer and look in there. The builders immediately surrounded Alena and asked for a drink. As soon as the woman removed the yoke from her shoulders, they seized her, tied her to a board and lowered her into the pit. The yoke and buckets were buried with her - this was the custom.
It must be said that the builders did not at all intrepidly commit a terrible act - they did not agree to bury the unfortunate woman for a long time, but the chief foreman convinced them of the need to make a construction sacrifice:

Let her die alone for the whole city,
We will not forget her in prayers;
Better to die alone
yes behind a strong wall
We will be safe from enemies!

These lines of the nineteenth century poet A.A. Navrotsky from the poem "Koromyslova Tower" in an extremely clear form explain the reason for the perfect ritual. His goal is to protect the city from harm by making a human sacrifice.
It is interesting that this kind of sacrifice was made in the Christian era, the builder - one of the heroes of the poem - even says that the deceased will be remembered in prayers. Undoubtedly, this testifies to the closest intertwining of Christian and pagan beliefs in the minds of people. The above legend is full of everyday details, due to which it is perceived as a real story. If someday, during construction work in the Novgorod Kremlin, the skeleton of a woman is dug up, it will not be surprising.

weeping walls
Legends of building sacrifice are found all over the world. True, women are not always immured. For example, in Georgia there is a legend about the Surami fortress, reflected in the folk song "Suramistsikhe". Based on her motives, the film by Sergei Parajanov "The Legend of the Surami Fortress" (1984) was shot. During the construction of the citadel, its walls collapsed several times. The king ordered to find a victim - the only son of a lonely man. One can only guess about the reasons for such selectivity - perhaps the sacrifice should have been associated with the maximum amount of suffering. One way or another, the young man Zurab, the son of a lonely widow, was chosen to be the victim. The song conveys a dialogue between a mother and her son who is being walled up.
The woman asks him several times: “Where are you laid?” He replies: “Ankle-deep, belly-deep, chest-deep, neck-deep...” According to legend, the tears of the weeping Zurab still seep through the stones of the fortress...

Mother's love

In the Serbian folk song "Building Skadra" we find another version of the building sacrifice - a young woman, the mother of an infant, was walled up in the wall of the fortress. The song tells that, at the request of the victim, two holes were left in the wall: for the chest, so that the woman could feed her child for a year, and for the eyes, so that she could see him. Surprisingly, however, the song does not say anything about the fact that the woman at that time ate something. Perhaps such a detail was simply missed, and the mother, walled up in the wall, was fed through a hole left at the level of her face. Or maybe, in the formation of the final text of the song "The Construction of Skadra", the medieval belief in a miracle played its role - the author was convinced that the immured woman was invisibly nourished by higher powers.
One way or another, but after the baby was weaned, the mother was immured completely. There is a superstition among local women that a white liquid oozes from the wall in the place where the unfortunate woman is immured. It should be collected and drunk by mothers who have problems with breastfeeding.

"I can't see you at all!"
Children can also act as construction victims. The legend tells that during the construction of a fortress in the Thuringian city of Liebenstein (now it is dilapidated), a little girl, the daughter of a tramp woman, who herself sold the child to the builders and was even present during the walling, was walled up in the wall.
The girl was treated to sweets and began to block the opening in which she stood with stones. It seemed to the child that everything that was happening was a fun game. “Mom, mom, I see you!” - the baby screamed at the beginning. But the hole got smaller and smaller, and the girl began to beg to leave her at least a small slit in order to look at her mother. As in the Novgorod legend about Alena, it was not so easy for the master to complete the terrible deed. In the end, the work was completed by his student. "Mom, Mom, I can't see you at all!" came a desperate cry. It is said that for many years at night in those places one could hear the plaintive cry of a child. Other legends claim that the ghost of a heartless mother still roams the ruins of the fortress and in the surrounding forests, after her death she repented of her crime...

An egg instead of a bird

There is no doubt that stories about a construction victim are often (although, we emphasize, by no means always) based on true facts. What is the reason for the terrible, from the point of view of modern man, ritual? There can be many explanations. Firstly, there was a belief that the soul of a walled person would become a kind of guardian of the building. Secondly, the sacrifice could serve to appease local spirits that were disturbed by the construction.
However, the most convincing explanation is offered by D.K. Zelenin. He rightly points out that before the appearance of stone buildings, people lived mainly in wooden houses. Ancient man was convinced that trees have a soul and angry tree spirits can harm the people living in the house.
Wanting to negotiate with the spirits of the trees, people made a sacrifice to them - usually someone with a low social status: a prisoner, a woman, a child. As human society developed, the sacrifice of people began to be supplanted by the sacrifice of animals, and even inanimate objects.
In 1874, during the repair of the city gates in Aachen (Germany), a mummified cat was found. Apparently, it was immured in the gate tower when it was laid in 1637.
In 1877, the skeleton of a hare and a chicken egg were found in the foundation of one of the Berlin houses. This building was built in the 16th century. Apparently, the builders decided that the egg could be considered the equivalent of a bird. Over time, a taboo was imposed on the sinister rite, but legends full of tragedy remained in the people's memory ...