Post Mortem Lynching August 12, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
This story came out of the Russian countryside in 1890. It should be remembered that this was a period when Russia was cast as an eastern ‘Ireland’ the butt of ‘civilised’ Britain’s jokes. In other words, take with a pinch of salt until a Russian source is found. Can anyone help: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
A very lurid light has just been thrown upon the life and superstitions of the Russian peasantry by the perpetration of a gruesome crime in the name of what they take to be Christianity. A rich popular farmer died rather suddenly in the village of Sooroffsky. He had been seen in the enjoyment of excellent health on Thursday, and was found dead in his bed on Friday morning. He was prayed for and duly ‘waked,’ after which he was carried to the grave, almost all the inhabitants of the village, inclusive of the priest, following him to the churchyard. Just as the body was being lowered, the lid, which had been fastened rather loosely with wooden nails, began to rise up slowly and detach itself from the coffin, to the indescribable horror of the friends and mourners of the deceased. Then the dead man was seen in his white shroud stretching his arms upwards and sitting up. At this sight the gravediggers let go of the cords, and, along with the bystanders, fled in terror from the spot.
So far this is the classic back from the dead tale. If only it had ended here…
The supposed corpse then arose, scrambled out of the grave, and, shivering from the cold (the mercury was two degrees below zero fahr.), made for the village as fast as his feebleness allowed him. But the villagers had barred and bolted themselves in against the ‘wizard,’ and no one made answer to the appeals he made, with chattering teeth, to be admitted; and so, blue, breathless, and trembling, he ran from hut to hut like a rat in a burning room, seeking some escape from death. At last fortune seemed to favour him, and he chanced on a hut the inmate of which was an old woman who had not been to the funeral, and, knowing nothing of his resurrection, had left her door unbarred. He opened it and entered, and going up to the stove seemed as if he would get inside it, if he could. Meanwhile, the peasants gathered together, armed themselves with poles and stakes of aspenwood, the only effectual weapons in a fight with a ‘wizard,’ and surrounded the cabin. A few of those whose superstition was modified by faith in the merits of modern improvements [love this!] also took guns and pistols with them, and the door being opened the attack of these Christians against this ‘devil’s ally’ began.
Here things get worse and worse.
The miserable man, dazed by all that had happened that morning, and suffering from cold and hunger, was soon overpowered, and his neighbours, with many pious ejaculations, transfixed him, through alive and unhurt, with holy aspen stakes to the ground in the cart before the hut. When things had reached this point the priest, who had recovered somewhat from his terror, came upon the scene, with a half-developed idea that perhaps after all the alleged corpse had been plunged in a lethargic sleep and might recover and live as before. But he found the unfortunate man pinned down to the earth with the aspen pales, with no manner of doubt about his death. The police superintendent (Stauovoy) who lived close by, then arrived, and also saw the murdered man, and made inquiry into the manner of his death. The peasants had gone to their daily work, leaving the body, according to the requirements of the superstition prevailing in Russia, until sundown, when they intended to draw out the stakes and throw the corpse into a bog. Leed Merc, 14 Mar 1890
After there is some futile moralizing about Russian education.
