Poltergeist. Mongolia

In the records of folklorists and ethnographers, there are sometimes quite interesting legends that are in no way inferior to modern stories about certain anomalous phenomena. This mainly concerns the genre of stories that tell about the meeting of people with evil spirits.

One of these stories, which can be safely classified as a story about a typical poltergeist, was found in the records of the Mongolian philologist and writer Ts. Damdinsuren and published with a translation into Russian on the pages of the magazine "Living Antiquity".

In 1923, in the "middle month of winter", marked by a terrible lack of food, the following mystical events unfolded. The yurt of Zhamyansharava was located at the north-western end of the village, and not far away on the south-eastern side of it was the yurt of Brown Gimpel, an old lama who had many disciples.

It was in the latter that the "chutgurs" got started, as explained by popular rumor. Without going into a detailed retelling of the story, the full text of which can be found directly on the pages of the magazine "Living Antiquity" (No. 3, 2008), we will list only the characteristic manifestations of the inflamed poltergeist:

1) Moving objects inside the yurt: a piece of frozen leg of mutton and a knife were moved, which subsequently stuck into it; throwing dung from horse droppings.

2) Moving objects on the street outside the yurt: there was a flight of a small piece of felt, which completed its journey by plugging into the sling of the Gimpel-guaya yurt (saw Zhamyansharav). In the village, an independent flight of a wide thick board was observed above the ground, which was not given into the hands of the boys who tried to catch it (Zhamyansharav saw).

3) The impact on the dwelling as a whole: the yurt was shaking, as if someone was pulling it by the sling and squeezing the walls (Zhamyansharav himself observed).

4) Destruction of objects: the Gimpel-guai rosary was torn and scattered; a candle was broken into two pieces and the wick was pulled out of it (the children had to have dinner in the dark).

5) Aggressive actions towards a person: an axe jumped up in the yurt without permission and hit the back of the person who entered. Sometimes at night someone invisible would not let Gimpel-guai sleep: he would throw off his blanket or beat him with a wooden lid from the boiler.

6) Self-repair of destroyed objects: the winter hat of Gimpel-guaya, which deigned to "jump" on its own, was burned out of harm's way, but after the act of destruction, the same hat was found in the same place with the same "indecent behavior". Once a bottle of vodka and a handful of Chinese coins fell through the smoke holes into the Gimpel-guai yurt. The money was hidden under the pillow, and the bottle was broken on a stone in the yard. Subsequently, instead of coins, horse droppings turned out to be under the pillow (a familiar demonological plot, isn't it?), and the vodka bottle was intact again, despite the fact that there were no glass fragments in the yard.

7) Animal reactions: only one dog in the village, who lived in the garbage, showed an unhealthy interest in the "yurt with chutgurs": she barked at the yurt until she was hoarse, and sometimes ran away from it with howling and tail between her legs, even though no one drove her. Strange behavior in other dogs was not noticed.

8) Moving the poltergeist after his victims: when the desperate Gimpel-guai, along with two boys who lived with him (about ten years old), decided to leave his home and went to his friends on the southern slope of Mount Samsar, they were accompanied by empty iron cans flying around. Outrages also began to happen at the party: "everything began to fly and jump," so I had to go back to Choir.

9) Ignoring sacred rituals: during the performance of a special ritual by an invited lama, who conducted it away from the monastery (it was forbidden to expel spirits near the monastery by the rules), while reading prayers and beating the drum, "chutgurs" mimicked him, knocking in response to iron cans.

During the divine service, which was already performed by another lama, one page disappeared from his book while reading prayers, and later a drum suspended on the tent ridge fell from above, injuring his head to the point of blood.

In the late spring of 1924, Gimpel moved his yurt further north from the monastery. Many lamas tried to expel the Chutgurs, both from the local monastery and specially invited from other places for this purpose. As a result, the efforts of one of them were crowned with success. The Chutgurs disappeared in the twenties of the last summer month. Thus, we can say that the poltergeist in Dzun-Choir did not last for about a year and a half.

Such demonological characters as Chutgurs appearing in this story are of interest in the study of beliefs about evil spirits among the Mongolian peoples. But at the same time, this story is also the testimony of not only a contemporary, but also a direct eyewitness to some of the described poltergeist events.

At different times, in different peoples and in different cultures, we meet completely similar descriptions of fantastic events, the culprits of which were declared poltergeist, barabashka, gins, chutgurs... This phenomenon has many names, but the essence is the same.