Did Zoya really stand and why do Samara residents believe that the misfortunes associated with the mysterious house are not over yet

This is such an Orthodox thriller: according to legend, on December 31, 1955, a group of young people gathered in house No. 84 on Chkalov Street in the city of Kuibyshev (present-day Samara). Everything was as it should be: they drank, danced, had fun. One of the invited girls, pipe factory worker Zoya Karnaukhova, was waiting for her new acquaintance Nikolai that evening. They met the guy quite recently, but the girl managed to like him. But Nikolai still didn’t go and didn’t go, and Zoya was upset. “Why aren’t you dancing? Come on, your Kolya won’t come!” - Zoya’s friends decided to support her, at which she became angry, jumped up from her seat and, taking the icon of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker from the shelf, began to dance with it. Like, since my Kolya didn’t come, I’ll at least dance with this.

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The rest of the guests allegedly felt uneasy at that moment, and they demanded that the image be returned to its place. “If there is a God, then let him punish me!” - Zoya answered and walked with the icon in a circle, continuing the dance of the desperate woman. A few minutes later there was suddenly a noise in the house, the wind rose and lightning flashed. When those around her came to their senses, the blasphemer was already standing in the middle of the room, white as snow, clutching the icon to her chest. Her legs were rooted to the floor, her eyes did not blink, and her breathing was also inaudible. But the heart was beating.

Nikola-ygodnik.narod.ru

Zoya’s friends first tried to remove the icon from the girl’s hands, but it didn’t work. Frightened, they called an ambulance. In the medical team that came to the call was Anna Kalashnikova, whose relative - and by coincidence also the priest Vitaly Kalashnikov - now tells the details of the Samara mystery, which he indirectly witnessed:

Anna Pavlovna Kalashnikova, my mother’s aunt, worked in Kuibyshev as an emergency doctor in 1956. That day in the morning she came to our house and said: “You are sleeping here, but the city has been on its feet for a long time!” And she told about the petrified girl. She also admitted (although she gave a subscription) that she was now in that house on call. I saw Zoya frozen. I saw the icon of St. Nicholas in her hands. I tried to give the unfortunate woman an injection, but the needles bent and broke, and therefore it was not possible to give an injection. Everyone was shocked by her story. Anna Pavlovna Kalashnikova worked as an ambulance doctor for many more years. She died in 1996.

The head of the Blagovest news agency, Anton Zhogolev, says that Kalashnikova’s memories are considered, in fact, the only living evidence that something strange really happened in house No. 84. All the “evidence” that became known later is more reminiscent of folklore. For example, the story of a certain grandmother who tried to find out from a young policeman whether there really was a stone girl in the mysterious house. He allegedly refused to answer directly, but then simply silently took off his headdress and showed the granny his absolutely gray head. During one night of duty, they say, he turned so gray.

It was me who was commissioned by Archbishop Sergius of Samara and Syzran to investigate the phenomenon of Zoya’s standing, which resulted in a book of the same name, which has already sold 25 thousand copies. In the preface to this book, I wrote that our goal is not to convince the reader that this miracle really happened. Personally, I believe that if there was no stone Zoe, then this in itself is an even greater miracle. Because in 1956, a rumor about a petrified girl alarmed the whole city - many turned to the church, and this, as they say, is a medical fact.

Indeed, the rumor about the petrified girl quickly spread throughout Kuibyshev. People began to stand guard near the house on Chkalov Street. The owner of the house, the owner of a beer stall, Klavdiya Bolonkina, boarded up the windows of the building with boards, and the police set up a 24-hour cordon near the house. Bolonkina’s neighbors said that she was a wealthy woman and rented out part of her house. It was in this part of it that a mysterious event occurred.

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True, skeptics have their doubts here too. There is a version that Bolonkina was simply tired of the huge number of people in front of her windows and reported to the police, asking to be spared the onlookers. Or maybe an enterprising woman decided to make money on people’s rumors and, creating mystery, boarded up the windows of the house on purpose. After all, eyewitnesses said that Bolonkina allegedly secretly led excursions to the house - for 10 rubles per person, which was a decent amount in those years. The onlookers, numb with horror, looked at the female figure with an icon in her hands, standing in the twilight. They say that Bolonkina invited her friend to play the role of Zoya and shared her earnings. Heartbreaking screams from the house at night: “Pray, people, we are perishing in our sins! Pray, pray, put on crosses, walk in crosses, the earth is perishing, rocking like a cradle!..” - this is also allegedly the work of Bolonkina and her accomplices. And the city authorities had to send the police to the place of the “pilgrimage” so that there would be no riots and self-harm. The picture of what happened in those years could be explained by the case of Zoya’s standing, which was kept under the heading “Secret” all these years in the regional police department. But in 1999, the administration building burned heavily, and the document archive was almost completely destroyed.

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How did the official authorities react to the miracle, given that atheistic sentiment was at its peak in the Soviet Union at that time? There was a legend that Nikita Khrushchev personally came to Kuibyshev, but there is no documentary evidence of this. The party reacted to the news of the miracle with malicious joy: the CPSU decided that all these rumors were a provocation, specially prepared for the regional party congress, which was supposed to happen soon. By the decision of this very party conference, the city newspaper “Volzhskaya Kommuna” (which, by the way, still exists to this day) published a feuilleton by editor Strakhov, “A Wild Case,” ridiculing the hype around the alleged incident.

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At the conference itself, the first secretary of the OK CPSU, Mikhail Efremov, gave the delegates a powerful scolding on this topic:

Yes, this miracle happened - shameful for us, communists, leaders of party organs. Some old woman walked and said: young people were dancing in this house, and one woman began to dance with the icon and turned to stone. After that they began to say: she became petrified, stiffened - and off she went. People began to gather because the leaders of the police authorities acted ineptly. Apparently, someone else had a hand in this. A police checkpoint was immediately set up, and where the police are, there are eyes. There were not enough police, since people kept arriving, mounted police were deployed. And the people, if so, everyone goes there. Some even went so far as to propose sending priests there to eliminate this shameful phenomenon...

The party decided to sharply intensify anti-religious propaganda in Kuibyshev and the region. In the first eight months of 1956, over 2,000 scientific and atheistic lectures were given - this is 2.5 times more than in the entire previous year. But their effectiveness was low. Documents have been preserved showing that during Holy Week the city seemed to die out, everyone sat at home. And on the eve of Easter, not a single resident of Kuibyshev came to the Pobeda club to watch a movie.

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So how did this story end? According to one version, a certain “hieromonk Seraphim” appeared to Zoya, who at that time had been standing with the icon in her hands for 128 days, on Easter, who consecrated the room and served a prayer service, and then took the icon from the girl’s hands. Zoya sank into a chair, exhausted, and could not come to her senses for a long time. However, even here everything is ambiguous. At that time, two clergymen named Seraphim were widely known. The first is Seraphim Tyapochkin, archimandrite of the Russian Orthodox Church, rector of St. Nicholas Church in the village of Rakitnoye, Belgorod region.

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The second was the then rector of the Peter and Paul Church in the city of Kuibyshev, Seraphim Poloz, who, soon after the events described, was convicted of sodomy - a fairly common article in those days, with the help of which they dealt with objectionable clergy.

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Believers are also satisfied with another version of the happy outcome of this story. According to folk legend, Zoya came to life after the appearance of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker himself. Shortly before Easter, an elder approached the house and asked the police officers on duty to let him into the house. They told him: “Move away, grandfather.” The next day the elder came again and was again refused. On the third day, on the Feast of the Annunciation, “by the providence of God” the guards allowed the elder to go to Zoya. The police allegedly heard him tenderly ask the girl: “Well, are you tired of standing?” It is unknown how long he stayed there, but when they missed him, they could not find him. Zoya then came to life and pointed to the icon: “He went to the front corner.”

Nobody knows what happened next to Zoya Karnaukhova. They tell all sorts of things about her future fate. Some believe that she died three days later, others are sure that she perished in a psychiatric hospital, and others firmly believe that Zoya lived in a monastery for a long time and was secretly buried in the Trinity-Sergius Lavra.

And it seemed that they had even forgotten a little about that mysterious Zoya (with the exception of tourists from all over the world who regularly came to look at the famous house), when on May 12, 2014 the building suddenly burned down. Locals, according to tradition, are divided into two camps: some see this as a fatal sign and expect other misfortunes, while others are confident that the house in the historical center of the city burned down for a reason and, most likely, this was the work of some local construction company, which has already designed another new building in this area.

• Doctors explain the phenomenon of Zoya's standing simply: the girl, apparently, had mental disorders, and during the dance she had another seizure. Catatonic schizophrenia is characterized by movement disorders - in particular, with this form of the disease, a catatonic stupor can develop, that is, a person can literally freeze in place. But more often this happens in a lying position.

• A similar incident is described in George Gurdjieff’s book “Meetings with Remarkable People.” Gurdjieff told a story there about how, while traveling in some country, he saw a ritual of sorcerers-black magicians: one person was placed in a circle, previously outlined, and ritual, magical actions were performed on him: after this, the person could not get out of it on his own. Only two or three physically strong men could carry this man outside the circle, but in this case he would vomit and begin to convulse. This continued until the person was dragged back. Gurdjieff described that it seemed as if some gigantic force, like a magnet, was holding the person.

• There are also many parallels in world art with the story of Zoe: from Homer’s Gorgon Medusa, who turned a person into stone with one glance, to Charles Perrault’s “Sleeping Beauty.”

• In 2009, director Alexander Proshkin made the film “Miracle” based on the legend about Zoya. The main role - reporter Nikolai - is played by actor Konstantin Khabensky.

• In Samara they say that the same Nikolai, whom Zoya did not wait for that evening, ended badly: he became a criminal and spent his whole life in prison.