A HORRIBLE SUPERSTITION

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 478, 7 June 1890, Page 3

A HORRIBLE SUPERSTITION

A very lurid light baa just been thrown upon the life and superstitions of the Russian peasantry by the perpetration of a gtuesome crime in the name of what they take to bo Christianity. A rich popular farmer died rather suddenly in the village of Sooroffsky. He was prayed for and duly • waked,’ after which he was carried to the grave. 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 grave-diggers let go the cords, and, along with the bystanders, fled in terror from the spot. The supposed corpse then arose, scrambled out of the grave, and, Bhivering from the cold (the mercury was two degrees below zero, Fahr. 1, made for the village as fast as his feebleness allowed him. But the villagers had bat red 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, 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 be could. Meanwhilo, tho peasants gathered together, armed themselves with poles and stakes of aspenwood, the only effectual weapons in a fight with a ‘ wizard,’ and surrounded tho cabin. The miserable man, dazed by all that had happened that morning, and suffering from cold and hunger, was soon overpowered, and hi 3 neighbours, with many pious ejaculations, transfixed him, though alive and unhurt, with holy aspen stakes to the ground in the court before the hut.