When I was little, my maternal grandfather had a summer house, a dacha, in the village of Stoyanka. My paternal grandparents also had a dacha there at one point, albeit in a more built up and crowded part of the village. My relatives from my dad’s side of the family, meanwhile, still have a family home across the highway, in the neighboring village of Horenychi, where many of my loved ones’s graves stand today.
You may have seen the AFP drone video of devastation in Stoyanka from last year, after the accursed Russians withdrew (click to watch on YouTube, as the AFP is annoying and won’t let me display it):
The river in the video is one I used to play near when I was very small. Corn grew in the area (which we occasionally stole as kids), and most of our games involved reenactments of scenes from Alexander Dumas (I was usually d’Artagnan).
It pained me to see the scars on the land I love, but even as the war continues, I know that Ukraine will one day heal:
In the video, you may also notice the beautiful woods that surround the area. As kids, we understood them to be haunted by the unquiet spirits of Nazi invaders. Today, I suppose, a few unquiet Russian spirits may have joined the Nazis. If you believe in that sort of thing.
I believe most strongly in physics, which means I am quite used to the idea of the invisible world.
Still, there are events that have the power to surprise me.
This past summer, a good friend was passing through Stoyanka, and walked around to see how reconstruction was going. He remembered my happy stories from the place: my grandfather’s greenhouse, my grandmother’s mint and strawberry patches, how I was allowed to run around with an unloaded service pistol, the bonfires we had on most evenings without rain.
But then my friend told me something that surprised me. He said he was admiring the woods, when he heard a man calling for his dog. It sounded like “Mukhtar! Mukhtar!” He said he noticed it right away, because Mukhtar was a popular name for dogs during the Soviet days, not so much in Ukraine of the 21st century.
He said that what was weird was that the voice got very close at one point, but he never saw anyone, even though he should have seen this man. He heard the dog bark happily and heard noises that suggested the man playing with the dog, but even though he was on a broad, sunlit lane, it was like the voices were coming from the thin air. It lasted less than a minute, he said, and he was weirded out, though he didn’t feel fear.
Well, that seems like a very regular story, right? Most likely, the sound just carried. Maybe my friend was extra jumpy and sensitive due to the recent horrors that had taken place there.
I was stunned, though. And here’s why:
My maternal grandfather was a retired warfighter, and like many men with similar pasts, he often had trouble sleeping. When that happened, he’d stay out on his veranda, sipping tea until the sky began to gray. I’d find him there sometimes when I needed to use the bathroom.
On one particular night in late spring, I woke up after midnight, but not because I had to pee. The window was open, the moon was out, and the smell of my grandfather’s lilac bushes was very strong after the rain. I remember it vividly. I had a feeling that a noise woke me, but I wasn’t sure.
I ventured out onto the veranda, and sure enough, there was my grandfather, sipping his good green tea, which he preferred after years of living close to the Chinese border of the Soviet empire. I remember his profile in the darkness, with a single candle burning. Then I again heard the noise that woke me. A man calling for his dog. I don’t remember if he called it by name. But I remember dog answering and barking. A big dog by the sound of it.
The dacha was near a sharp turn on a country lane, right next to a copse of woods you’d have to cross to get to the river in the screenshot I shared above. The veranda faced the lane, the moon was bright, and the noises were close, but there was nobody there. Again, I remember it very vividly, those dense pines and occasional birch trees, illuminated by the bright moon.
I don’t know what I said to my grandfather, but I must’ve been a little spooked. I do remember what he said to me, however, “There aren’t ghosts, there are just walking memories.”
Decades passed. I never thought of that incident as some weird haunting. As a kid, I mostly worried about the people who lived around the bend. They had a big house and were always throwing loud parties with tasteless music (yes, I was a little snob) and being annoying. They had mean dogs — I honestly don’t remember if any of them was named Mukhtar — and at the time, I thought that one had escaped and that the man and the dog were hiding from my grandfather, because he often argued with them about letting their animals loose.
I never even made anything of my grandfather’s statement about ghosts and memories, because he liked to tease me whenever I got scared (and if I didn’t toughen up, he sometimes made me dig ditches — retired warfighter, remember?).
In my mind, it was a memory of a neighbor being out late with his dog, me worried about a potential conflict with the neighbors again, and my grandfather saying something mysterious to either get me to laugh or to scamper away so I’d stop annoying him in his solitude.
But after my friend told me what he heard, it was like a puzzle piece clicked into place. What if grandpa had meant what he said?
Stoyanka had always been full of ghost stories, and I don’t know if my grandfather believed in them. But these days, I wonder. I think some places do have long memories, and maybe there are imprints that remain. Maybe a ghostly man and his dog Mukhtar occasionally wander by those woods. Maybe they come back because of how beautiful it is out there, whether in sunlight or under the moon. Or maybe it’s all a big coincidence.
The world is full of horrors, but it’s also full of mysteries, and not all of those mysteries are awful. Sometimes, they are reassuring.
I wanted to share this story with you because the blessed spooky season is upon us, and this is my favorite time of the year to share stories like this (you can find more in my online archive).
I also want to share it because of how terrible the news has been as of late, and I like the idea that it’s not just dark and twisted walking memories that remain on the scarred earth.
Stay safe, take care of yourselves, and take care of each other. Talk again soon!
Yours in spookiness and in hope,
Natalia.
It is a lovely story, well written.