Horror stories. Tales from the psychiatric hospital Creepy stories from the psychiatric hospitals

I have always loved to listen and read all sorts of stories about the incomprehensible and inexplicable, I have had this since childhood. I was also not deprived of fantasy, I imagined all the content of these stories very vividly and clearly. Often, walking through the woods, sitting alone at home, she began to imagine that someone would come out or a mysterious sound would be heard. But despite this, in my life there were practically no terrifying, frightening or simply strange stories. Maybe just a couple of times, and they were not scary, rather just incomprehensible.

So I lived for 19 years. And in the 20th year of my life, I managed to get a job in an industrial practice in a psychiatric clinic, on a helpline (I am a student of the psychology faculty). I still practice there, for about 2 years now. I work not alone, but with two of my classmates. Once a week, on Saturday, and sometimes also on holidays. Despite the fact that the helpline belongs to a psychiatric clinic, our office (and now a small “apartment”) is located in the most ordinary city student clinic. Conventionally, our work activity can be divided into 3 time periods.

The first stage is the very beginning of our practice, when we just got there. We worked only the day shift from 8 am to 8 pm, and our “boss”, who brought us here, remained alone for the night in a small office equipped with a sofa, armchairs, a washbasin, a refrigerator, and, in fact, 2 telephones, which received calls.

The second stage began six months later, when we got used to it and people began to trust us in the new place. We began to stay on full, daily duty, from 8 am Saturday to 8 am Sunday.

The third stage began in December 2012, when our phone was reorganized into a new regional service, we were given a whole “apartment”, where there is a workplace with a server and 4 computer phones, a kitchen, a reception room, a shower and a toilet. We started working from 9 to 9, also the whole day.

But enough of the introduction. I must say right away that oddities did not begin from the very beginning. The whole first stage, when we worked only during the day, everything was quiet and calm. Nearby, in the gym, boys were engaged in karate sections, a security guard or a security guard was sitting at the entrance, the clinic was not empty, even though it was Saturday. It all started at the second stage, when we started to stay overnight. Moreover, for the first few nights, I did not stay with the girls, but went home, that is, they were on duty together. It was then that all sorts of stories began about suspicious steps in the corridor and so on. But I did not attach any importance to this, you never know. And the girls didn't seem to mind too much either. Although even then it began to alarm, given that the guard makes the last round from 22 to 22.30, and then locks himself in his closet, watches TV and sleeps. It makes no sense for him to walk in our wing at all, because the toilets are located at the opposite end of the corridor, and there are no stairs, if he suddenly had an urge to go up somewhere or go down to the basement, we would not even hear it.

There were many stories. There are even more legends associated with this clinic, heard from our boss after the fact. I will tell only those stories that I myself have witnessed.

Case number 1. It was one of my first night shifts, back in my old office. We then went to smoke on the fire escape, which was located at the other end of the corridor. Sometimes we went down a flight, closer to the basement, and stood near the exit to the street, and sometimes right at the door and the stairs to the top, which was surrounded by bars, and the bars were locked with a barn lock. One fine night, we once again went there to smoke, all three of us. Passing by the guard's closet, we heard his measured snoring and went even quieter so as not to wake him up. There was no one in the polyclinic besides the 4 of us, the time was 12 midnight or so. Once on the stairs, we did not go down to the exit, but remained near the grate, where the light was on. I must say that this light burned on the spans of all 3 floors, except for the 4th, there was pitch darkness, nothing could be seen. We stood, quietly talking, were already tired and were soon going to lie down and take a nap. There was a pause in the conversation. And then I heard the soft sound of footsteps going down the stairs. The steps were soft and muffled, as if a light person in slippers was walking, and very slowly, each step was distinct, verified. They were distributed from the very top, i.e. from the 4th floor where the lights were off. I turned around, looking at my friends. They also stood and listened to this sound. This made me even more frightened, because if only I had imagined it, I could attribute everything to my fatigue. The guard disappears immediately - firstly, he was sleeping in a closet 2 minutes ago, and secondly, when he makes a detour through the floors, the lock on the grate to the stairs is open and the grate door itself is open. So we stood for a minute, listening to this unnatural sound for a night polyclinic. Then one of my girlfriends decided to look up into the flight - and she didn’t see anything, but something continued to descend the stairs towards us. Without saying a word, we quickly put out the cigarettes and rushed to the toilet, which was located nearby. There we were able to throw away the cigarettes and laugh nervously, still not understanding what had just happened. Barely finding the strength to get out of the toilet, we rushed headlong to our room, past the same snoring guard. They locked the room and sat in it all night until morning, not daring to go out for a smoke.

Case number 2. It happened about six months after the first, in the fall, after a long summer break in work. We still lived in that first room, or rather lived there for the last month before moving to a new “apartment”. It happened at night, at 2 or 3 o'clock. We were dead tired of daytime calls and decided to take a nap, especially since people hardly call at such a late hour. I lay down on the sofa, along the wall, with my head to the door, which was a little closed from me by a closet standing along the same wall. And the girls laid out 2 chairs perpendicular to my sofa and slept there, one closer to the door and the other by the window. We chatted a little before going to bed, already being in the dark, I deliberately did not answer, pretending to fall asleep, although I was still quite cheerful, just tired of talking. And then the girl who was sleeping by the window turned to the one who was lying closer to the door. Her voice trembled. "Do you want to be scared? Turn around." She continued to lie with her back to the door, saying that she did not want to turn around, asking, they say, what is there? “There is something there. Yul, well, at least you look. At first, I thought that my friend decided to scare us before going to bed, but my heart prudently went to my heels. Overcoming my fear, I peeked out from behind the closet and looked towards the door. My whole body immediately went cold and my heart beat wildly. I saw in the gap between the wall parallel to mine and the door of a person, a girl who was leaning her back against the wall. She stood completely motionless, her hair hid her face, I saw only her thin hands, and her body, dressed in a floor-length white dress with long sleeves. It was not transparent, I did not see the wall and the pattern of wallpaper behind it, it just stood there and covered this wall with itself! Like a very real person. But where does a stranger come from in a locked hospital and a locked office? I stared at her for literally a minute, then I could not stand it, and reached for the nightlight. With the advent of light, she disappeared, I don’t know how, because when she turned on the light, she was with her back to the door. We decided not to discuss anything, it was scary and incomprehensible. They dozed off in the light. The girl who first noticed this described everything that happened, as I saw it, so there is no point in retelling it.

Story #3. It happened literally 3 weeks ago, after our "resettlement". We started to smoke in the basement, which is a long corridor with low ceilings, on the floor of which iron sheets are laid, but on the sides there is an ordinary concrete floor, so we move to the smoking room “along the wall” so as not to rattle iron, especially along at night. There are closed doors on the sides, however, on the right side there are 2 rooms that you can look into - one is simply closed with a grate, and the second room simply has a door taken out and placed next to it. The smoking room, of course, is located at the very end of the corridor, right next to the second door. the light is on only at the entrance to the basement and in the smoking room itself, and in the middle of the corridor there is always a kind of twilight. The smoking room itself is similar to the room from the opening scenes of the first Saw, only with chairs and a small window under the ceiling, and a pot in the center (instead of an ashtray). Despite all the infernality of the situation, it was never scary in this basement, we calmly walked there one by one, even at night. I could take coffee and smoke there while sipping it. And once I even dozed off there for half an hour, sitting on a chair. So this time I went there after one especially long conversation, took 2 cigarettes, planned to sit in a calm atmosphere, listen to the wind humming outside the window of the smoking room. For more than 2 months, I got used to all the sounds of the basement - to the rustle of iron leaves from the wind, and to drops of water, and to other sounds. I was calm there. And then suddenly, going down, I felt an incomprehensible anxiety, I wanted to run away from there as soon as possible. But I wanted to smoke even more, and I went to the smoking room. Having smoked one cigarette, I was already reaching for the second, but suddenly changed my mind. It got really worrisome. I quickly headed for the exit, trying to walk along the concrete road, so I walked in general silently, because I was also wearing felt slippers. Already almost approaching the exit from the basement, I suddenly heard a completely extraneous sound. It was a childish giggle, coming from right behind me, about two meters away. A wave of cold swept through my body. I automatically turned around, the sound died down, there was no one behind me. Silent silence. I started so that the heels sparkled! in seconds she climbed the stairs, ran along the corridor, afraid to look back, ran into the “apartment” and locked the door. I turned white with fear, my eyes were bulging. I told the girls everything, now we don’t go to the basement alone and without phones at night.

So, first things first. About myself I can only say that I am a first-year student at a provincial university, however, quite prestigious in our suburban areas. I myself, although I have several trusted friends, spend more time either alone or with my family. I will sketch out a small plan of our town near Moscow: the administration (“white house”), the police, the hospital, schools, and so on - everything is the same as always. There is also an old lunatic asylum, closed under Tsar Pea, dilapidated and forgotten, standing in a once picturesque place, which is now overgrown with weeds, bushes and small trees. Actually, we will talk about him. I begin the story. Although I am a rather reserved person, a company of 2-3 people will not hurt me, especially friends, and especially if you “stir up” something interesting with them. I lived in this city not so long ago, so so far I have got only three good friends, I avoided others. Of these three, two were visitors - Vasya and Sergey, and one native - Anton. Once, when the snowstorm stopped, we cooperated to climb into some abandoned house and hold small gatherings there (such winter ones). As an abandoned house, we chose this most abandoned psychiatric hospital, although there was also a burned-out house as an option, but there was no roof. In the afternoon we got on foot through the snowdrifts to this building - the idea to come at night was expressed, but was not taken seriously. With difficulty pushing the snow piled aside by the door, we squeezed inside. It was terribly dark in the corridor, one of us turned on the lantern - we all had one. We looked around. Everything, as in ordinary abandoned buildings - fragments of boards on the floor, a crooked stand on the wall, broken hanging lamps on a dirty, sooty ceiling in places - my friends were not there for the first time, but I got here for the first time. We moved to the door to the corridor, where there was a streak of light. The four of us went out into a fairly spacious hall, quite light from the snow outside the windows. There were two peeling beams in front of the reception desk with a broken window. So that you can better imagine this place, I advise you to recall the local hospital and age it by twenty years, add tons of people drinking during this time on the ground floor, and look at the resulting picture. This place could be called a monument of abandonment. We cut down the lantern and went to the center of the room. On the sides of the reception there were passages to the corridors, they once had doors. The reception desk was empty and broken, even the table was broken.—Let's go! - said one of us, and we, divided into two groups (two by two), moved into the corridors: Vasya and I - to the left, Sery and Anton - to the right. Slowly walking along the corridor, from time to time we pushed the door with our foot, turning on the lantern and illuminating the next room. Maybe someone knows what an adrenaline feeling it is to feel that you are alone in a large three-story building that no one needs, and you can do whatever you want. - I asked my lagging companion. - Yes, there was a psychiatric hospital, only something strange was going on here, like experiments on people ... - I was already prepared to listen to the story, as this moron sharply slapped me on the shoulder and yelled. I cursed and almost hit him on the head with a flashlight. He ran away and, laughing, said: “God knows, they kept psychos, then they closed the house.” Rummage in the archives, they are on the third, but you are unlikely to climb, there are no stairs there. I said that I would go further, he nodded, and we parted. I glanced briefly into some rooms - somewhere there were tables, somewhere they were gouged, somewhere in the offices there was snow due to broken windows. The linoleum on the floor was torn and full of holes. I went up to the second floor - apparently, these were wards for ordinary patients, for doctors and attendants - there were many large spacious rooms for several people, some even had iron skeletons of beds . I went into one such room. It was relatively clean, with a metal chair next to the wall. I went to the window - they were all intact, and behind the glass in the snow I saw footprints leading from the wall of the hospital into the forest. “Where did the guys go,” flashed through my mind, I was even surprised, but fear brought me out of my thoughts - a shadow flashed and stopped on the wall: someone was standing in the opening and began to sneak. By the characteristic shaking of my head, I recognized Vasya, the reflection in the window convinced me that it was him. I yelled, turning around quickly. Frightened, the boy dropped his lantern and stumbled over a plank and fell to the floor. he choked out, and then I started laughing. I helped him up, and we began to discuss the possibility of holding a party here. The wind did not blow, it was even warm. More booze, something to warm up (like a kerosene stove), and then we'll see. - In the spring or summer, I would stir up ... - No, in the summer you need to go to nature, - I objected. - Let's see, - Vasya said, and we went on. doors. He pushed one of them, and it creaked the light into the stairwell. To the right was a simple stone staircase leading down, to the left nothing, just emptiness. - And this is on all the stairs, - said Vasya. - So that people do not break their heads, these doors were left here. And then drunk rods and so. - And what, no one climbed in? - Yes, they climbed in. One climbed in, then said that he saw shadows in the corridor, then he saw people from the archive, they asked him for help, he “moved” and killed the whole family ... - Vasya began to invent. I patted him on the shoulder: “After all, you are a noble inventor.” He laughed and said that he would put me on if I was so impatient there. I agreed - there was an archive, and some sick-lists from a psychiatric hospital can be as scary as horror films. After collecting and laying together the bricks that lay around, boards and other rubbish, I tried to jump to the stairwell, and when I succeeded (with my height), I climbed up with the help of a friend. There were no doors, in the corridor in front of me it was very light. I stepped forward and looked around. Bright corridors, on the sides - a lot of iron doors with tops. Everyone was locked up, the tops were closed - apparently, violently mad patients were kept here at one time. I walked further and went into another corridor, shorter (the building was U-shaped). There were more or less preserved classrooms, some even closed, they came across with normal doors, the floor was cleaner - it was immediately obvious that schoolchildren and alcoholics almost didn’t get in here. I went further. I saw a long corridor with a small number of doors. I quickened my pace and moved forward. Going to the door, I pushed it and got into the library. Half of the cabinets were lying on the floor, there were few books - apparently, after all this time they climbed here. The windows were intact, it was light. I noticed the switch, clicked - it is clear that the light did not turn on. I walked further, noticed a heavy wooden door, pushed it with my foot. She did not give in, and I almost fell from this unexpectedness. I banged on the rotten door again and again, until finally I knocked it open and got into a room with a mass of racks, cabinets and tables. There were cardboard boxes on each shelf, some were packed, some were open, showing papers, some of which were scattered on the floor. I walked between the shelves and pulled the first packed box towards me. It was quite heavy, and I decided to carry it to the table so as not to mess around in a cramped space. I was already bringing it to the table, as if something pulled the box, and there was a terrible roar. The bottom of the box rotted and collapsed, and the cassettes that were in the box crashed to the floor, rattling wildly. I was scared, but quickly pulled myself together. I tossed the already empty box aside and bent over the contents. Simple cassettes, already outdated for a long time, large, black, with faded notes - sometimes in pencil, sometimes in pen - on the side. There were numbers, then a fractional sign, and more numbers - obviously, these were video recordings for some kind of case histories. I took three of them and stuffed them into my jacket pockets - I hoped that these cassettes would deliver many interesting minutes. I also grabbed a couple of rather voluminous folders, stuffing them with difficulty into the inside pockets of my jacket. I again sank down in front of a bunch of cassettes and began to think what to do with them. Having piled them up, I moved the pile under the table, and at that moment I noticed a flickering shadow that ran through the doorway - I saw it on the opposite side of the doorway. Turning my head back, I groaned a lot. The thought flashed through my head that this was again Vasya joking, that it could be a watchman (although he was never born here), or some kind of dog. I jumped to my feet in fright when the cell phone rang. Anton called. - Why are you crawling there, come on down! his voice rang out. "I'll be there soon," I answered and added. “I’ll break this moron a little.” “Which one?” “Yes, Vaska, he’s tired of sneaking up.” At the other end, they fell silent, and after a pause, Anton said: “There are three of us here.” The voices of Vasya and Seryoga confirmed this, I was surprised and frightened in earnest. Behind the door outside along the wall, anyone could lurk and wait for me. I looked around. In addition to the front door, there was another opening covered with a CURTAIN! I rushed to the exit, and as I ran down the corridor, I dropped one of the folders. Having run into the stairwell, I was frightened again when I realized that I could collapse from a rather high height - there were no stairs. I quickly descended on my hands, jumped to the second floor and saw some people in front of me, yelled, but then I recognized Anton, Sery and Vasya. all three shouted. - Fucked up? - There was someone there, - I said. All three shrugged their shoulders, Vasya said that he also saw someone - with a scythe on his shoulders and in a black hoodie, and we laughed together. I didn't tell them about the cassettes, and as we walked down the road we discussed the party. Anton and Seryoga walked along the other wing and said that everything was bad there in general, I told them about the third one, Vasya about the second one. - Bad idea. Maybe it will be warmer - on the second it will be possible, but not now. And in truth the wind rose, the snow began to take revenge with renewed vigor. - Where else did you go? I asked Anton. “What do you mean?” “Well, the footprints were fresh from the wall into the forest. All three looked at me, and I at them. - We didn’t go anywhere - we just wandered in a psychiatric hospital. I told them about the traces, and we decided that it was someone else wandering. Coming home, I found that all the family had gone to relatives in another city and they would not be there for several days . In this case, it was to my advantage - I would not be hurt to see what was on the cassettes. I had dinner, took out a good old cassette player from the mezzanine, connected it to the TV. He dumped the folders and put the cassettes on the table. I waited for the VCR to start up and inserted a cassette into it. The machine swallowed it, and stripes flickered across the screen. When the ripples passed, a woman in white clothes appeared on the screen, sitting on a metal chair like the one I saw in the hospital. She kept her hands on the table, cuts were visible on her hands. The video was black and white, rippled in places, the sound was just disgusting. Apparently, the film was demagnetized while lying in the box. I connected the VCR to the computer's TV tuner and overtook the recording into memory. It was already dark when I finished shamanizing with filters, color, various programs for restoring old video materials, but the output turned out to be a rather bad, but still watchable video of a dialogue with a patient. She was young, judging by her face, and had a dialogue with a doctor who wrote it all down. Through the noise in the sound, one could hear the conversation: - What is your name? - Angelina (there was further noise) Andreevna. - What worries you so much? - It haunts me (there was noise again). , while scratching her hands. “Who is chasing you?” “My dead sister,” the noise began to interrupt the sobs that had begun, ripples ran through the image, but you could see that Angelina was starting to wring her hands. “How is she chasing you?” “She comes to me to the ward, - the sound became better, although ripples still slipped on the screen. - Why is she doing this ... (she does, I guessed, since the interference began again) raised her eyes for the first time. I was a little scared - my eyes were exhausted, with a dark vascular network. - For what? the doctor's voice rang out clearly. “I didn't save her,” the girl drooped, and her shoulders twitched. Such a dialogue of simple phrases lasted for several minutes. The quality of the video has become much better, and it was already possible to make out the date of recording - the 89th year. From the conversations, it became clear that the girl's sister crashed in an accident, and now it seems to her that her spirit is haunting her. However, I was already getting scared. - Tell me, where do you get cuts on your arms, back and legs? the doctor asked warmly. “It is she,” the girl said in a weeping whisper. “Did she come to you at night?” “Yes. And she started cutting me. Please don't take me to the third floor, leave me on the second floor, with people, I don't want to be alone. - Okay, you'll be on the second, but you have to promise that the cuts will stop. - I'll try, just don't leave me there alone, Angelina pleaded. “All right, go. Take her out,” he said to someone, and another woman, apparently a nurse, brought the girl out. “A severe form of depression, a split personality, outbursts of auto-aggression, paranoia,” the doctor began to list, apparently for the record. He named a few more tricky mental illnesses, gave the date and last name of the patient - Churina, and it reminded me of someone ... Yes, I definitely heard this last name before. playback. While the video was copying, I opened one of the cases. Someone Vasily with a strange surname, at the time when he was 18 years old, began to believe that his parents and sister were demons. The diagnosis is chronic paranoid schizophrenia. The voices of the angels urged him one night to take his grandfather's gun, load it and shoot all his family. He was arrested and sent to a mental hospital. He lived in some Lyubichi in the Tver region. It is not clear how he ended up in the Moscow region - apparently, he was sent for treatment. A photograph was also attached to the case, black and white, of course. The guy is like a guy, only his eyes are bulging. I was distracted from reading by movement on the monitor (the video was still playing) - on it some silhouette silently shouted, gave signs to the camera, which was installed, apparently, through the door. I was frightened by surprise, but a real horror seized me when the girl (she had long hair) began to cut her hands with a kind of sharp object, scratching and wriggling in the most incredible poses, trying to prick herself as hard as possible, while protecting herself from something . Then the camera shook, and she began to shoot how doctors, orderlies run inside and tie the girl up, give her an injection and she falls asleep. The image disappears. To say that I was scared is to say nothing. I hastened to close the video. Yes, it was pure horror. I set out to show the video to my friends, threw in the rest and saw that the second video was already ready. I turned it on too, ready to be scared. The now familiar wall with a calendar and a poster of a brain appeared on the video - the quality of this video was much better. Another girl was already sitting at the table, apparently with blond hair, and she was answering the questions of the same voice, while continuously swaying from side to side and biting her lip: - Anna. Sometimes my hands light up. That worries me.” “When does this happen?” “Only when I fall asleep.” “And that's why you don't sleep? How exactly do they burn? - Both palms at once, it hurts a lot, Ivan Stepanovich. - But you don't have burns on your hands. And we can guarantee that your hands won't catch fire just like that, you should be asleep. Understand, two weeks without sleep is already serious! Suddenly, the girl panicked: “No! I cant! You've never experienced it, so you say it like that! This conversation went on for several minutes, for every question she had a delusional answer. Finally, the doctor said, "All right, I'll prescribe some pills for you, and you can be transferred to the ordinary patients." "Not sleeping pills?" - Anna said quickly and with fear. - No, just soothing ... The girl nodded her head and thought. I took a closer look. Yes, her eyes were closed. The rustling of the pencil stopped. There was a tense silence. "Anna!" the doctor called loudly. As if on cue, she raised her head and, immediately lowering her eyes to her palms, screamed loudly. I flinched at that horrible scream and cut the speakers off. When I looked at the monitor again, I saw Anna, in a semi-conscious state, rushing from corner to corner of the office, waving her arms, and, apparently, screaming. The doctor jumped up, after a moment the orderlies came running, the struggling girl was taken away. A man in a white coat walked over to the table and sat down at it. I turned on the speaker. A voice rang out: “This time, first-degree burns appeared on the patient’s arms. Perhaps a suggestion. He began to list the diseases again, and I scrolled the record further. At some point, I was frightened and almost yelled - the camera was filming a body hanging in a noose. There was no doubt that it was Anna. Further, the recording showed how the body was placed on the couch, the camera casually removed the iron door with the top, and after that came the ripples. I turned off the player and, turning on the music, began to leaf through the second folder with the patient's personal file. It described a case of split personality, with another small case filed for each personality. I began to read. It was written about a woman who under certain circumstances was the most modest girl, under others she calmly worked as a prostitute, having got herself a separate apartment. Her third alter ego was a dog, which she turned into when she got into the basement of her house. In her case, everything ended relatively well - she recovered. It turned out (all this was described in detail in the personal file) that when she was 5 years old, her mother often locked her in the basement of the house for several days, and her older brother demanded that she satisfy his sexual needs in exchange for food. A year later, the neighbors found out about this, and the girl was taken away. When she became an adult, these cases completely faded from her memory. A sheet with two numbers separated by a fractional sign was pasted on the last back. The same sheets, but with different numbers, were in other cases. I realized that these were cassette numbers, and decided to go get them tomorrow. Deciding that that was enough for today, I went to bed. told him right away. He dismissed this idea in a sleepy voice and said that he would just look at the records, but would not go. “And Anton and Seryy are unlikely to go,” he said, preventing my call to them. “Why?” “Yes, I think so. I called them too.” they really refused to go, even though it was daytime. I decided to go alone, got dressed, took a lantern, just in case a knife, and when I took it, I remembered the shadow that ran then. It became scary, and I added a bat to the knife, hiding it under my jacket - it was small, but heavy, with a lead core. I locked the apartment and went to the hospital. It was already lunch when I got to it and went inside. Still the same hall, the same reception. I went to the left corridor, walked to the stairs and went up to the second floor. Only when I was about to step onto the stairs to the third, I got scared and remembered that there were no stairs, and I would either have to stomp home behind the hinged one or think what to do. I began to think. Going home for about a kilometer - it won’t work, you have to look for something. I dragged 10 bricks and a stand made of wood from the first floor, put the bricks on top of each other in length, put the stand on them. There was a great chance to fall, but I was carried away, and I grabbed the edge of the stairwell. Then I pulled myself up on my hands and climbed onto it. I took out a bat and went out into the already familiar bright corridor. Everything was as it was then. Snow flakes flashed outside the window, the window itself was stained and dirty. I walked over to the archives, holding the bat at the ready, and pushed open the door. It creaked open, and I glanced at the already familiar room. Cassettes were still lying near the table, all the boxes were in place. Looks like no one has been to this place since me. I went into the room. Nobody. I looked at the opaque green curtain that closed the passage - also no movement, but the curtain scared me wildly again - why is it hanging here, because after so much time it would either have been torn off, or would it itself have torn? So someone put it here. I shouted: “Hey, if there is someone here, come out, I will not harm you!” In response, silence. I realized what an idiot I must look like now, and leaned over the cassettes, choosing the right ones. And the right ones were those whose numbers were written in the cases of patients. I found them by half-worn inscriptions with a pen and put them in a backpack, having previously thrown three more cassettes and about five cases into it. I was about to leave, when I glanced at the opening, closed with a curtain. I approached her closer, feeling horror. Pulling it back, I saw a square room, completely empty, without any sign of a person. Even shining a lantern there, I did not see any door or hatch there, and how could he be there? I calmed down and went out. Again it seemed to me that someone was waiting for me outside the door, but again there was no one there. Walking down the corridor, I suddenly stopped, feeling some anxiety that was growing. I turned around. There were no silhouettes in the bright window light, no one was running. The linoleum was clean. It was this purity that reminded me that when I ran away from here yesterday, I dropped one folder, and now it was gone! I felt terrible, but I had a bat in my hands, and I decided to find out what was happening here. I went from door to door of the left wing, pushing the doors - a warehouse, an archive, a library ... In the library on the table, a clean object attracted my attention. Everything around was covered with a layer of dust, and he stood out for his cleanliness. I went to the library and took the item. It was a flash drive. The most common flash drive, 16 gigabytes, apparently, is whole. It became fun for me. Obviously, someone from those who climbed here before me forgot it, and now I can become the owner of several hours of pornography, a bunch of movies or music, and just a good flash drive. I took it and went to the exit. Jumping from the stairwell to the second floor, I went downstairs and went out into the street. Breathing in fresh air, I went home. At home, I dumped the contents of the backpack on the floor, separated the cases and put them on the table, put the cassettes in front of the VCR. In parallel with this, I began to search the Internet for information about the local psychiatric hospital. There was little information, but I went to some site where it was described in detail. It was also written there that there was little information, because the hospital had not been used for a long time, and data about it were stored mainly in books and magazines. However, it was still written that the hospital was hastily closed after some unpleasant incident happened there. The hospital was not simple, something unusual was investigated there (here I remembered how the girl spontaneously had burns on her palms), but then the research was curtailed. “Hmm, yes, tin,” I muttered and inserted the USB flash drive into the computer. She recognized herself, a menu popped up, and I copied all the contents to the computer - the flash drive was packed almost to capacity. While the data was being copied, I went to the cassettes. The first tape was with the guy who killed his whole family. I immediately inserted it into the tape recorder and turned it on. Again, a disgusting quality, you can barely make out a man wrapped in a straitjacket, through the interference you can only hear his voice. This record will also have to be copied to a computer and processed. I went to the computer - the data had already been copied, and I decided to postpone this business for the time being. I looked into the folder with curiosity. About a hundred video files, each about five minutes long. — Wow! I burst out, and I started the first video. A chair appeared on the screen and a girl holding her hands on the table in front of her. She looked at one point and fiddled with her fingers. Cuts were clearly visible on the arms, bandages were visible above the elbow. “What is your name?” - from this voice I felt pressure in the abdomen. Yes, these were definitely the recordings that I saw, only here they were in excellent quality, albeit in black and white. “Angelina Pavlova Andreevna,” I was surprised, they usually introduce themselves, putting their last name in the first place. “What worries you so much? I pressed the space bar. Playback has stopped. I was terribly scared. Suppose someone before me collected all the records (only after that I noticed that the records had the same type of numbers as on the cassettes, except for the last ones), edited and improved them, and on one of the trips I forgot the flash drive on the third floor. But why didn't you come? Maybe it was his shadow that flickered then? I began to think and decided that this thought was correct, because there were no more options. I scrolled through the record to the end. In the end, I again found that scene where the girl is hitting the walls, a dull sound of blows is heard, she begins to cut and stab herself, at the same time defending herself from the attack of the "spirit" ... I turned off the player and started the next record. A very young girl, almost a teenager, was already sitting at the table, and in a pretentious manner, with active gestures and big eyes, she sang out that people constantly walk around her who help her, tell a lot of new things. - Tell me who let you out of the cell ? the doctor asked. “Well, one of my friends let me out, I asked him, he let me out, and helped me get out, and told me where the doctors go, and distracted them with knocks and a shadow, and I left,” she laughed. He quickly wrote everything down, then asked: “Are there many of them?” How often do you see them? - There are a lot of them, I see them very often. Now one of them tells me that you forgot your cigarettes at home, ahahahaha! The doctor chuckled and ordered his assistant to take the girl away. When they left, he pushed a drawer aside and said for the record: - No cigarettes, apparently, I either dropped them or forgot them at home. I stopped playback. Judging by the number of entries, they would be enough for the second Great Wall of China. I have included the following entry. There again appeared a girl of about 25, short-haired, with dark hair. I looked at the date - 90th year. The last ones were 89th. Yeah, so the further, the later the records. I turned off the player and started recording about three quarters of the way through. The recording turned out to be already in color, a girl already familiar to me was sitting on a chair. Yes, this is the one that saw people. Now she just smiled, she became an adult. - Tell me, what do people say to you now? - a familiar, slightly thickened voice sounded. - That it will all be over soon! - What exactly? - They will let me out. - But you understand that as long as you hear them, we can’t let you out. . I stopped playback and skipped to the last record. There was already excellent quality, rich color, good sound. A woman of about 40 was sitting at the table, but she looked good, and she said with tears in her eyes: “Today they were again!” I heard their footsteps! - Did they push towards you? - No, they just walked! I'm so scared! Do you have strong doors? What if they enter? the woman sobbed. "No, the doors are good, don't worry." But you can deal with them yourself. Do you remember that demon that one night came to you? Did you defeat him? - Yes ... - So, you will succeed this time as well. Just be ready.” “Okay…” Then it was seen how the girl leaves the room, no one accompanies her. The doctor sits silently for a while, then gets up, shakes the camera and it approaches the door. Apparently he forgot to turn it off. I began to look. Clean gray linoleum - the camera was tilted down and filmed it. Suddenly, the doctor apparently noticed that the camera was working, and, having raised it, turned it off. The playback ended, but I managed to notice in the last frames some kind of bright spot on the floor of the hospital corridor. I threw the video into the program and watched the last second frame by frame. Here the camera quickly raises, some object lying on the floor is blurry in the distance, the next frame is clear - and I almost screamed: there was a folder on the floor that I dropped when I ran away from there for the first time! I jumped up. Yes, it was definitely that folder, even some papers spilled out of it. Today the folder wasn't there, so the recording was made yesterday! Moving away from the shock, I sat down at the computer again and started the video called "1/10". Again the same quality. Again the same office. Again the girl at the table, but different. She tells the same doctor that there is someone under the skin of her face. — Who? — I don't know. Maybe worms? I can feel them crawling! - When do you feel it? - When I'm alone for a long time. This conversation went on throughout the recording. I switched to the next one. Then to the third. On the fourth, I was scared when I saw the face of this girl. It was all torn apart, apparently with nails, and the girl herself was crying and complaining that the worms got her. I moved on in fear. There the scratches were already smaller, the girl was calm. I jumped to the eighth entry and hiccupped as the girl's face was a bloody wound. Apparently, the wounds were caused by a nail or a piece of iron, but whatever it was, her face was terrible. I felt my breath ragged and tears welling up in my eyes. The next record is snow, a path trodden in the snow leading to the house, the sound of two pairs of feet crunching snow. The recording lasted five seconds. I stood up in horror. The devilry that took place in this city crossed all boundaries. The doorbell suddenly rang, which made me feel cold again. Looking through the peephole, I saw Vasya and opened the door for him, letting him into the apartment. He asked why I was so pale, and I showed him these ten entries in sequence. He looked through them silently while I poured tea in the kitchen. When I came in, he was sitting with bulging eyes, breathing heavily. "What is it?" - I asked. - I know her, she's my neighbor, she left for Moscow a month ago! I was stunned by his words. - Call the police! - he shouted, but the city did not have its own outfit - usually it was called from a neighboring one, but because of the weather it was unlikely that anyone would have reached us - snow had piled up for a year in advance. - What should we do? - he asked. Judging by his face, he did not lie, and it really was his neighbor. It was getting dark and evening. We called Anton and Seryoga to rush to us. We showed them these records, they closed their eyes in horror when the girl tried to say something with her torn mouth and only blinked her torn eyelashes. The last video (with a frightened woman) shocked all three of them when I told them that I had dropped the folder when I was running away from there, and today it was not there. We began to consult. Anton's father had a gun from the time of the Great Patriotic War, and Anton promised to take it. I took the bat, Vasya carried the camera, Gray just followed the company. We could have waited until morning or called in more senior people, but we were afraid that we would simply attract the attention of the person who continued to operate in the hospital. Therefore, we quietly made our way to the hospital, when after 15 minutes we waited for Anton with a gun. We ended up in a familiar hallway. All four turned on their lights and looked around. Everything is the same, everything is the same. Vasya turned on the camera, it was hard to see, but at least the sound was recorded. We went down the corridor, climbed the stairs to the second floor and stopped in the stairwell. In about five minutes, three of us climbed to the third floor, lifting each other up. Anton remained downstairs with a pistol. We went out into the corridor. It was strangely warm here, despite the winter. We quietly stepped on the floor, illuminating the floor and walls. Vasya noticed a few drops on the floor. We squatted down and began to examine them. Simple dark drops, thick, not frozen, gray in color. We went further. All the same doors. I knocked on one of them fearfully and put my ear to the door. Everyone held their breath. Silence. We examined the door. There was neither a lock nor a latch on it, just like on a top, as if the door was littered or locked from the inside. “Strange,” we decided. such. The lantern went down, and we saw a man in a shabby guard uniform, middle-aged, short, tired. "What the hell are you doing here?" he asked in a sleepy voice. Obviously, he had recently slept, and his face seemed strangely familiar to me. It also seemed suspicious to me that he was sleeping when it was minus 10 degrees on the street, and the building was not heated. “There’s nothing to steal here, except maybe these doors…” he kicked the iron door. like hanging out in the cold. They woke me up, you understand… — Excuse me, — said Vasya, and we moved after the watchman. Everyone except me - I said that I would look for Anton, and went the other way. Leaving, I heard the conversation of friends and the watchman: - And how do we go down, there is no ladder there? - I usually put mine ... There are only four of you? - Yes. I went down on my hands to the second floor and shouted: “Anton!”. ? - came from somewhere below. - Get up, we were discovered ... - Who? - Local watchman. I heard Anton's steps, then I saw a lantern - he was going upstairs. Approaching me, he said: “What other watchman? It hasn't been here since it closed! I was surprised and suddenly I was twitched - I recognized the guard! The face on the tape I was watching on the cassette was pretty hard to see, but I compared it to the photograph - yes, it was him. The same simple village face, the same bulging eyes of a maniac who went mad and shot his whole family with his grandfather's hunting rifle... I rushed to the second staircase, Anton, preparing a pistol, followed me. We went down to the first floor. It was quiet. Footsteps were heard from below. We turned to the stairs and began to shine a lantern there. A guard appeared in the light, and, covering his face from the light of the lanterns, he asked: “Anton and his friend?” We lowered the lanterns, the watchman removed his hand from his face. Yes, it was him. "Where are they?" I asked. The watchman smiled slyly and said: “I’ll clean you up anyway, you bastards!” He didn’t have time to get a pistol out of his jacket - Anton shot him in the leg, and he fell, spinning like a spinning top. Our ears squealed from the roar of the shot, we ran down the stairs after our friends. We entered a dark cellar. With a lantern they found some object in the corner, covered with a tarpaulin. It turned out to be a generator. I started pulling the rope while Anton was on guard, and finally the generator started up. Light spilled over the room. It turned out to be a morgue. Spacious, with stone arches, with a mass of recesses in the walls and a huge wide iron door at the end. I went to the first recess and pulled the handle. Something like a shelf rolled out. Anthony came too. There was something on the shelf, covered with a sheet. It was a body, there was no doubt about it - the outlines of the head, torso, arms - we did not consider further. I felt dizzy... What is the body doing here if the hospital was closed 15 years ago? Anton slowly took the cover and pulled it back sharply. When he did this, I was a little distracted, as it seemed to me that someone was knocking at the other end of the morgue. But when I turned my head, I screamed in horror. On the shelf lay the same girl with a terribly torn face, open eyes and mouth, but the worst thing was that her legs were cut off. Fully. Anton stood in a stupor, I quickly pushed the shelf back and brought him to his senses. “We need to find Vasya and Ser…” my words addressed to him were interrupted by a groan and a knock at the other end. Anton also heard them, and we rushed there, additionally illuminating the path with lanterns. We have reached the furnace. Yes, it was a crematorium - a huge wide riveted door. In such a furnace it was possible to burn a bull. We lifted the bolt and opened it. Two gigantic worms tumbled out of the open door, scattering dust. Something hissed. The worms stirred and began to cough - they were our friends who got dirty in the ashes of the crematorium. And the gas hissed, the sharp irritating smell of which Anton and I also felt, quickly locking the door and waking up our friends. “Let's get down ...” Vasya muttered, and we moved to the exit. We did not turn off the generator and went up to the first floor. The guard was no longer there. We were terribly frightened and saw that the bloody trail leads to the second floor. Vasya and Sergey dissuaded us from going there, but we all the same went upstairs as a group of four. Friends told us that in the crematorium, besides them, there was another hefty cauldron - with the help of a lighter, they could see human bones there. Under this story, we followed the trail. The trail led to another wing. Stepping carefully, we walked along it. Our opponents knew this building better, and the worst thing was that we did not know who it was and how many there were. Maybe it's one psycho, or maybe there are hundreds of them. The trail led to the stairwell and up the leaning stairs. We climbed up to the third floor. It was terribly dark, slowly the lights began to go down. The trail led us to the junction of two wings of the building, to an office with a normal door. We looked around. Nobody. With our feet we began to beat on the door, it had already begun to give in, until Anton reminded us that the guard had a gun that we forgot to take from him. We stopped in indecision, moving sideways from the door. I turned my back on the door and kicked it open with a bang. We stood like that for about a minute, not daring even to look in there. Finally, having agreed on signs, we jumped into the office together, shining lanterns. There was no one there. The trail of blood turned into a puddle under the chair - apparently, someone helped him, and this someone was a doctor. Anton began to stand outside the door while we fiddled in a clean office. I sat down at the table… Yes, it was the same office that constantly appeared in the records, there was no doubt about that. There was a computer connected to an uninterruptible power supply, charged, obviously, from a generator in the morgue. It reminded me of the surname - Churina. I asked Vasya and Sery if they knew one. They said no. — Anton, and you? I shouted. While he was walking, I opened the drawers in the desk - one contained another flash drive and keys. Seryoga found a large camera in the closet. “Some kind of maniac,” he said with feeling. “What am I? - Anton asked, looking into the room. - Do you know Churina? - Well, yes, this is my mother's maiden name, but what? I, to be honest, was horrified by these words. - Yes, I heard about her. What happened to her? - She died in childbirth. — Aaaa… Yes, everything came together. The recording was made in 1989, now 2011. Anton will turn 21 this year, he was in the army - hence the possession of a pistol. He is a native of this city. Yes, his mother was here...I took the keys and we left the office. It got completely dark. As if the world was flooded with black paint. We went to the cells for the violent lunatics. With difficulty I found the hole for the key, and with even greater difficulty I found the right key in the bunch. The lock clicked, the heavy door creaked, I ran to the side - you never know what could run out from there. But it was quiet. I looked there. Nobody. A toilet bowl, a couch, a rag on the couch, next to it is a metal table embedded in the wall. And no one. We moved on to the next door. Nerves were on edge, and Vasya said: “Maybe we’ll come tomorrow?” You never know, it's dark now, and this watchman is wandering around somewhere. With a pistol. We unanimously decided that this was a good idea, and quickly left the third floor, taking the keys. Quickly getting out of the hospital, we stomped to me. Arriving, they began to warm themselves with beer, partially purchased for the party. Vasya and Sery went to the bathroom separately to wash off the cadaverous ashes. And I decided to show Anton the recording with his mother. He was tensely silent throughout. When the playback ended, he said: "Is that all?" "Yes." "Where's her business?" My aunt really crashed... Nightmare. - I don't know, it looks like it's in the archive. I sympathize. When the four of us gathered, I connected the USB flash drive to the computer. There were only three videos, but they shed some light on what was happening in the hospital. In the first video, someone was bandaging a maniac sitting in a chair. The video is short, 15 seconds. On the second, the same room was filmed as when questioning the patients, only instead of the patient there was a maniac. - You must clean them! They think you're stupid, but you know a lot! - insisted the doctor. - I can not touch them, I need a gun or fire! - I put the gun in your room. Don't cook them, BURN! Don't give them a chance to make themselves known, otherwise there will be hundreds of them! Remember what you did with the demons of your family, bring light to the world! For about five minutes, the doctor brainwashed the patient until he got up and left. “Horror,” Gray commented on what he saw. But the real horror was on the third video. The doctor, apparently, was a cameraman and filmed how the watchman sawed off the legs from the dead body of a girl with a wood saw, one by one, with a nasty dull sound, like on a rotten board, and loudly, like wood, when it hit the bones, and then laid them side by side on the floor. Having finished this, he covered the corpse with a sheet and pushed the shelf, then took an ax and cut each leg in the knee area, put it all on his hands like firewood, and moved to the crematorium. The operator followed him. In the open door of the furnace stood a huge cauldron, occupying about half of the furnace. The watchman put the stumps into a cauldron, and they could be heard gurgling in the water. Then the stove was closed, some switches and levers were turned, and flames began to slip from the stove through the gap between the door and the wall. About five minutes into this shoot, the lever was turned again, the door was open, and steam was pouring out of the oven. The voice of the operator was heard, we recognized the voice of the doctor: “Appetizing,” he inhaled the steam. - Patients will be satisfied. This is where the recording ended. Sergey and Vasya, who gradually turned green throughout the video, fell into the toilet, and characteristic sounds came from there. Anton and I just looked at each other. We decided to go to bed. The thought flashed through my head that the maniac could track us down, but I drove it away. In the morning we woke up safe and sound, but we were late for the institute - it was already Monday. We were not particularly upset, since we had a more interesting case than the institute. Gathered and equipped, we moved to the hospital. When we started to approach it again, we noticed something strange - on the third floor of the hospital, the windows were strangely clean, as if washed - bright. Having noted this to ourselves, we penetrated inside. We noticed snow in the hall - it was suspicious. Snowballs came across here and there, and looked like footprints. We quickly climbed to the third floor and moved along the corridor along the metal doors. Throwing a glance at the end of the corridor, I noticed that the door to the office was closed. We went to the first door that came across and I inserted the key. To our general surprise, the door opened easily even without the help of a key - it was not locked. We cautiously entered inside. Along the wall was an iron sunbed, embedded in the wall, on which lay a mattress. On the side stood a washstand and a toilet bowl, a stained mirror hung. On a metal table stood a plate with the remnants of slurry, in which we identified what had been boiled in the crematorium and what had been dripped in front of the door. We dispersed around the cell, even though it was small. On the walls, I saw a lot of strange drawings scratched with a nail, there were also words that looked more like spells to ward off evil spirits. There was a dark cloth under the window, which, obviously, covered it. I had no doubt that this was the cell of the girl who was afraid of demons… But what kind of demon did she defeat? There was a hammer under the bed. We left the strange room and went to the next one. It was also unlocked and opened surprisingly easily, as if greased. Everything in this room was exactly the same as in the previous cell, except for the bloody floor near the bed and traces of bloody palms on the walls; the mirror was broken, there was blood and rags of cloth on its fragments. There were wide bloody streaks along the wall. Without speaking, we somehow immediately realized that a girl lived here who tore her face off ... She cut it with fragments, tore it apart, holding it along the wall ... Horror. Suddenly, we all jumped when the cell door slammed. - shouted Anton and pushed the door with his foot. The door didn't open, and we started to panic a little, until I remembered the keys and opened the door from the inside. We went out. There was no one around, but there was no draft that would have closed the door. Anton held a pistol at the ready as we opened the doors one by one. All had the same thing - emptiness, only a bench, a table, a toilet bowl, a washbasin ... Only in one room the bench was walled not on the right, but on the left, into the wall, and I immediately recognized the room in which the girl, who was afraid of her flammable palms, hanged herself . She hanged herself on a pipe, which for some reason passed in the ward from above. We also saw the maniac's room, the mattress was in the corner, the doors were scratched with nails - obviously, at one time he had a good rage. We reached the last cell, the walls of which were covered with notebook sheets with drawings. This surprised us, and we began to consider them. Simple children's drawings, some silhouettes around the child ... Above the child there is an inscription - Katya. Exactly. This is the same girl who saw spirits around her. I noticed one leaf that caught my attention. I tore it off the wall and began to read. “Today is January 28, 2011 (which surprised me a lot, because it was today!) — which means you are already reading this letter. You have seen the tapes with me and you know that I will not lie now. If you understand this, then know that we are already dead. You must find us, the people who died earlier tell me. Everything you know about this building is enough. Just don't be afraid and take your friends on your journey, they will help you. Our souls will rest as soon as our tormentor is punished.” “Wow…” I said. “What? my friends asked me, and I gave them a piece of paper. Gray, twisting it in his hands, asked: - So what? - What, what, read! - What to read, the sheet is empty. We left and went to the office. It wasn’t locked, but we didn’t find a camera in the closet. “That means he was here…” Anton said. I will help her. Therefore, she knows how. "Everything you know about the building..." What does it mean? All I needed was to move myself… And where is that guard? So… What do I know about the building? Well, built in the 80s, closed sometime in the 95s, it was said that the government was investigating the supernatural abilities of people like the girl who had her palms on fire or the one who saw ghosts. In thought, I went to the window. The snow was already falling in flakes and spinning strangely near the window, as if inviting me to take a look at the street. I looked, and then I was shocked - I recognized this path on the street! She was at the last recording with a girl who ripped her face off! I turned around and told my friends about it. They fully supported my idea to go along this path - we had a gun. We quickly got out into the street, went around the building and followed the path. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up as I recalled the notes. Friends, too, were silent and walked seriously. We walked along the trail for about 15 minutes until we came across a small house in the forest. Smoke was coming from the chimney. We decided to go. In the only room there was a stove, next to which sat a man in a white coat. He turned his head towards us, and we saw his face - the face of a mad genius, with shining eyes and bared teeth. He laughed so hard that we ran out into the street and ran in horror for about a minute, until we stopped and began to ask each other whether it was a reality or a hallucination. When we again dared to come to the house, it was empty. Following the tracks from it, we walked about 50 meters more and saw some kind of unit like a sawmill, absolutely all stained with blood and some rags. Blood melted the snow around her in a hot puddle. Vasya vomited, we looked with horror at this construction and were afraid to accept the idea that several people were lowered into a tray and cut into pieces, then cut again and eventually turned into a red goo that swayed in the pit where all this and merged. The crackling of branches made us jerk sharply towards the source of the sound. It was the doctor. Giggling nastily, he said in a mocking voice: "Yes, it's me!" It was I who asked them to go down there for liberation! And they went, he-he-he, go! One by one, and your mother, Antosha, who was afraid of demons, and the soothsayer, all went! And your uncle, Vasya, and he wanted too! - What nonsense, I don't have an uncle! shouted Vasya. "Naive boy!" Do you really believe that your relatives will tell you how your uncle killed all his relatives? Yes, you are named after him! And your mother,” he turned to Anton, “do you think she is sinless? Yes, she killed a bum with a hammer when he walked along the third floor! And she could kill the one who wandered there the day before yesterday, and we would have cooked soup out of him too! - after these words, I felt that something in my stomach turned over, because it was I who went there. And then I remembered that on the recording this woman said that someone was walking outside the door. - Lies! I'm not from these places! — Ha-ha-ha! the psycho cackled. “Fool, do you think they would leave you here?” A shot rang out, interrupting the madman's speech. Anton fired his pistol, but missed. The psycho giggled and said, “Don't try, son. Papa will do everything himself. - Papa? Fuck you! - You don't like my joke? The psycho took out a box of matches. Only now did everyone notice the smell of gasoline and the psycho's wet clothes. “And I thought it would be fun,” and he lit a match. The pillar of fire stood quietly for some time, but then it began to run through the forest, screaming and rolling on the ground. Anton wanted to shoot him, but Vasya lowered his hand: “Let him suffer.” A minute later, the psycho calmed down and only smoked. — came a demonic voice from the side of the unit. But no one had time to react, except for Anton, who grabbed his pistol with lightning speed and fired in the direction of the voice. The bullet ricocheted off the metal, sparks flew into the face of the psycho and he, unable to resist, collapsed into the pit, splashing thick blood, rags, some black lumps, hair onto the snow near the pit ... We hurried to get out of there. This is how the story happened. The cops talked us a little, then they let us go, they even announced gratitude.

Tata Oleinik

Vlad Lesnikov

Yes, we like to write about the mentally ill. Firstly, against their background, it is easier for us to feel mentally healthy. Secondly, even Kant said that there is nothing more interesting in the world than the stars in the sky and all sorts of oddities inside the human brain. Here you go, it happened, you calmly carry your head on your shoulders and do not expect any trick from it. Although a keg of gunpowder with a lit wick would probably be slightly more dangerous - such amazing things can sometimes be done with people by their consciousness.

And do not forget: often, only by studying a broken thing, you can understand how it should ideally work. It was psychiatry that at one time created the basis on which the modern sciences of thinking in general, such as neurobiology, neurophysiology, evolutionary psychology, etc., developed. , we have collected eight case histories describing cases of rare and very interesting syndromes.

Without control

In the 20s-30s of the 20th century, Dieter Weise, a former postal worker, was treated in the German clinic "Charite" for seven years. Mr. Weise's problem was that he could not control his body in any way. The only thing he could control was speech and breathing. Everything else was run by a certain Peter, who was a big bastard.

The attending physicians were never able to get to know Peter: he did not enter into contacts with humanity, he left all communications to Dieter, and he came off to the fullest.

Richard Stübe, the patient's attending physician, wrote: "The patient's clear, reasonable speech was amazing - the speech of an exhausted, but completely healthy person." While Peter masturbated in front of the nurses, banged his head against the wall, crawled on all fours under the beds and threw feces at the orderlies, Dieter Weise, in a tired voice, asked those around him for forgiveness and begged him to immediately put on a straitjacket.

The luminaries of world psychiatry argued for a long time how to define Mr. Weise's illness. Some advocated an unusual form of schizophrenia, while others suggested that they were dealing with an advanced version of "alien hand syndrome", in which the brain loses volitional control over the neurons associated with a particular part of the body.

It was never possible to find out: in 1932, the patient Weise, left for a short time unattended, plugged the drain hole of the sink in his room with a piece of sheet, waited until enough water was collected, and drowned himself, lowering his head into the sink. “It was undoubtedly a murder,” Dr. Stübe later reflected. “It’s scary to imagine Dieter’s feelings at the moment when an unknown invader who occupied his body forced Dieter to bend over the sink…”

The book in which the American psychiatrist Oliver Sacks described this clinical case is called “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat”. In the 1960s, Mr. Sachs was asked to examine a famous musician, a teacher at the conservatory, whom Sachs calls "Professor P."

Professor P. was no longer young and had enjoyed the reputation of a person with oddities all his life, which did not prevent him from being a famous singer first, then a respected teacher, as well as starting a family and living happily with his wife for many years. So the wife was worried that recently the professor had become something completely unpredictable.

Sachs talked to the musician, found no special oddities, minus some eccentricity, and they began to say goodbye. And then the professor did a very unexpected thing. Approaching his wife, he extended his hand, felt her head with the gesture with which one usually takes a hat, and made an attempt to put the object thus obtained on himself. The wife twisted out of her fingers, the professor moved them in the air and thought. Sachs made a hunting stance and took the professor in turn. They met regularly, talked, passed a lot of tests.

It turned out the following. The worldview of the professor suffered catastrophic holes. He looked like a man who is trying to look around in a dark closet with a weak flashlight. He practically did not distinguish people visually, but he perfectly identified voices. Worse, he often confused people with inanimate objects. He could remember a detail - a mustache, a cigar, large teeth, but was not able to recognize a single human face and could easily mistake a head of cabbage or a lamp for a person.

Looking at the landscape, he did not see most of the houses, people and human figures - they seemed to fall into some kind of blind spot. When Sachs laid out several objects on the table, the professor sometimes managed to identify one of them, he simply did not notice the rest and was very surprised when they said that, in addition to the notebook, there was also a saucer, a comb and a handkerchief under his nose. He agreed to recognize the reality of these objects only by feeling them.

When the doctor gave him a rose and asked him to tell him what it was, the professor described the flower as "an oblong object of dark green with an extension of red at one end." Only by smelling this item, he determined that it was a rose.

His vision was fine, but the signals received through visual transmission, the brain absorbed only ten percent. In the end, Sachs diagnosed Professor P. with congenital agnosia - a pathological perceptual disorder, though very qualitatively compensated for by the rich life experience and good education of the patient, who, seeing instead of the world around him, mostly chaos of hard-to-define objects, nevertheless managed to become socially successful and a happy person.

Frozen Horror

Autism, which the general public now often confuses with genius, thanks to the authors of Rain Man, is a disease that has not yet been studied completely enough. Many scientists believe that it is more appropriate to talk about a group of different pathologies with common features. For example, it is known that some autistic people are practically incapable of aggression; others, on the contrary, suffer from severe and prolonged bouts of uncontrollable anger directed at others; still others, feeling anger and fear, prefer to inflict damage on themselves.

The behavior of autistic Aiden S., 19, who was under observation for some time at the hospital at the University of Pennsylvania, belongs to the fourth, rarest category.

Like many autistic people, Aiden is incredibly dependent on the daily routine, the stability of the environment, and reacts painfully to any innovations. Therefore, any "wrong" action of relatives or medical personnel causes a catatonic attack in Aiden: the young man freezes in the position in which he happened to face the "danger" - pajamas of an unpleasant color, loud noise, unusual food. His muscles become completely stiff, and if the posture at the time of the attack was unsuitable for maintaining balance, then the patient falls to the floor with a loud thud, without changing this posture. No force can unbend his arm or leg without breaking anything.

Aiden can stay in this position indefinitely. Therefore, the doctors, as soon as Aiden "wedged" again, performed the traditional ritual, once developed by Aiden's mother. The body was brought into a completely dark room, after which one of the doctors whispered there by heart for half an hour nursery rhymes from Mother Goose's Tales, and after a while Aiden regained the ability to move normally.

Oliver Sachs, already mentioned earlier, in his works often recalls a patient who suffered from a rare syndrome called "Korsakov's psychosis". Former grocer Mr. Thompson was brought to the clinic by friends after he went insane from years of alcoholism. No, Mr. Thompson does not rush at people, does not harm anyone and is very sociable. Mr. Thompson's problem is that he has lost his identity, as well as the surrounding reality and memory. When Mr. Thompson is awake, he trades. Wherever he is - in the ward, in the doctor's office or in the bathroom for a hydromassage session - he stands at the counter, wipes his hands on his apron and talks with the next visitor. His memory span is approximately forty seconds.

Do you want sausages or maybe salmon? he asks. - And what are you in a white coat, Mr. Smith? Or do you have such rules in your kosher shop now? And why did you suddenly grow a beard, Mr. Smith? I don’t understand something ... am I in my shop or where?

After that, his forehead is again serenely smoothed, and he offers the new "buyer" to buy half a pound of ham and smoked sausages.

However, in forty seconds, Mr. Thompson also manages to clear up. He's telling stories. He makes incredible guesses about the identity of the buyer. He finds hundreds of convincing and always different explanations for why he suddenly fell out from behind his counter and ended up in an unfamiliar office.

Ah, the stethoscope! he shouts unexpectedly. - Here you are, mechanics, a wonderful people! Pretend to be doctors: white coats, stethoscopes ... We listen, they say, machines, like people! Manners, old man, how's the gas station doing? Come in, come in, now everything will be as usual for you - with brown bread and sausage ...

“Within five minutes,” writes Dr. Sachs, “Mr. Thompson mistakes me for a dozen different people. Nothing stays in his memory for more than a few seconds, and as a result he is constantly disoriented, he invents more and more obscure stories, constantly composing the world around him - the universe of the "Thousand and One Nights", a dream, a phantasmagoria of people and images, a kaleidoscope of continuous metamorphoses and transformations. Moreover, for him this is not a series of fleeting fantasies and illusions, but a normal, stable, real world. From his point of view, everything is in order.

The Bulgarian psychiatrist Stoyan Stoyanov (yes, Bulgarian parents also have brilliant insights) in the 50s of the 20th century observed patient R. for a long time, who would have been an ordinary schizophrenic if he had not experienced periodic attacks of the so-called dream-like oneiroid.

Attacks occurred about once every two months. At first, the patient began to experience anxiety, then he stopped sleeping, and after three or four days he left the hospital and went straight to Mars.

According to the doctor, during these hallucinations the patient changed decisively: from uncommunicative, gloomy, with primitive speech and limited imagination, he turned into a person with well-placed artistic speech. Usually, during an attack, R. slowly stamped around in a circle in the center of his ward. At this time, he willingly answered any questions, but was clearly unable to see either the interlocutor or the surrounding objects, so he constantly flew into them (because of which he was transferred to the “soft room” for the duration of the attacks).

R. described receptions in the Martian palaces, fights on huge animals, flocks of flying leathery birds on the orange horizon, their complex relationship with the Martian aristocracy (especially with one of the princesses, with whom, however, quite Platonic feelings connected him). Dr. Stoyanov specifically pointed out the exceptional accuracy of detail: all attacks always occurred on Mars, in the same setting.

For several years that the doctor took notes, R. was never caught in a contradiction: if he already said that the columns in the side hall of the princess's palace were made of greenish stone - serpentine, then three years later, "seeing" these columns, it will exactly repeat the previous description. It is now known that hallucinations during a dreamlike oneiroid have an exceptional reality for a hallucinator, they are more detailed, meaningful and prolonged than any dream, although they are also easily forgotten after "awakening".

Word Disliker

Aphasia Wernicke - this is the diagnosis of 33-year-old Muscovite Anton G., who survived a traumatic brain injury. Dialogues with him are published in the Bulletin of the Psychiatric Association (2011). After the accident, Anton can’t figure out the words in any way: they seem to have changed in his dictionary, breaking away from their meanings and mixing up as God puts it into his soul.

I threw the bryl, - he says, - screwed up the drin. Well, such a roundish one, with which they will twist the colossus.
- Steering wheel?
- Yes. Bryl. Dokor, let's roll the abyss. The galosha is thumping.
- Head? You have a headache?
- Yes. At dashing gas. Between tears. Hypodal.

This is not a defect of speech, this is a violation of its understanding. It's hard for Anton to talk to people. They speak some language unfamiliar to him, in which he hardly catches barely familiar consonances. Therefore, it is easier for him to communicate with gestures. He also forgot how to read - some wild combinations of letters are written on the tablets in the hospital.

Anton himself writes “aknlpor” instead of his name, instead of the word “car” (they show him a car in the picture and slowly repeat “machine-on” several times), he hesitantly draws a long series of consonants, on a whole line. Neurologists and speech therapists are able to cope with some of the problems with aphasia. And although Anton will have a long therapy, he has a chance to return to the world full of reasonable words and meaning.

Endless happiness

Edelfrida S. is a hebephrenic. She's fine. Her doctor, the famous German psychiatrist Manfred Lutz, author of the bestselling book Crazy, We Treat the Wrong Ones, loves hebephrenics. From the point of view of Dr. Lutz, not only a psychiatrist, but also a theologian, only those who suffer from their mental illness should be treated. And hebephrenics are very happy people.

True, if hebephrenia, like Edelfrida's, is associated with an incurable brain tumor, it is still better for them to live in a clinic. Hebephrenia is always a magnificent, cheerful and playful mood, even if the hebephrenic has no reasons for joy, from the point of view of others. For example, the bedridden sixty-year-old Edelfriede is terribly amused when she tells why she cannot be operated on and therefore she will die in six months.

Bryk - and I'll kick my hooves! she laughs.
- Doesn't that make you sad? Dr. Lutz asks.
- Why's that? What nonsense! What difference does it make to me whether I'm alive or dead?

Nothing in the world can upset or upset Edelfrida. She does not remember her life well, she vaguely understands where she is, and the concept of "I" means practically nothing to her. She eats with pleasure, only occasionally lowering her spoon to laugh heartily at the appearance of cabbage in soup or to scare a nurse or doctor with a piece of bun.

Aw-aw! she says and laughs out loud.
- Is that your dog? the doctor asks.
- Yes that you, the doctor! It's a bun! And with such brains, you are still going to treat me?! Here is a scream! “Strictly speaking,” writes Lutz, “Edelfrida has long been gone with us. Her personality has already gone, leaving behind this pure sense of humor in the body of a dying woman.

And finally, let's return to Dr. Sacks, who has collected, perhaps, the most striking collection of madness in modern psychiatry. One of the chapters of his book "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" is dedicated to a 27-year-old patient named Christina.

Christina was a completely normal person, she ended up in the hospital because of the need for a gallbladder operation. What happened there, which of the measures of preoperative therapy entailed such strange consequences - remained unclear. But the day before the operation, Christina forgot how to walk, sit up in bed and use her hands.

First a neurologist was invited to see her, then Dr. Sacks from the psychiatry department. It turned out that for mysterious reasons, proprioception, a joint-muscular feeling, disappeared from Christina. The part of the parietal brain responsible for coordinating and feeling one's body in space began to idle.

Christina could hardly speak - she did not know how to control her vocal cords. She could take something only by closely following her hand with her eyes. Most of all, her sensations resembled those of a person enclosed in a robot body, which can be controlled by correctly and consistently pulling the levers.

“Having ceased to receive an internal response from the body,” writes Oliver Sachs, “Christina still perceives it as a dead, alien appendage, she cannot feel it as her own. She cannot even find words to convey her state, and she has to describe it by analogy with other feelings.

It seems, - she says, - that my body has become deaf and blind ... I don’t feel myself at all ... "

It took eight years of therapy and hard training for the woman to be able to move again. She was taught to rearrange her legs, following them with her eyes. She was taught to speak again, guided by the sound of her voice. She learned to sit without slumping by looking in the mirror. Today, a person who does not know Christina's diagnosis will not guess that she is sick. Her unnaturally upright posture, measured gestures, artistic voice inflections and carefully mastered facial expressions are perceived by strangers as artificiality and bombast.

Once I heard how they called me a fake doll through and through, says Christina. - And it was so insulting and unfair that I could burst into tears, but the fact is that I also forgot how to do this. And somehow there is not enough time to learn everything all over again. ”

Psychiatric clinics are not a particularly attractive place, even without horror stories. Usually people are afraid of abandoned clinics, because the spirits of those people who were once within their walls can live there. However, as practice shows, existing psychiatric hospitals are much more dangerous than abandoned ones.

Unexpected end of shift

This story took place in one of the American clinics. The woman who worked there as a nurse was completing her usual chores in order to go home as soon as possible. There seemed to be no sign of trouble. But as she walked around the corridor for the last time, she noticed that the door to one of the chambers was half open. She cautiously approached the ward and in the middle of the room saw ... the severed legs of one of the cleaners. In the other corner of the room sat a patient suffering from a serious mental disorder. In her hands were the eyes of the victim.

Subsequently, it turned out that the patient had long planned to commit her crime, as she did not like this employee. Various jokes were constantly circulating about their mutual hostility, but no one could have imagined that the matter would end so terribly and tragically. As for the nurse, she was not afraid and quickly pressed the button to call the emergency team. The killer patient was transferred to more intensive treatment and, of course, kept under lock and key for the rest of her days.

Hidden grief turned into horror

Another story happened to a patient in a London clinic. It was a young girl named Jane who ended up in a psychiatric clinic due to a miscarriage. She was unmarried, but together with her lover, they really wanted a child. But, as the doctors said, this event was just a trigger. In fact, a mental disorder lay dormant in her for many years. When the tragedy happened, the lady fell into a state of acute psychosis, so it was decided to hospitalize her.

Neither exhortations nor work with a psychotherapist helped Jane. Even the most advanced medicines did not work on her, her grief was so strong. In the end, a doctor was found who was able to choose the right drug for her, and the girl calmed down a bit. The whole clinic breathed a sigh of relief - after all, one of the most problematic patients felt better and better every day.

But... not everything turned out to be so cloudless. And even vice versa. One fine day, when one of the clinic staff entered her room, he saw a terrible sight. The patient was lying in a pool of blood on her own bed. Her throat was torn, and pieces of skin were torn from her neck. It turned out that she did it with her own hands with the help of an overgrown nail.

baby killer

A 12-year-old patient was admitted to one of the psychiatric clinics in Boston. He was very polite and helpful to all the staff. "Hello", "Thank you", "Please" - everyone around was only surprised at how cute teenagers can still be.

But after the head doctor of the clinic gathered all the staff to tell them something about this patient, the excitement quickly stopped. In reality, this child was a homicidal maniac. At school, he was also very polite. He was especially courteous to one of the teachers who taught mathematics. Gradually, he became her favorite, his marks in mathematics began to improve. After all, as often happens, bad students study even worse, and good students do better only for the reason that the teaching staff begins to treat them in a certain way.

What did the young killer want?

What led to the fact that a 12-year-old boy was imprisoned in the walls of a psychiatric clinic? The fact is that one night he killed his own mother. The little maniac stabbed her several times. His motivation? He just wanted the math teacher to be his mom.

Terrible night shift

This incident happened to a nurse during a night shift in one of the hospitals in the Czech Republic, which specialized in the treatment of patients with Alzheimer's disease. The nurse did her evening rounds to make sure all the patients were there. In one of the wards, she noticed that one patient, unlike the others, was not going to sleep. She sat in day clothes right on the bed, and her eyes were fixed on one point. “Would you like to lie down?” the clinic employee asked her as calmly as possible. "No, thank you. They are already coming for you," the patient replied, slowly looking away from the wall to the nurse. "I will miss you very much when you are gone."

“I thought I would just die of fear,” the nurse said. - That night, I barely waited for the end of duty to finally go home. Of course, I couldn't close my eyes for a minute."

Unusual patient

Over time, most medical professionals get used to all sorts of extraordinary cases, but this patient was remembered by an employee named Gillian Craig for a long time. One day, during her shift, a new patient was admitted to the hospital. He did not remember any information about himself at all, but in appearance he looked more like a homeless person. He did not have a passport or any documents. He ended up in the clinic because of his violent behavior. The policemen, who drew attention to him at one of the stations, transferred him to a psychiatric hospital. But this patient still remembered one fact about himself. He constantly told Gillian the same thing: that he was an ex-pilot, they were experimenting on him at a secret air force base.

Brad turned out to be a reality

One day, Gillian decided to discuss these strange stories with a colleague. The conversation was overheard by another employee. After a while, he approached Gillian and took her aside to talk in private. It turned out that this secret base, which the patient is talking about, is not at all a figment of the imagination. "She really exists," the employee told Gillian. - But this is a top secret organization. All entrances and exits from it are closed. A person cannot know anything about it if he has never been there. Please, if you value your life, forget about these stories and do not make a fuss if the patient begins to pester you with his talk again.

An old woman who communicates with the dead

One of the patients of the Canadian clinic frightened the nurses by communicating with the dead at night. During the day, she was an exemplary patient. If an outsider saw this sweet and in all respects pleasant old woman, he would be very surprised by the fact that she is a patient in a psychiatric clinic.

What did this lady do at night that turned her into a real nightmare for those nurses who happened to look after her? The fact is that this inhabitant of a mental hospital communicated with the dead. And this communication from the outside seemed not just nonsense.

Her words drove the unfortunate employees crazy. Here is what one of the nurses recalls: “She constantly talks about the fact that there is someone in her room. For example, she can ask if we are going to feed this little girl who is standing behind me. what will we do with the boy sitting at her head, because he was left without parents. By the way, the old woman herself constantly emphasizes the moment that all her ghostly guests have long been dead. In addition to children, her frequent visitors are a man who worked for many years in our area as a plumber, and some taciturn lady."

“One evening I went to Miss P. in the evening to give her medicine,” says another nurse. “She sharply pulled me up, since all her dead people are now sleeping, and I can wake them up. Miss P. herself was sitting quietly and without moving, but after a while she nevertheless went to bed.

I did an internship at a clinic at the department - yes, there is a medical faculty in our outback. But we had, so to speak, one practical course, which we took at the Central District Hospital - the central district hospital. That is, you really are on duty, like a doctor, in the department, in the receiver - this is not Moscow or St. Petersburg, where an intern will never be left alone. The clinic at the department was not so hot, and the Central Regional Hospital was falling apart in general, there were not enough hospitals, the beds were always full, the patients lay in the corridors. You walk along the corridor, and there everything is dirty, broken, someone was going to fight, and someone even died ...

It was said that there were more hospitals, but one hospital had burned down for two years already. And one doctor worked there in therapy, with whom we whiled away the duty in the remaining Central District Hospital, it was he who told me this strange story.

It was an ordinary CRH. Rotten, old, buildings of the thirties and forties. There were two buildings, one for tuberculosis, the other for everyone else, but the tuberculosis one was demolished back in the 80s to build something new, and so nothing was built. Five floors, surgery, two therapies, gynecology and intensive care. Very good in terms of diversity, but there is no equipment, in intensive care there is one old monitor, two worn-out imported ventilators and three of our RO-6s.

Medicines are bad, but then there was much less paperwork than now - it was easier to get. The analyzes are the same. The corresponding contingent is a degrading population, lumpen and old people, with the addition of drunken youth and a small number of visiting Caucasians. Doctors drink, the head physician steals - everything is like with people, in short.

In the hospital, there were problems from all departments, because the healthy do not get into hospitals, and the sick and crippled tend to die. But most of the problems delivered, of course, resuscitation.

It must be said right away that in intensive care they died often and in large numbers. They died from many causes, but most of all there were bruises, drug addicts, beaten down and other outcasts, lonely grandparents with neglected bedsores, strokes, and oncology. The head physician, although he was a log, understood that it was more expensive for himself to scold resuscitators for supermortality. They could say: “For this money and on such equipment, work yourself,” and leave, and therefore he only occasionally shook his finger.

The hospital did not have its own morgue, the corpses were taken to the morgue at the medical faculty for autopsy, but, oddly enough, it had its own pathologist, Nikodimych, who opened these corpses there, and came to the hospital for five minutes and clinical conferences. But this is during the day. At night, of course, no one wanted to drive the "dead body" through the whole city, and therefore the corpses were stored in the resuscitation corridor. The ICU itself was a rather gloomy place, as can be, with chipped tiles, rusty cots, drafty windows, and protruding pipes. Its windows overlooked a dense forest, although for the most part the sick in it did not care. A corridor stretched through the whole intensive care unit, then painted in a brownish-beige color, now it has become generally somehow rusty. The floor in the ICU was tiled, with the same floral texture as the mortuary, and the hallway was old, rotten linoleum. And there was an elevator along which a fat woman Manya periodically drove patients up and down - for an x-ray, for example, or to the same intensive care unit. At the other end there was an exit to the emergency room, and the corpses were placed closer to it (and one or two corpses were guaranteed at night), but one day the head physician, walking along with the chief medical officer in his patrimony, noticed that it was not worthwhile for those who came to the hospital to housewarming to see the former its tenants in the form of a dead and very filthy, which is why he ordered to immediately find another place for the night dead. And they found him. Just behind the elevator was a nook that never had sunlight, dimly lit by a lightbulb on the other side of the corridor. There was nothing special about it, before they sometimes put all sorts of junk in it, oxygen cylinders, but it turned out that it was perfect to put a gurney or two with corpses there. Why no one thought to put them there before - no one knew. As it turned out, not in vain.

It all started with the fact that one morning they found the body of a dead man on the floor next to the gurney. He lay face down, spattering the entire floor with bloody sputum (before that he was on a ventilator through a tracheostomy), with his arm extended forward. They decided that they put it inaccurately, although the nurses and the doctor swore that they put it securely. Someone gloomily joked that those still living patients were sent to a corner of the dead and there they flew from a gurney. And in fact - not to record the dead as other psychos? A week later the incident happened again. This time in the morning they found an old woman on the floor, who died of a stroke. Evil rumors spread again, especially since she was lying unusually too: one leg was bent under the body, both arms were stretched forward. How she was able to change her position like that, being in rigor mortis - the devil knows. The dead are usually like logs.

The resuscitator, already different, poked at the tests and the ECG and argued that when she was transferred, she was deader than the dead. “Yes, but how do we explain to the relatives that her nose is broken?” - asked the chief medical officer. The relatives didn't care, the broken nose was corrected by the dissector in the morgue and did not affect the presentation.

Nevertheless, the dead continued to be placed on a gurney in a dead corner. There were five resuscitation places, and when someone died, they did not keep him in bed until the morning, because someone in the departments could get sick and they needed a free bed. And the corpses, which were taken to the morgue without delay during the day, continued to remain in the corner under a sheet at night, and sometimes even without it.

It was then that our pathologist, Nikodimych, a good man, by the way, had some suspicions. He made a remark to the doctors at the five-minute meeting that they incorrectly indicate the time of death, being mistaken for many hours. He was asked on what basis. He said that although he was not a medical examiner, he knew the signs of death and the time of their onset. According to him, in those ill-fated corpses from intensive care, rigor mortis is sometimes weak, and sometimes completely absent, while according to all the laws of thanatology, it should be maximum by the time of admission to the morgue. The head physician thanked him dryly for the remark and turned the conversation to another topic.

Already later, over a bottle, Nikodimych complained to the head of surgery that the corpses from intensive care were too unusual.

The causes of death there are different, respectively, the organs should be different, but all of them had strange micro-ruptures on the histology of many organs - the heart, muscles, intestines. Moreover, without signs of inflammation - they were completely fresh, a few minutes before death, or even ... Sometimes there was a plethora of organs, usual for a quick death, but somehow unusual was bleeding of muscles and limbs, as well as myocardium. In one man who died of leukemia, the blood was almost gray, that is, they write, of course, that in patients with leukemia it is lighter than usual, but not gray, and he died not from an excess of tumor cells, but from sepsis on the background of immunodeficiency. Another patient died - a different story, an unfortunate microcephaly, he doesn’t dare to call him a man, he came to die, spoil the statistics. His mother obviously had mental disorders herself, because, having given birth, she dragged on until she was 11 years old, although already at two months, when, in addition to unconditioned reflexes, not a single conditioned reflex appeared, they looked at his head with ultrasound (in children, the bones are thin) and made sure that due to an intrauterine catastrophe (probably an infection), two bubbles of the meninges remained from the brains above the trunk. His mother pulled him, saved him from bedsores, fed him through a tube and changed diapers, while he was twisted by spinal automatisms in obscuration of the mind, instead of letting nature do its job, but then she had a stroke, and she herself sank to the level of a vegetable already in another hospital. He was taken to the hospital and, by order of the head physician, was sent to intensive care. Why a child in an adult hospital? We don't have children for a long time. Why not in a nursing home? They also no longer exist. The doctors cursed the head physician to themselves - what did he think, the child would get up and go?

In intensive care, they wanted to suffocate the poor amphibian with a pillow, but limited themselves to just minimal care, which is why after three days he had a huge smelly bed sore on the sacrum and smaller on the shoulder blades and neck, after four days the temperature rose, after five days the temperature disappeared, as did diuresis , muscle tone and swallowing reflex (together with breathing - the only sign of the activity of his brain stem), and after another half a day, the pulse and breathing disappeared. As expected, he was kept overnight in the corridor and sent for an autopsy. And at the autopsy, in addition to the signs of sepsis and the complete absence of the brain, micro-ruptures of the muscles were again found, and in addition - torn ligaments and even a torn meniscus of the knee joint. As if before death he was actively twitching. “But he did not twitch before his death, he lay in an atonic coma, as he should be!” - resuscitators beat themselves on the chest. And there were even micro-tears on the underdeveloped eye muscles (Nikodimych is meticulous), although it is doubtful that this creature moved its eyes in general in life. And again, no signs of inflammation, well, there is infiltration of neutrophils in the area of ​​ruptures, edema. I’m not talking about rigor rigor - you don’t have to expect some kind of rigor from a puppet body. Everyone had to scratch their heads. Of course, they were not sent for any tests, there was no money and no equipment - the only laboratory assistant counts erythrocytes in Goryachev's cell. Nikodimych, of course, did not say much, so he grumbled. He is used to many things, an atheist to the marrow of his bones. The head physician sometimes spoke to him behind closed doors, about what - is unknown. Someone said that Nikodimych wrote two posthumous epicrises - one to the doctors, the official one, the second somewhere upstairs, to the head physician, or even higher. The corpses continued to fall occasionally, they continued to be stored in that corner. Everyone was, as always, all the same.

Once in the fall, such a cheerful resuscitator Petrovich was on duty. A good doctor, only sometimes he went into hard drinking, but two or three hard drinking a year for our places is not even a hint of alcoholism. And he was on duty at night, alone. In the evening I said goodbye to my colleagues, went to the staff's room to smoke, drink tea (and sometimes even stronger) and play solitaire on the computer.

Night as night, October. Gloomy, damp, frosts at night already, but not this night. Outside the windows, the wind howls and light rain, not a single thing is visible - only a lantern somewhere far away. There is warm light in the staff room, case histories and other papers on the tables, sweets under them, cognac in the cupboards. Grace. I feel like taking a nap, dreaming about a pleasant good place away from this animal burial ground, preferably in another country. Especially grace was in surgery, since there were no serious patients - the young doctor on duty was watching TV and was already preparing to fall asleep. Suddenly there was a call. The doctor shuddered and, after thinking for a second, in the hope that he would be silent, grabbed the receiver. The intensive care nurse called, inconsistently saying that the resuscitator on duty urgently needed help. The surgeon didn't even ask what was wrong and rushed down, expecting to see anything. But, having rushed in, making turns on the stairs and creaking sneakers (replaceable shoes), he saw in the intensive care unit itself that the resuscitator really needed help and only exclusively to him. With a face as pale as death, he was reclining in the intern's room, breathing heavily, a nurse from intensive care and a nurse from therapy stood nearby. One measured his pressure, the other fanned him with a history of the disease, like a fan. The surgeon shook the resuscitator for a long time, he muttered something about a revived corpse. Only an injection of lorazepam loosened his tongue slightly. He felt something. The corpse, meanwhile, lay quietly, next to a sheet on the floor.

The resuscitator told the following (or maybe he told later in another hospital, it just dawned on the doctors too): one alcoholic was going to die with them, either from cancer, or from cirrhosis of the liver. Smelling of mice, yellow-green, at first he, who had been unconscious for three days before, waved his arms covered with spider veins, began to scream, then abruptly subsided and, breathing for five minutes like a fish, less and less often, gave his soul to God. He was resuscitated on paper, and after half an hour waiting for the first cadaverous spots, also on paper, they loaded him onto an eternal creaky dead man's gurney and took him feet first to the dead man's corner, where they left him until morning, covered with a sheet. The resuscitator went to deal with other patients, came up two hours later to check how the dead man was doing, you never know what? I was convinced that rigor mortis had already begun in him - cadaveric spots became obvious. Then he came up an hour later, or rather, passed by. He caught something in the corner of his eye, as if the sheet was twitching, moving just a little. He looked carefully into the semi-darkness of the corner - everything seemed to be quiet. I wanted to turn away - I heard a rustle and saw how the sheet was sliding off the body. He approached, pulled off the sheet, expecting to see a rat eating a dead man (yes, there were such cases), but what he saw amazed him - the dead man, as in Gogol's Viy, began to come to life! Here he lies motionless, his mouth open (they forgot to tie it up), but suddenly a muscle on his face, on his arm, on his torso begins to twitch. Another second - and suddenly the whole body comes into motion. It does not twitch, just fingers move slightly, as if looking for something, eyes open and rotate, some amazing facial expressions appear on the face and lips begin to move, as if trying to say something. Under the yellow-green skin of the neck, the Adam's apple begins to twitch up and down, the chest rises, the legs slightly bend at the hip joints. The dead man hoarsely begins to mutter something. Quiet, so quiet, almost inaudible. And he looks first to the side, and then with round eyes with a cornea that has begun to dry out - directly at the doctor. Then the resuscitator did not remember well: he yelled, rushed away, to the staff room, where he stumbled upon a nurse.

The doctor is shaking, covered in sweat, his face is red, the pressure jumped to 200 to 120. The therapist came running, they brought down the pressure, but don’t put him in intensive care in an empty place - they called the chief medical officer, the head physician, tearing them away from their beloved wives or mistresses. They ordered to call the 03 brigade and take the doctor to the university clinic, which was done. An angry and sleepy shift arrived at the place of the resuscitator, who was already watching the patients until the morning.

In the morning, at the five-minute session, animation reigned, laughter and advice to drink less. They joked about Viy, putting in his place the deputy head of the regional health department. The head physician spoke, briefly retelling the events. Through various channels, a rumor about the fate of the resuscitator has already reached. What is the conclusion? "Squirrel"! Quickly under his arms and to a psychiatrist.

The psychiatrist listened, confirmed the diagnosis, accepting the doctor's conviction that he had not drunk for a week, and therefore he did not see the drunken shop as a confirmation of the diagnosis. And the resuscitator was taken to a psychiatric hospital. And the unfortunate dead man, as if nothing had happened, to the morgue. What Nikodimych found with him there, he kept silent.

Then tragedy struck. In the morning, the only elevator in the hospital did not respond to calls. The elevator lady, Baba Manya, usually hung around the dining room or the library, not out of a passion for reading, but because of her affinity with the librarian in terms of chatter, but this time the elevator was closed, and she herself was not. I called my family and went to work. They advised them to file a complaint with the police, and they themselves rushed to look on the territory of the hospital, until it occurred to one doctor to look through the window on the elevator door. It was he who saw that the elevator itself was on the first floor, where there was an intensive care unit, there was no light in it and something was turning white in it. They opened the elevator by force and were stunned - a dead woman Manya lay on the floor of the elevator. She lay blue, with her tongue hanging out, obviously dead from a heart attack or a pulmonary embolism, but for some reason her clothes were torn in places, as if she was tearing them on herself in agony when there was not enough air. And again, at the autopsy, Nikodimych noted that there was no rigor mortis. According to his rough estimate, she died around 10 pm. What she was doing in the elevator until that time, no one knew. And, what is most interesting, Baba Manya herself is covered in abrasions, especially her arms and face, as if she was in convulsions, but at the same time, the abrasions are almost dry, there is no blood on them. He wondered if a person with near-zero blood pressure could tear himself all over as he dies. Came to the conclusion that no. Ironically, next to the elevator in that very corner were two gurneys - again with two corpses. Both were in quite decent poses, only one somehow strangely straightened his head and bulged his eyes, while the other had his left hand clenched into a fist.

There was a rumor, and everyone became uncomfortable. Patients suddenly began to want to be discharged, who was lying, and all the rest, except for those who had completely fallen into insanity and prostration, did not get into the walls of the hospital. There was some talk in the department. First a district police officer arrived at the hospital, then a commission from the Ministry of Health, then someone else. Of course, at each check, the head physician pestered everyone directly through the chief medical officer, everyone took out the missing medicines, added unwritten stories and generally painted the grass. Everyone got tired, the first layoffs of their own free will went, and the resuscitation nurses were the first to quit. In their place came brand new, ugly, smoky, straight from the medical school. The next morning, everyone who walked along the resuscitation corridor could see how two corpses, two drunkards, were on two gurneys in that very corner, as if embracing, holding out cold hands to the face of a neighbor. The nurses giggled and there was a desire to suspect them of mocking the dead, but, firstly, the rumor was about the ill-fated corner, and secondly (as it turned out later), these nurses were just fools who did not know the situation. Someone called the head physician, he went somewhere, there was again a check, during which dead cockroaches rained down on the checking woman from the ventilation in the administration (someone said that it was the joker-engineer of the hospital that reversed the electric motor in order to spoil the head physician after his dismissal). Then, on Wednesday or Thursday, the medical examiner arrived unexpectedly. No one was told what his name was, what his last name was, or who he was. They just said from above that he would arrive soon and that he was a medical examiner. A dry, very gloomy guy, about 50 years old, with black eyes over large cheekbones - such a characteristic face without cheeks and lips, like a skull, covered with skin and with eyes. No one liked his gaze, which bored like a drill. Dressed in a cloak, he spoke quietly, abruptly, not viciously, but just in this frightening way. He arrived with two muscular guys in simple suits, as if they were orderlies from a psychiatric hospital, also laconic and gloomy. He went to our pathologist Nikodimych and talked to him for two hours. Nikodimych, a man who had gone through Afghanistan and Chechnya, left him not only frightened, but somehow especially thoughtful, brushing aside all questions. He came two times, walked like a shadow around the hospital, not stopping at resuscitation, the third time he came on Wednesday and began to wait for the night.

Two more patients died that day. Again alcoholics, young and old. And the intensive care unit was empty, by some coincidence, the patients were no longer taken to the hospital, and their own, who were already lying, abruptly went “on the mend”. So this medical examiner demanded that the bodies be left in the hospital, although they could have been answered in the morgue.

The head physician asked him: “Shall I take you to the morgue?” And he said: “No, leave them here.” The head physician did not understand, he began to insist on being sent to the morgue, but that uncle quickly shut him up. And stayed overnight in intensive care. The resuscitator is obliged to be on duty, even if the only living body in the intensive care unit is himself, but the medical examiner and those two guys who brought some suitcases on the nondescript "Niva" hinted to him that it would be better for him to be with the therapist on duty on the 4th floor, and only their company remained on this floor. He understood the hint quickly and went upstairs. They drank a lot, but not fun - no one liked what was happening. They blocked that corridor with screens from the X-ray room and turned off the light, as is customary there.

Then God knows what they did there. Probably no one will know. But they told me that one of the patients on the second floor did hear something. It is hard to believe - on the second floor there is therapy, but in fact psychosomatics, where old people who have fallen into insanity lie. But all the same, allegedly one, a little out of his mind, was sleeping by the ventilation directly above the corridor and heard from it that somewhere around midnight some rustling began to be heard from below, then very quiet, monosyllabic conversations, then in the middle of them the creak of a gurney, very quiet, indistinct muttering. Later there was some kind of sound, as if cutting meat, barely audible knocks, squelching, dripping. The mumbling became somehow nasal and even guttural, then it turned into sobbing, sniffling, and completely stopped. And again, almost until morning, barely audible conversations. In the morning, the resuscitator went down to the intensive care unit. The medical examiner, without saying goodbye, went out through the back door and got into a black Gazelle. Those two sat there, carrying suitcases in their hands. There was another black Gazelle, both started up and left. There were no corpses on the gurneys, just like the gurneys themselves, the corner was empty. At the morning five-minute meeting, the head physician noted with pleasure, but inwardly tensely, that these three had left. The disappearance of corpses did not seem to bother him. However, for him, everything was just beginning.

In the afternoon, firefighters arrived, or rather, their chief boss - fat, contented, without declaring war. He examined the outside of the hospital superficially, went into the receiver, stood for a couple of minutes and left. Two days later, the prescription - the hospital is in emergency condition, immediately all patients to other clinics, doctors to the same place. Everyone was surprised - the hospital, of course, is not so hot, but all the hospitals in this city and in general in the region are like that. The head physician was especially surprised - after all, he was deprived of the feeders. Already he strained his connections almost at the very top of the region, but only found out (this was overheard by one doctor behind his secretary) that the order was from the very top, nowhere higher.

Nevertheless, they took pity on the head physician - they made him some kind of deputy to the local department of the Ministry of Health, and the rest of whom where - heads of other clinics as ordinary doctors, ordinary doctors who did not find a place themselves - to plug holes in the outpatient department, nurses, nurses and other filth - to the street. Nikodimych, by the way, left medicine and, it seems, even moved with his family to another city with his brother. No one had heard anything about the resuscitator, frightened by the corpse, some said that he had died, and indeed from a "squirrel", others said that he had simply gone crazy and was still in the "yellow house", others said that he seemed to be left the psychiatric hospital, but left the city immediately.

And the hospital was already closed for two months, it was empty on the third day after the order to close. Everyone left her for some reason with relief. They took away some equipment - the same monitor, furniture, which is newer, turned out the light bulbs, even the electric shield was taken away and locked up. Ribbon fitted - they say, it's dangerous. They say that the building, disconnected from all electricity, looked ominous. The most interesting thing is that the building stood like that for more than a year. Absolutely empty inside, it looked as usual from the outside: the windows were intact, the trees around were growing, except that in spring the grass climbed wildly along the edges of the fence. Behind the hospital, about 50 meters away, such weeds grew, to envy. And around her, it’s like scorched earth, although she always has been. And the windows - empty, dark windows through which the sick and the doctors used to look at the world, but now only emptiness looked through. They remained absolutely intact, not a single broken window for a whole year, for our area this is generally fantastic. Of course, they said that the homeless climbed into the basement and spent the winter there, but no one saw smoke and fire from the basement, and the homeless had to burn fires, because the heating was also turned off. There were all sorts of rumors, one more ridiculous than the other, but I won’t even remember them anymore. So it stood, empty, useless, frightening the five-story buildings nearest to it, inhabited by old women. People crossed the street to stay away from it until it burned down in the winter. Down to the ground. The building is old, the floors are wooden - it flared up like a match, as if it was completely dry, and when firefighters arrived, it burned like a fire. Bright torches rose from the roof, the windows shattered from the heat and bright flames and smoke illuminated the surroundings. They said that the fire did not spread so quickly even through the old ceilings, that it was set on fire in several places from the inside. May be. But nothing was left of the building itself in a couple of hours, and no one extinguished it. Ashes. And now, they say, it is there.