Ancestral Visitors

            Several creatures of ill-fortune prowl around the bloodlines of the more noble families of old Tsarist Russia. Three of the noble lineages have had such creatures attach themselves to their households:

          The Zubov family of Strelna and Moscow has a reoccurring specter, which appears on the death of the current Count. The specter has only briefly been glimpsed by a scullery maid in 1636, and a half asleep footman in 1699. The specter has been described by both as a floating bald woman, wearing silken clothes, stained in some manner (whether it was by blood or mud is unclear). The specter howls out the name, ”Zubov! Zubov!” repeatedly. The Count is said to die within 48 hours of the specter’s appearance. It is unknown whether the visitation is the cause of the death, or simply reacts to the imminent demise of the current patriarch. Many believe that it is the cause, as evidenced in the memoirs of Sir David Luminsta, who was guest at the household of Stephan Zubov, then Count. The apparition was heard, but not seen, and within 12 hours the baron was dead.
As Sir Luminsta writes, “Count Stephan’s footman has just gone by in great haste, and he has told me that the Baron, after coming from the Castle, had gone to bed in perfect health, but that about half past two this morning, his own man hearing a noise in his master’s room went to him, and found him in the agonies of death, and before he could alarm the servants, his lordship was dead. The specter strikes again.”

          A further household with ghostly visitors is the Demidov family of Mayvin. There the spectral visitor is seen but does not speak. This creature is further different in that it appears to warn of the death of any member of the family, be they blood or married in. The visitor first appeared two days before the death of Nikita Demidov, second patriarch after the establishment of nobility. The specter is a small man, wrapped in a death shroud; hair is attached to the head in thin irregular wisps. Across the face and scalp and hands foul open sores are displayed, some apparently oozing pus. All who have looked upon this creature have described being overcome by a wave of nausea (vomiting is not unheard of here). A member of the family is said to die within a week when this specter visits.

          Additionally an identity has been placed to this visitor. Many who see it swear that it resembles a painting prominently displayed in the Family Manse, that of Demid Antufiev, establisher of the line. If it is indeed this old noble, the sores on the ghost give credence to the rumor that he had died of an aggressive and persistent case of syphilis, and not of a heart seizure as the family maintains. If it is indeed Demid Antufiev, then perhaps the addled ghost does not realize that his reign has long been over.

          The third family, the Panin, ennobled in 1767, the case seems to be that the visitor appears only after the head of the family has died. To them a strange entity, known as the Grey Piper, comes. He walks the hills by the family manner playing a sad melancholy song on bagpipes. The song is taken to be a song of lament for the Count’s passing, but its true purpose is unknown. The entity does not appear to be malevolent and does not approach anyone, but he is clearly heard and seen in the hills. This entity is said to have appeared for over 300 years.

UFO Cultists and Cattle Mutilations

A series of possibly interconnected incidents occurred in rural Colorado in the summer of 1975. While occasional lone UFO sightings had been recorded in the area of Gunnison County, that July saw an explosion of activity. Various balls of green, blue, yellow, and red were recorded looping in odd patterns, chasing each other, and possibly fighting over the skies for four days. This was the mildest incident of the summer.

            At that time there were also several dozen cattle mutilations reported by ranchers. The majority of the blood had been drained from the cows and various pieces removed- ears, sex organs, kidneys, udders etc.- but never the same pieces from any two heifers. Most of the written accounts of this time use the phrase “surgical precision” when describing the wounds, but this may have been creative license on behalf of the reporters. It may simply be a person who is skilled at cutting meat. Several of the bovine appear to have been dropped from a height of twenty or thirty feet. Unusual, as they were found in their pens nowhere near any device capable of lifting such a heavy animal.

            While some may leap to a supernatural or extraterrestrial explanation for these dead cows, there may possibly (or probably to be exact) a very human cause. A blue plastic bag was found lying by a trash can in the Thornton City Greyhound bus terminal. Inside was a cow’s ear, a severed cow tongue, and a scalpel, but no blood. Whether it was left there by design or accidentally it indicates a very human origin to the mutilations.

      John Lahti, an investigator of paranormal claims, has come across an old organization which existed in the town of Pictin, Colorado, called the Silver Society or, alternatively, The Silver Raiment Society. It was originally formed (and even briefly incorporated) in the 1910’s and flourished in the 1920s. Very little documentation remains on this organization, but what does exist indicates that this group married the idea of astral projection with the possibility of contacting intelligent extraterrestrial life. Astral projection and other forms of meditation had become a fad in America during this time, along with many ideas imported from Eastern religions.  The organization was shut down in 1927, due to a federal court case involving back taxes.

            Or did it? A bizarre incident during the night of August 21^st, 1975 on the outskirts of Pictin may suggest otherwise. A motorist driving down Route 76 at about 3:30 a.m. encountered some 15 masked people in silver colored robes forming a roadblock with linked arms. As he stopped they attempted to encircle the vehicle, but he managed to turn around, nearly hitting several of them, and escape. The police paperwork on this incident has been lost in the subsequent decades or been misfiled. The incident has only been preserved because the motorist related the story to several reporters at the time.

            There has been some speculation, with no actual evidence, that the mutilations formed as part of a ritual for this group to communicate (or realistically, attempt to communicate) with an otherworldly entity. Whether this is a rite passed down through the generations or something new is up for grabs.