I hope you are reading this article in inclement weather, when the wind is howling outside the window, and dark clouds cover the world with ragged patches of shadows. Probably, it is on such a day that it is worth talking about the most creepy and mystical places in Belarus. There will be legends of vampires and deserted villages, dead lakes and a haunted hotel set up in an old monastery. At the same time, I emphasize: if you wish, you can visit all these places in person. I will tell you how to get to them, where to rent a house and how to fully experience the atmosphere of mysticism. Let’s get started – and you’ll understand all the most important things along the way.
The village of Pare and the legends of the Polesie vampires
Photo from the website darkermagazine.ru .
An inconspicuous Polesie village, lost among the forests on the very border with Ukraine. A lingering silence hangs over the ancient thatched roofs. Dogs are barking somewhere. The bent silhouettes of local grandmothers flash in the courtyards. At first glance, nothing unusual. But these places have their own frightening secret – and it hides behind the wooden gates of the local cemetery.
You notice this place from afar. First, huge crosses hung with ribbons and lace. Then there are tarnished graves, as if just in case they were covered with oak logs (or massive boulders). Researchers still do not know where such a burial tradition came from. But according to one legend, in a similar way, people protected themselves from the grave undead. Usually they write about vampires and ghouls, but local legends mention other creatures – bonecrusers (rotten to the bones of the dead, able to get out at night and wander around the village).
Photo from the website darkermagazine.ru .
An indirect confirmation of local legends is another tradition that has become entrenched in these parts – to build fences from pointed aspen. A book by Belarusian author Denis Nyrkov (albeit an artistic one) was even published in 2021 about the funeral traditions of the village of Pare.
How to visit this place? It is most logical to combine a trip to the vampire village with a trip to Pinsk, which in turn can be reached by minibus. See the schedule and prices on the website7588.by . And you can check the cost of housing in Pinsk on this site.
Haunted hotel in Minsk
The Monastyrsky Hotel is located in the very center of the capital – in a historic building where the Bernardine Monastery was once located. The interior retains fragments of old walls, frescoes and a whole system of underground passages, which in the past centuries encircled the entire Upper City.
The legend of the monk’s ghost living here appeared after a secret room was found under the hotel during restoration work. Since then, he has allegedly been seen by both hotel staff and guests. And a group of volunteers from the UfoCom project even conducted special searches at the hotel.
Now they are talking about the “Monk’s Room” and the ghost walking around the hotel quite officially. Information about the disembodied guest is even provided on the hotel’s website.
How to visit this place? You can spend the night next door to a ghost for 250 BYN. The exact prices and photos of the rooms can be viewed here.
Nesvizh
However, the most famous ghosts of Belarus live 120 kilometers from Minsk – in a small town called Nesvizh. Ghosts are seen in the old halls of the local teachers college (located in the former building of the Benedictine monastery).
…And in the famous Nesvizh Castle. The legend of the local beauty Barbara Radziwill is one of the most beautiful and lyrical in Belarus. Her affair with Crown Prince Sigismund Augustus began even before he ascended the throne of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. But it was the coronation that became the starting point in a series of misfortunes associated with a couple in love.
The king’s mother wanted to marry him to one of the overseas princesses. And Barbara remained a living obstacle to her plans. As a result, the girl was poisoned soon after. But the heartbroken king has not come to terms with the loss of his beloved. Forgetting about all the foundations of the Catholic Church, Sigismund invited a powerful necromancer to the palace, deciding with his help to summon the ghost of Barbara. The session of spiritualism turned out to be successful. But at the very moment when the ghost of the deceased wife appeared in the castle room, the king ignored the words of the sorcerer and, rushing to her, tried to take her in his arms. As a result, the magical connection between the world of the dead and the world of the living was broken, and the spirit of Barbara Radziwill was stuck somewhere in the middle, locked forever in the castle walls.
Wojciech Gerson — Zjawa Barbary Radziwill.
It is generally believed that if Sigismund had died in Nesvizh, his soul would have been able to reunite with his deceased wife. But his death came suddenly, many miles from home. Since then, two ghosts – Sigismund and Barbara – have been wandering through the dark galleries of two different castles: Krakow and Nesvizh, unable to find each other or let go.
How to visit this place? Trips to Nesvizh can be found in the line of many Minsk travel agencies. (Here is one tour for an example). How to get to the city on your own, I told you in detail here. Well, if you want to wander through the same corridors with Barbara Radziwill, then pay attention to the hotel located in Nesvizh Castle. You can check the cost of his rooms on this page.
Mir Castle
There is a chilling legend associated with the castle in the World. More precisely, not with him, but with a small pond next door.
The thing is that over the years the Mir Castle has changed owners many times. During the reign of Prince Ilinich, an apple orchard appeared, which became even more beautiful at the time when the Radziwills ruled the castle. But after the World came into the possession of the Russian military commander Nikolai Svyatopolk-Mirsky, everything changed quickly. The new tycoon began to redesign the castle for himself. The garden was cut down, and a small pond was dug in its place.
But during the felling of trees, one of the loggers died by tragic accident. And standing over him, his grief-stricken mother cursed the Russian nobleman, shouting that from now on he would find corpses in the local pond every year. Until their number equals the number of trees cut down.
Soon the curse began to come true, andBlack clouds gathered over Mir Castle. First, 12-year-old Princess Sonechka drowned in the pond. And some time later, the nobleman himself was found dead near the shore of an artificial reservoir.
Nowadays, the ancestral tomb of Svyatopolk-Mirsky, standing near the medieval fortress, continues to suffer from floods on a regular basis. As if dead princes are destined to drown even after death…
How to visit this place? I have a separate article on how to get to the World. Here it is, read it. And there is a hotel in the castle today. You can check the room rates here. You can also go to Mirsky and Nesvizh castles with an excursion. I will give one of these below.
Secrets of the city
You can find your own bit of mysticism on the old streets of Grodno. Some time ago, an interesting project called “Secrets of the City” appeared here, combining at the same time the features of an excursion and a theatrical performance. There is a ghost of a nun, and a “plague doctor” in a black cloak, and walks outside the walls of the Bernardine monastery, and many dark stories related to the legends of old Grodno.
You can read all the details here.
I do not promise you a meeting with ghosts, but it seems to me that such excursions with a mystical bias are quite suitable for the topic of our article today.
Dead Lake and legends of mermaids
In the Myadel district of Belarus, there is a small lake with black water among the impenetrable forests. It is often written that there is practically no life in it. Therefore, legends constantly attribute various magical properties to it. Someone says that travelers start to feel dizzy here, and in local legends there are mentions of a drowned church and mermaids who supposedly guard this place. It’s up to you to believe them or not. But the places there are really beautiful.
You can see the Dead Lake in the Narochansky National Park on the Blue Lakes ecotrope. For information about routes, places of residence and prices, see the websitenarochpark.by .
Necromancer pyramid 100 kilometers from Minsk
In a small town called Uzda, right in the middle of the old cemetery there is a huge stone pyramid, about 10 meters high. It was built at the beginning of the century before last – in 1800 – by princes from the family of Zavisha. Once upon a time, noble burials were located on its first floor, and a room for rituals was equipped on the second floor.
It is not known for certain why the tomb of the Zavish family has such an unusual shape. But most often, the history of its construction is associated with Jan Kazimirom Zawisha, a famous Belarusian scientist and archaeologist. He led the research of old graves, actively studied ethnography and Belarusian folklore, and also organized expeditions to Egypt.
There are legends that even attribute to him the practice of necromancy and the search for a recipe for eternal life. Anyway, the pyramid of Zavisha remains one of the most mysterious objects in Belarus today. You can see it in the city of Uzda, at the Catholic cemetery on Pervomaiskaya Street. It is possible to get to the first floor, where the graves were once located, without any problems. But you will have to climb into the “secret” chapel on the second floor.
Secrets of Nalibokskaya Pushcha
Not far from Minsk, among the forests of Nalibokskaya Pushcha, there are ruins of an old Soviet sanatorium, once called Lesnoye.
Photo by 34travel
In 1986, a huge complex with tiled roofs and a beautiful tower participated in the All-Union review and fought for the title of the best building. But in 1994 the complex was closed. Today, the huge building of the empty sanatorium is one of the most famous and colorful “abandoned buildings” in our country. Old documents with the schedule of procedures are still lying around inside, huge halls and treatment rooms are overgrown with dust, and the eye sockets of the windows keep looking at Nalibokskaya Pushcha.
Photo from the website hawat.by . Detailed information about the abandoned sanatorium can be found there.
It is often written on the Internet that the sanatorium was closed due to the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and excess radiation in this area. But after the explosion in Chernobyl, the complex worked for another 8 years! Therefore, other versions are put forward as possible reasons for the closure of Lesnoy.
Someone is talking about the problems in the economy that covered Belarus in the mid-90s. And someone even writes about the ancient curse that touched Nalibokskaya Pushcha. The thing is that next to the sanatorium (literally a couple of hundred meters from it) there are ruins of the ancient Tyshkevich manor, built in the early 19th century.
photo from the website hawat.by
The famous noble family was very fond of hunting in Nalibokskaya Pushcha. But during the construction of the manor and the hunting lodge, an ancient pagan temple was allegedly destroyed. Since then, these places have been covered by a series of strange misfortunes. Then the bear will break out of the enclosure and bite the schoolgirl, then the guests during the hunt will start shooting not at the animals, but at each other.
Today, a mysterious manor house and an abandoned sanatorium stand side by side. It’s like something really wrong is going on in these places. You can see them with your own eyes 70 kilometers from Minsk, in Nalibokskaya Pushcha, near the village of Rudnya.
Chernobyl exclusion zone
There is no mystical story of its own here. But it is difficult to imagine a story about the most terrible places in Belarus without mentioning the Polessky Radiation Reserve. It is located in the extreme south of Belarus, not far from the city of Khoiniki – in the territory where more than 22 thousand people once lived.
There have never been large cities here, so today the Belarusian part of the exclusion zone is a scattering of empty villages, abandoned factories, farms, schools, hospitals and palaces of culture. You can visit here for 50-150 BYN (depending on which point of Belarus you start from). For details, see the websitezapovednik.by .
I also wrote about these places in some detail in my article about Gomel (the link to it will be here). Read it if you’re interested. And today I just have to say goodbye. If you know any other mysterious and mystical places in Belarus, welcome to the comments.
