This story was published in a book by the Russian writer and priest Dmitry Bulgakovsky titled “From the Underworld: Apparitions of the Dead from Ancient Times to the Present Day,” published in 1902. In it, the author collected several dozen stories about contacts with the dead author.

Below is one such story. It was told to Bulgakov by a certain O.D., who himself witnessed the anomalous phenomenon.

“Twenty miles from our estate, in the village of Vishnevets in the Volyn province, lived a priest who was a great friend of my father. This priest, having become a widower, was left with a sixteen-year-old daughter. At his request, my father allowed his daughter, Stepanida, to visit him for a short time, to distract the orphaned girl from the difficult emotions of her mother’s death.

About two weeks passed, Stepanida did not return, and so my father and I (I was then about ten years old) went to Vishnevets to visit his widower friend and take my sister home.

We arrived in Vishnevets in the evening, around ten o’clock, and the only people home were the girls, my sister, and the priest’s daughter. I wanted to run around the garden, but I was afraid to go deeper, so I sat down on a bench not far from the house.

I saw a lady in a black dress walking down the alley. When she reached me, she looked at me with a smile and headed into the priest’s house through the porch that opened directly onto the garden. I ran to the other porch, where my father and the girls were sitting.

“Some lady entered the house through the garden porch,” I said.

My sister and friend exchanged glances at these words and seemed alarmed, so my father asked them what was wrong and what was troubling them. They replied that, based on my description and her clothing, this woman was my late mother, who came into the house every day and was seen by everyone. Since my father didn’t believe in such things, he laughed at the girls.

The priest didn’t return for a long time. Stepanida suddenly screamed and said she’d glimpsed a dead woman passing by.

Without waiting for the master of the house, we went to bed. I slept with my father in one room, next to the priest’s office, and the girls in another. Around two in the morning, I woke up, I don’t know why, and heard a conversation in the office.

A male voice said:

– Why are you so late today?

“I was here earlier,” a female voice replied. “I saw your guests and wanted to hug the little boy in the garden, but he ran away from me. Then I wanted to thank Stepanida for her friendship with our daughter, but she was afraid of me…”

– Why didn’t you prepare it?

— We are strictly forbidden to appear to those who are afraid of us, under threat of losing the right to further meetings with the living.

Hearing this, I was terribly frightened, for I realized the conversation was between the deceased and the priest, her husband, and I jumped straight onto the bed next to my father, who, like me, was also awake. He warned me not to disturb him as he listened to the conversation between the being from beyond the grave and the living.

The next day, over morning tea, my father turned the conversation to the night visit and expressed doubts about it, suspecting something completely different.

“Believe it or not,” the priest replied, “but as an honest man and a servant of the holy altar, I tell you that I am in spiritual communication with many of the dead, including my wife. They often ask me to pray for them, and when I fulfill their requests, they personally thank me. My late wife visits my home almost every day and often expresses an interest in everything around her, just like a living person. Whenever I ask her about the conditions of the afterlife, she always evades direct answers, declaring that they, the dead, are forbidden to answer any questions from the living, especially idle ones.”