The most terrible deaths in history: list, description and interesting facts. Life stories

01.02.2024

Based on materials from the newspaper "AiF"

There is life after death. And there are thousands of evidences of this. Until now, fundamental science has dismissed such stories. However, as Natalya Bekhtereva, a famous scientist who has studied the activity of the brain all her life, said, our consciousness is such matter that it seems that the keys to the secret door have already been selected. But behind it there are ten more... What is behind the door of life?

“She sees right through everything...”

Galina Lagoda was returning with her husband in a Zhiguli car from a country trip. Trying to pass an oncoming truck on a narrow highway, the husband sharply pulled to the right... The car was crushed by a tree standing by the road.

Intravision

Galina was brought to the Kaliningrad regional hospital with severe brain damage, ruptured kidneys, lungs, spleen and liver, and many fractures. The heart stopped, the pressure was at zero.

“Having flown through black space, I found myself in a shining space filled with light,” Galina Semyonovna tells me twenty years later. “In front of me stood a huge man in dazzling white clothes. I couldn’t see his face because of the light beam directed at me. “Why did you come here?” - he asked sternly. “I’m very tired, let me rest a little.” - “Rest and come back - you still have a lot to do.”

Having regained consciousness after two weeks, during which she balanced between life and death, the patient told the head of the intensive care department, Evgeniy Zatovka, how the operations were carried out, which of the doctors stood where and what they did, what equipment they brought, from which cabinets they took what.

After another operation on a shattered arm, Galina, during her morning medical rounds, asked the orthopedic doctor: “How is your stomach?” From amazement, he did not know what to answer - indeed, the doctor was tormented by abdominal pain.

Now Galina Semyonovna lives in harmony with herself, believes in God and is not at all afraid of death.

"Flying like a cloud"

Yuri Burkov, a reserve major, does not like to remember the past. His wife Lyudmila told his story:
“Yura fell from a great height, broke his spine and received a traumatic brain injury, and lost consciousness. After cardiac arrest, he lay in a coma for a long time.

I was under terrible stress. During one of my hospital visits I lost my keys. And the husband, having finally regained consciousness, first of all asked: “Did you find the keys?” I shook my head in fear. “They are under the stairs,” he said.

Only many years later did he confess to me: while he was in a coma, he saw my every step and heard every word - no matter how far I was from him. He flew in the form of a cloud, including to where his deceased parents and brother live. The mother tried to persuade her son to return, and the brother explained that they were all alive, only they no longer had bodies.

Years later, sitting at the bedside of his seriously ill son, he reassured his wife: “Lyudochka, don’t cry, I know for sure that he won’t leave now. He will be with us for another year." And a year later, at the wake of his deceased son, he admonished his wife: “He did not die, but only moved to another world before you and me. Trust me, I’ve been there.”

Savely KASHNITSKY, Kaliningrad - Moscow

Childbirth under the ceiling

These are the memories of 19-year-old Anna R., who survived clinical death. Such stories can be found in abundance on Internet forums where the topic of “life after death” is discussed.

Light in the tunnel

Disagreements among scientists have reached the point that the start of a new experiment was recently announced. For three years, American and British doctors will study the testimony of patients whose hearts stopped or their brains turned off. Among other things, the researchers are going to put various pictures on the shelves in the intensive care wards. You can see them only by soaring right up to the ceiling. If patients who have experienced clinical death retell their contents, it means that consciousness is really capable of leaving the body.

One of the first who tried to explain the phenomenon of near-death experiences was academician Vladimir Negovsky. He founded the world's first Institute of General Reanimatology. Negovsky believed (and the scientific view has not changed since then) that the “light at the end of the tunnel” was explained by the so-called tube vision. The cortex of the occipital lobes of the brain dies off gradually, the field of vision narrows to a narrow strip, creating the impression of a tunnel.

In a similar way, doctors explain the vision of pictures of a past life flashing before the gaze of a dying person. Brain structures fade and then recover unevenly. Therefore, a person has time to remember the most vivid events deposited in his memory. And the illusion of leaving the body, according to doctors, is the result of a failure of nerve signals. However, skeptics reach a dead end when it comes to answering trickier questions. Why do people who are blind from birth, at the moment of clinical death, see and then describe in detail what is happening in the operating room around them? And there is such evidence.

Leaving the body is a defensive reaction

Dmitry Spivak himself examined the mental state of women in labor and found that about 9% of women experience “leaving the body” during childbirth! Here is the testimony of 33-year-old S.: “During childbirth, I had a lot of blood loss. Suddenly I began to see myself from under the ceiling. The pain has disappeared. And about a minute later she also unexpectedly returned to her place in the room and again began to experience severe pain.” It turns out that “leaving the body” is a normal phenomenon during childbirth. Some kind of mechanism embedded in the psyche, a program that works in extreme situations.

Undoubtedly, childbirth is an extreme situation. But what could be more extreme than death itself?! It is possible that “flying in a tunnel” is also a protective program that is activated at a fatal moment for a person. But what will happen to his consciousness (soul) next?

“I asked one dying woman: if there really is something THERE, try to give me a sign,” recalls Doctor of Medical Sciences Andrei Gnezdilov, who works at the St. Petersburg hospice. “And on the 40th day after death, I saw her in a dream. The woman said: “This is not death.” Many years of working in a hospice have convinced me and my colleagues: death is not the end, not the destruction of everything. The soul continues to live."

Dmitry PISARENKO

Cup and polka dot dress

I went to visit this woman’s relatives. And it turned out that during the operation... a neighbor came in with a polka dot dress for a girl and the cup was broken.”

This is not the only mysterious case in the practice of Gnezdilov and other workers of the St. Petersburg hospice. They are not surprised when a doctor dreams of his patient and thanks him for his care and touching attitude. And in the morning, upon arriving at work, the doctor finds out that the patient died during the night...

Church opinion

Priest Vladimir Vigilyansky, head of the press service of the Moscow Patriarchate:

— Orthodox people believe in the afterlife and immortality. There is much confirmation and evidence of this in the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. We consider the very concept of death only in connection with the coming resurrection, and this mystery ceases to be such if we live with Christ and for Christ’s sake. “Whoever lives and believes in Me will never die,” says the Lord (John 11:26).

According to legend, in the first days the soul of the deceased walks through those places in which it worked the truth, and on the third day it ascends to heaven to the throne of God, where until the ninth day it is shown the abodes of saints and the beauty of paradise. On the ninth day, the soul again comes to God, and it is sent to hell, where wicked sinners reside and where the soul undergoes thirty days of ordeal (tests). On the fortieth day, the soul again comes to the Throne of God, where it appears naked before the judgment of its own conscience: has it passed these tests or not? And even in the case when some trials convict the soul of its sins, we hope for the mercy of God, in whom all deeds of sacrificial love and compassion will not go in vain.

One of the main questions for everyone remains the question of what awaits us after death. For thousands of years, unsuccessful attempts have been made to unravel this mystery. Apart from guesswork, there are real facts confirming that death is not the end of the human journey.

There are a large number of paranormal videos that have taken the internet by storm. But even in this case, there are a lot of skeptics who say that the videos can be faked. It is difficult to disagree with them, because a person is not inclined to believe in what he cannot see with his own eyes.

There are many stories about how people returned from the other world when they were near death. How to perceive such cases is a matter of faith. However, often even the most inveterate skeptics changed themselves and their lives when faced with situations that cannot be explained using logic.

Religion about death

The vast majority of the world's religions have teachings about what awaits us after death. The most common is the doctrine of Heaven and Hell. Sometimes it is supplemented by an intermediate link: “walking” through the world of the living after death. Some peoples believe that such a fate awaits suicides and those who have not completed something important on this Earth.

A similar concept is seen in many religions. Despite all the differences, they have one thing in common: everything is tied to good and bad, and a person’s posthumous state depends on how he behaved during life. The religious description of the afterlife cannot be written off. Life after death exists - inexplicable facts confirm this.

One day something amazing happened to a priest who was the rector of the Baptist Church in the United States of America. A man was driving his car home from a meeting about building a new church when a truck came towards him. The accident could not be avoided. The collision was so strong that the man fell into a coma for some time.

An ambulance arrived soon, but it was too late. The man's heart didn't beat. Doctors confirmed the cardiac arrest with a second test. They had no doubt that the man was dead. Around the same time, the police arrived at the scene of the accident. Among the officers there was a Christian who saw a cross in the priest’s pocket. He immediately noticed his clothes and realized who was in front of him. He could not send God's servant on his final journey without prayer. He said words of prayer as he climbed into the dilapidated car and took the hand of the man whose heart was not beating. While reading the lines, he heard a subtle groan, which shocked him. He checked his pulse again and realized that he could clearly feel the blood pulsing. Later, when the man miraculously recovered and began to live his old life, this story became popular. Perhaps the man really returned from the other world to complete important matters at the behest of God. One way or another, they could not give a scientific explanation for this, because the heart cannot start on its own.

The priest himself said more than once in his interviews that he saw only the white light and nothing else. He could have taken advantage of the situation and said that the Lord himself spoke to him or that he saw angels, but he did not do this. A couple of reporters claimed that when asked what the man saw in this afterlife dream, he smiled discreetly and his eyes filled with tears. Perhaps he really saw something hidden, but did not want to make it public.

When people are in a short coma, their brain does not have time to die during this time. That is why it is worth paying attention to the numerous stories that people, being between life and death, saw a light so bright that even through closed eyes it seeps through as if the eyelids were transparent. One hundred percent of people came back to life and reported that the light began to move away from them. Religion interprets this very simply - their time has not yet come. A similar light was seen by the wise men approaching the cave where Jesus Christ was born. This is the glow of heaven, the afterlife. No one saw angels or God, but felt the touch of higher powers.

Another thing is dreams. Scientists have proven that we can dream anything that our brain can imagine. In a word, dreams are not limited by anything. It happens that people see their dead relatives in their dreams. If 40 days have not passed since death, this means that the person actually spoke to you from the afterlife. Unfortunately, dreams cannot be analyzed objectively from two points of view - scientific and religious-esoteric, because it’s all about sensations. You may dream about God, angels, heaven, hell, ghosts and whatever you want, but you don’t always feel that the meeting was real. It happens that in dreams we remember deceased grandparents or parents, but only occasionally does a real spirit come to someone in a dream. We all understand that it will be impossible to prove our feelings, so no one spreads their impressions further than outside the family circle. Those who believe in the afterlife, and even those who doubt it, wake up after such dreams with a completely different view of the world. Spirits can predict the future, which has happened more than once in history. They can show dissatisfaction, joy, sympathy.

There are quite a famous story that happened in Scotland in the early 70s of the 20th century with an ordinary builder. A residential building was being built in Edinburgh. Norman McTagert, who was 32 years old, worked at the construction site. He fell from quite a height, lost consciousness and fell into a coma for a day. Shortly before this, he dreamed of falling. After he woke up, he told what he saw in the coma. According to the man, it was a long journey because he wanted to wake up, but he couldn’t. First he saw that same blinding bright light, and then he met his mother, who said that she had always wanted to become a grandmother. The most interesting thing is that as soon as he regained consciousness, his wife told him about the most pleasant news that was possible - Norman was going to become a dad. The woman found out about her pregnancy on the day of the tragedy. The man had serious health problems, but he not only survived, but also continued to work and feed his family.

At the end of the 90s, something very unusual happened in Canada.. The doctor on duty at one of the Vancouver hospitals was taking calls and filling out paperwork, but then she saw a little boy in white night pajamas. He shouted from the other end of the emergency room: “Tell my mom not to worry about me.” The girl was afraid that one of the patients had left the room, but then she saw the boy walk through the closed doors of the hospital. His house was a couple of minutes from the hospital. That's where he ran. The doctor was alarmed by the fact that it was three o'clock in the morning. She decided that she had to catch up with the boy at all costs, because even if he was not a patient, she needed to report him to the police. She ran after him for just a couple of minutes until the child ran into the house. The girl began to ring the doorbell, after which the mother of that same boy opened the door for her. She said that it was impossible for her son to leave the house, because he was very ill. She burst into tears and went into the room where the child lay in his crib. It turned out that the boy had died. The story received great resonance in society.

In the brutal Second World War one private Frenchman spent almost two hours firing back at the enemy during a battle in the city . Next to him was a man of about 40 years old, who covered him on the other side. It is impossible to imagine how great the surprise of an ordinary soldier in the French army was, who turned in that direction to say something to his partner, but realized that he had disappeared. A few minutes later, screams of approaching allies were heard, rushing to help. He and several other soldiers ran out to meet help, but the mysterious partner was not among them. He searched for him by name and rank, but never found the same fighter. Perhaps it was his guardian angel. Doctors say that in such stressful situations, mild hallucinations are possible, but talking with a man for an hour and a half cannot be called an ordinary mirage.

There are quite a lot of similar stories about life after death. Some of them are confirmed by eyewitnesses, but doubters still call it a fake and try to find scientific justification for people’s actions and their visions.

Real facts about the afterlife

Since ancient times, there have been cases where people saw ghosts. First they were photographed and then filmed. Some people think that this is an edit, but later they are personally convinced of the veracity of the pictures. Numerous stories cannot be considered proof of the existence of life after death, so people need evidence and scientific facts.

Fact one: Many have heard that after death a person becomes exactly 22 grams lighter. Scientists cannot explain this phenomenon in any way. Many believers tend to believe that 22 grams is the weight of the human soul. Many experiments were carried out that ended with the same result - the body became lighter by a certain amount. Why is the main question. People's skepticism cannot be eradicated, so many hope that an explanation will be found, but this is unlikely to happen. Ghosts can be seen by the human eye, hence their "body" has mass. Obviously, everything that has some kind of outline must be at least partly physical. Ghosts exist in greater dimensions than us. There are 4 of them: height, width, length and time. Ghosts have no control over time from the point of view from which we see it.

Fact two: The air temperature near ghosts decreases. This is typical, by the way, not only for the souls of dead people, but also for the so-called brownies. All this is the result of the action of the afterlife in reality. When a person dies, the temperature around him immediately drops sharply, literally for an instant. This indicates that the soul leaves the body. The temperature of the soul is approximately 5-7 degrees Celsius, as measurements show. During paranormal phenomena, the temperature also changes, so scientists have proven that this happens not only during immediate death, but also afterwards. The soul has a certain radius of influence around itself. Many horror films use this fact to bring the filming closer to reality. Many people confirm that when they felt the movement of a ghost or some entity near them, they felt very cold.

Here is an example of a paranormal video that features real ghosts.

The authors claim that this is not a joke, and experts who watched this collection say that approximately half of all such videos are the real truth. Particularly noteworthy is the part of this video where the girl is pushed by a ghost in the bathroom. Experts report that physical contact is possible and absolutely real, and the video is not fake. Almost all pictures of furniture moving may be true. The problem is that it is very easy to fake such a video, but in the moment where the chair next to the sitting girl began to move by itself, there was no acting. There are very, very many such cases around the world, but there are no fewer of those who just want to promote their video and become famous. Distinguishing fake from truth is difficult, but possible.

Death is something that no one has ever been able to avoid. All living things die sooner or later, the only difference is in the circumstances.

Many people believe that the most terrible phenomenon is death itself. But the pages of human history tell us that the death throes can be much more terrible than death itself. To convince you of this, we suggest reading a selection of the most terrible and painful deaths in history.

The most painful human deaths in history

Death of Joram

The Bible is full of stories not only about love and kindness, but also about justice, which is often cruel. One of these is the parable of Jehoram. According to legend, he was once the ruler of Judea and considered Beelzebub the main deity, which aroused the wrath of Yahweh. Joram was severely punished: he was struck by a strange disease, from which his flesh began to decay from the inside. Before he died, the king suffered for 2 years.

How Herod was punished

Another biblical horror story is dedicated to King Herod, who ruled Caesarea in Palestine. The name of Herod is well known to everyone who has read the New Testament - it was he who, having learned about the impending birth of the true king of Judea, ordered the destruction of all the newborns of Bethlehem. Subsequently, he organized the persecution of the first Christians, executed John the Baptist and the Apostle James. The Bible lists Herod's cause of death as being eaten alive by worms.

Murder of Grigory Rasputin

Many close to the court were wary of the mysterious friend of Nicholas II - there were rumors that Rasputin was an insidious sorcerer associated with black magic. Less superstitious courtiers saw him as a dangerous political rival who had too much influence on the emperor.

On December 29, 1916, Prince Felix Yusupov invited Rasputin to dinner, during which he treated the guest to poisoned wine. The poison did not work, then the conspirators, the prince and his accomplice Vladimir Purishkevich, shot him in the back.

The killers thought that Gregory was dead and carried him out of the palace. But he unexpectedly not only showed signs of life, but also began to strangle one of the conspirators. Then another bullet was fired at Rasputin, but after that he did not die, but tried to escape. They caught up with him, beat him, and then threw him, still alive, into the icy waters of the Moika.

In total, three wounds were found on the body of the dead favorite of the emperor, all fatal: in the head, kidney and liver.

61 days of nightmares by Hiro Syauchi

In 1999, Japanese man Hiro Shauchi received a huge dose of radiation while performing his work duties at a plant where nuclear fuel was processed. The next two months after the accident became a real nightmare for Hiro.

On the 45th day, the skin completely peeled off Syauti’s flesh, after which the internal organs began to rapidly deteriorate. On the 59th day, his heart failed three times in a row. Doctors managed to pump him out until the 61st day arrived, which brought Syauti the long-awaited deliverance. Willy-nilly, you will think about legalizing euthanasia.

The Tragedy of Deborah Gayle Stone

Many people are afraid of rides, and for good reason. Ignoring safety rules often leads to disastrous consequences.

In 1974, American Disneyland delighted visitors with a new attraction - the “America Sings” attraction. It was one of the first entertainments using animatronics, in other words, singing and dancing robots.

The attraction created a sensation: from the first minutes of the working day until the park closed, dozens of people crowded around the robots. But for some reason, 18-year-old Disneyland employee Deborah Stone was frightened by these “electronics” - she could not explain the reason for her strange phobia, but every time she ran past them, she felt uneasy.

And as luck would have it, she was appointed the caretaker of this attraction! And so, before the start of the next performance, she was instructed to check the rotating mechanism. The girl got stuck in the hole, and then the show began. The robots began to sing, the stage began to rotate, and the girl found herself ground into bloody pieces between the rotating part and the stationary concrete wall. While she uttered inhuman screams of pain, visitors thought it was part of the performance.

David Kirwan and the thermal springs

In 1981, David Kirwan was walking through Yellowstone National Park with his bosom friend and his dog. The purpose of the visit was typical - the young people wanted to see the beauty of the thermal springs for which this beautiful reserve is famous.

Everything was going well until the pet, breaking off the leash, jumped into the water. David decided to save his friend's dog and went into the pool, instantly realizing what a stupid thing he had done.

A small note: Yellowstone is at the same time one of the most beautiful and dangerous places on our planet. Prohibition signs are posted throughout the park - going down to the natural pools may be the last thing an unlucky visitor to Yellowstone will do in his life. The fact is that in some springs in the park, the water temperature can reach up to 121 degrees Celsius and have extremely high acidity.

With difficulty, David got out of the water, receiving a burn on 90% of the surface of his body. When the owner of the dog, whose body never surfaced, took off the shoes of the scalded rescuer, pieces of the skin were torn off along with them. The next day, David died from painful shock.

Execution of György Dozsa

The Inquisition, wars, and diseases left a terrible mark on the history of the Middle Ages. There were many terrible deaths at that time, but the mention of one of them still makes the blood run cold. We are talking about the execution of György Dozsa.

Gyorgy Dozsa led a peasant uprising in Hungary. It was quickly suppressed, after which its wounded leader was captured by the government. So that other peasants would no longer have the thought of rebelling against the feudal lords, the most severe execution was invented for Gyorgy Dozsa.

The leader of the uprising wanted to become king of Hungary. To cause him not only physical pain, but also to ridicule his hopes, György was seated on a metal throne with a hearth hidden inside, handing him a scepter and an orb that was as hot as the seat. A red-hot crown was placed on the head of the leader of the uprising.

Then Brother György and those who took part in the riot with him were brought into the hall. The brother was publicly cut into pieces, and like-minded rebels suffering from a long hunger strike were forced to bite off the flesh of the still living Doji in a circle. “Eat it whole and you will live,” they were promised. Everyone who refused to eat human flesh was killed. Those who agreed to cannibalism too, but only after Dozha was eaten.

The Torment of Junku Furuta

Human cruelty towards one's own kind often knows no bounds. And, unfortunately, references to terrible torture and murder are not only associated with the Middle Ages.

In 1988, 17-year-old Japanese girl Junka Furuta was kidnapped by a group of sadistic minors: Hiroshi Miyano, Jo Ogura, Shinji Minato and Yasushi Watanabe. They held the girl captive for 44 days in the house of one of the gang members.

Miyano's parents were big shots in the Japanese Yakuza mafia, so it was not difficult for the young man to intimidate the girl and his own friends. Under threat of death, she called her parents and told them that she was fine so that the police would not look for her.

On the very first day of her captivity, she was raped repeatedly, forced to eat insects and drink urine, smoldering cigarettes were stuck into her flesh and the girl was set on fire with a lighter.

On the eleventh day, her limbs were broken and hung from the ceiling, using the girl’s body as a punching bag. She tried to escape, but the escape failed, for which her legs were doused with firelighting fluid and set on fire. Furuta was then tortured by having a broken bottle inserted into his anus.

On the twentieth day, firecrackers were shoved into the girl, and then red-hot knitting needles.

A month of imprisonment passed, and the bored rapists came up with new methods of torture. The unfortunate Japanese woman was doused with hot wax on her face, her breasts were pierced with needles, her nipples were pinched in a vice, while at the same time a light bulb was shoved inside the girl.

On the forty-fourth day, Junku Furuta died from painful shock after two hours of torture by fire. The next day, the teenagers cemented the girl's body in a barrel and threw it away at a construction site.

The police managed to find the body and the killers. But the punishment did not correspond to the crime - the attackers were sentenced to imprisonment for a term of 4 to 17 years, depending on the degree of guilt. According to the law on the protection of the rights of minors, their names were not publicly disclosed. Hiroshi Miyano, the leader of a gang of sadists, was released in 2007.

Fatal Christmas

On Christmas Eve 2002, 25-year-old bartender Doyle decided to celebrate the holiday with his friend Michael Wright and his girlfriend. In an alcoholic fervor, Wright thought that Doyle was harassing his girlfriend and beat the poor man. He broke the bartender's legs and threw him into an open hatch. The distance to the bottom was about 5.5 meters.

Wright wanted to scare Doyle, but did not suspect that the bottom of the sewer was flooded with boiling water from a broken pipe. The bartender fell into boiling water with a temperature of 150 degrees Celsius, and his injuries prevented him from getting out. He was still alive when help arrived, but neither firefighters nor paramedics dared to go down.

Having opened the guy's body, doctors noted that he looked like a lobster cooked by a chef - the internal organs were boiled, and the skin came off the bones. The worst thing is that while his body was being boiled alive, Doyle remained conscious.
Subscribe to our channel in Yandex.Zen

You become scared for your children after such “stories” when children die, die due to the fault of incompetent doctors and their negligence. What should ordinary people do?

White NEGLIGENCE. How little Olya died
Yesterday was nine days since the death of eight-month-old Olenka Tolyagina. The baby did not die because of an accident or an incurable disease. The little angel died in the Ulyanovsk Children's Infectious Diseases Hospital among the doctors who calmly watched the child die for 24 hours. The girl's mother, Natasha, has already filed an application with the regional prosecutor's office. But even if the person responsible for the baby’s death is found and punished, this will not return the Tolyagin family their long-awaited ray of light, little Olenka.

How to talk to a mother who has suddenly lost her child? I was afraid that I simply wouldn’t find the right intonation, the right words, that I wouldn’t be able to make it clear that I was driven not by journalistic curiosity, not by the desire to “dig up” a sensation, but by a sincere desire to understand the situation, to find and help punish those responsible.

But, apparently, Natasha’s tormented soul was so overwhelmed by her mother’s grief that her emotions broke through almost immediately, the conversation, as they say, “got better” from the first minute. Having emerged from everyday reality, I plunged into an atmosphere of hopelessness and grief, from which a cold runs down my back and my hands become covered with goosebumps.

The Tolyagin family lives in the Ulyanovsk region, in the village of Bolshoye Nagatkino in a cozy home. Kostya and Natasha have an eldest daughter, two-year-old Snezhanna, but the young parents always dreamed of having many children.

“My husband Kostya,” Natasha begins her story, “simply dreamed of a second baby, and when it became clear that I was expecting a child, he was very happy. He carried me in his arms throughout my pregnancy, blowing away specks of dust.”

The pregnancy was going well. On July 13, the long-awaited warm little bundle was born - the girl was named Olenka. Kostya and Natasha couldn’t be happier with their little one, who was surprisingly calm and very cute. “She had big eyes, long eyelashes, funny eyebrows, a naughty crest that stuck out funny on her head. A real little princess,” Natasha recalls her daughter with a smile. “My husband didn’t let her go, and the eldest Snezhanka kept coming up to her crib, looking at her sister and proudly saying: “Sister.”

Eight months of ordinary human life are, as a rule, everyday gray everyday life. When a child appears in a family, every month of his first day of life seems like an entire era. The first smile, the first tooth, the first cooing... Baby Olya developed completely normally, routine examinations by the pediatrician in the card confirm this.

The baby had two days to live

At four months old, Olya caught a slight cold; the doctor diagnosed her with bronchitis. The baby had a fever for a week and quickly recovered.

When a month ago my daughter had a slight fever and a slight stomach upset, Natasha was afraid that it might be bronchitis again, and rushed to the doctor.

The local police officer carefully examined the child and suspected pneumonia. The photographs taken confirmed left-sided pneumonia. Since the girl’s mother told the doctor that the baby had diarrhea, the doctor decided to send Natasha and her daughter to the Ulyanovsk Infectious Diseases Hospital.

Actually, from that minute the countdown of little Olya’s life began. “We were put in a four-bed ward,” recalls Natasha. - The conditions are terrible, the wards are terribly stuffy, there is no ventilation. Sick children are lying in the corridors, at the same time construction workers are doing some kind of protracted repairs, the kids are breathing this dust and dirt. Patients are not sorted, recovering but still weakened children constantly encounter new arrivals and fall ill again. The hot water in the infectious diseases hospital is turned off at night! And if the baby wets himself or craps himself, it is impossible to wash him at night. This is just some kind of “Auschwitz,” sighs mother Natasha.

In such conditions, little Olya was treated by her attending physician Evgeny Bezkhlebov for left-sided pneumonia. Among other procedures, the baby was prescribed inhalations. “I brought my daughter to the treatment room for inhalation, and right there, among the sterile instruments, I saw woodlice crawling,” Natasha’s voice is already trembling with tears. - I asked the nurse, how can this be? There’s a children’s department right there!” And she shrugged her shoulders tiredly and said that woodlice are harmless insects that don’t bite! You can’t imagine what horror is happening there!”

According to Natalya, soon all her roommates, frightened by the hospital conditions, began to go home with signatures. And she, fearing for the baby, decided to complete the course of treatment.

Despite all the hospital horrors, Olenka was confidently on the mend. After looking at her repeat X-ray of the lungs - and this was two days before the girl’s death - the attending physician reported that the child had practically no pneumonia, only residual effects remained. Delighted, Natasha began to prepare for discharge.

“How I blame myself for not running away from the hospital with my daughter as soon as she got better,” the young woman laments. “I’m sure that if a child with an acute infection had not been admitted to our ward, my kitten would have been alive!”

The girl, who had barely recovered from her illness, contracted a second infection from her roommate. “Suddenly, my daughter’s temperature jumped to 39, and she started vomiting,” Natasha states automatically. “I immediately ran to the nurse, she came to us about half an hour later and gave me an injection of diphenhydramine. In response to my words that the child was throwing up, she replied that this was very good and that she needed to continue to press the tongue. Olenka was getting worse, the temperature did not subside, she was thrashing about in my arms, moaning, I just didn’t know what to do. A gypsy neighbor told me to run for a doctor. I ran, the doctors were sitting in the surgery room and almost laughed in my face. Finally, Bezkhlebov agreed to go into the room with me and immediately ordered the nurse to put his daughter on an IV. I carried her into the treatment room and stood in the doorway. I saw how the nurse could not get into her vein, how she cursed and swore at the same time. Having poured half of the medicine onto the floor without getting into the vein, Olenka was again injected with diphenhydramine.

Your daughter died

“I begged the doctors on my knees to do at least something. They didn’t take Olya to the intensive care unit, they said that there was no place for us there,” Natasha says through tears.

Only after four hours of Natalya’s plea for help, the doctors transferred the dying child to the intensive care unit.

The resuscitator, who came out some time later, told Natasha, who was in a semi-fainting state, that the child had suffered cardiac arrest, but the condition had been stabilized.

“I went to Bezkhlebov and said that my daughter’s heart stopped,” says Natasha. - And he answers me: “All this is nonsense, nothing stopped her.”

Soon Kostya arrived and with difficulty pulled his wife away from the doors of the intensive care unit. “My husband and I went home, stopped at the pharmacy, and bought diapers for Olenka. I hoped for the best, but my heart told me there would be trouble. Suddenly the backlight on the display of my cell phone went out, where I had a photo of Olechka. Everything just broke inside me. I think there will be trouble." Arriving home, Natasha dialed the emergency room phone number and asked how her daughter was doing. At the other end of the line, a calmly indifferent voice answered her: “I don’t have good news for you. Only the bad ones. Your daughter has died. Follow her to the morgue."

“She was lying there so pretty, as if she had fallen asleep. Only there were some scratches on the left side of her face that weren’t there when she was taken to intensive care.”

In the morgue, which is located on the territory of the children's clinical hospital, the grief-stricken parents were charged a thousand rubles for “storing the corpse.” Olya’s death certificate states that she died of “unspecified pneumonia.” A more accurate diagnosis will be made only in two weeks.

“I know why my kitten died,” Natasha suddenly tells me.

From what? - I ask.

Because we didn’t pay the doctors money.

Have you been hinted at a bribe? - I'm trying to clarify the situation.

Natasha is silent for a long time, as if pondering whether to tell me something or not, then, apparently not daring, she answers evasively:

Everyone knows that we treat people only for money.

“When I said goodbye to my baby,” Natasha tells me, “I promised her that I would go to court, to the editorial office, to punish those who were responsible for her death. And the very next day they came to me from social security and told me not to go to the correspondents, they say they’ll get so much money from you, you’ll be too tired to give them back. How much will I owe you for writing about our history?

I got a lump in my throat...

Who will be responsible for this?

“You know, on the eve of the wake I dreamed about my girl. She was smiling, only her face was skinned. Maybe there is life up there in the sky? Maybe she feels good there? Doesn’t it hurt?” Natasha asks herself, apparently not for the first time.

I don't know how to answer her to this. And also, I don’t know who will be responsible for the death of little Olya. And will anyone be held accountable for this?

73online.ru managed to get through to Alexey Smolin, the head of the hospital where Olenka Tolyagina died.

Tell me, why did the child die?

You'd better talk to our superiors about this matter.

But did you watch it?

The girl was diagnosed with infectious pneumonia, atypical course. I can’t say more precisely now; in two weeks the final results of the autopsy will be available. This matter is currently being handled by Rospotrebnadzor.

But for you, what happened was a shock?

Of course it's a shock. This is nonsense for all of us. We didn't have that.

At one of the last staff meetings in the city administration, Governor Morozov expressed concern about the growing number of abortions in the region: “Last year,” he noted. “We had 15,000 babies born, but 19,000 could have been born.” When will he stop lying to us and to himself? Who needs these 5,000 unborn souls if they so cynically and easily “kill” already born, desired and beloved children? And why these hypocritical calls to give birth to patriots if their small homeland does not love them to such an extent?

“She sees right through everything...”

Intravision

Galina was brought to the Kaliningrad regional hospital with severe brain damage, ruptured kidneys, lungs, spleen and liver, and many fractures. The heart stopped, the pressure was at zero. “Having flown through black space, I found myself in a shining, light-filled space,” Galina Semyonovna tells me twenty years later. “In front of me stood a huge man in dazzling white clothes. I couldn’t see his face because of the light beam directed at me. “Why did you come here?” - he asked sternly. “I’m very tired, let me rest a little.” - “Rest and come back - you still have a lot to do.” Having regained consciousness after two weeks, during which she balanced between life and death, the patient told the head of the intensive care department, Evgeniy Zatovka, how the operations were carried out, which of the doctors stood where and what they did, what equipment they brought, from which cabinets they took what. After another operation on a shattered arm, Galina, during her morning medical rounds, asked the orthopedic doctor: “How is your stomach?” From amazement, he did not know what to answer - indeed, the doctor was tormented by abdominal pain. Now Galina Semyonovna lives in harmony with herself, believes in God and is not at all afraid of death.

"Flying like a cloud"

Yuri Burkov, a reserve major, does not like to remember the past. His story was told by his wife Lyudmila: “Yura fell from a great height, broke his spine and received a traumatic brain injury, and lost consciousness. After cardiac arrest, he lay in a coma for a long time. I was under terrible stress. During one of my hospital visits I lost my keys. And the husband, having finally regained consciousness, first of all asked: “Did you find the keys?” I shook my head in fear. “They are under the stairs,” he said. Only many years later did he confess to me: while he was in a coma, he saw my every step and heard every word - no matter how far I was from him. He flew in the form of a cloud, including to where his deceased parents and brother live. The mother tried to persuade her son to return, and the brother explained that they were all alive, only they no longer had bodies. Years later, sitting at the bedside of his seriously ill son, he reassured his wife: “Lyudochka, don’t cry, I know for sure that he won’t leave now. He will be with us for another year." And a year later, at the wake of his deceased son, he admonished his wife: “He did not die, but only moved to another world before you and me. Trust me, I’ve been there.”

Savely KASHNITSKY, Kaliningrad - Moscow.

Childbirth under the ceiling

“While the doctors were trying to pump me out, I observed an interesting thing: a bright white light (there is nothing like that on Earth!) and a long corridor. And so I seem to be waiting to enter this corridor. But then the doctors resuscitated me. During this time I felt that it was very cool THERE. I didn’t even want to leave!” These are the memories of 19-year-old Anna R., who survived clinical death. Such stories can be found in abundance on Internet forums where the topic of “life after death” is discussed.

Light in the tunnel

There is a light at the end of the tunnel, pictures of life flashing before your eyes, a feeling of love and peace, meetings with deceased relatives and some luminous creature - patients who returned from the other world talk about this. True, not all, but only 10-15% of them. The rest did not see or remember anything at all. The dying brain does not have enough oxygen, which is why it is “glitchy,” say skeptics. Disagreements among scientists have reached the point that the start of a new experiment was recently announced. For three years, American and British doctors will study the testimony of patients whose hearts stopped or their brains turned off. Among other things, the researchers are going to put various pictures on the shelves in the intensive care wards. You can see them only by soaring right up to the ceiling. If patients who have experienced clinical death retell their contents, it means that consciousness is really capable of leaving the body. One of the first who tried to explain the phenomenon of near-death experiences was academician Vladimir Negovsky. He founded the world's first Institute of General Reanimatology. Negovsky believed (and the scientific view has not changed since then) that the “light at the end of the tunnel” was explained by the so-called tube vision. The cortex of the occipital lobes of the brain dies off gradually, the field of vision narrows to a narrow strip, creating the impression of a tunnel. In a similar way, doctors explain the vision of pictures of a past life flashing before the gaze of a dying person. Brain structures fade and then recover unevenly. Therefore, a person has time to remember the most vivid events deposited in his memory. And the illusion of leaving the body, according to doctors, is the result of a failure of nerve signals. However, skeptics reach a dead end when it comes to answering trickier questions. Why do people who are blind from birth, at the moment of clinical death, see and then describe in detail what is happening in the operating room around them? And there is such evidence.

Leaving the body is a defensive reaction

It is curious, but many scientists do not see anything mystical in the fact that consciousness can leave the body. The only question is what conclusion to draw from this. Leading researcher at the Institute of the Human Brain of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Dmitry Spivak, who is a member of the International Association for the Study of Near-Death Experiences, assures that clinical death is only one of the options for an altered state of consciousness. “There are a lot of them: these are dreams, and drug experience, and a stressful situation, and the consequence of illness,” he says. “According to statistics, up to 30% of people at least once in their lives have felt leaving the body and observed themselves from the outside.” Dmitry Spivak himself examined the mental state of women in labor and found that about 9% of women experience “leaving the body” during childbirth! Here is the testimony of 33-year-old S.: “During childbirth, I had a lot of blood loss. Suddenly I began to see myself from under the ceiling. The pain has disappeared. And about a minute later she also unexpectedly returned to her place in the room and again began to experience severe pain.” It turns out that “leaving the body” is a normal phenomenon during childbirth. Some kind of mechanism embedded in the psyche, a program that works in extreme situations. Undoubtedly, childbirth is an extreme situation. But what could be more extreme than death itself?! It is possible that “flying in a tunnel” is also a protective program that is activated at a fatal moment for a person. But what will happen to his consciousness (soul) next? “I asked one dying woman: if there really is something THERE, try to give me a sign,” recalls Doctor of Medical Sciences Andrei Gnezdilov, who works at the St. Petersburg hospice. - And on the 40th day after death, I saw her in a dream. The woman said: “This is not death.” Many years of working in a hospice have convinced me and my colleagues: death is not the end, not the destruction of everything. The soul continues to live." Dmitry PISARENKO

Cup and polka dot dress

This story was told by Andrey Gnezdilov, Doctor of Medical Sciences: “During the operation, the patient’s heart stopped. The doctors were able to start it, and when the woman was transferred to intensive care, I visited her. She complained that she was not operated on by the same surgeon who promised. But she could not see the doctor, being in an unconscious state all the time. The patient said that during the operation some force pushed her out of her body. She calmly looked at the doctors, but then she was overcome by horror: what if I die before I can say goodbye to my mother and daughter? And her consciousness instantly moved home. She saw that the mother was sitting, knitting, and her daughter was playing with a doll. Then a neighbor came in and brought a polka dot dress for her daughter. The girl rushed towards her, but touched the cup - it fell and broke. The neighbor said: “Well, that’s good. Apparently, Yulia will be discharged soon.” And then the patient again found herself at the operating table and heard: “Everything is fine, she is saved.” Consciousness returned to the body. I went to visit this woman’s relatives. And it turned out that during the operation... a neighbor came in with a polka dot dress for a girl and the cup was broken.” This is not the only mysterious case in the practice of Gnezdilov and other workers of the St. Petersburg hospice. They are not surprised when a doctor dreams of his patient and thanks him for his care and touching attitude. And in the morning, upon arriving at work, the doctor finds out that the patient died during the night...

Church opinion

Priest Vladimir Vigilyansky, head of the press service of the Moscow Patriarchate: - Orthodox people believe in the afterlife and immortality. There is much confirmation and evidence of this in the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. We consider the very concept of death only in connection with the coming resurrection, and this mystery ceases to be such if we live with Christ and for Christ’s sake. “Whoever lives and believes in Me will never die,” says the Lord (John 11:26). According to legend, in the first days the soul of the deceased walks through those places in which it worked the truth, and on the third day it ascends to heaven to the throne of God, where until the ninth day it is shown the abodes of saints and the beauty of paradise. On the ninth day, the soul again comes to God, and it is sent to hell, where wicked sinners reside and where the soul undergoes thirty days of ordeal (tests). On the fortieth day, the soul again comes to the Throne of God, where it appears naked before the judgment of its own conscience: has it passed these tests or not? And even in the case when some trials convict the soul of its sins, we hope for the mercy of God, in whom all deeds of sacrificial love and compassion will not go in vain.