Police in Russia broke up a strange ritual in a forest where two young women were buried alive in shallow graves. Officers found the women in the Leningrad region, wrapped in cloth and lying in holes dug into the ground, a ceremony supposed to help people experience a spiritual rebirth.
According to The Sun, the two women had their heads covered in wrappings that made them look like mummies. They were pulled out of graves that were about 20 inches deep. Both women made it through alive, but one of them could barely stand up when she came out of the ground. When police arrived, they saw 13 more people sitting around a fire. Some of them had already dug holes for themselves and were waiting to be buried next.
Police arrested a man who called himself a shaman named Timur and a woman named Yekaterina Korolev, who helped him run the group. Before the police took them away, they made the shaman dig out the two women he had wrapped and buried in 20-inch graves. Officers found 13 more followers waiting for their turn to go through the same thing.
Ssomething out of a horror movie
Koroleva ran the ceremony and tried to explain what they were doing. She said people didn’t pay almost $80 to be buried, even though reports suggested they did. She also claimed the women could breathe the whole time because their heads weren’t covered all the way.
“The essence of the ritual is essentially a kind of reset,” she said. “It’s a psychological trance ceremony where a person undergoes a complete reboot, a full cleansing. If someone has gone through certain life events, or wants to be completely reborn, to fully change their life, they opt for this extreme form of burial.”
People who joined the ritual believed it would help them start over in life or meet Hel, who is the Norse goddess of death. They got wrapped up in old rags before being put in the ground. The group attracted people who wanted to make big changes in their lives through this dangerous practice.
Police are now figuring out what charges to file against Timur and Koroleva. A Russian news site called Novye Izvestia said they could go to prison for up to seven years. Shamans usually claim they can talk to spirits and heal people through special ceremonies, but what these two were doing put people in real danger.
Right now, investigators are trying to figure out if the people buried actually wanted to do this or if they were talked into it, similar to other cases where cult leaders manipulated their followers.
Shamanism does have a real cultural history in some parts of Russia, but police have to step in when these practices could actually hurt or kill someone. Police investigations into unusual circumstances often show that things are more messed up than they first appear.
