Bring Their Bodies Home?
The Ghosts of the Spanish Blue Division
by Mike Walsh

Throughout Russia where the fiercest battles of World War 2 took place grave robbers known as ‘black archaeologists’ search for military artefacts. These are then sold throughout Europe, which seems to have an inexhaustible appetite for such macabre souvenirs.

Other than the dangers of unexploded devices and the horror of exhuming human remains are the paranormal events often experienced by researchers. In 1997 six grave robbers neared the war ravaged ruins of Makaryevsky monastery in the Leningradsky region. Noticing what appeared to be a bonfire they approached and were shocked to discover the conflagration was hanging in the air. On their approach it died and disappeared.

Their sleep that night was broken by human screams coming from the direction of the nearby forest. When dawn broke one of their party entered the woods where he became disoriented. He returned hours later in filthy clothes and with what the others described as ‘an insane look on his face.’ He never revealed any detail of his experience.

THE SPANISH CAULDRON

One of the more notorious of the war related abnormal event zones is to be found in the valley of Myasnoy Bor 30km from Novgorod. Here, during the 1942 Lyuban Offensive the Soviet 2nd Attack Army confronted divisions of the Wehrmacht, the Waffen SS which included volunteers of the Spanish Blue Division.

Galina Pavlova from Engels heads a search group and tells of an incident she shared with others in 1997: “The forests of Myasnoy Bor are scary and mystical. As soon as you find yourself on your own sounds begin to come from the forest. You can clearly hear yells as if battle still rages.”

War graves explorer, Alexei, used to excavate in the woods near Bryansk where the Red Army was dug in between 1942 and 1943. He says: “We excavated the bodies of six Russian and 11 German soldiers, four of which were Wehrmacht soldiers, in a swamp trench shelter.

IT WAS UNMISTAKABLE

“We cut the trench logs and discovered decomposed German boots with bones sticking out. Little by little we dug out remnants of four people. It was getting dark. We left the skeletons at the trench and camped out on the meadow 200 metres away”.

He told of how later they were woken from their sleep by one of the group who said something weird was going on. “We got up and began to listen very carefully. It was unmistakable. We could hear German speech; songs, laughing, and the clatter of tank tracks. It was very scary.”
He described returning in the morning light to the trench they had been working on. It was much as they had left it but walking a little further they saw tank ditches and most amazingly, fresh tank tracks.

CAN SPAIN BE FORGIVING?

Another haunted zone is Novokhopersk in the eastern section of Voronezh. Members of an exhibition led by acclaimed battle fields’ archaeologist Genrikh Silanov took photographs of uniformed troops near tents.

Researchers were bemused by a figure that appeared to be wearing Czech uniform. Later they discovered that a Czech unit had integrated with the Red Army. Silanov believes the pictures are ‘chronal mirages’ created by what he calls memory fields connected to dramatic events of the past.