A woman holds a skull during a “Dia de los natitas” (Day of the Skull) ceremony at the Cementerio General of La Paz. (Photo by David Mercado/Reuters)

A light installation is seen on the facade on the banks of the Saone river to pay tribute to the victims of the Paris attacks in Lyon, France, December 8, 2015. (Photo by Robert Pratta/Reuters)

Made Mohon, the operation manager of Sangeh Monkey Forest, feeds macaques with donated peanuts during a feeding time at the popular tourist attraction site in Sangeh, Bali Island, Indonesia, Wednesday, September 1, 2021. (Photo by Firdia Lisnawati/AP Photo)

This handout photograph taken and released by the Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation on April 17, 2024, shows Mount Ruang spewing hot lava and smoke as seen from Sitaro, North Sulawesi. A volcano erupted several times in Indonesia's outermost region overnight on April 17, forcing hundreds of people to be evacuated after it spewed lava and a column of smoke more than a mile into the sky. (Photo by Handout/Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation via AFP Photo)

Yeshiva School students briefly dance on Grant Street after the menorah lighting outside of the City-County Building for the fifth night of Hanukkah, Thursday, December 26, 2019, in downtown Pittsburgh. (Photo by Alexandra Wimley/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette via AP Photo)

Photo: Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870 – 1924) lying in state in the Kremlin. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images). 1924

Important! For the same article in Russian language click here.

Something quite intriguing is happening within Russian-speaking internet during the last few – should you type a fully academic inquiry (at least, according to Russian academic requirements) in national search engines for "Lenin's mausoleum" – the first thing you get (even in top 10 searches) is website pages talking about black magic and occult. Website authors view this construction differently, but unconditionally agree on one thing: the mausoleum of the "leader of the world proletariat” – the essence of a magical artifact, a sort of “energy vampire”. It was built with a certain purpose: to drain the energy out of miserable Soviet citizens on one hand; and to poison the anthroposphere of one-sixth part of the earth with its vibes (the exact territory that was occupied by the former Soviet Union), depriving the Russian people of will to resist on the other hand. Complete nonsense? No doubt. Nevertheless, an intriguing one. Well, probably because some oddities do exist in mausoleum's history. These oddities are the thing we are going to discuss this time. First, let me refresh you memory on the subject.

Matthew Rolston: Talking Heads presents monumental color portraits of dummies chosen from a collection of nearly seven hundred ventriloquists dolls (dating from 1820 –1980) housed at the Vent Haven Museum in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky.

The old church of Geamana village is seen partially submerged by polluted water tainted with cyanide and other chemicals near Rosia Montana, central Romania, March 24, 2014. (Photo by Bogdan Cristel/Reuters)