The Villarrica Volcano is seen at night in Chile, April 16, 2016. Villarrica is one of Chile's most active volcanoes. Picture taken with long exposure. (Photo by Cristobal Saavedra/Reuters)

“Left behind” children Luo Hongni, 11 (L) and brother Luo Gan,10, carry flowers to be used as feed while doing chores in the fields on December 18, 2016 in Anshun, China. Like millions of Chinese children, the four Luo siblings are being raised by their grandparents in rural China as their parents left to find work in urban areas. (Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

Stefan Sigmund, 29, from the Transylvanian city of Cluj, attempt to smoke 800 cigarettes through a self designed device in less than five minutes, in central Bucharest Tuesday, January 30, 1996, trying to enter the Guinness Book of Records. It is the last of his several attempts entering the record book which included eating 29 hard boiled eggs in four minutes and leaping into a lake from a height of 41 meters (135 feet) even if the Guinness Book of Records no longer rewards self damaging attempts. (Photo by AP Photo/Stringer)

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.

Palestinian barber Ramadan Odwan styles and straightens the hair of a customer with fire at his salon in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip February 2, 2017. In Ramadan Odwan's barbershop in Gaza, hair isn't just blow-dried, it's blowtorch-dried. “People have gone crazy about it, many people are curious to go through the experience and they are not afraid”, he told Reuters. “People here love adventures”. (Photo by Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters)

Second Place Winner: “Thunderstorm at False Kiva”. I hiked out to these ruins at night hoping to photograph them with the Milky Way, but instead a thunderstorm rolled through, creating this dramatic image. – Max Seigal. National Geographic Traveler Director of Photography Dan Westergren, one of this year's judges, shares his thoughts on the second place winner: “This photo combines two different scenes into one: the small kiva in a cliff dwelling and the grand vista of Canyonlands National Park across the valley. I really like the two different color palettes – warm inside and purple outside. This two-for-one scene was caused by the lightning storm outside the dwelling, which lit up the landscape like it was a huge electronic flash. Looking at this picture I can imagine what a wonderful sight it must have been for the ancient people who lived here. It doesn't seem too amazing now in our modern world, but might have been mind-blowing for the prehistoric residents”. Location: Utah. (Photo and caption by Max Seigal/National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest)

In this handout image provided by Ogilvy, a burger made from cultured beef, which has been developed by Professor Mark Post of Maastricht University in the Netherlands (pictured) is shown to the media during a press conference on August 5, 2013 in London, England. The in-vitro burger, cultured from cattle stem cells, the first example of what its creator says could provide an answer to global food shortages and help combat climate change, was fried in a pan and tasted by two volunteers. The burger is the result of years of research by Dutch scientist Mark Post, a vascular biologist at the University of Maastricht, who is working to show how meat grown in petri dishes might one day be a true alternative to meat from livestock.The meat in the burger has been made by knitting together around 20,000 strands of protein that has been cultured from cattle stem cells in Post's lab. (Photo by David Parry)

Teenage girls at a drinking fountain in Hyde Park in Central London on August 9, 2022 after weeks with no significant rain and unprecedented high temperatures. Many parts of southern England and Wales are facing drought conditions and preparing for emergency water measures. (Photo by Sarah Lee/The Guardian)