City of Dead: Feel of Eternal Death

Hello folks, you might have heard of some weird, scary and mysterious places. Today's blog is dedicated to one such place. So let's get started.

Remember in my last blog what I said about the mountains? That every mountain has its own story of existence. Mountains carry creepy and scary stories along with their existence. Mountain ranges, remote location and one hell of a creepy history, what more a mystery-seeker would want?

City of Dead

Dargavs, a village in Russia, is one of the creepiest and mysterious places in Russia. The village is also known as the City of Dead. There is a necropolis that dates back to the medieval ages, just outside the village of Dargavs in Prigordony District. Dargavs is surrounded by five mountain ridges of the Caucasus mountains. Such geography makes it a remote and hard-to-explore destination. The valley, where Dargavs is located, is 17 km long.

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A necropolis is a huge burial place or cemetery. The word itself is derived from ancient Greek words, nekro, and polis which means dead and city respectively. No wonder why the word Necropolis is linked with the City of Dead.

Interesting Facts

Dargavs contains a total of 99 different crypts with single windows. The oldest crypts date back to the 14th century. The back of the complex is having a watch-tower. The top of the tower has been destroyed. It is said to believe that the tower was used to watch over the resting souls. A crypt is nothing but an underground room beneath the church, mostly used as a burial place.

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This necropolis holds the remains of more than 10,000 people, lying with their belongings and clothes. The tombs are shaped like huts with curved rooves going inward and pointed peaks at the top of them. Some of the tombs are two to four storeys high. The taller the tomb, the greater the number of people buried in there.

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Many tombs are having a boat-like wooden structure present in there, that resides the remains of people, which again raises questions as there is no navigable river nearby. It was believed that in order to get to Heaven, one (departed soul) must cross a river. 

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Historians believe that each crypt has a well out the front that elaborates an important role while ensuring if a loved one had made it to the next world. All of the crypts in Dargavs are almost identical in terms of their architecture. There were rumors floating around about people that tried to get into the city of Dead never returning back alive.

History & Local Beliefs

Locals also believe in legends like, in the 18th century, a plague swept through Ossetia. Ossetians decided to built houses for sick and affected people. They were prohibited from leaving the houses and even from direct contact with others. Affected people had to wait for themselves to die so that the plague couldn't spread anymore, which is a bad and terrible way to go.

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Since the 16th century, this remote southern Russian area has been used as a burial ground. Its origins are still unclear. Another theory is that when the territory was short on food during the 13th Century Mongol-Tatar invasion, locals living in this 17 km valley of the Caucasus mountains began to create similarly structured above-ground crypts to conserve space.

Another theory suggests that the City of the Dead was created following the Indo-Iranian tradition established by the migrating Sarmatians in southern parts of Russia and buried their dead above ground to respect the land.

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Other Cities of Dead

Dargavs is not the only City of Dead!!! Such necropolises do exist across the world. They were built for different reasons. For example, the Valley of the Kings in Egypt is said to be believed where the Gods were entombed. In Rome also, there are some medieval necropolises present. During the Middle ages, necropolises replaced simple and small cemeteries.

As Richard Pryor once said, "I know that if I wasn't scared, something's wrong because the thrill is what's scary", people do love to visit and travel to such creepy and scary places. It's like those horror movie scenes where a person knows that something's wrong but still dares to check upon silly things.

Just like all other such places, Dargavs attracts tourists from all over the world. But as the place is remote, it is very hard to accommodate there, which is why at any given time, there would be no people rush in Dargavs. Some people also believe that it's the local superstition that keeps tourists at bay.

That's it for now. Hope you like this :D