Kossovsky Castle

The Palace of the Counts of Puslovsky in Kossovo (also known as Kossovsky Castle) is one of the ”youngest" castles in Belarus. But, at the same time, there are a huge number of legends about it and its modern “inhabitants”.

At least two ghosts “live” in the castle itself. The first is the Black Lady, the ghost of Countess Jadwiga Puslowska. According to one version, the Countess loved sledding so much that she did it even in summer – for this the yard and garden were covered with salt. The countess was cursed by grooms who were tired of treating horses that had salt in their eyes and lungs, and gardeners who were pretty tired of saving the garden after salt procedures. As a result, the curse worked. According to another version, the countess was simply beside herself when one of her descendants, Leonid Puslovsky, sold the palace for debts and therefore, after her death, she began to appear as a ghost.

The second ghost is a young maid who rejected the courtship of the count (according to another version - one of his guests). As a result, she was kicked out into the corridor. And a lion was walking through the corridors of the palace: he was released there at night to guard against thieves. No one saw this maid alive anymore – but she began to appear in the form of a ghost…

But that's not all – the legend of the Wild Hunt of King Stakha, on the basis of which the famous novel of the same name by Vladimir Korotkevich and the film based on it also came from here. According to her, at the beginning of the XVI century, the old Belarusian gentry rebelled against the authorities, and Stakh was one of the military leaders. The peasants called him the king. He died as a result of the betrayal of one of the local magnates of Roman – he drugged Stakh and his retinue while hunting with a sleeping potion, and then stabbed him. In the local swamps on foggy nights and today you can see the ghostly hunt of King Stach, who is looking for the descendants of the traitor and his henchmen.

The chapel near the Puslovsky Palace, at the entrance to Kossovo, deserves a special mention. It was built in 1859 from ancient tombstones. And around the chapel, the graves of the participants of the Kastus Kalinovsky uprising have been preserved. If you listen closely, you can hear incomprehensible whispers in Polish and Lithuanian in the chapel. And at night, next to the chapel, you can see a flickering light, as if several candles were lit in the cemetery. But it's not worth checking: according to legend, those who come to the chapel at night may not live to see the morning.