Suryaninsky forest

For several centuries, in the area of the villages of Suryanovo and Rudnevo, the ghost of the French tutor Theophile Henri Vicomte de Blangy has been wandering around the Oryol Polesie. Documentary information about his life has not been preserved. But a legend about him has come down to our days.

It is believed that nowadays in the Suryaninsky forest (Bolkhovsky district), you can meet a ghost carrying a severed head in his hands.

It is believed that the foreigner killed in these parts, the Frenchman Theophile de Blangy, is supposed to frighten random travelers, as well as murderers and unclean residents of the area. Fleeing from the revolution in his native country, the viscount got a job as a tutor to the Oryol landowner Alexei Yurasovsky, who lived near Bolkhov. After a few years of teaching, the foreigner fell in love with the daughter of one of his master's serfs.But if the girl herself was not against going down the aisle, then her father refused to marry. Seeing the suffering of the tutor of his children, the master gave him both the bride and her relatives, after which the girl's parents had no way out. The owner said down the aisle, so down the aisle. But the father of the beauty decided to get rid of the unloved son-in-law anyway. One day, when he was returning late through the forest, the Frenchman was attacked by people bribed by his father-in-law. The wife's father himself was also present at the scene of the massacre and even personally beheaded his son-in-law. 

Only after a while the ghost of the deceased began to appear first to the murderer, and then to other residents of the nearest villages. He did not disappear even after the Frenchman's father-in-law committed suicide, and the locals opened the foreigner's grave and drove an aspen stake into de Blangie's body.

Rare ghost stories appear in our days. According to one version, he appears to travelers on the road from Bolkhov to Karachev. On the other hand, people begin to see him, as a rule, shortly before his death, often a decapitated Frenchman comes to personally invite the interlocutor to the next world.