The Northern Crown

Scared To Death

This episode of Scared to Death explores chilling paranormal mysteries centered in Russia, beginning with the cursed, unfinished Northern Cr

Key takeaways

The Northern Crown hotel in St. Petersburg remained unfinished for decades due to political instability and reported fatal accidents.
A demolition worker named McHale witnessed an eight-foot-tall shadow figure that moved with animalistic, non-human movements.

Main topics

The Northern Crown Hotel curse
Alyoshenka humanoid mystery

Notable quotes

We are protected, though we may be frightened. Our life you may not steal, though we may be scared to death.

Conclusion

A haunting exploration of how historical tragedy and unexplained pheno

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:01) Whether thou art a ghost that hath come from the Speaker 2 (0:04) earth, Speaker 1 (0:04) or a phantom of night that hath no hollow, or one that lieth dead in the desert, or a ghost unburied, or a demon, or a ghoul, whatever thou be until thou art removed, thou shalt find here no water to drink. Thou shalt not stretch forth thy hand to our own. Into our house enter thou not. Through our fence break through thou not. We are protected, though we may be frightened. Our life you may not steal, though we may be scared Speaker 2 (0:37) to death. Speaker 1 (0:40) Welcome to Scared to Death, Creeps, Peepers, Roberts, and Annabelles. I'm Dan. Hello, Dan. I'm Lulu Marie. Hello, Lulu Marie. Hello. You have a charity announcement, and then I have a little podcast appearance that we're doing coming up I'll talk about. Okie dokie. Okie dokie. Okie dokie. Speaker 2 (0:59) This month, to support our neighbors in Spokane, we are donating to Big Table Spokane. When we were thinking about everyone who was affected by the fires, the Spokane complex fires, it was really hard for us to know the best path forward. Obviously, losing everything is hard for anyone. There's absolutely no doubt about that. But losing everything when you're part of the service industry, where you have to force that smile in order to get back to work, to make money again, feels pretty impossible. And it's also worth noting that 69 % of all hospitality workers don't make enough to make ends meet. So when you add a tragedy on top of that, the impact to their lives multiplies in ways that are really hard to quantify. So that's where we're donating this month. And it may sound familiar. We've donated there before. And the reason that we chose them also is... when these tragedies happen, a lot of fucking scams pop up and nothing irritates me more than people taking advantage of those people who really need help. So this was a sure way to make sure the money went where we knew it could be used and wouldn't be a scam. So we're not exactly sure how much we'll be donating because we record in advance, as you guys know. And also all of the tips from the bartenders at summer camp will be added to this. So the amount is pending and we will report back in. And then I would just also. like to say, even though this already happened by the time you guys hear this, but not yet as we're recording, a big shout out to our friend and restaurant owner, TJ Taylor, who owns 106 here in Coeur d'Alene. Her and I have been coordinating and it will have already happened, but we're working on a clothing drive to specifically help Big Table to help these specific families who work in the hospitality industry. And yeah, it's just been a really humbling experience to have my hands more in. a tragedy. I signed up with the Red Cross. I've been working with TJ and it's, yeah, it's just really, really, really different than, you know, to kind of feel connected to it in a different way. And if you're interested in learning more about Big Table, they do exist outside of Spokane as well. You can visit bigtable.org. Ah, Speaker 1 (3:12) good stuff. And right before we jump into stories, Lindsay and I were lucky enough to get to voice a few characters for David Cummings and his The No Sleep podcast. It's such a good show. We are definitely fans. And again, recording this in advance, I know it always makes dates tricky, but we should be on the September 20th episode. That's what David said last time we talked. We voiced characters for an old carny couple, Hank and his wife, for a story with a working title, at least, of Clown Heads. by mstar so check it out uh even if it doesn't happen to show up on that episode which i think it will uh but even if it doesn't they just do an amazing job consistently on no sleep so very fun to collaborate with them and Speaker 2 (3:52) it's just so funny to collaborate like we were joking with him how we like might possibly be related with the cummings the dan the david yeah and david i think is also going to be on the crime wave at sea cruise yeah what a Speaker 1 (4:05) february yeah in Speaker 2 (4:06) february of 27 so if that's if you're planning your vacations for 27, you can go to Crime Wave at Sea and see what cabins are still available. Speaker 1 (4:15) Absolutely. And now, what paranormal listener claims have you chosen to share this week from those sent in to mystory at scaredtodeathpodcast.com? Speaker 2 (4:23) Yes, I have two stories this week. My first one takes us to Ohio, which always makes me happy. We are headed to Cincinnati Music Hall, and we are going to hear a tale about somebody who works there and some lore and then their own personal encounter. Speaker 1 (4:38) Okay. Speaker 2 (4:39) And then my second story is hard to explain until you get into it. So I'm just going to say it's an accepted offering. Speaker 1 (4:48) Accepted offering. Okay, I'll try and keep that in mind. Speaker 2 (4:50) Okay. Speaker 1 (4:50) And both of my two stories, and I have a larger amount of total story today than the past few weeks, come from Russia. We haven't actually been there that much on this show. For the first, we're going to visit the Northern Crown, an extravagant Russian hotel that never welcomed a single guest. accumulated decades of deaths, rumors, and claims of a towering shadow figure lurking inside, though. And one worker who was working on the demolition crew for this hotel says he discovered just how dangerous that presence was shortly before the building was finally demolished. And then for my next story, it is such a weird one. It's the story of Alyoshenko. When an elderly Russian woman claimed she had brought home a tiny, bizarre humanoid she found crying in the woods. Nobody believed her until other witnesses claimed they saw it too. Police recovered its mummified body and a very bizarre mystery began to unfold. So what are this week's spoopy socks before I get started? That Speaker 2 (5:49) second tale sounds wild. It Speaker 1 (5:51) is fascinating. Speaker 2 (5:52) I bet. Very Speaker 1 (5:54) entertaining. Speaker 2 (5:54) Okay. Okay. Well, big thanks to fan Sarah who sent these I'm a fucking gem socks. Now you might be thinking like, Lindsay, you've worn those socks before and you would be right, except these are compression socks. So I can be wearing special socks with crystals on them at all times because actually I'm a huge fan of compression socks. So you Speaker 1 (6:16) really are. I Speaker 2 (6:17) really am. So thank you, Sarah. Speaker 1 (6:19) Perfect. Thank you, Sarah. Okay, here we go. On the banks of the Karpova River in St. Petersburg, for many years, there once stood a grand, opulent hotel, one of the finest in all of Russia. Or should have been, but no one would ever spend a single night there. Nearly 250 rooms, multiple restaurants, bars and cafes, a big swimming pool, and an enormous central atrium beneath a beautiful glass dome. Everything you would expect to find in an extravagant luxury hotel, except for guests. The Northern Crown Hotel was under construction off and on for more than 30 years, and during that time it survived a collapse of the Soviet Union and burned through multiple contractors and investors and enormous sums of money. It was reportedly around 90 % complete at one point and yet still never opened. However, people would stay there in the sense that they died inside its walls. A prominent Russian Orthodox church leader collapsed during a big lavish banquet, died inside shortly before the hotel was supposed to open, Russian media would later report that dozens of accidents occurred on the property during its long construction, with many of them being fatal. Owners changed, deadlines came and went, attempts to finish the hotel repeatedly failed, and eventually some people in St. Petersburg began to say that the Northern Crown wasn't merely unlucky, but rather it was cursed. According to a handful of stories that circulated among security guards, contractors, urban explorers, and others who claimed to have spent time inside the abandoned hotel, The Northern Crown was not empty. Something lived there. Something responsible for the curse, for the deaths. Something tall and dark as midnight. Something that seemed to bring a deep and terrible cold with it. And when workers finally arrived to tear the Northern Crown down, whatever had been living inside apparently wasn't ready to leave. Time now for the tale of the Northern Crown. Speaker 1 (8:19) St. Petersburg, Russia. Construction on what would eventually become the Northern Crown Hotel began back in 1988, when St. Petersburg was still called Leningrad and the Soviet Union still existed. The hotel was originally envisioned as a prestigious government-backed tourism project called the Petrogradskaya Hotel. Unlike what many would expect when they hear about some Soviet-era building, many including myself, this was not supposed to be another practical, soulless, utilitarian drab concrete block where weary travelers would grab a few hours of miserable sleep behind thin curtains atop thin mattresses and cheap, lumpy pillows. This place was supposed to have been fabulous, and not just by Soviet standards, by any standards. The original building plans called for nearly 250 rooms, underground parking, conference facilities, restaurants, bars, cafes, a swimming pool, and a massive enclosed atrium. One early plan even called for a fountain on the roof. But problems plagued this project almost immediately. The original architect, Mark Reinberg, reportedly became so frustrated with government interference that he eventually walked away and disavowed the project, claiming what was being built no longer resembled his original design and another lesser-known architect took over. Construction resumed, but then the Soviet Union collapsed and suddenly the government organization responsible for the hotel no longer existed. And when payments thus stopped, the project's Yugoslavian contractor unsurprisingly stopped construction. And now an enormous unfinished luxury hotel was just left sitting vacant beside the Karpovka River. Eventually, some private investors stepped in, the hotel was renamed the Northern Crown, and work resumed. But then work stopped again, when the money once more ran out. But then more new investors stepped in, and the work resumed. But then it stopped again. Then it started again. By the middle of the 1990s, after years of delays, it looked like this cursed project might finally be completed. By some accounts, Northern Crown was roughly 90 % done by 1995. So close. Almost there. After seven years of construction, after world power-shifting political upheaval, after the very collapse of the country that had commissioned it, after changing architects, contractors, and investors, most of the hotel's rooms were ready. The Northern Crown was finally about to become a hotel. But then came November 2, 1995. That evening, Bank St. Petersburg, a major new local financial institution, held a celebration inside the nearly completed Northern Crown to commemorate the bank's fifth anniversary. Among the attendees was Metropolitan John Snichev, Metropolitan of St. Petersburg, and Laduka, one of the city's highest-ranking Russian Orthodox clerics. Also attending was St. Petersburg Mayor, Anatoly Sobchak and his wife, Lyudmila Narusova. According to one account of that evening, Sobchak and Narusova arrived nearly an hour late. Narusova then approached Metropolitan John to apologize and ask for his blessing. The Metropolitan gave it to her, then immediately collapsed and died. Right there inside the Northern Crown during the first big event ever held there. What could have been a soft opening, perhaps. John suffered a fatal heart attack at the age of 68. Of course, there was nothing inherently supernatural about a man in his late 60s suffering a heart attack, but considering everything else that had already gone wrong with the Northern Crown, something felt ominous about this to many. And curiously, shortly after his death, construction stopped yet again. Soon, though, more investors would step in and bring still more money, more plans would be announced, more completion dates would be proposed, but somehow nothing ever quite worked out and the hotel that was perpetually almost finished remained unfinished. And now, the longer it sat empty, the more disturbing stories began to accumulate around it. Russian media would eventually report that more than 40 accidents had occurred at the property during the 1990s alone, and 15 of them were supposedly fatal. And now the Northern Crown became known by some locals as Nyaka-Ro-She-Yemesto-Miesta, I think. A cursed place, a bad, haunted place. Shortly after the building was truly abandoned, Urban explorers, teenagers who were bored, photographers, thrill-seekers, curious people fascinated by abandoned buildings and or the paranormal routinely trespassed onto the grounds. What they found was an incredible and eerie monument to something that had almost existed. Hallway after hallway lined with luxurious and doomed-to-be-eternally-empty rooms, abandoned restaurants and kitchens, a swimming pool, that had been completed but never filled with water, a pool that had never once welcomed a single swimmer, a huge modern lobby beneath a rotunda and dome and all of it quickly falling into urban decay and ruin. Glass was soon broken, wiring soon exposed or stripped and stolen, graffiti covered the walls, and ice covered the floors. And somewhere along the way, stories began circulating about a particular shadow. One former security guard supposedly saw the tall, very tall, silhouette of what he assumed was a thin man standing beneath the rotunda late one night. When he called out to it, or him, so he thought, it quickly disappeared behind one of the columns. And when he walked over to investigate, no one was there. Years later, a group of trespassers supposedly claimed that a dark tall figure followed them through several floors of the hotel. They reportedly never got close enough to see its face. They weren't even actually certain that it had a face. But no matter how many stairwells they climbed, eventually one of them would look across the atrium and see it again, watching them from another floor. Another story that surfaced from back before construction ceased involved a contractor who supposedly refused to return to the property after seeing what he initially believed was another worker standing at the far end of an unfinished hallway. When he called out, the man didn't answer, so he started walking toward him. But then as the distance between them closed, he realized the man was much farther away than he'd thought because the figure was not six feet tall, he was closer to eight. His head nearly touched the ceiling. When the man stepped backward into a room and disappeared, the contractor was too scared to follow or finish the job. Rumors began to spread that this figure had been witnessed over and over since the very beginning of the project, that it was the real reason as to why the project was never completed. And perhaps it was witnessed even more than reported, because in Soviet-era Russia, sharing ghost stories was not simply taboo, it was a good way to kill one's career and social standing. Official Soviet culture rejected the supernatural, spiritualism, and religion in all forms as backwards and superstitious. And in the years following the USSR's collapse, this cultural taboo lingered. Traditional ghost stories rarely appeared in mainstream publishing. During the pre-internet era, there were, of course, no paranormal message boards and some equivalent of Reddit threads. Then, when the internet began, it developed very differently in Russia than in the U.S. Early laws allowed security agencies to monitor data. A lot of people, especially in urban areas like St. Petersburg, were still afraid there could be repercussions for speaking freely or describing anything viewed as backwards and superstitious. So... It seems likely that most paranormal claims of the era never made it into any publications or internet archives. There were almost certainly many more sightings of whatever this shadow was than were ever reported if, of course, in fact it existed. But we do have this following claim left by a man who wrote that he worked inside the Northern Crown shortly before its eventual demolition. He reported that there was something in there, something not just malevolent, but dangerous. Something that he not only saw, but something that reached out and touched him. He called himself only McHale, no surname. McHale said that he had worked in construction in St. Petersburg for most of his adult life, and that in January of 2019, he was part of a small crew sent into the Northern Crown to conduct preliminary work connected to its fast-approaching demolition date. His job wasn't to actually tear the building down, not yet. Before heavy demolition could begin, portions of the property needed to be properly inspected, mapped, cleared, and marked. Some areas were structurally unsafe, while others contained debris or material that still needed to be removed. Certain stairwells could be used. Others couldn't. McHale and the other workers were instructed to follow marked routes through the building, and they were warned repeatedly, do not wander off of those routes, ever. If a floor is marked unsafe, don't walk on it. If a staircase is blocked, don't use it. If you're unsure whether an area has been cleared or not, just stay the hell out. All pretty standard stuff, really. So Mikhail was not bothered by any of this. This was not the first time he'd worked on a condemned building. He had been on jobs where floors had collapsed beneath people, where rusted metal had sliced open a leg, where one stupid decision could bring part of a ceiling down on your head. Old buildings didn't scare him. And ghost stories certainly didn't. And yes, despite what I said earlier about a comparative lack of published and online paranormal accounts in Russia compared to the West, he had heard the stories about the Northern Crown. It was now long after the Soviet Union era, and more people frequently talked about ghosts. Everyone on the crew had heard stories, and they joked about them. One of the men told Mikhail that if he saw the ghost of that metropolitan who had died of that heart attack walking around inside, legends of his ghost also exist, that he should ask him where he had hidden a bunch of money connected to the project that had disappeared. Another warned him about the giant shadow man, and McHale laughed. He said if he saw an eight-foot-tall ghost, he would tell him to talk to the supervisor and grab a hard hat, that they could use a big, strong guy like that. For the first several days, nothing happened. The Northern Crown presented as nothing more than an old building, a huge old building, but an empty one. But then one afternoon, McHale claims that he saw something or someone across the atrium. He wrote that he was standing on an upper floor, checking some markings near a series of rooms when a flash of movement caught his eye. When he looked across the open center of the hotel, perhaps a hundred feet away, what he thought at the time was a man was standing along the opposite balcony. Mikhail assumed he was another worker, but when he raised a hand to greet him, the man did not respond, so Mikhail shouted something across the atrium. Still, this figure said nothing. Just simply stood there. McHale was, of course, intrigued, looked harder, and couldn't make out what he was wearing. Tell if the guy was dressed like a fellow member of the demolition preparation crew or not. He couldn't tell because the opposite side of the atrium was very poorly lit, he thought, and the figure appeared almost completely black. Then, this guy stepped behind a column, somebody else called out to McHale, requiring his attention, and he quickly moved on from thinking about who he had just seen. But about 20 minutes later, he would again wonder who he'd seen because shortly after that sighting, he moved up another floor, stepped out of a room, looked across the atrium, and saw this figure again, standing one floor higher, directly across from him. McHale stared, and the man stepped, stared back. At least McHale thought he did, but he still couldn't see a face. Couldn't see any identifying details. Just the shape of this person. And very quickly, something about this shape started to bother him. It was too tall, too thin. McHale shouted, Hey! The figure didn't respond or move, but it did appear to continue to quietly stare towards McHale. Who are you? He called out next. More silence. Then the figure walked away, moving like a man more or less, a man with a strange gait. While Mikhail watched him go, he noticed something else unusual. His arms looked oddly long for his body. Not grotesquely or impossibly long, but certainly long enough to leave him feeling a little bit uncomfortable. The figure's hands seemed to hang nearly down to his knees. Mikhail watched the figure disappear through a doorway. Then he immediately decided... that he needed to figure out who the hell this guy was, and he radioed some co-workers, asking who was working on the opposite side of the atrium. One of his co-workers quickly told him, nobody should be. That section had already been cleared. McHale asked if another crew had come inside. Nope, it was just them. McHale then told them that they had a trespasser because he had definitely just seen somebody. Nobody was too alarmed as this was not unheard of. People still occasionally found ways into the Northern Crown, mostly at night, but sometimes also during the day when a crew was actively working. A supervisor overhearing the conversation told him not to intervene and confront anyone, that if he saw the person again to radio the others, he would send someone to find and escort them from the building. And with that, McHale moved on or tried to. What he hadn't told anyone else was how odd. This figure had looked, or how it made him feel. Mikhail had only been working for about ten minutes after this conversation when he heard slow and measured footsteps above him. Speaker 2 (21:10) Step, step, Speaker 1 (21:13) step. Speaker 2 (21:14) He Speaker 1 (21:14) shook his head, exhaled hard. God damn it, the floor above was supposed to be empty. He radioed again, asked if anybody had gone upstairs. No. His stomach sank as he pictured what he'd seen across the atrium now being above him. He reported that he thought he had just heard somebody up there and again tried to let it go when his claim wasn't taken that seriously. He told himself he was done reporting anything else unless he actually ran into whoever this was. If he didn't, his co-workers were going to start mentioning words like ghost and haunted and start teasing him about being too spooked to continue. Then he heard the sound of footsteps above him resume. Shit. Mikhail stepped down to the hallway towards a spot directly underneath where the sounds above him seemed to be originating. And the footsteps stopped. A few moments of uncomfortable silence ensued, and then a door closed somewhere above him.