The Military Governor of Moscow, Yury Vladimirovich Dolgorukov, was a great friend of the eminent grandee Stepan Stepanovich Apraksin, formerly Military Governor of Smolensk and known above all for his lavish receptions at his house on…

According to the account of Elizaveta Petrovna Yankova, Apraksin and Dolgorukov had made a rather peculiar compact: whichever of them died first was to give a sign to the other, who remained among the living, and to appear to him three times before his death, to announce that the hour had come. Apraksin died first, in 1827. One of the Bulgakov brothers wrote of him that he was an empty and uninteresting man, useful only for receiving guests in his rich house, yet many Muscovites mourned the passing of Stepan Stepanovich, remembering him not only as a hospitable and attentive host but also as a kind and warm-hearted man.

Yury Vladimirovich outlived his friend by three years. And indeed, according to his brother Vasily Vladimirovich, before his death he saw the spirit of Apraksin, who appeared to him first six months beforehand, then once more, and finally three days before the end. Yury Vladimirovich told those close to him of each appearance of his bosom friend, now departed, remarking that the hour of his own departure was drawing near.

But the most curious thing in this story is not the wish of the closest of friends to make sure that the world of the dead could communicate with the world of the living, nor even that they did manage to communicate after all, but the tale that is told in connection with Apraksin's death: it is said that some months before he died he too was visited by a certain old man, who pointed to his approaching end and then a second and a third time warned him that death was near. Might that first visitation have been the cause of Apraksin's and Dolgorukov's sudden interest in the possibility of intercourse between the living and the dead?