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 a rather peculiar agreement: 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, needed only to receive guests in his wealthy 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 before, then once more, and finally three days before his death. Yury Vladimirovich told his family of each visitation of his bosom friend now departed, remarking that the hour of his own passing was drawing near.

But the most curious thing in this story is not the wish of two close friends to make certain that the world of the dead and the world of the living might communicate, nor even that they did manage to communicate after all, but the tale told in connection with Apraksin's death: namely, 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 not the first apparition have been the very cause of Apraksin's and Dolgorukov's sudden interest in the possibility of commerce between the living and the dead?