my frostbitten fingers and the ghosts of kazan's frozen river

okay. so i’m in kazan, and my nose feels like it’s gonna just... snap off if i sneeze. i just checked the weather app and it’s basically screaming -17c with a ‘feels like’ of -21c. the humidity’s at 100%, which means the air isn’t just cold, it’s wet cold, the kind that seeps through three layers of wool and laughs at your劣质 hand warmers. it’s a solid wall of cold, and my m EMF meter’s battery is dying faster than my will to live outside. someone at the hostel told me this is ‘paradise for ghost hunters’ because the cold preserves everything, including… well, you know.

‘the spirits get lethargic in the deep freeze, you can hear their whispers better,’

this old guy mumbled over his tea, pointing a bony finger at the kazan kremlin walls across the frozen kazanka river. i don’t know if he was messing with me or if he was onto something.


my plan was to walk the entire qolşärif mosque perimeter, but after ten minutes my camera’s lens fogged up so bad i could’ve been filming a ghost already. i ducked into this little tea house on bauman street-all low ceilings and samovars-that i found on some random tripadvisor thread. the old woman running it gave me the stink eye for tracking snow in, but she poured me a scalding chai that saved my digits. i’m linking the spot because if you’re ever here and your soul (or just your toes) feels like it’s leaving your body, it’s a port in the storm. [tripadvisor link]. while i was thawing out, i overheard two students whispering.

‘they say if the river ice cracks at exactly midnight on the new moon, you’ll see the ghost of the tatar queen walking where the water used to be,’

one said. the other just laughed, but i wrote it down. my notebook is getting damp.


so i’m basically a popsicle with a pulse, creeping around these ancient stones. the weird thing is the silence. it’s not quiet-quiet, it’s a thick, cottony silence broken only by the creak of ice on the river and my own teeth chattering. i tried setting up my digital recorder near a graveyard gate near the blagoveshchensky cathedral, but all i got was the hiss of cold and a snippet of what might’ve been a drunk man singing two streets over. still. you take what you can get. if you get bored, sviyazhsk island is just a short, freezing boat ride away-supposedly packed with phantom monks. maybe tomorrow, if i can feel my face again.


photos turned out weird. the low winter sun does this thing where it makes the colorful onion domes look like they’re bleeding gold into the grey sky. i’ve got a couple here that don’t do it justice, but one shows the spires all sharp against the flat light. [unsplash image 1]. another’s just a close-up of frost patterning on a gate lock like delicate lace. [unsplash image 2]. everything is extreme. the cold is extreme. the history feels extreme.


left my thermal mug in the hostel. rookie mistake. now i’m sipping tap water from a bottle that’s turning to slush. moral of the story? kazan in january isn’t for the faint of heart, or for anyone who likes feeling their extremities. but if you wanna hear a history that’s so old it might as well be a rumor whispered on the wind… wear every single thing you own. and maybe listen for the ice.

p.s. the local board was dead, but i found a cryptid enthusiast forum where someone posted about ‘cold spots’ in the kazan state museum of fine arts. might check that out next. link’s here if you’re into that sort of rabbit hole. [forum link].