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Over the 14 centuries since its founding, Kyiv has accumulated a wealth of legends and mystical places -- some of which the locals avoid because of their bad reputations.

The Kyiv Post presents a guide to the spookiest sites in the city for those bold enough to visit them on Halloween night.

Lysa Hora (Bald Hill)

Lysa Hora (“Bald Hill” in Ukrainian) is a common name for hills with no bushes or trees – places where witches and demons are believed to meet up each month for a witches’ Sabbath.

There are 13 such spots in Kyiv, but the best-known one is Lysa Hora near the Vydubychy metro station. The hill gained notoriety centuries ago as a place of death. Historians say that back in the 9th century, pagan rituals and sacrifices were practiced there. When the Tatar-Mongol hordes invaded the city in 1240, some Kyivans hid in caves beneath Lysa Hora. When the Mongol ruler Batu Khan ordered the entrances to the tunnels to be bricked up, the place became a grave for thousands.

In the early 20th century, Lysa Hora became an execution site, where the bodies of nearly 200 executed criminals are buried.

“Lysa Hora is a very powerful geo-pathogenic zone with emanation of powerful negative energy,” says Liudmyla Zhukova, a member of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, who researches bioenergetics and alternative medicine. “Occult rituals aimed at causing harm to people have been practiced there for centuries.”

Zhukova says no harm will come from a one-hour walk near the hill, but “a longer stay there might cause loss of energy and health problems.”

Babyn Yar

Another place of ill fortune is Babyn Yar, a ravine in the northwestern part of Kyiv where the one of the greatest massacres of the 20th century took place. Up to 100,000 people, among them 30,000 Jews, were killed there from 1941 to 1943 by soldiers from Nazi Germany.

Zhukova says the tragic history of Babyn Yar makes the site particularly sinister. “Geopathogenic zones are usually located in the places where cemeteries used to be, or where killings occurred,” she says.

Lada Luzina, a Ukrainian fantasy fiction writer and head of the Kyiv Witches Club, first learned about the murders in Babyn Yar when she was six years old from her grandmother. Her grandmother’s story impressed the young Luzina so deeply that she was scared of the site for the next 20 years, she says.

Luzina says the most sinister part of the Babyn Yar is the area near St. Cyril’s Church.

“For centuries many awful tragedies occurred there. They say that there is an entrance straight to Hell there,” Luzina says, adding that popular beliefs say that in ancient times a human-eating dragon used to live in the caves under the spot where the Church of St. Cyril now stands.

Abandoned Green Theater

The Green Theater, a Soviet-era amphitheater surrounded by trees on the banks of the Dnipro, actually includes the high wall of a 19th century fortress. It is located on Park Alley, not far from Arsenalna metro, on a steep hillside. Legends say that the hillside has an entrance to the underworld, that many people have been lost in its caves, and that it is a place of ghosts.

A pagan idol carved out of wood stands on the Lysa Hora hill in Kyiv. The place is used as an altar in the pagan rituals even today.

Writer Luzina says this site also has an evil reputation.

“Before the (Bolshevik) Revolution of 1917, many murderers and prostitutes lived there. Murders occurred almost every day,” the writer says.

In summer, the Green Theater is a place for outdoor concerts and parties. But during the colder seasons it stands empty.

Khorevytsya, or Castle Hill

To get to the mystic hill of Khorevytsya, also known as the Castle Hill (Zamkova Hora), one has to climb the hill near Frolivsky Monastery in Podil and go past an abandoned cemetery. Khorevytsya is reputed to be a place where devil-worshipers from the whole Kyiv and the surrounding region get together on special occasions, like Walpurgis Night, Ivan Kupala Night and the night before the Feast of St. Peter and St. Paul on July 12. Today, Khorevytsya has become a haven for adepts of Paganism and Satanism, who regularly conduct rituals on the hill.

Kyiv Post staff writer Nataliya Trach can be reached at [email protected]