Here is a true ghost story for Halloween, based on facts and a bit of superstition…

On a cold December day soldiers in the Djulfa region of a remote area in the mountainous region of the Caucasus were told they had to travel to the Iranian border where an old cemetery of their enemy existed. 

When the Muslim soldiers said they were not going to walk in the cold just to see an old Christian cemetery of their enemies, the head of the Djulfa army said, “You will be the last people to see the cemetery; don’t worry.”

As the soldiers reached the remote cemetery, they were given sledgehammers and told to smash every single gravestone to dust. It was December 14, 2005. They had to come beck the next day, because there were too many graves there.

On their second visit to the cemetery soldiers saw some men in the Iranian border taping what they were doing. The soldiers were reluctant to continue, and although some didn’t touch one gravestone, most of them followed the orders and there was no more cemetery left in the next few days.

When the police chief of Djulfa, Asif Guliyev, read in newspapers that their enemies had videotaped the destruction of the cemetery and showed it to the world, he got angry at the reports.  He had given approval for the destruction of the cemetery and had promised to cover it up.

On the night of December 24, 2005, Guliyev – a Muslim – could not sleep. He knew it was the day for a Christian holiday, and he was fearful that the ghosts of the Christian cemetery destroyed in his region wound hunt him.  This was because his grandfather had told him that if anyone touched the graveyard of any person they would die.  And the gravestones in this case that had been destroyed were not of one person – but of about 10,000 medieval Armenians.

Guliyev heard knocks on his door.  He reluctantly opened the door and saw a thousand white spirits looking at him with blood dropping from their eyes as tears. He shook his head up and the ghosts had disappeared.

The next day Guliyev saw the same dream, and also someone who might have been the prophet Muhammed telling Guliyev he should arrest those who destroyed the cemetery. But instead, Guliyev decided to leave his region for a vacation to the city of Nakhichevan with a friend visiting from Baku.

TREND news agency tells the rest:

In the night for 8 January [2006] the head of the Djulfa district police department Asif Guliyev and his family members died at the result of the fire which had broken out in his apartment in Nakhchevan, the press service of the Interior Ministry told Trend.

The cause of the fire was malfunction in the “Aygaz” type heater in the apartment of the people died. After the fire had been distinguished the corpses of Guliyev, his wife and two daughters, as well as the Baku resident Faig Imanguliyev have been found.   

Whether “Aygaz” (an Armenian male’s name otherwise spelled as Haygaz) or any of the 10,000 Armenian ghosts of the Djulfa cemetery had killed Guliyev was not known.  But since his bosses and no one in his country were going to punish him or be punished for the destruction, people say that he burnt his apartment down after being visited by the Djulfa ghosts every single day.

And it is said that whoever reads this story and denies or glorifies the destruction of Djulfa will be visited by the ghosts of the ancient cemetery who are roaming across the world to find a place where they can rest with no fear of being disturbed again.