The Mad Monk's Progeny

Though many of the stories surrounding Rasputin and his death have suffered from recent historian skepticism, the story of a peasant with a proclivity for sex as a religious act somehow coming to be the healer for a failing noble family has always seemed to me the perfect seed for a horror story.

Since the 'truth' about the life and death of Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin (1869-1916) has varied, even to his true year of birth, revised as early as the 80's, I decided other 'accepted facts'... namely the death of his older brother (of pneumonia) after he jumped into a river to save Grigori, and the curious lack of information about his mother served as a perfect stepping off point for this story.

The mystery about how Rasputin could so reliably control hemophilia, AND how the admittedly wild appearing man could convince women in fair numbers and more then one at a time to share their treasure with him both seem supernatural. And whether true or not, that he was supposedly poisoned, stabbed, shot, drowned, and burned adds to the flair of his tale. But I wanted a more American story, so his brother had to live, and so, we have the story you (hopefully) just completed. I hope you enjoyed it, and that it was not apparent too quickly the story on which it was based. Regards, RA