Tolstoy Ghosted His Wife Then Up and Died

Leo and Sophia, six weeks before his death in 1910. PUBLIC DOMAIN

At three in the morning on a cold winter’s night Countess Sophia Berss woke to thumping of footsteps. Her husband, Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, arguably the nation’s most famous writer, was restlessly pacing in the next room at their home estate, Yasnaya Polyana, about 100 miles south of Moscow. He told her he had taken some medicine, asked her to go back to sleep, and shut the door behind her. When she woke again the next morning, her husband was gone.

Read more: Atlas Obscura