Man seeks marriage help from occult leader, gets butchered with axe

After rational attempts to save his marriage came up fruitless, 33-year old Anton Shabanov turned to the supernatural in desperation.

As The Sun reports, Shabanov's wife Lyubov left him less than a year into their marriage, and they were no longer living together. In a last-ditch effort, Shabanov turned to occult leader and "convicted fraudster" Nikolay Ivanov.

Ivanov was asked to perform a ritual wherein Shabanov and his estranged wife's possessions were to be buried in a forest, however just as he began, things turned violent.

According to The Sun, a fight broke out between Ivanov and Shabanov when the former made fun of the latter, as well as Lyubov. As the altercation escalated, Ivanov allegedly grabbed an axe and hacked Shabanov to death with blows to the head and neck.

After covering the body with branches, Ivanov fled, but was soon caught by police, where he confessed to the crime.

Ivanov was sentenced to pay £20,700 in damages, and serve nine and a half years in prison at a "strict regime" labor camp.

As Vox reports, occult ceremonies and other supernatural practices are quite popular with Russians. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, they say, many throughout the country turned to spiritual beliefs to "make up for the ideological void left by communism." Despite being repeatedly debunked as nonsense, Russians continue to engage in these rituals, and in the case of Shabanov, it was a decision that ended up costing him his life.