Nevertheless, there are ghost stories to be told in St Petersburg. It is, after all, a city built on bones.
The best-known story is, perhaps, the Queen of Spades by Alexander Pushkin. It is said that the ghost of the old countess Anna Fedotovna -- the "Queen of Spades" -- can be seen in the streets of St Petersburg.
Some of Pushkin's contemporaries swore the story was true. They even named Princess Natalia Petrovna Golitsyna as the real Anna Fedotovna.
Her acquaintances, when they read the story, could not but notice the resemblance between Countess Anna and Princess Natalia. In addition, her old house, placed by Pushkin "in one of the main streets of St Petersburg," is very much like Princess Natalia's house at 10 Malaya Morskaya Ulitsa.
The house was rebuilt by Constantine Thon in the 1840s, and it looks nothing like it did during the Spade Queen's reign. It is neglected and shabby, and saw hard times under the Communists.
Its run-down condition only adds to the atmosphere. Inhabitants of the communal apartments nearby are sure to tell you that the ghost of the Queen of Spades sometimes appears in the courtyard of the house.
However, about 10 years ago I passed by this house late at night dozens of times, on the way to and from rehearsals held at a nearby college theater, and I never sighted a ghost.
There are other, less famous places which are believed to be haunted. Some people say that crowds of ghosts can be seen on Arsenalnaya Ulitsa at the site of the former Vyborgskoye Roman Catholic Cemetery destroyed and replaced by factories beginning in 1930.
And old woman who had been a Komsomol worker back in the 1930s assured me that she had heard the horrible screams of these ghosts who were protesting the desecration of their final resting place.
I too heard the "horrible screams" at that place while waiting for the Number 8 trolleybus late one evening, but I saw no ghosts.
And no wonder -- the screams have nothing to do with ghosts, they are just the sounds of polluted pressurized air escaping from the chimneys of the nearby Heat Electric Power Station.
You cannot help getting spooked. In a dark and deserted place, near the former cemetary so barbarously destroyed, and hearing unearthly moans and screams...it is a rather unpleasant experience. But no ghosts.
Nor did I see the writer Anastasia Chebotarevskaya who drowned herself in the Malalya (Small) Neva at the beginning of the Soviet regime because the authorities refused her permission to emigrate. She is said to appear near the Tuchkov Bridge.
Nor have I seen the ghost of Leningrad's Communist Party leader Sergei Kirov, who is said to haunt his former apartment at 26-28 Kamennoostrovksy Prospect where he was murdered in 1934.
It makes me suspect there aren't any ghosts in St Petersburg. Perhaps it's the bad climate.