Moscow Urban Legend

[nataliek at UALBERTA.CA]

Quoting "Riley, Maureen DLI-W USA TRADOC" <maureen.riley at US.ARMY.MIL>:

> Here is something that might be of interest to you, and anyone else who
> has been intrigued by this urban legend from our (for many of us) "alma
> mater".
>
> http://www.mmforce.net/msu/heart/
>
> Maureen Riley
> Defense Language Institute-Washington
>

As your local legend (urban and other) expert, let me add my 2 cents.   
The ones on the website above especially are like typical building  
legends, found internationally.  They are told about some of the  
buildings on the campus where I now teach.  Here at the Univ. of  
Alberta, there are supposedly secret rooms in the BioSci building and  
staircases that lead nowhere.  The deliberate sabbotage of builders,  
whether the workmen or the architects, is also widely known.  It too  
is told about the BioSci building here.  In connection with MGU, I did  
not see, to my suprise, some version of the walled-up wife.  In old  
legends this is literally the wife of one of the builders who must be  
sacrificed for the building to stand.  In more modern ones, like the  
stories about the library here, it is an unfortunate maintenance  
worker who gets immured either in the building itself or, in the case  
of the jaintor, trapped in a closet until it is too late and found  
only much, much later.

The flying away on a piece of plywood is new to me, though miraculous  
flight or miraculous falls from tall buildings are common, and I am  
charmed by its connection to a set expression.

Natalie Kononenko
Kule Chair of Ukrainian Ethnography
University of Alberta
Modern Languages and Cultural Studies
200 Arts Building
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2E6
Phone: 780-492-6810
Web: http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/uvp/

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