The metro is a specific transport and, of course, it has generated many rumors, legends, myths. The fantasy of our citizens knows no bounds, and it often intersects with real events, so in our time it is not always possible to understand which of these terrible stories is true and which is fiction. We invite you to familiarize yourself with the most common legends and myths about the Moscow subway and beyond.
There have always been especially many horror stories about the metro in Moscow. Here are just a few of them.
Ghost train
According to some reports, the ghost train sweeping past the station platforms after midnight can only be heard, and working subways, as well as late passengers, regularly encounter this inexplicable phenomenon. Others say that it can be seen (and even during the day), but such a phantom looks like a regular composition.
The ghost train is perhaps the most common metro horror story.
Superstitious citizens put forward several reasons for the appearance of this ghost. According to one of them, in the first years of the construction of the Moscow metro (and, as you know, prisoners were also involved in the work), a trial train, in which there were prisoners, exploded in the tunnel.
Another reason is also associated with prisoner builders. They say that some of them were shot and walled up in the walls of the subway. In other words, it is the dead convicts who allegedly appear to modern people on the ghost train.
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Countless photographs of the alleged ghost train can be found online.
There is a no less creepy legend: according to it, many years ago a train with passengers disappeared without a trace in the metro. The authorities allegedly kept this incident strictly classified. And now this very train began to appear at one or another station.
Ghost driver
According to another legend, an electric train caught fire on one of the metro lines during the Soviet years. During the emergency, the driver pulled many passengers out of the fire, and he later died in the hospital. And supposedly it is his ghost, who looks like a completely black man, who now walks through the tunnels, frightening the subway workers.
A black man can scare even metro builders and diggers. If you believe in him.
By the way, it is not known what specific incident with the electric train is in the legend, since information about many emergency situations in the subway in the Soviet years was not advertised, and until now we do not know for sure about their real scale.
"Bad" stations
According to rumors, there are stations in the metro at which passengers often feel uncomfortable, and impressionable people associate this with their "bad" history. For example, they say that the wooden benches installed on Novokuznetskaya were made almost from icons of the blown up Cathedral of Christ the Savior. There is no official confirmation of this information, but the fact that the marble slabs of the church, on which the names of the heroes of the 1812 war were carved, were used for the side walls of the Novokuznetskaya benches, was repeatedly said by the metro workers themselves.
Photo * Novokuznetskaya * immediately after construction.
For a similar reason, some citizens consider the station "Arbatskaya" to be "bad", explaining that for the sake of its construction, the local church of St. Tikhon of Amafuntsky, erected in the 17th century, was demolished. The allegedly ground bricks of the temple were used for mixing concrete for the station.
Secret passage
At the Okhotny Ryad station, there is an interesting fragment in the marble wall opposite the platform: a rectangular area covered with simple ceramic tiles looks like a patch against the background of the chic cladding.
The same tile at the Okhotny Ryad station.
This rectangle gave rise to rumors that there is a secret passage in the wall or that someone was walled up there. In fact, everything is more prosaic: a fragment of the tiled cladding was left here specially in memory of how the local walls were originally. After all, Okhotny Ryad is one of the very first stations of the Moscow metro (it was built in 1935).
St. Petersburg
Even 15 years ago, there were superstitious rumors that as soon as the 60th metro station was built in St. Petersburg, the city would go under water. Particularly impressionable citizens waited with horror when the same "fatal" station - "Parnas" would be put into operation. However, 12 years have passed since the moment it was built, but the prediction has not yet come true, and meanwhile there are already about 70 stations at the moment.
Station * Parnas * did not become fatal for St. Petersburg.
There are no less absurd rumors about the double doors of some stations. Rumor has it that it was decided to close the paths from passengers (according to the principle of a horizontal lift) due to the possible flooding of the metro. They say that dense protection in the form of walls and double doors will delay water flows and allow passengers to quickly evacuate.
A horror story about a possible flood is associated with such stations.
In fact, such a project of stations was not at all connected with the upcoming (supposedly) flood: by closing the tracks, the authors first of all nullified the possibility of passengers falling onto the rails.
Kiev
Once upon a time there were rumors among the people about the giant rats of the Moscow metro, but in our time these horror stories tell about the subway of the Ukrainian capital. Employees of the Kiev metro reassure citizens: there are no giant rats in the metro and cannot be. Moreover, in the tunnels, according to the assurances of subway workers, you will practically not find even ordinary rats, as well as other rodents, because they simply have nothing to eat there - unless they can gnaw the wires. In addition, vermin is regularly carried out in the metro.
Legends about giant mutant rats still terrify mysticism lovers.
There is a lot of talk about the fact that the Kiev metro can be flooded with water at any time. But experts categorically declare: these are also groundless rumors. Not a single metro line runs under the Dnieper, and under no circumstances are smaller rivers capable of causing serious damage to stations and tunnels.
The Kiev metro is not threatened with flooding.
Minsk
There is a legend among the inhabitants of the capital of Belarus that there is a secret metro station "Komsomolskaya" under the KGB building. Allegedly, with a hypothetical enemy attack on Belarus, the top leadership of the KGB and other security agencies will be able to urgently evacuate by metro.
The KGB building in Minsk.
In fact, they really planned to build such a station. In Soviet times, it was even marked on the map of the Minsk metro, although it was marked "promising". However, it never came to full implementation of these plans. True, they managed to make preliminary preparations, and the metro tunnels in this part of the city were carried out in such a way that, if necessary, such a station could be built quickly.
The same station that was never built on the old map of the Minsk metro.
But the rumors that there are underground metro bridges in Minsk are absolutely true. One of them is located on the stretch between Traktorny Zavod and Proletarskaya, where the track of the electric trains runs through the water system. First, a tunnel was built here, then it was covered with earth, and the Slepnya river was launched under it. The bridge between the stations "Mikhalovo" and "Petrovshchina" is similarly built - it is also underground, and the river Myshka flows under it.
There is a large amount of groundwater near Minsk.
There are a lot of rumors about the secret tunnels of Minsk - for example, between the Government House and the metro. There really was a similar "tunnel" before, only it was an ordinary underground pedestrian crossing and did not lead to a secret station, but to the administration building of the subway, from which it was just possible to descend into the subway. Subsequently, during the construction of the Stolitsa shopping center on this site, the crossing was removed.
From the Government House one could secretly go to the metro.
There are no less active rumors about the second tunnel: it allegedly connects the Government House, the Palace of the Republic, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the State Security Committee.
Rumor has it that it was built in the 1990s, so that the tunnel could quickly transfer police units to areas of street riots. There is no official confirmation of this information.
Some metro legends are associated with our Soviet past, when any major emergency was hushed up.
Anna Belova