One of the founders of Moscow, Yuri Dolgoruky, had not the best fame, and in the 17th century Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich decided to engage in the prince's "PR campaign".
For this, it was decided to collect all the stories that were recorded or that told about him.
One of the stories said that in one of the swamps, where Moscow would later appear, the prince met an unknown monster. According to the legend, the prince's squad went through the forest along the bed of the Neglinka River approximately where the capital's street Kuznetsky Most is today. Here they found themselves near a swamp, over which there was an impenetrable fog. Suddenly a monster with three heads emerged from the fog. His body was covered with wool of different colors. The monster did not attack people, turned around and disappeared in the disappearing fog. Together with the prince walked a certain old man, a sage, who is sometimes called a monk, and sometimes - a sorcerer.
He told Yuri that the appearance of the monster was a sign and in this place a city should be built. When the prince came out of the forest and found himself on Borovitsky Hill, he saw a small settlement where the Vyatichi lived and where the boyar Kuchka ruled. The prince, without thinking twice, seized the city, killed its rulers and thus laid the foundation for Moscow. Apparently, the unknown monster also had a considerable share of its participation in this.
Various mysterious creatures in general often became characters in capital legends.
The voice ravine, separating the villages of Kolomenskoye and Dyakovo, was considered a habitat for strange creatures that were found in the 19th century. Once the local peasants were returning from a wedding from the village of Sadovniki and decided to go through the ravine. In a ravine, they found themselves in a green fog, from where monstrous creatures appeared, similar to people, but completely overgrown with wool. The men were scared, but the creatures turned out to be friendly and led them out of the ravine.
But only when the peasants came out to the people, it turned out that they had been absent for twenty years. It is alleged that a note about this was published in the Moskovskie Vedomosti newspaper on July 9, 1832, but the surviving copies refute this.
In the twentieth century, there was also one case of meeting with a similar creature and also in a ravine. This time the creature faced an even greater threat than itself - the Soviet pioneers. Yes, and with help in the form of a district police officer, armed with a pistol. It was when he saw the pistol that the unknown creature hurried to disappear into the green fog.
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It was said that even Pionerskaya Pravda wrote about this, but no story about such an event was found in any issue of the newspaper. According to one version, all these stories were invented by an archivist student for his coursework on source studies.
KUZNETSOV KONSTANTIN