The Red Stain
One of the most widespread Soviet scary stories. A family moves into a new flat and finds a red stain on the ceiling or the wallpaper that will not wash off and will not paint over: every morning it comes through again, a little larger. At night people vanish from the room, one at a time, and after each one the stain is brighter. The moral, in the children's telling, is always the same and always said out loud: they should have called the police at once.
The Black Hand and the Red Spot
Two stories from the same body, usually told back to back: the black hand that reaches out from under the bed or out of the wall, and the red spot on the ceiling that grows every night until it swallows the people living there. Both work the same way — the threat comes not from outside but from the flat itself, from the furniture and the walls, which is the one place a child cannot get away from. Folklorists have recorded them in many variants across the Soviet Union since the 1960s, and they remain the most durable layer of children's urban folklore.
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