Viy

"Viy", also translated as "The Viy", is a horror novella by the writer Nikolai Gogol, first published in volume 2 of his collection of tales entitled Mirgorod (1835). Despite an author's note alluding to folklore, the title character is generally conceded to be wholly Gogol's invention. Plot summary Students at Bratsky Monastery in Kiev break for summer vacation. The impoverished students must find food and lodging along their journey home. They stray from the high road at the sight of a farmstead, hoping its cottagers would provide them. A group of three, the kleptomaniac theologian Khalyava, the merry-making philosopher Khoma Brut, and the younger-aged rhetorician Tiberiy Gorobets, attracted by a false target of wheat fields suggesting a nearby village, must walk extra distance before finally reaching a farm with two cottages, as night drew near. The old woman begrudgingly lodges the three travelers separately.