The article reveals the ideas of the Gagauz about the necessity of offering a “construction sacrifice” to ensure the durability of the construction and to acquire a guardian spirit of the house (tilsim), which will protect the dwelling and its inhabitants from the influence of evil spirits. Among the Gagauz, the beginning of each stage of house construction is marked by a sacrificial offering. The sacrifices are grain, flour, bread, coins, chicken / rooster, lamb. From the meat of the sacrificial bird/animal, the Gagauz prepare a ritual dish or give it alive as a present. There are no memories of Gagauz people of walling up live people or animals in the foundation of a house, the first to enter a newly built house is a rooster or a cat. The folk memory preserves recollections of the custom of measuring a person’s shadow by the builders (boy ölçmäk), known in the Carpatho-Balkan region as the rite of “shadow fleeing” or “shadow stealing”. The article also draws comparisons between the well-known Gagauz narrative “The Human Sacrifice Buried During Bridge Construction” and similar stories found in Greek, Bulgarian, and Turkish languages. The study showed that both the rituals of “construction sacrifices” and the legends about them were adopted by the ancestors of the Gagauz in the Balkans, were widely developed in Bessarabia and have survived to this day in a reduced, transformed and reinterpreted form.