A chapel was built on top of a chasm filled with half-human monsters to keep them in
Several places on Earth are thought to be entry portals to hell. A foul-smelling and gas-spewing crack in a sandstone hill some 47 kilometers north of Prague caused so much concern among people in the middle of the 13th century that they built a chapel to cover the chasm, and then put a castle around the chapel to protect it.
The location has had checkered history since then, but the chapel still stands at Houska Castle, guarding the earth from whatever lies beneath. Demons and other evil spirits can’t cross holy ground, so whatever was down in the smoking chasm has been trapped for eight centuries.
The earliest written reference to the castle says that it keeps “something that must not be named” from escaping into the outside world. Other early references cite the presence of a gate to hell or a pit full of demons.
The tiny castle is not located near a source of water and the hill itself is not strategic, and there is no trade route nearby. Rain water from the roof had to be collected in a stone vat in the center of the courtyard, which was not very practical.
Odder still, the castle has almost no fortifications facing the outside. It was never intended to face an attack, except from within. The thick woods and rocky hill were already virtually impenetrable.
While it is still small, the current appearance is actually due to a later expansion and a Renaissance makeover that added enough amenities for people to live there.
The alterations removed a moat and a watchtower, and removed some of the sandstone outcrops that were left inside the castle walls and interiors. Defenses facing inward were removed, but decorative depictions of archers’ loopholes can still be seen in the interior courtyard.
The legend is that demonic chimeras — creatures neither fully human nor fully animal — would crawl up out of the pit at night and drag down any people they could capture. Winged hellbeasts also were supposed to fly up, propelled by the pit’s foul vapors, to terrorize the local cattle and destroy the crops.
The local authorities, before the castle was built, wanted to find out what was in the pit and where it led to.
When he was pulled up he was babbling incoherently. He seemed to age decades in just a few moments; his hair had turned white and his eyes had a crazed look. He never regained his senses and died soon after of unknown causes.
After that, prisoners chose a life of torture instead of a trip down into the smoking pit.
The famous poet Karel Hynek Mácha spent the night there once in 1836 and wrote a letter outlining his strange visions including a peculiar funeral.
Even into the 20th century, people claimed that car batteries would mysteriously lose power when parked near the castle and other unexplained phenomena would occur.
The other figures are saints such as Andrew and Christopher, save for a curious depiction of a left-handed female centaur.
Left-handedness was often associated with evil, and the centaur is a half-human beast. Why she is female and an archer is not explained. But the figure has no links to Christian iconography. Its roots are pagan.
He was shot through a window by local hunters, as his activities had caused some suspicion in the area, and the invading Swedish army was not very popular anyway. His ghost is supposed to still haunt the castle.
For a while in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the castle had a quiet period and was used as a hunting lodge, and a collection of trophies can still be seen there. Some are considered quite valuable.
Others say it was used for occult purposes, as there was a faction of the SS that tried to harness mystical dark power as a weapon, and searched the conquered lands for magical trophies and places with mystical energies.
The castle fell into disrepair in the communist era, and was used for storage and as a bleak sanatorium.
This led fellow dissident Václav Havel to write Charter 77, a human rights manifesto that put him at the forefront of the dissident movement and helped catapult him to the presidency after the Velvet Revolution in 1989.
The castle opened to the public in 1999, and is slowly being renovated. It is possible to see the chapel, rooms with hunting trophies, some armor and weapons, walls with more frescoes including an early depiction of the castle itself, and a basement room decorated as a dungeon. A side building has a display of whimsical dark-themed wooden puppets. More spaces are slowly being opened.
The castle has been used for meetings by UFO enthusiasts and other modern fans of the paranormal and esoteric arts.
Houska, in the Czech language, means a braided bread roll. Why that is the castle’s name is a mystery, but a stone sculpture of such a roll is on the banister of one of the staircases.
Currently, it is not possible to stay overnight at the castle.
This is not the only gate to hell in Bohemia. Another can be found near Prague Castle, marked by a stone circle on the street. It marks where demons came up to drag the last pagan princess, Drahomira, down to hell for her sins.
An article by Baba Studio with Raymond Johnston. Copyright Baba Studio, all rights reserved. Please contact us if you would like to syndicate or otherwise use this article.