Houska Castle: Europe’s Gateway to Hell

some 50 kilometers north of prague liza castle shrouded in mystery surrounded by thick woodland crisscrossed with low peaks and rushing streams prad hoskar is an architectural anomaly jutting from a sheer rock face it blends both renaissance motifs with gothic design pagan murals with christian symbolism but it's not what's on the outside of the castle that makes it so endlessly fascinating but rather what's rumored to be on the inside according to sources houska was originally built with its defensive walls facing inwards as if its owners were terrified of something getting out the nature of that something well it's here that we tiptoe into x-files territory 16th century chronicle has recalled that the builders thought that they were constructing their castle atop the doorway to hell itself long since renovated by later owners hoska today retains little evidence of its spooky past but telltale signs still remain from creepy murals painted centuries ago to accounts of the ss used in the castle for a cult experiment during world war ii in today's halloween edition geographics is exploring the spooky tales surrounding this infamous czech castle and attempting to separate fact from terrifying fiction about halfway between prague and the czech german border lies a densely wooded land it's known as kokorinsko and it's famous among domestic tourists for its rock peaks and deep valleys for its cycle trails and romantic castles but there is one castle in kokorinsko that never makes it onto lists of romantic places one that until the collapse of communism in 1989 had been shunned and unoccupied for eons known as frad hosker it has a claim to being europe's most terrifying castle with anywhere as mythologized as radholska it can be tough to figure out what's real and what's not so rather than muddle through conflicting sources we're going to give you separately both the creepy and the not so creepy versions and since this is halloween let's start with the creepy stuff out of the spookiest mysteries about husker castle is why it exists at all constructed sometime in the mid 13th century although some sources trace it to the reign of king wenceslas the first radholskar's location makes no logical sense surrounded by impenetrable forest it sat alongside no medieval trade routes nor was it a place of great strategic importance or near a military frontier the castle was built far from any water source with only a heavy stone system that caught the rain stopping those inside from dying of thirst in short life here for medieval checks would have been a gigantic pain in the zadek but that assumes people actually lived in pratholska weirdly the castle was built without a kitchen suggesting that people only stayed there fleetingly at best weirder still there were no defensive walls something of a rarity in these war-torn times at least there weren't on the outside although it's long since been torn down there's evidence an old defensive wall used to exist facing inwards into the courtyard in european castle architecture such a layout is totally unique which naturally begs the question well why did they do it why go to all their trouble building a weird inverted castle in a completely useless place of course there are multiple theories but for now we'll stick with the freaky ones according to the oldest known source husker castle was built to keep something that must not be named from escaping into this world from this point on the story goes full on h.p lovecraft oral tales from this time say that the castle was built directly over a fissure in the hill one from which foul-smelling fumes escaped they further say that the fisher was so deep no one could see the bottom of it just endless darkness perhaps unsurprisingly legends arose that this fissure was an entrance to hell itself certainly it seems something spooked those living nearby the counts of the time are full of tales of strange creatures that would crawl out of the pit at night chimeras that were part animal and past human others talk of vaguely human shapes with vast leathery wings that would fly out of the fissure and attack the castle or destroy crops while all of this might smack of medieval peasants having a bit too much sliver vitzer the authorities were seemingly spooked enough to seal off the crack from the outside world but when it came time to start construction no one wanted to just build across it without figuring out what this pit really was without finding out what was really down there what they discovered would make the legends of pradholska seem more terrifying than ever [Music] in terms of bad choices they don't come much worse than those offered to the prisoners in 13th century cocarinsko just before construction began on frat holsker the local authorities rounded them all up and asked them to choose life in a medieval dungeon or to do one little task for them and then walk free when the prisoners asked what that task was we can only imagine the authorities giving a chilling smile before saying well be lowered into the crack in that rock and tell us what's down there now there are many versions of what supposedly happened next but they all agree on some basic points first a small group of prisoners finally volunteered and they were all led to the rock together second that one man was selected to be the first down the authorities lowered him on a rope into the pit and told him to shout if he got into trouble the third thing the stories agree on is what happened next within seconds the man started screaming begging to be pulled back up the other prisoners hauled him back to the surface only to find that his mind had snapped the man was crying raving in one version his hair had gone white and he looked like he'd aged 30 years the man died the next day or maybe the day after that the cause was given as fright after that the other prisoners refused to be lowered into the pit and the authorities said to work covering it up as fast as they could in some sources the reigning king at the time either wenceslas the first or ottakar ii heard what had happened and added his own resources to the build in no time at all the pit had been sealed a chapel was built on top of it in the hopes that whatever might be living down there wouldn't be able to cross the sacred ground then the defensive walls were erected facing inwards towards the chapel archers may have been stationed there with orders to kill anything that emerged but nothing ever did after fredholska was built tales of beasts and chimeras stalking the land began to fade away almost entirely around the 14th century some unknown hand added demonic frescoes to husker chapel possibly as a record of these bygone folk tales possibly as a warning after that the castle gradually began to fade from memory because it was only rarely occupied there were only occasional reports of things like faint scratching sounds beneath the chapel floor not that the legends ever completely disappeared though during the 30 years war on a per capita basis still the deadliest war ever fought in central europe an officer from the occupying swedish force became obsessed with the legends of hoskar sources report that a local hunter assassinated him after rumors spread that the officer was conducting black magic rituals in the chapel after that the myths around husker went silent for a long time sometime in the 16th century the inward-facing defensive wall was knocked down and the whole castle was rebuilt in a renaissance style after that it was more or less just ignored by history now there is a story that czech romantic poet carol heineck maher stayed at holsker in the 1830s and subsequently wrote a letter to a friend about seeing demons in his nightmares but most modern literary scholars consider it a fake but the same can't be said about records of the next high-profile figures to occupy holsker when world war ii finally hit there would be one group that was very interested in all aspects of the occult the ss they occupied husker castle soon after hitler annexed the sudetenland what they did while there would spark controversy for decades to come here's the deal with husker castle it was built in something known as the sudetenland a region of bohemia settled by ethnic germans in the reign of ottakar ii for centuries germans and czechs were cool with this arrangement until suddenly the 20th century happened and everyone became very not cool with this in 1938 hitler demanded the region be allowed to split from czechoslovakia and join germany this led to the munich agreement a polite way of saying that the allies rolled over and let the nazis take everything they wanted that fall german tanks occupied most of northern and western bohemia and husker castle suddenly found itself a part of the third reich for the first time in centuries people began paying attention to its spooky past those people were the ss who confiscated the castle soon after the war started naturally their holsca base was off-limits to ordinary people not surprisingly it soon became a source of intense speculation the leading theory was that hoska had been turned into an outpost for the nazi lebensborn program it would be a place to breed a race of aryan supermen by having germanic women and ss members go at it like fascist rabbits lebensborn centers were set up in multiple occupied countries so it's not too much of a stretch to imagine a suitably remote castle might have been used for these purposes but let's get real the lebensborn project isn't what most people associate with nazi activity at hoskar for decades now rumors have swirled that the ss were interested in the castle's haunted pit pretty much since berlin fell to the red armies onslaught in 1945 there have been claims that parts of nazi high command were fascinated with the occult some of these claims include a portion of the ss that as the war turned against germany actively began searching out supernatural phenomena that could be used as weapons if that's true it's a really big if then radholska would have been a perfect match for their crazed plans certainly there are stories that inhuman experiments were performed on prisoners there although what those experiments involved we can't say there are also tales of the ss trying to locate the pit itself and even performing dark rituals inside the chapel sadly we can't say for certain if any of this is true at the end of the war when it became clear all hope was lost the ss abandoned hoskar before going they set fire to all their records leaving no trace of their activities except ashes when the communists seized power in czechoslovakia just three years later the castle was confiscated by the state and placed off limits to visitors it was only reopened in 1999 by which time any evidence of what happened between its walls had been lost for good so that's the story of kratholska the creepy place where to this day cars refuse to start and faint scratching sounds can sometimes be heard from underneath the chapel but there's another holsca in the records one with a history perhaps less fantastical but equally interesting a history of war of protest and yes of nazi occupation it's time to learn the tale of the other ratholska no matter which version of oscar's story you're hearing the first thing you need to know is that there is a lot of information missing from the record for example it's theorized that a fortification stood on this site as early as the ninth century but who built it or why is something that's been lost to time however we do have a remarkably good explanation for why kratholska stands in such a remote place in the aftermath of ottakar ii's death the kingdom of bohemia fell into a troubling period of uncertainty this was an era when fortunes could be made or lives broken an era for bold action when it came to expanding a territory and heineken of the lords of duba was all about territorial expansion the area holsker is sat in is right next to heineck's ancestral estate when ottakar ii kicked to the bucket hainek began immediately buttering up his heir the child king wenceslas ii in the hopes of enlarging his territory but heineken didn't want to be so subtle about it so according to the czech republic's dedicated castle website hrady.cz he built a whacking great gothic fortress there as a kind of hint designed to make a point rather than be lived in it's this empty structure that became the basis for hratholska however the castle didn't stand empty for long in 1316 about 20 years after heinek did his rich people version of squatter's rides his son also confusingly called highneck opened oscar for habitation by the 1370s it was finally busy enough for the family to commission the building of a chapel as you'll recall from our folklore version of this story the chapel supposedly stands above the pit into hell but what's interesting about this is that early sources say nothing about the chapel being built above anything no the first mention of the pit makes clear that it was another part of the castle entirely published in the 1540s kronecker chesca by vatslava was one of the first and greatest works written in vernacular czech tracing the history of bohemia across centuries it's the czech equivalent of geoffrey of monmouth the history of the kings of britain it's also the first source to record the tale of hoska's pit to hell according to haiker a hole was found near the castle near a great rock in the hole a number of different spirits inhabited he goes on to say these spirits walked the paths near this pit and appeared so terrifying that people refused to go there it was only when the desolate castle was finally built that the area was tamed what's fascinating is that haika locates the helmet near the castle rather than below it and no mention is made of the chapel like most legends it's clear the husker story evolved over time still it's clear a large part of the modern version is grounded in fact both via hiker's record and later historical events for instance hoskar was really occupied by the swedes during the 30-year war but while no records of an officer obsessed with the occult survive we do know it was nearly demolished to stop it falling into enemy hands in the end though only the moat was filled in to weaken the fortress as a defensive structure not that oscar would ever be used for defense again in 1700 the noble family in charge finally relocated elsewhere husker was left with a single official to look after it and so hratholska began to slip into obscurity but it would never truly fade away in the 19th century the castle would be resurrected not as a defensive fortress or a seat of aristocracy but as a place of legend [Music] if you ignore the likely fake letter supposedly written by carol heineck maca then the next time hradhoska appears in the record is the 1870s interestingly it features not in a report but in a short story by ernst wenzel which partially revolves around convict being lowered into the pit below hoska and returning half-crazed by what he sees although it's possible that wenzel was basing his tail on real-life folklore it seems more likely that this is a case where the folklore followed the fiction yet there are still plenty of odd things about hoska even on the official record take the frescoes in the chapel while not exactly demonic as some websites claim they are certainly both tinged with paganism and relatively violent there are centaurs and dragons and creatures apparently devouring people nor are they later editions around 1929 when the castle was owned by head of skoda production yosef shimanek restoration work uncovered the frescoes beneath some plaster thought to date from the 14th century they're one of the most atmospheric sights in bohemia likewise nazi interest in holsker during world war ii is something that can be easily verified in the 1940s the reich main security office or rshas am to the seventh department set up an office there but rather than conduct a cult experiment its main purpose was to use holsker for holding millions of stolen manuscripts as the war raged across europe the nazis looted books on jewish history and mysticism masonic rituals occult practices and all sorts of esoterica that classic image of nazis as book burners who hated the written word as journalist anders rydel proved in his reason to the book of thieves this was total nonsense instead the nazis were obsessive collectors who hoarded the libraries of those they killed initially the hoarding was done in berlin but when allied bombing raids began the rsha moved its manuscripts to safer locations one of these was kratholska which became a gigantic repository for among other things rare books on jewish mysticism not that hoskar was the only czech castle involved historian patricia kennedy grimstad had tracked many of these stolen collections including one that wound up in novi falconburg a grand chateau just 40 kilometers north of hosker there under the direction of ss officer werner gotcha a vast occult library was established this library became the foundation of a top-secret occult research project that may have been intended to create a masonic style sect within the ss it's not hard to imagine locals who overheard rumors of an occult project at a castle in the region naturally assumed that it was taking place at the weird and spooky hosco rather than the ornate and comfy novi falcenberg sadly the exact records of which books were kept at hoskar have been lost forever after the war the new communist government in czechoslovakia confiscated the entire castle rare books and all they turned it into an outpost for the national library before shuttering the place in 1970 and dispersing the collection far and wide although dedicated researchers have tracked many of the looted books down many more remain missing but we've still not quite answered the major question of our story how how did hosker go from neglected library outpost to the most infamous castle on the internet well let's find out [Music] from the shutting of the national library outpost in 1970 until the velvet revolution in 1989 almost nothing of interest happened at husker castle there was a half-baked attempt to turn it into a spa retreat that involved digging a deep well in the courtyard but it was eventually called off the one genuinely notable thing that did happen was when rock group plastic people of the universe recorded their debut album there there was this album that led to their arrest by the communist government in turn leading to playwright vatsalov harvell penning the anti-regime chapter 77 which in turn made him czechoslovakia's leading dissident and left him perfectly placed to become president after the 1989 revolution so there you have it hradhoska's small yet pleasing role in both music and political history and speaking of the velvet revolution by the time democracy was restored oscar castle was in a dreadful state returned to the shimanek family it languished for years as a barely known ruin another victim of the communist era's rampant neglect it wasn't until 1994 that its fortunes began to change that was the year that the epic series chas radhov in english the times of castles in bohemia began publishing intended as a comprehensive guide to every castle in the region it delved deep into history and folklore it was in volume 3 that the modern public first learned the spooky tales associated with tradholzka of course a castle reference guide written in czech is never going to popularize a story no matter how fascinating that story is but it was enough to catch the attention of some journalists some of whom reprinted the tales without first framing them as folklore fantastica factor magazine for example published a long piece in september of 1997 that both borrowed from the castle reference guide and added its own flavor it's to this very article that the idea of the defensive walls facing inwards can seemingly be traced along with the idea that the location of the castle is a mystery in and of itself still the tale might have died there had something momentous not happened in 1999. ratholska finally reopened to the public now if you live in the czech republic like both me and the person who wrote the script for this video you'll know that most czech castles aim less to attract the paranormal investigator market and more attract the middle-aged cyclist with an impressive beer gut and a love of clebasa so we're not trying to imply that these stories were a cynical marketing move by the owners but the opening did mean that tv suddenly had much easier access to this creepy castle that same year prima television sent a team out to investigate bringing hoska's mysteries to a wide czech audience for the first time two years later when plastic people of the universe founder milan malia havasa died a whole new slew of camera crews showed up from that point on shows about huskers creepy past became a core part of european tv programming remember this was the peak era for paranormal reality shows when filming psychics talking about evil energies and random sellers was considered prime time entertainment as hoska's reputation grew at home its story soon began migrating onto english language message boards before long anyone online and into creepy tales or mysteries knew about it or at least the version that had appeared in fantastica factor magazine the idea of inward-facing defensive walls and a pit to hell below the chapel became such an accepted part of the law that it's almost impossible to find an english language source that doesn't repeat them it was only thanks to a whole bunch of czech articles in google translate that this video was able to give you anything like the truth today kratholska is an essential part on the legends of prague taurus trail as associated with the czech capital as the golem or rudolph the second alchemy to be honest it probably deserves to be there the 1540s mentioned in chronicles is legit creepy and the chapels frescoes and nazi history are ultimately fascinating and terrifying but in a way it also does the real history of this place a disservice by only focusing on the folklore here is a castle that experienced over 800 years of turbulent european history a place that stood witness to events as diverse as the thirty years war the third reich and czechoslovakia's communist regime it was within gradhoska's walls that music history was made and the path was indirectly set for vaclav havel to one day become czech president it was also here that perhaps millions of invaluable jewish manuscripts were sadly lost victims of a fanatical ss who needed to steal not just their enemies lives but their culture and memories too when a real history of a place has been overshadowed by its folklore it's easy to get negative to bemoan all the unsourced articles looking to only serve up a quick halloween chill but there's also a positive way of looking at it without that folklore it's doubtful anyone would pay attention to kratholska it'd just be another castle in a country with an overabundance of them it's only because of its spooky reputation that we commissioned this video that morris wrote it that i presented it and you watched it and yet thanks to that impulse we now all know far more about both the castle itself and several overlooked events in european history than we ever did before today's video may not have quite been the creepy tale you were expecting but hopefully you found some value in it and if you are ever in radholska listening out for the scratching coming from beneath the floors do take a moment to think about all the things that happened here truth may not be stranger than fiction but it's our belief that history is almost always equally interesting so i really hope you found that video interesting if you did please do hit that thumbs up button below don't forget to subscribe thank you for watching

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Id: Rll0TJtBMpE

Length: 23min 12sec (1392 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 30 2020