Houska Castle

The story

Houska is a Gothic castle at Blatce, in the Liberec region of the Czech Republic, roughly 47 km north of Prague. It dates from the thirteenth century, but who founded it and when is disputed. Czech Wikipedia lists two views: that Jindřich of Dubá built it around 1280-1290, or that King Přemysl Otakar II did. The official site is not consistent: its history page says the first half of the thirteenth century and names Přemysl Otakar II, who reigned later, and its milestones give 1280-1290. The first written mention is also contested: 1291 in Czech Wikipedia, tied to a burgrave’s office, but 1316 in English Wikipedia, when a Hynáček of Dubá was recorded as being of Houska.

After a Renaissance remodeling between 1584 and 1590, the castle stopped serving as a residence in the eighteenth century and decayed. Repairs followed in 1823. In 1897 it passed to a Hohenlohe princess, and in 1924 Josef Šimonek bought it and restored it in 1929-1930, according to the official site.

The documented wartime story is not about demons. During the Second World War the castle was confiscated. Czech Wikipedia, citing a 2010 book by Padevět, says that in August 1943 the Reich Security Main Office made it a depot for Jewish and Masonic books from across Europe, under the code name Burgund II; the official site likewise says it was seized and from 1943 served as a “depozitář židovských a zednářských knih,” a depot of the same kind. Czech Wikipedia says it went back to Šimonek’s heirs in the early 1990s; the official history page says it was returned in restitution and opened to the wider public in 1999, the year English Wikipedia also gives.

The legend

The central legend is that the castle sits on a rock with a bottomless chasm leading to hell, with the chapel built over it, and that the walls were meant to keep the demons in. Czech Wikipedia and the official site both use the words “průrva až do pekla” (a rift reaching all the way to hell).

Its oldest trace is plainer than the tale. The chronicler Václav Hájek of Libočany, in his Kronika česká (first printed in 1541), writes under the year 878 that “nalezena jest nedaleko od toho hradu díra jedna u veliké skále” (a hole was found in a great rock not far from the castle), full of spirits that took the forms of beasts and terrified people on the road until the castle was left empty. We read this as quoted in a 2015 master’s thesis from the Technical University of Liberec, which cites a modern edition; we did not see the 1541 print, and the thesis’s author thanks her father, the castle’s castellan. As quoted, the passage has no hell and no chapel, and the hybrid creatures and dark-winged beings that English Wikipedia attaches to it are not there. The thesis also notes that Hájek’s years are probably invented. A hiking site repeats the tale of the chapel above the fissure; the thesis gives it only as something people say, and we found no early source for it.

The hell comes later. According to the same thesis, a story by Ernst Wenzel in a Prague almanac for 1870 has a prisoner lowered into a pit near the castle, and the historian August Sedláček in 1895 tells of a prisoner promised pardon who is let down by rope, screams to be pulled up and leaves people sure that it is an entrance to hell. The hole is filled and a small church built on it, demolished in 1830. So the pit in these versions lies near the castle, not under its chapel. The detail that he came up aged by thirty years appears in English Wikipedia, citing a 2019 Prague Visitor text; we did not find it in the older versions. A list of creatures (a frog-man, a headless horse, an old woman) comes from a Prague tourism site quoted by Wikipedia. Czech Wikipedia adds a Thirty Years’ War tale of a Swedish commander named Oront, supposedly a black magician who kept a black hen to gain immortality, shot by two hunters with a blessed bullet, whose ghost is said to haunt the castle, and a faceless figure in a black monk’s hood that watches those who come at night. The thesis retells Oront’s story too, placing him after the war; we did not read anything older. The official site itself uses a promotional line, “Díra do pekel, či přestup do jiné dimenze?” (a hole to hell or a crossing into another dimension?).

One text is a modern hoax. A letter attributed to the writer Karel Hynek Mácha, supposedly of 1836, has him pass through Houska’s underground into the Prague of 2006. The hiking site loudavymkrokem.cz calls it a “prokazatelnou literární mystifikací” by the writer Františka Vrbenská, Czech Wikipedia calls it a short story of hers, and the Liberec thesis says she admitted it. Many mystery hunters still believe it genuine. English Wikipedia also mentions myths of Nazi occult experiments at Houska; we found no solid source for them, and the documented wartime use was the book depot.

What remains today

Czech Wikipedia rates it among the best-preserved castles of Přemysl Otakar II, although its fortifications are gone, and says the original Gothic structure survives up to the second floor with many details, together with the painted decoration of the chapel. It is a protected cultural monument. English Wikipedia says visitors can see the chapel, with faded paintings that include figures resembling demons and animals; we did not find a source that connects those paintings to the legend. Czech Wikipedia also says that from 2003 to 2015 the castle hosted a national meeting of researchers of mysteries, the Sphinx Conference. The castle has been featured in the Travel Channel series Legendary Locations and mentioned in a 2022 Forbidden History podcast episode, The Devil’s Bible, according to English Wikipedia, which we did not verify.

Visiting

Houska is open for guided tours only. When we read hradhouska.cz on 6 November 2026, the 2026 season had opened on 3 April and the posted hours ran from April to October, so the season for the following year may differ. Check the castle’s website for dates, hours and prices before you go. You can listen to the guide’s version, then compare it with the history above.

Sources

1. Wikimedia Commons category : Houska Castle — Wikimedia Commons
2. Historie (official history page) — Hrad Houska, 2026-11-06
3. Houska Castle — Wikipedia, 2026-11-06
4. Houska (hrad) — Wikipedia (Czech), 2026-11-06
5. Hrad Houska v proměnách věků (Barbora Dvořáková, master's thesis) — Technical University of Liberec, 2015
6. Hrady: Houska — loudavymkrokem.cz, 2026-11-06
7. Official website
8. Tajemné síly (official legend page) — Hrad Houska, 2026-11-06
9. Wikipedia article — Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Text written by AI from the sources above and checked by a separate AI fact-check (how we work). Images: credits and licenses under each picture.