Somewhere in the Skies - HALLOWEEN SERIES | Houska Castle: The Gateway to Hell

Starting point is 00:00:01 This episode is brought to you by Netflix. Most valuable promotions in Netflix are hosting a blockbuster triple headliner Saturday, May 16th. Rhonda Rousey returns to face fellow woman's MMA pioneer Gina Carano in the main event. Plus co-main's Nate Diaz versus Mike Perry. And the best heavyweight in the world, Francis Ngano versus Felipe Lenz. Watch Rhonda Rousey versus Gina Carrano, live only on Netflix. Saturday, May 16th at 9 p.m. Eastern Center time, 6 p.m. Pacific time. In the 13th century, Huska Castle was built, likely by the ruler Otikar, the second of Bohemia.

Starting point is 00:00:45 Located around 50 kilometers from the capital city of Prague, the formidable-looking castle is situated noticeably out of the way of convenient trade, has no nearby water source, and was built with no kitchens. The castle's long-ruined fortifications are built facing into the castle, an inversion that is exceedingly rare in European castles. The castle doesn't even have usable windows. Behind the window panes are nothing but walls. This grand castle atop the limestone cliff seems unsuitable for the living. The castle changed hands multiple times throughout the centuries

Starting point is 00:01:28 and functioned as a prosaic administrative building until it fell into disuse and disrepair in the 18th century. Beginning even before the time of the castle's construction, folk wisdom and lore has maintained that the limestone cliff is the site of a chasm, a bottomless pit leading straight to hell. A 9th century legend recounted by the 1541 Czech Chronicle describes an unfathomably deep crack in the ground, and what came out of it to kill the villagers' livestock

Starting point is 00:02:07 and strike fear into the villagers. Visitors from the chasm include chimeras, such as a frog crossed with a human, winged monsters, and ghosts have all been said to have emerged from the depths and entered the mortal realm. Villagers' desperate attempts to seal off the chasm with enough stones or other debris were in vain. After all, how do you fill a bottomless pit?

Starting point is 00:02:36 The panic obviously caught the attention of area authorities, who took it seriously. When Huska Castle was built, it was said that the castle's chapel was built directly over the pit in order to once and for all seal away the visitors from hell. Nevertheless, curiosity persisted about the nature of the pit.

Starting point is 00:03:00 During the 13th century construction of Huska Castle, legend has it that local prisoners sentenced to death were offered full partings. If they agreed to be lowered down into the pit, take a look around and report back on what,

Starting point is 00:03:16 if anything, they saw in the dark. The first volunteer was lowered by rope into the dark. No sooner had he disappeared, then he began screaming and terror. lifted out of the portal, his dark hair had gone completely white, and his face had aged decades. Whatever it was he encountered had completely maddened him. Accounts here differ on whether he was locked away in an asylum or if attempts were made to nurse him

Starting point is 00:03:50 back to coherency. Regardless, the variations on the tail agree that within a matter of days, he was dead. With the construction of the castle hurried to completion, it would seem from the dearth of records that the many terrors stalking out of the pit were indeed sealed off from the world. In the 14th century, an artist added frescoes

Starting point is 00:04:16 to the walls of Huska that depicted nightmarish sights, such as demons and monsters, plaguing mortal souls. Some say these are records of what happened, at the site of the castle and offer a reason for why the castle exists. A couple of hundred years later in 1836, Czech poet Karel Heinek, Macha, spent a night at Huska, and supposedly, in his dreams, was visited by a terrible vision, which he later recounted in a letter to his friend Edward Hindo. Mata described his soul descending into the pit, and then being transported into a hellish mechanized future,

Starting point is 00:05:00 Prock, 2006, to be exact, where he wandered in horror and despair. Among other unnerving experiences in this vision, Macha wrote that he met a girl who showed him moving pictures in a small casket, and that in darkness he walked among high sandstone cliffs, riddled with holes, that projected an eerie yellow lens,

Starting point is 00:05:25 light, uncannily similar to the enormous blocks of flats, which in the present day loom about the outskirts of Prague. So how did these visions of the future emerge from his subconscious? Was it really only a dream? Or is it possible that he was actually transported ahead in time? There are those who believe this to be true. This isn't to say that the story ends here. Whereas the castle successfully kept in the worst of the pit to hell, humans throughout history have introduced their own unique horrors into the castle, ensuring that Huska's dark reputation only increased with time. Throughout the centuries, Huska's notoriety drew in those attracted to harnessing its power

Starting point is 00:06:19 through occult practices and black magic. During the Thirty Years' War, legend has it that a mercenary of the occupying Swedish force, a brutal tyrant, known as Or Orant, took up residence at the castle. As well as being a violent force in the area, local history tells of Aronto's interest in alchemy and black magic. Attracted by the terrifying history of the castle, he performed animal sacrifices within its walls regularly, seeking to draw out and control. whatever malevolent power dwelt there. When he was finally killed at Huska by a local hunter, it was said that this evil remained at home on the grounds.

Starting point is 00:07:07 This brutal and power-hungry soldier remains one of the malicious spirits said to haunt the castle, even up until today. While Arundo's legend is apocryphal, modern history proves that indeed the castle's undeniable mystery drew in occult-minded groups hungry to gain power for evil ends. From 1938 onward, the Nazis began their brutal campaign of annexing, Sudentiland, and ultimately occupying Czechoslovakia. Among Adolf Hitler's top leaders was Reichserfururr, SS Reich leader Enrich Himmler.

Starting point is 00:07:48 Himmler, known as the founder of what's been coined esoteric Hitlerism, had a penchant for the occult and sought to integrate it into Nazi ideology and practice. With Czechoslovakia now under Nazi control, Himmler took an interest in the notorious castle. From 1939, until the end of the war, Nazis occupied Huska Castle for an oddly specific purpose. Himmler's obsessively dedicated library of esoteric and occult manuscripts, some 500,000 of them were transferred to Huska Castle for safekeeping through the war. Under the auspices of the Nazi's ideological research and evaluation office, which was, for all intents and purposes, a Nazi think tank that oversaw the proliferation of Nazi ideology

Starting point is 00:08:42 and anti-Semitic propaganda, the special interest library was kept handy. For what purpose is still unknown. official record of what the Nazis got up to at Huska Castle remained shrouded in mystery throughout World War II. There is some speculation that the castle was also used as a site for Leibbonsborn, a maternity program that the Nazis ran to encourage racially pure women by Nazi standards, to birth perfect Aryan babies. At the Leibonsbourne, the children would be raised and indoctrinated in Nazi ideology. Some children from other European countries who were deemed Aryan enough were even kidnapped from their families and brought to such centers to be Germanized and handed off to German parents.

Starting point is 00:09:37 Huska Castle might have served as a site for this shocking program. There remain theories that the occult obsessed SS, with their wealth of knowledge and books about the occult on hand, might have done as Oranto, the Swedish mercenary did hundreds of years before, used the castle's uniquely terrifying environment to feed their power through shocking experiments on prisoners and conducting rituals and sacrifices within the chapel. When their defeat was all but certain, the Nazis set fire to many of their records,

Starting point is 00:10:16 some of those records being about the goings-on at Huska. regardless of what the Nazis might have gotten up to, the evil they brought to Huska Castle sealed its reputation as a fearful place beyond faded legends. So what is of Huska Castle today? In 1999, Huska Castle opened to the public as a tourist attraction. After years of disuse, it sees thousands of tourists every year. Striking a dramatic cliff-top image, it's considered a remarkably well-preserved building. But the location's dark valences continue to influence the area to this day.

Starting point is 00:11:01 Locals say cars often won't start near Huska Castle. Some have reported sightings of strange creatures flying in the area after dark, and dark silhouettes haunt the castle, including one in the shape of a monk. And if you stand in the castle's chapel and listen very closely, many agree that you can hear a scratching sound from a gateway just beneath the floors. A reminder that the past is never far at Huska Castle. You're great of protecting your data, but lots of places could still expose you to identity theft. I thought it was safe.

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Somewhere in the Skies - HALLOWEEN SERIES | Houska Castle: The Gateway to Hell

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