The Why Files: Operation Podcast - 616: The Devil's Bible and the Nazi Hole to Hell

Episode Date: November 3, 2025

Sweden's National Library protects the Codex Gigas—165 pounds of vellum featuring the complete Bible and a terrifying portrait of Satan. Scholars estimate the work should've taken thirty years. Herman the Recluse finished it in one.  The traditional story involves a desperate bargain with darkness. The real story connects this manuscript to a limestone crack in Bohemia where creatures emerged nightly, a duke who sent prisoners into the depths, and a fortress built to seal Hell's gateway.  When the Nazis occupied the site in 1940, they brought excavation equipment and Himmler's personal occult division. What they found made them destroy everything and flee.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgXZ6bVuuN8

Bohemia 1229, a monk named Herman the recluse watched the bricks stack up around him, sealing him in, punishment for his sins. Then Herman made a desperate offer, set him free, and in one night he'd bring glory to the monastery by creating a book containing all the world's knowledge. A manuscript of that size would take 30 years to write. Herman had 12 hours. Impossible. Still, his offer was accepted. His execution could wait one more day. In the morning, the monks unlocked Herman's room, ready to drag him back to his brick tomb. But there was the book, complete, over 600 pages. When Herman was asked how he achieved this, he said, I prayed for help.

The monks were confused. Herman's sins were envy, lust, fornication, and worse. Why would God help him? But Herman didn't pray to God. He prayed to someone else. Herman heard the bolt slide into place and footsteps disappear down the hallway. He was alone. His cell was 12 feet by 8 feet, stone walls, one high window, a table, quill, ink, blank parchment, and can

Hermann thought about the promise he'd made, complete the manuscript by dawn or face amurment. What now? Amurement or immuration is a type of torture where you're enclosed in a tight space and left to die. Ew, it sounds like a spirit airline's flight. Herman was found guilty of serious crimes against God. His punishment was he'd be forced to stand in a stone room no bigger than a coffin, then walled in alive. If the cold didn't kill him, the thirst would, or starvation. or the rats.

Yeah, definitely a spirit airline's flight. Just had the screaming children and a guy next to you eating a tuna sandwich with his shoes off. Herman lit the candle and started writing. The manuscript needed to contain all the world's knowledge, art, science, history, philosophy, mathematics. But Herman decided to start with the Bible. Writing the Bible would help him atone for his sins.

Herman was working through Genesis Chapter 1, when he heard the bell ring for midnight prayer. He swore he had just sat down, but had been three hours. He wasn't halfway finished with the first page. Then he heard three chimes, the Mottons bell. Somehow another three hours had passed, and he barely wrote another word. Herman started to panic. The sun would be up in a few hours.

The heavy door would open, and he'd be dragged to a stone box. He'd been praying to God for help and forgiveness. He received neither. His sins were extreme. God wasn't listening. So Herman decided to pray to someone else. Satan, Lucifer, if you can hear me, I'll give you anything. My soul, my eternal life, anything.

Please let me live. And Herman's prayer was answered. Suddenly the room got cold, and the darkness coalesced into a human form, or almost human. It was over six feet tall with broad shoulders, strong features, handsome even. But the eyes were wrong. They were too dark. No, this guy had BDE. What?

BDE, bad devil energy. The entity spoke with too many voices at once, some laughing, some screaming, and asked if Herman was sure about his offer. You made an offer. Did you mean that? Yes. Anything. My life, my soul, for eternity. as you wish

write Herman did nothing but his hand grabbed the quill dipped it in ink and he started writing he was a passenger in his own body but the words poured out 400 pages

then 500 pages then on page 577 Herman didn't write words he drew a full page illustration of the manuscript's true author the first self-portrait and history of the devil himself. Worst set a fold ever.

You stepped on my cliffhanger. I'm just trying to lighten the mood a little bit. I don't need you to lighten the mood. I need you to keep the jokes at the top of the scene and let me build the drama. We're going to be here all night. The holidays sneak up fast, but it's not too early to get your shopping done and actually have fun with it. Uncommon goods makes holiday shopping stress-free and joyful. With thousands of one-of-a-kind gifts you can't find anywhere else.

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They expected to find him dead or insane. Instead, they found the manuscript, 620 pages. But what was the most striking was the size, not the length of the length of the the book, the actual size. It was 36 inches tall, 20 inches wide at nine inches thick. It weighed 165 pounds, just the book. The abbot lifted the cover and couldn't believe it. The complete Old Testament was there. Every book, every chapter, every verse, perfect Latin calligraphy. He turned the pages. The New Testament. Matthew through Revelation. Not a single error, not one smudge or correction. But the Bible was just the beginning.

The next section contained Josephus' antiquities of the Jews, the complete history of the Jewish people from creation through the Jewish revolt against Rome, 40 years of historical documentation, transcribed perfectly. Then the siege of Jerusalem, the destruction of the Second Temple, the fall of Masada. The monks kept turning pages. Isidore of Seville's etymologies was next, 20 volumes of knowledge. grammar, rhetoric, mathematics, medicine, agriculture, architecture, and warfare. Everything scholars knew about the natural world.

Then the Chronicle of Bohemia, the complete history of their own land, kings and battles, and politics going back 400 years. Herman had documented their entire civilization. Next were two medical texts, techniques for identifying diseases, treatments, herbal remedies. Then a text on anatomy and physiology. how the body worked, why it failed, and how to heal it. Then the pages turned dark. A whole chapter with magic formulas, incantations in Latin,

some in languages the monks didn't recognize, symbols that predated Christianity, geometric patterns that seemed to move in candlelight. There were protection spells, ways to trap evil spirits in physical objects. There were even instructions for identifying demonic possession, seven signs, 14 symptoms. The possessed would speak in tongues,

Displays superhuman strength, and no secrets they couldn't possibly know. They react violently to holy water and blessed salt or sacred relics. Herman had created an operational manual for spiritual warfare. As the monks turned the pages, they became more and more concerned. Then page 577. A full-page portrait of Satan. Green face, red horns, two forked tongues, clawed hands reaching outward, trapped between two towers.

Opposite Satan, the heavenly sin. city, fortified walls and golden spires, the eternal battle between good and evil. The manuscript continued, alphabets in multiple languages, spells for protection against night creatures. A few monks asked why there are so many rituals for creating weapons to fight unholy forces. Herman said he didn't know, but the abbot sighed and in a shaky voice said, I do. Houska Castle sits on a limestone cliff in the forest of Bohemia, a few miles north of the monastery. The castle had always been strange.

First, its location doesn't make sense. It has no strategic value. It's not near any trade routes. It's not near a water source. Then there's the building's design. It didn't have a kitchen, no sleeping quarters. But the most concerning design elements were the fortifications. They faced the wrong way.

They didn't face out. They faced toward the courtyard. The castle wasn't built to keep enemies out. It was built to keep something in. Before the castle existed, the locals spoke of a crack in the limestone that exposed a bottomless pit. They called it a hole to hell.

They threw rocks in and never heard them land. They lowered in rope, and no matter how long, it never touched the bottom. Strange sounds came from the hole. Whispers, screams. Words and languages nobody recognized. Local tribes said the hole was torn open thousands of years ago, and something ancient and evil lived deep in the earth.

Yeah, was it a magic seal fetus? No. A crab cat? No. A magic seal fetus. Demons. Yeah, that makes more sense. In Herman's time, the situation was desperate.

Entire villages were terrorized. Farmers found their livestock drained of blood. Animals were twisted in unnatural shapes. Travelers who went too deep in the forest, forest were found days later in pieces, if they were found at all. The local clergy was overwhelmed. Whatever was down there, the church couldn't stop it. No army could stop it.

This was spiritual warfare. But the priest knew they needed something more powerful than prayers and holy water. They needed instructions for identifying, confronting, and defeating these forces of darkness. And just a few miles away, a monk named Herman the recluse had created exactly the weapon they needed. Herman's Codex had turned the tide of the war. For 40 years, the evil was contained. Villages were resettled. Travelers reached their destination safely.

Preachers still crawled from the pit every night, but now they faced organized resistance. But the war was taking its toll. The monks were exhausted and running out of resources. For every demon they banished, two took its place. Even with Herman's manual, they would eventually lose. In the late 13th century, Duke Adikar II investigated the hole, and just as the legend said, it had no bottom,

the Duke needed to know what was in there. The castle dungeon was empty, and prisoners were given a choice, death by torture, or go in the hole and report everything they see. The guards lowered the first prisoner. They heard screaming. They felt the rope twitch violently and then go still. When they pulled the man up, his hair was completely white.

He aged 50 years in minutes, and he was babbling about frogs the size of men, shadows with eyes, and a massive entity staring up from below. Dugatakar tried again with a different prisoner. Same result, rapid aging and total insanity. Each experiment revealed more horrors. This was more than a pit. It was a gateway, a source of evil that would bring demons into the world until the end of time. The Duke decided that if the church couldn't close the gateway with prayer, he would close it with stone.

Massive limestone blocks were quarried and brought to the site. Monks blessed every stone. They consecrated the mortar. They prayed over every beam of wood. Piece by piece, a fortress took shape above the sealed pit. And finally, a chapel was built on top of the slabs. The chapel was dedicated to the warrior St. Michael. Yeah, smart.

If you got a demon leaking hellmouth in your basement, building a church on top of it, it's just good property management. Well, it was a symbol of faith-conquering evil. It's a divine cork, you're not. and a holy bottle cap and a fizzy drink from hell. Let's call it what it is. When the last stone was set, the gateway to hell in Houska Castle was finally sealed,

and it would stay sealed for 700 years. Then, new dark forces arrived that didn't want the evil contained, they wanted to channel it for their own purposes. That was 1940, when the Nazis took Houska Castle and started digging. May 1940, northern Bohemia, SS officer Klaus Mendel stood at the edge of the forest studying Hauska Castle through binoculars. Gray stone, no strategic value, no transportation routes, no resources, worthless. But Himmler's orders were clear, secure the castle, excavate the chapel

floor, tell no one why. Mendel read the files, medieval texts about bottomless pits, prisoner experiments from the 1270s, ancient artifacts, mystical manuscripts, superstitions, just nonsense. But he wouldn't tell Himmler that. Himmler believed in the occult, and more importantly, so to the furor. They thought these things held real power, and the power could be controlled and weaponized. The SS convoy arrived with 40 men and equipment, radar, medical instruments, and prisoners. Lots of prisoners. The chapel floor was limestone slabs, each weighing over a ton. Prayers had been carved into the stone. Latin phrases meant to bind and seal the pit. The jackhammers didn't care about prayers.

After seven days, they finally broke through the floor. The pit lived up to its reputation. It was deep and dark, and not only was it bottomless, the hole seemed to swallow all sound around it. The first prisoner was a math professor from Prague, 43 years old. His hands were shaking when guards strapped him to the harness. They lowered him slowly, 50 feet, 100.

At 200 feet, the screaming started. They hauled him up fast. His black hair had turned white. He looked like he was 80 years old. And he was manic, laughing and rambling. As the sedative took effect, he whispered, They're waiting, so many teeth. He died that night of heart failure.

Over three weeks, they lowered 11 more prisoners. One described frog creatures the size of men, hundreds climbing the walls of the hole. Another came up speaking a language no one recognized. One prisoner clawed his own eyes out. He said seeing was worse than blindness. Three prisoners didn't come back at all. Over time, the castle changed.

Animals avoided the area. The forest was deadly quiet, no birds, no insects. At night, green lights flashed in the chapel windows. Soldiers heard sounds in the walls, scratching, whispering. Three guards deserted. Mendel didn't bother searching for them. The remaining men stopped sleeping, intentionally. Their dreams became vivid nightmares that felt more real than reality.

They went through gallons of coffee. and lots of amphetamins, anything to stay awake. Then Mendel, the skeptic, began to see movement at the edge of his vision. He felt like he was being watched. He could swear he heard the wind whisper his name. In January 1945, orders came from Berlin. The Allies were coming.

Destroy everything. The equipment, the research, all documents, everything. And that was fine with Mendel. Surrender was better than spending one more night at that castle. They poured concrete into the hole. A titanium plate was welded over the top, and steel locks were added. Finally, landmines were placed all over the property, and 80 years later, the landmines are there still.

The current owners say the mines make it too dangerous to dig, but locals know that's only half the story. The Nazis came looking for something in House Good Castle. Nobody knows for sure what they found, but they made it so whatever it was, nobody would ever find it again. Something people ask me all the time is what shirts I'm wearing on the show, and I'm about to let you in on the secret. It's true classic. You've probably seen me in the long-sleeve Henleys, because let's be honest, half my closet is true classic at this point. And that's not a gimmick.

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with defenses facing inward, both in 13th century Bohemia. But what's true? Well, the Konex gigas, which is just Latin for big book, the codex is definitely real. It's been in Sweden's national libraries since 1648. And today you can see digital scans of every page. You can read the spells, study the patterns, look at the drawing of Satan on page 577. It's all there. Herman the recluse existed. But the codex took decades to complete, not one night.

It was actually 20 to 30 years of continuous work. That's the realistic timeline. The overnight creation legend emerged because the handwriting consistency seems impossible. Everyone's handwriting changes as you age, but the writing in the codex doesn't. It stays consistent. But that consistency proves methodical work, not rushed to panic. A monk working through one desperate night would show mistakes, sloppiness, declining quality. The codex shows none of that.

Same spacing, same pressure, same style, start to finish. and Carbon Dating confirms the book took about 25 years to write. We know Herman existed because he signed the Codex, but there's no historical record of a monk named Herman committing crimes against God or to being sentenced to a murement. That part of the story first appeared hundreds of years after the codex was written. The devil portrait on page 577 is weird, but it's not unique. Medieval manuscripts often included images of Satan as warnings about morality,

Being drawn opposite the heavenly city is standard Christian iconography, good versus evil, heaven versus hell. The most unusual aspect of the book isn't the concept, it's the size and detail. Scribes didn't create books this big. It was just too expensive. The codex is made from over 160 animal skins. The ink was expensive. The gold leaf used to decorate the pages was expensive.

When the church burned thousands of books referencing dark magic and the devil, they didn't burn the codex, probably because it was so unusual. and so valuable. Monks often protected rare works like this. There is one unresolved mystery about the codex, though. Right after the section on exorcism, 10 pages were carefully cut out, and nobody knows what was on those pages, but legend says they contain instructions for summoning demons, or the devil himself. As for Houska Castle, the pit is really there. Limestone caves are common in Bohemia, so it's probably just a sinkhole or a deep cavern, and probably isn't bottomless, but we don't know for sure.

Nobody's seen it in hundreds of years. And if you find pictures online, they're fake. Now, at first, the castle's design does seem strange. The fortifications do face inward. But Otter II used the castle as a prison for a while. Inward-facing defenses would help guards keep an eye on the prisoners. And the location also doesn't make sense unless it's a prison. because it has no strategic value, no water source, it's not near any trade routes,

but if Otokar was building a prison, he'd probably want it somewhere remote. Speaking of Otokar, he did conduct experiments on prisoners there in the 1270s. Those are documented. What he found in the pit and why he sealed it, we don't know. Now, Himmler's interest in the occult is also a fact. He created the largest collection of books on witchcraft, the supernatural, and occult practices in history, over 13,000 manuscripts. And some believe Himmler stored his collection.

in Hauska to protect it from Allied bombing. Others say the SS was there for something else, either black magic rituals or experiments on locals trying to create a master race. But without documentation, all we have are rumors. There's also no evidence that Himmler read the Codex Gagas. We can assume he was aware of it, but the Swedish National Library has no record of any Nazi official requesting access to the book. But the occupation of the castle, the destruction of records, and even placing landmines around the property? That's all true. How's good castle opened a tourist in 1999? You can take guided tours. You can walk through the chapel. You can see the frescoes. You can stand over the sealed pit. And many people have reported strange

sightings at the castle. And if you're brave enough, you can go see it for yourself. So how do we explain the codex? Why create such a strange and dark book? Well, medieval people lived in constant fear. Plague, war, famine. When they couldn't explain suffering, they know. named it. Demons, monsters, evil crawling from the ground, which is probably why the Codex survived and became so famous. If there were a manual for fighting evil, then evil could be fought. And if evil could be fought, it could be defeated. And the Codex explains how to do it. So the Codex isn't about making a deal with the devil. It's about fighting him. The Codex is about hope. Herman spent 30 years creating a manuscript that gave people hope in the face of unknown terror. Whether the demons

were real, doesn't matter. fear was real. Herman didn't need supernatural help to create something extraordinary. He had something more powerful. Faith. The Codex and Houska Castle exist. Both are steeped in legend. But more importantly, both are testaments to human courage and determination in the face of evil. And both were created to protect the innocent and punish the guilty. And both were created to give people hope. Now that's not legend. That's history. And it's history worth remembering. Thank you so much for hanging out today. My name is A.J.

Here's hecklefish. PHS who dominate out. Dona S. Requiem out. This has been the Wi-Files. Get fun or learn something. I'd really appreciate it if you like, subscribe, share, comment. That stuff, I think that stuff really helps. Like most topics we cover on the channel,

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Those are the plugs. I cut them down a little bit. Felt a little better. We have new ones coming, though. I promise. Anyway, that's going to do it. Until next time, be safe. Be kind. And know that you are appreciated. I play for Libby, a scenario 51. A secret code inside the Bible said I was. I love my kids. UFOs and paranormal

fun as well as music So I'm singing like I should But then another piece Fear is see theory It comes the truth My friends And it never ends No it never ends

I fear the crap cat and got stuck inside males' home with M.K.L. truck of being only two of where. Did Stanley Kubrick fake the moon landing alone on a film set with shadow people there? The Roswell aliens just fought the smile. Man, I'm told, and his name was cold. And I can't believe I'm dancing with the fishes. Had no fish on Thursday, next Wednesday, J-2, and the wife are laughing at me all through the night.

All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth so the one falls on my feet all through the night. The Mothman's sightings and the solar storms still come to have got the secret city underground. Mysterious number stations, planet's Earth O two, Project Stargate, and where the dark watch found in a simulation don't you worry though the black night

said a light it told me so I can't believe I'm dancing with the fish heck of fish on Thursday nights when they chase

you and the white balls have been all to the night all I ever wanted was to just hear the truth so the white balls of repeat all through the night Handful fish on Thursday next when they change you

and the white miles have to be all through the night All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth So the one falls on repeat all through the line girlie love to dance girlie love to dance because she is a camel and camels love to dance when the feeling is right on wasting time

Get in love to day. Get in love to be.