Welcome to Unexplained Extra with me Richard McClain smith, where for the weeks in between episodes, we look at stories and ideas that, for one reason or other, didn't make it into the previous show. Last week's episode, Lying in Wait detailed the haunting experience of a group of US Marines who spent sixty days stationed on top of a notorious observation point in Helmand Province in South Afghanistan, known
to some as the Rock. It is perhaps unsurprising that stories of ghosts should materialize out of the experiences of war, given the ever present proximity of death and the heightened emotional state of all those caught up in it. Ultimately, however, it is the location of this story that takes center stage. Though the people change, it endures like a strange radio tower made of earth and rock, broadcasting the tales of
a land haunted by decades of conflict. Though somewhat of a tangent, it put me a mind of another equally strange location that has become synonymous with wartime tales of the strange and unnerving. It was back in March twenty sixteen that a worker at a storage depot used by the National Library of the Czech Republic, came across an unusual collection of books that had not seen the light
of day since the nineteen fifties. Comprised of various occult texts as well as histories of witchcraft, freemasonry, and folklore, the collection is believed to have formed part of a vast book library, much of its stolen of similar material that had once been the possession of Heinrich Himler, as the head of the German s S Unit. It is thought that Himmler intended to keep the books at Castlevevelsburg in Germany, which he'd earmarked as a potential headquarters for
the ss. Some, however, believed that many of the books were in fact taken to another, even more mysterious castle, located in the forests of Bohemia in modern day Czech Republic,
for reasons that have never been entirely clear. Perhaps we might find a clue in one of my favorite horror films of the nineteen eighties, Michael Mann's flowed nineteen eighty three masterpiece The Keep, based on the book by Paul Wilson, tells the story of a troop of German s S soldiers stationed at a strange and ancient castle high up in the Carpathian Mountains in Romania, who are slowly being
killed off by a mysterious force located there. The force is later revealed to be a dark and powerful entity that had been trapped in the depths of the castle's keep, only to be reawakened by the presence and nefarious energy of the German soldiers. I have no evidence to suggest the keep was based on the stories surrounding house could castle, but there's certainly good reason to think it was. The prisoner leant over the edge and peered down into the
unfathomable deep beyond. As far off from out of the depths of the surrounding forest, A wolf howled. As the man continued to stare. He was almost certain he felt a warm air beginning to rise up from somewhere deep inside the crevasse. When he caught sight of something slithering about in the darkness, the prisoner jumped back from the edge, his feet scuffing at the rock, sending a handful of
dust and pebbles cascading down into the abyss. As the prisoner clung gratefully to the rope tied tightly around his waist. All about waited expectantly for the sound of the rocks hitting the bottom, but no such sound came back. The prisoner looked pleadingly toward heineck Burker. He changed his mind. He said he'd rather faced the noose than spend another second near this place. But heineck Burker didn't flinch and waved for the soldiers to begin lowering the man into
the vast, endless crevasse. According to local legend, the fisher had appeared one morning sometime in the early thirteenth century, striking a seemingly endless cleft through a small limestone ridge deep within the forests of Central Bohemia in present day
Czech Republic, roughly sixty kilometers north of Prague. Reports of strange, half human, half demonic creatures seen flying out of the crevasse, killing and mutilating, called livestock, soon began to circulate, While some claimed that anyone walking too close to the rift would be dragged into it, only to return half human, half demonic themselves. The locals called it the gateway to Hell.
As the story goes, heinech Burker of Duba, a confidant of the reigning monarch of the time, Ottakar the Second, took it on himself to investigate the rumors. After locating the mysterious crack, Burker offered to pardon any condemned prisoner who was willing to be lowered into it to see
what exactly was down there. On the first attempt, a prisoner, equipped with a burning torch to light the way, was lowered by Burker's guards into the hole, being dropped deeper and deeper until a distant, horrific scream was heard shooting up from deep inside the chasm. With the guards working furiously to recover the man, he emerged finally into the light, his eyes vacant and lips trembling as he mumbled something indecipherable.
His hair had turned completely white. If you're an entrepreneur or independent professional, now it's the time to accelerate ahead of all your competitors, and I want to help you do just that. I got together with Proton, an app based all in one tool for small businesses, and we're
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Proton dot com slash unexplained. One of the only sources, if not the only, source, that gives some indication as to when house could castle was built can be found in vaslav high X Chronica Cheska or Bohemian Chronicles, which was first published in fifteen forty three. In it, Hayak makes reference to a certain castle of Hauska being in
existence as far back as thirteen sixteen. The eponymous Hauska is thought to have been the son of famed ruler Slavi Bore, who may have built a wooden fortress on the site of what would later become Hausker Castle sometime in the tenth century, naming it after his son. Heineck Berker is believed to have built a stone castle on the same spot sometime in the mid thirteenth century, then later adopted the name Hausker for himself, becoming Heineck Berker
of Hauska. It is said that Burker, having either been convinced of the diabolic nature of the mysterious crack in the forest, or simply as a way to placate the local population who believed it, constructed the castle in an effort to keep whatever terrible things might emerge from it at bay. Substantial stone plate were laid over the apparent crack in the limestone ridge. A chapel was then constructed over the offending spot around which the castle was built.
Apocryphal or knot, there are numerous facts about the castle that suggests there may be more than a little truth to its supposed dark origins. For a start, being located in the depths of what at the time would have been almost impenetrable forest and swamp plant, while also being nowhere near a fresh water source. The castle, which would have been incredibly expensive to build, had absolutely no strategic
purpose whatsoever, adding further to the mystery. Although the castle was significantly altered in the seventeenth century, with its towers, moat and defenses being removed, it is said to have originally been constructed in such a way that its fortifications faced inward toward the chapel. The only explanation for this, it seems, is that the ustle was built as a defense not against the outside world, but against what was
contained within it. While inside the chapel, frescoes dating from the fourteen hundreds that still survived today to pick scenes of the archangel Michael fighting a dragon symbolic of his fight against supposed evil, as well as an image of him weighing souls for their last judgment. As the Bible has it, it is the archangel Michael who was given
the task of defeating Satan in the end times. Another image found inside the chapel appears to show a female centaur holding a bow in their left hand, which some have identified as being significant since the left hand has often been associated with the devil. In the seventeenth century, Housca Castle was located in the Kingdom of Bohemia, also referred to as the Czech Kingdom, within the broader umbrella
of the Holy Roman Empire. During the early seventeenth century, much of the Empire was embroiled in a bitter and bloody battle as two of its major players, the Habsburg family and the French House of Borbon, battled for supremacy. The resulting conflict, one of the most destructive in European history, would eventually last for thirty years, becoming known as the Thirty Years War, and claimed the lives of anywhere between
four and a half to eight million people. During the war, many other peripheral powers were drawn into it to protect their various territories within the Empire, including Gustavus Adolphus, the then King of Sweden. As a consequence, it is rumored that a Swedish commander named O'tronto used his involvement in the war as an opportunity to secure Castle Housker for himself, having been drawn to it by its dark and tantalizing mythology.
After capturing the castle during the Swedish Army's forays into Bohemia. A Toronto, a supposed alchemist and practitioner of magic, is said to have made attempts to harness the strange energy said to be contained within the castle's walls. While a Toronto was staying at the castle, it is believed that his soldiers were given free reign to rape and pillage
the surrounding communities in revenge. While also unnerved by the reports of strange occult experiments being carried out at the castle, two local hunters assassinated the Swedish commander, supposedly killing him while he was in the mists of one such strange experiment. In the years after a. Toronto's supposed occupation, the castle
is thought to have fallen into severe disrepair. After being restored significantly in the early nineteenth century, it began once again to draw in all manner of visitors curious to know more about the peculiar fortress on the Limestone Cliff. In eighteen thirty six, poet Carol Heinick Masher, while in the middle of a walking tour of the local area, is said to have spent a night at the castle.
That night, it is claimed that Masha fell into a deep but fitful sleep, in which he found himself drifting toward the chapel, only to be pulled deep below the floor and threw into the chasm below it. Moments later, he found himself wandering unfamiliar streets, soon realizing he'd been
propelled two hundred years into the future. As he apparently wrote in a letter to a friend, he was surrounded by huge towers like sandstone cliffs, with holes dotted throughout them, from out of which eerie yellow light was shining like modern day tower blocks. Perhaps while later you saw a woman on the street watching moving pictures out of a
small boxlike contraption she was holding in her hand. Just over a hundred years later, under the orders of Adolf Hitler, the German army invaded Czechoslovakia, and a short time later a troop of SS guards was stationed at Castle Houska. Just why they were there, however, remains a mystery. Today, Hauska Castle remains open to visitors, nestled deep within the forests of Bohemia as beguiling and incomprehensible. As Ever, if you enjoy unexplained and would like to help supporters, you
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