Castle Houska: Gateway to Hell Part 1

Astonishing Legends

Scott Philbrook

History, Society & Culture

4.6 • 9.8K Ratings

🗓️ 17 September 2017

⏱️ 103 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The descriptor "Hell Hole" can currently describe anything from your first apartment to the workplace you dread, but where do we get that term? Ages ago, could there have been a hole that people believed led straight to the depths of hell itself? There are several sites in our world that could lay claim to that title, where the "veil" to the underworld seems a little "thin," but a historically solid contender would no doubt be Houska Castle, about 40 miles north of Prague in the Czech Republic. Tales of demonic beasts issuing forth from the chasm and visiting violence upon villagers and ghastly specters scaring those who roam the castle grounds have been known since the Middle Ages to the present, but what of the edifice itself? No matter what you believe about the folklore, what can't be denied is that the castle was not built for the usual reasons – instead of a fortification to keep people out, it was built to keep things in.

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0:29.9	This week's episode of astonishing legends is brought to you by the Great Courses Plus,
0:33.4	Policy Genius, Blue Apron, and our contributors at patreon.com.
0:37.6	Almost 1200 years ago, sometime around the year 827,
0:42.9	Sorby and Prince Slaviborr was born in the city of Melnick,
0:47.2	which is located in the central Bohemian area of the Czech Republic.
0:51.8	Prince Slaviborr was a man of the people,
0:54.3	known for taking good care of them.
0:56.5	He burnt wooded areas to make way for fertile ground that could be farmed,
1:00.9	and founded several new villages to ensure that his subjects would prosper.
1:05.6	He's probably most famously known in history,
1:08.2	for being the father of Saint Ludmila,
1:11.1	who was strangled to death by henchmen sent at the behest of her daughter-in-law,
1:15.7	1096 years ago, almost to the day,
1:19.1	this episode of astonishing legends is being posted.
	...

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