According to the pervasive and chilling local legend, the unsettling reason behind Houska’s bizarre construction is horrifyingly simple yet utterly profound: the castle was deliberately erected directly over a bottomless pit. This fissure in the Earth was believed to be a direct portal – a gaping maw – from which demonic creatures, monstrous black-winged beasts, and other unspeakable horrors would emerge at night, plaguing the surrounding countryside.

For generations, the local villagers, steeped in the grim folklore of the region, meticulously avoided the terrifying site. Their claims and whispered warnings solidified the pit’s malevolent reputation:

• They swore that terrifying, inhuman screams and guttural noises could be heard echoing from the abyssal depths of the hole, especially after darkness fell.
• It was widely believed that any person who dared to get too close to the gaping pit would inevitably go mad, driven insane by what they saw or heard, or simply vanish without a trace, swallowed by the infernal chasm.
• The pit was said to be so unfathomably deep that no one had ever been able to find its bottom, no matter how long a rope they lowered into its blackness.

When the castle was finally constructed, the very first structure to be completed, with a chilling sense of purpose, was a sacred chapel. This holy edifice was deliberately positioned and built directly above the dreaded pit, in a desperate, last-ditch effort to seal it shut with the concentrated power of Christian faith and ward off the malevolent forces believed to reside within.

One particularly disturbing and infamous tale from the castle’s dark history speaks of a condemned prisoner. Offered a pardon if he agreed to a perilous task, the desperate man accepted the offer to be lowered into the dreaded hole on a rope, with the instruction to report what he witnessed in its depths. After only a few agonizing seconds of descent, the man began screaming in an unholy, primal terror, his cries echoing from the abyss. When he was frantically pulled back to the surface, he was utterly unrecognizable. He had appeared to age decades in mere moments, his hair having turned stark white, his face contorted into a mask of unimaginable horror. He died shortly thereafter, never speaking coherently again, forever haunted by the unspeakable horrors he briefly glimpsed in the infernal void.