House of Dr Faustus Prague
Standing on Karlovo namesti (Charles Square) iS a beautiful building with a long history that is as mystical as its name: Faustuv dum (the House of Faust).
The Dr. Faust of legend is well-known for his practice of of black magic and for making a pact with the devil and this particular building was so-named for its long mystical history and the motley successive collection of eccentric inhabitants.
In the 14th century the baroque mansion was owned by keen naturalist and avid alchemyst Prince Vaclav of Opava and he is probably the first in the association of the House with the Faust legend.
During the reign of Rudolf II, the astrologer Jakub Krucinek lived there with two sons the younger of which killed the older one for treasure alleged to have been hidden in the house.
House of Dr Faustus Prague
Later nocturnal dwellers of the Faust house include Edward Kelley (yes the notorious charlatan and assistant to Dr. John Dee?), Ferdinand Antonin Mladota of Solopysky whose chemical experiments (which sometimes led to huge explosions blowing holes in the roof) scared people in the neighbourhood. Mladota’s son was good not only at physics and chemistry but also at mechanics. He astounded his visitors by a door opening itself, a flying staircase or electric shocks while touching the handle.
Later in its colourful history a student living in the House tried, unsuccessfully, to patch the expansive holes in the ceiling. There is a tale that recounts how the poor student found a book of secrets and magic, read some of the spells and was wafted magically through the holes by the devil much in the manner of the unfortunate Dr. Faust.
Probably the most eccentric inhabitant of the Faust house was Karl Jaenig who, in the 19th century, painted the walls with funerary texts, maintained a functional gallows on the premises and slept in a wooden coffin. In his will he stated he wished to be put into his coffin lying face down. Eeh there’s nowt so queer as folk! ‘appen.
Many of the names of the innumerable residents of this mysterious abode are long yet their unusual tastes and bizarre behaviour served to create and maintain a legend.
Unfortunately the Faust House is closed to the public but it can be admired from the outside which is probably all to the better lest you find yourself spirited through the holes in the roof by Old Nick ‘imself.
Steven Dark
Host of dARk arTS Horror Radio – Broadcasting From Beyond the Grave 24/7/365 Vintage Old Time Radio Horror, Mystery and Suspense.
https://darkentertainments.com
http://horror.radio
In 1944, medium Helen Duncan (1897-1956) became the last but one woman in Britain to be convicted of witchcraft when one of her seances exposed a government attempt to cover up the deaths of 861 sailors.
It thus marks the end point of the period Witch trials in the Early Modern period for Great Britain and the beginning of the “modern legal history of witchcraft.” It is generally thought that the last unfortunate woman to be convicted under the 1735 Act was Helen Duncan (1897-1956), who received nine months in May 1944. She had a previous conviction in Edinburgh in the 1930s and was making a substantial sum from her séances in Portsmouth. Helen Duncan’s case though was not the last but the penultimate though more widely known conviction for witchcraft in Britain when one of her seances exposed a government attempt to cover up the deaths of 861 sailors. Over the years her supporters, and there have been many, have tried to obtain a pardon and to clear her name.
It started much the same as her other seances. With a chilling moan and strange white substance leaking from her mouth, Helen Duncan began communicating with the dead… But suddenly, the eerie calm was pierced by a police whistle and officers piled into the house, in Portsmouth, Hants, to arrest Britain’s top medium. The following morning Helen, known as Hellish Nell, was charged under section four of the 1735 Witchcraft Act. It was 1944, and, astonishingly, officials had ordered her arrest because they were afraid she would reveal top-secret plans for the D-Day landings. They had been monitoring her since she had revealed the sinking of a British battleship earlier in the war – even though the government had suppressed the news to maintain morale at home.
Helen was among them and, by the 1930s, she was travelling the country, summoning up spirits before incredulous audiences. But while the seances were making her a celebrity, scientists were already questioning her abilities and, in 1931, she was invited with Henry to London to have her skills tested by psychic researcher Harry Price. He recalls: “She was placed in the curtained recess. In a few seconds, the medium was in a trance. The curtains parted and we beheld her covered from head to foot with cheese-cloth! Some of it was trailing on the floor, one end was poked up her nostril, a piece was issuing from her mouth. I must say that I was deeply impressed – with the brazen effrontery that prompted the Duncans to come to my lab, with the amazing credulity of the spiritualists who had sat with the Duncans and with the fact that they had advertised her ‘phenomena’ as genuine.” In a bid to reveal the contents of Helen’s stomach, Price asked if she would undergo an X-ray. “She refused. Her husband advised her to submit. But that seemed to infuriate her and she became hysterical. She jumped up and dealt him a blow on the face. Suddenly, she jumped up, unfastened the door and dashed into the street – where she had another attack of alleged hysterics and commenced tearing her seance garment to pieces. Her husband dashed after her and she was found clutching the railings, screaming.” Yet the researchers did not bring about Helen’s downfall. Instead, the seeds were sown in the Mediterranean, on November 25, 1941. HMS Barham, a 29,000-tonne battleship, was attacking Italian convoys when it was hit by three German torpedoes. The ship went down within minutes, with the loss of 861 lives. Already reeling from the Blitz, the British government decided to keep the news quiet, even forging Christmas cards from the dead to their families. But they never reckoned on Helen’s psychic powers…
Days after the attack, she held another seance and claimed that a sailor with the words HMS Barham on his hatband appeared and said: “My ship is sunk.” News of the apparition swiftly reached the Admiralty, which finally chose to act two years later, in January 1944, amid fears that Helen would somehow reveal plans for the D-Day landings five months later. When Helen was arrested, everyone expected a swift release. But such was the paranoia of the authorities, she was refused bail and told that she would stand trial at the Old Bailey. It was alleged she had pretended “to exercise or use human conjuration that through the agency of Helen Duncan spirits of deceased dead persons should appear to be present”. News of the case infuriated PM Winston Churchill. In a note to his Home Secretary, Herbert Morrison, he wrote: “Give me a report. What was the cost of a trial in which the Recorder was kept busy with all this obsolete tomfoolery, to the detriment of the necessary work in the courts?” The trial lasted seven days. Mediums had rallied to her cause and their defence fund allowed her barrister to call 44 witnesses to testify she wasn’t a fraud. Yet it was to no avail. Helen served her sentence and emerged from prison that September a changed woman. At first she vowed never to hold another meeting but eventually relented, a fateful decision. The end came in 1956 when she agreed to give a seance in Nottingham. Though the Witchcraft Act had been repealed five years earlier and spiritualism was recognised as a bona fide religion, Helen was arrested and subjected to a strip search. She never got over the shock and, after being rushed to hospital, remained there for the next five weeks and died on December 6. Whether a gifted psychic or a charlatan who exploited people’s griefs, the strange tale of Helen Duncan continues to attract controversy.
The authorities of the time had not seen Bedknobs and Broomsticks, clearly!