Faust House

The building once occupied by the famous English alchemist Edward Kelley and long regarded as the very heart of dark magic.

Faust House, officially recorded in the chronicles as Mladota Palace and standing on Prague’s Charles Square, has been considered the ultimate epicenter of black magic for centuries. Its foundational curse is brutally clear: anyone who remains within its walls gains staggering wealth and forbidden knowledge, but must eventually surrender their immortal soul.

The house’s sinister reputation was forged by an unprecedented parade of eccentric owners. In the 16th century the astrologer Jakub Krucinek lived here; his family became the first documented victims of the curse when his younger son murdered his older brother in a quest for the illusionary alchemical gold rumored to be hidden in the cellars. Late in the same century, the English occultist Edward Kelley turned the building into the undisputed center of the dark arts. He set up a massive laboratory in the attic, where he tried to create an artificial man and change lead into gold. Kelley also built a unique sixty-step spiral staircase, and his experiments with volatile chemicals regularly triggered violent explosions that blew holes in the roof—gaps the superstitious townsfolk believed were demons bursting out of Hell.

In the 18th century the engineer Josef Mladota filled the house with fantastic machines: doors that opened by themselves, knobs that shocked unwanted guests with static electricity, and mechanical dolls wandering from room to room. To contemporaries, these marvels were indistinguishable from a pact with Satan. The final flourish arrived in the 19th century with chaplain Karl Jenig. Obsessed with death, he slept in a wooden coffin, kept a human skull and a fragment of real gallows rope in his study, and draped the walls with funeral banners.

Such a concentration of extraordinary residents spawned abundant folklore, whose central legend later tied the house to Doctor Faust himself. When Faust’s pact with the Devil expired, the demon Mephistopheles allegedly dragged him to Hell straight through the ceiling, leaving a gaping hole. The curse’s workings are detailed in the tale of a penniless student who moved into the empty house afterward. Every morning he found a silver thaler on the table. Once he grew wealthy, he discovered a library of grimoires and, driven by greed, tried to command the demons himself. That illusion of control proved fatal: one day he vanished without a trace. Neighbors found only a wrecked, blood-soaked room and the torn carpet that had covered the famous hole in the ceiling. The Devil had taken him the same way he had taken Faust. Countless attempts to seal the scorched, sulfur-reeking opening have failed: by morning the bricks are blasted out, the mortar turned to dust, and any effort to close the portal calls forth a ghost.

Beyond legend, researchers have logged numerous unexplained phenomena. Across the centuries the building has repeatedly burst into flames with no physical cause. On the wall of the corner tower where the Devil allegedly seized Faust, black oily stains keep reappearing no matter how often they’re scrubbed or painted over. Persistent rumors also speak of hidden tunnels leading to the town hall and of a healing spring somewhere in the cellars.

From 100 Cursed Places · Fern Flower Press