Šembera’s Ghost

Every night, exactly at midnight, the gates of the Boskovice house opposite the Minorite monastery fly open. Out rushes the ghost of Šembera, the former lord of Bučovice, transformed into a horse. He was a notoriously wild nobleman. In his youth he ran Zikmund Prašický of Zástřizly, lord of Buchlov, through in a duel. People also say he burned deeds granting his property to the Minorite monastery in Brno. Ever since, the ghost of a knight with a bloody sword appeared at the site of the unhappy duel, before the corner house opposite the monastery. Šembera, changed into a horse with fire and smoke pouring from its nostrils, carries the devil on his back. He races along the street to the monastery gate, stops there, paws sorrowfully, neighs and looks anxiously at the church and monastery. He then turns into Kobližná Street and gallops out of town through Cejl, towards Husovice and Obřany, disappearing with the hissing devil into his cave. Šembera and his companions supposedly once came to carouse in this cave above the Obřany valley, about an hour’s walk from Líšeň. It is still called Šumbera or Šembera. Every night the devil also rides out of this cave on Šembera and ploughs the whole hill with him, as the great ploughed-up stones on the rock’s summit testify. See Bučovice.