The Lantern of Old St. Vitus

The return flight from Prague had been uneventful, but as I scrolled through the photos on my camera, a chill crept down my spine. Hundreds of golden orbs floated in the frames, hovering over tombstones, spiraling around the spires of St. Vitus Cathedral, and clustering in the dim corners of a chapel I had visited without a guide. At first, I dismissed them as lens flares or dust motes. But they had weight, a deliberate presence, and I knew with a certainty that chilled me that they were not a trick of the light.

Five years prior, a man had knocked on my door in the dead of winter. He was tall, gaunt, with eyes the color of old parchment, and he spoke in a voice that seemed to come from far away. He claimed to be a pilgrim from the year 1297, a scribe named Bartolomej who had been tasked with copying a forbidden text beneath the city of Prague. His story was madness, yet he showed me sketches of alchemical symbols and a map etched on leather that matched the layout of a monastery I had never seen. I let him stay for four months, and he spoke of his life, his death, and the reason he still walked the earth.

He told me of the Lantern, a device of brass and glass that could capture the souls of the unshriven. It was kept in the crypt of Old St. Vitus, buried beneath the foundations of the current cathedral. His master, a renegade abbot, had used it to trap a wandering spirit, but the spirit had turned on them, and the lantern was lost in the collapse of the crypt. Bartolomej’s last act before he died was to seal the entrance with a small stone etched with the constellation of Orion. He showed me that stone in a vision, and it haunted me until I booked my flight to Prague.

During my research, I found the stone exactly as he had described, hidden in a niche behind a wooden statue of a weeping saint. With trembling hands, I pried it loose, revealing a narrow stairway that reeked of damp earth and old incense. I descended, my flashlight casting long shadows, until I reached a circular chamber. In the center, on a stone altar, sat the Lantern—an intricate device of tarnished brass and cloudy glass, glowing with a soft, baleful light. As I approached, the orbs in my photos began to coalesce, gathering around me like curious moths.

A voice echoed from the Lantern, not in words but in images: a hooded figure kneeling in prayer, a knife flashing, and then a shriek that pierced the air. I realized the Lantern was not just a vessel; it was a prison. The spirit trapped within it was the abbot himself, and Bartolomej had been his victim, not a willing scribe. The orbs were the remnants of the other souls the abbot had harvested from the cathedral’s dead, kept in a perpetual state of unrest.

I tried to flee, but the Lantern pulsed, and the chamber began to collapse. Stones rained down, sealing the entrance behind me. In the darkness, the Lantern’s glow intensified, and I saw the abbot’s spirit emerging, a shadow with hollow eyes. It reached for me, its touch like ice, and I felt my knees buckle. But as it touched me, I caught a glimpse of the Lantern’s etchings—a way to break the binding. I recited the words Bartolomej had taught me, a litany in Latin that I barely understood.

The Lantern shattered with a sound like a scream, and the spirits flew free, swirling around me before fading into the walls. The chamber grew silent, and I was left alone in the pitch black, the stones blocking my only escape. I sat there for hours, until rescuers—drawn by the strange light emanating from the car park above—dug through the rubble and found me, clutching a shard of the Lantern. They told me I was lucky, that the crypt had been sealed for centuries, and no one knew how I got in.

Now, back home, I look at the photos again. The orbs are gone, replaced by a single, distinct form—a man in a pilgrim’s cloak, his face obscured, standing behind me in every shot. I have not slept since. And I have started to write a book, not about my visitor, but about the Lantern of Old St. Vitus, and the truth that some prisons are not meant to be opened. The shard on my desk hums in the dark, waiting, and I know that Bartolomej’s story was only a beginning.