“He calls out of the dark forest in a stolen voice, and to answer him is to be torn apart.”
Somewhere in the night forest of Bohemia a voice cries out — a child weeping, a man calling for help, or simply a long wordless scream that rolls through the trees. The hejkal is named for that call: the howler, the yeller, a forest demon of the Czech lands whose entire hunt is conducted by sound. It has no interest in being seen. It wants one thing from a traveller on the dark paths, and that is an answer.
The lore describes a man-shaped thing covered in fur or moss, crowned with a wreath of fern — a figure the old Czech sources likened to the fauns and satyrs of the ancients. To hoot back at its call, even in mockery, is to summon it: the hejkal springs onto the answerer's back and rides him through the forest until he drops, or simply tears him apart. The rule it enforces has kept its shape for centuries: in the woods after dark, never answer a voice you cannot see.
The Legend
The hejkal's game is imitation. It borrows the sounds most likely to pull a decent person off the path — a lost child crying, a desperate cry for help — and lets the forest's own echoes do the rest, turning anyone who walks toward the sound in circles until they are hopelessly lost. Mushroom pickers, pilgrims and woodcutters were its classic victims, and the tradition insists that even seasoned woodsmen were spun around by it.
Answering is the fatal act. Whoever returns the hejkal's cry finds it on their back in an instant, to be ridden through the trees until they collapse, or torn to pieces on the spot. The darker tales go further: a hejkal may carry off a woman for a wife, and if she escapes him he tears their child apart in revenge. The demon's whole legend is a single lesson taught in blood — the night forest speaks, and it is not speaking to you.
The Record
The creature has a long paper trail for a backwoods bogey. Jan Amos Komenský mentioned the hejkal in the seventeenth century, comparing such beings to the fauns and satyrs of classical antiquity, and Czech folklore collections record it across the map under local names: the hýkal and hejkadlo around Chrudim and Počátky, the hejmon of the Vitorazsko woods, the strangling škrtič of the Šumava forests.
Northern Moravia contributes a female chorus, the húkalky, whose frightening hooting is reported in the same tradition — local legend even credits them with giving Hukvaldy castle its name. Around Tábor the role is filled by the pohunkové, spirits of dishonest hunters condemned to cry in the woods. The variants agree on the essentials: a voice in the night forest, a mimic's skill, and a punishment reserved for whoever answers.
The Lore
The countermeasures are the classic kit of Czech path-magic: shoes swapped onto the wrong feet, pockets turned inside out, and bread carried in the coat — the homely charms by which a traveller scrambled the demon's hold on him. Silence remained the first and best defence, for the hejkal has no power over someone who refuses to give it a voice to seize, and the old advice was simply to walk on and let the forest scream.
Folklorists place the hejkal among the wild folk of the Czech forest, alongside his female counterparts — the hejkalky, the divoženky, the lesní panny — and read in him the old fear of the echo: a sound that answers from nowhere, in country where being lost overnight could kill. He remains a fixture of Czech storytelling, the standing explanation for every shriek out of the dark that no owl or fox ever admitted to.
Field Notes
- ✦ The rule of the woods: never answer a voice you cannot see.
- ✦ Described as a wild, hairy or moss-grown man-shape, wreathed in fern.
- ✦ Mentioned by Komenský in the 17th century and likened to the fauns and satyrs of antiquity.
- ✦ Regional kin include the hýkal, hejkadlo, hejmon and the hooting húkalky of northern Moravia.
- ✦ Folk defences: shoes on the wrong feet, pockets turned out, and bread carried in the coat.
Case File
- Classification
- Forest demon
- Category
- Humanoid/Wildman
- Territory
- Forests of Bohemia and Moravia
- First Sighted
- Mentioned by Jan Amos Komenský in the 17th century
- Habitat
- Dark woods after nightfall
- Reported Size
- Tall and shaggy
- Also Known As
- Hejkadlo · Hýkal · The Howler