A mate is heading off soon to Prague to do a study abroad semester at Charles University (the oldest in Europe). This was one area of town which did not escape the reaches of our ghost tour in Prague.

If I remember rightly, it is by the main entrance of the university that the skeleton of a giant who used to guard the front door there stands.

In the fourteenth century (yes, the fourteenth century seemed to be a happening time in Prague) there worked at the university an old professor of anatomy who was obsessed with collecting bones. He was particularly taken with the idea of inheriting the giant’s bones, because, well, they were giant.

So one day he made a deal with the giant. ‘Listen up, big fella,’ he said. ‘I’ll pay you ten thousand crowns now, if I can get your bones when you die.’ ‘Sure thing, little man,’ said the giant, figuring that as he was a good forty years younger than the professor he was sure to outlive him anyway.

This made the giant very happy as he was now a rich man, so basically he did what any good Czech would do - he went to the pub down the road and got thoroughly drunk for three days in a row.

But on the third day, as he was stumbling home, he happened to trip and hit his head on the ground, fatally fracturing his skull.

Meanwhile, the professor was overjoyed at having acquired the bones so quickly, and, being not without a sense of humour, had his students polish them up to perfection and then stood the full skeleton back outside the door of the university, complete with giant’s staff and all.