Dem bones, dem bones...

People visit this site looking for all kinds of things... Mostly, as Carnacki has pointed out before, they come looking for "vampire sex", but hey - many of them stick around for more than a couple of page views, so we must be doing something right. This said, one of tonight's/this morning's visitors came to us via a Google search for Ossuary Chapel. Now, I knew they weren't unique to Sedlec, but I was a touch surprised by how many there are - they must have been all the rage circa 1400 or so... There're several in the UK, such as this one in Rothwell; there are the beautifully-painted skulls of Austria and Bavaria. Paris has her catacombs, Rome has necropoli and catacombs to boot. St. Catherine's in Sinai, Egypt; St. Mary's in Wamba, Spain... It goes on and on. The Industrial Age is represented as well, by this utilitarian Gothic-Art Deco ossuary that holds the remains of soldiers killed at Verdun. The bones themselves are not on view, but their resting place serves quite well as a reminder of the horror of war, where the others are intended to convey the horror of sin. The best account that I happened to find tonight of a visit to an ossuary other than Sedlec has to be the description of this one in Sedal, Portugal:

The artwork on the ceiling continues the combination of weirdness and whimsy: curly-haired cherubs hover above painted skulls-and-crossbones, and scythes are interspersed with elegant flowers. A statue of Jesus and an ornate, gilded altar are overshadowed by the chapel’s most gruesome decoration: two desiccated corpses hanging on a side wall. The bodies of a man and a small child are now several hundred years old, but there are still skin and shreds of clothing clinging to their pathetic frames.

Well, my list of places I must vist just grew... How about yours?