Immortal souls

The ossuary of a church or cathedral might seem like the kind of place you'd never want to visit. A space filled with human bones isn't necessarily a place of morbidity and sadness, according to an interesting  article on the travel/design site WebUrbanist.com - instead, an ossuary can serve as a reminder that ''...life is fleeting, but some part of us can live on in this world''. 

Not your average tourist destinations

I couldn't decide which strange object to post about, so here's a double feature of strange places instead!

The Capuchin Monastery in Brno, Czech Republic allows visitors to see its catacombs, where the mummified bodies of monks, abbots and various people rest. I think it's safe to say that the catacomb is the most visited part of the monastery! Bodies were laid in the catacombs until 1787, when Emperor Joseph II forbade bodies to be buried in the catacomb.

The bodies in the catacomb were accidentally mummified - the ventilation holes in the tunnels keep the air constantly dry, which mummified the bodies hundreds of years ago. Baron von Trenck is a famous figure in Brno, and so rests in a glass-topped coffin in a separate room.

I felt a little squeamish when I saw this picture, so I've put in a link instead of posting a picture of the catacombs!


I now end off the 'strange objects/strange places' series with a place where dead people are part of the decor.

This place, also in the Czech Republic, is the Sedlec Ossuary, Sedlec, near Kutna Hora. Bones decorate nearly every wall of the small Roman Catholic chapel, and a delicate bone chandelier hangs from the ceiling.The ossuary lies beneath the Cemetary Church of All Saints. The bones of approximately 40 000 to 70 000 people are contained in the ossuary. From what I've gathered, one man arranged the bones decorativley - his name was František Rint. The woodcarver was paid by the prominent Schwarzenberg family to arrange the bones in 1870.

I think I would visit all the weird places I've posted about. The places are definitely very creepy, yet somehow fascinating.

Photo source: http://0.tqn.com/d/goeasteurope/1/0/i/5/-/-/SedlicOssuary4.JPG. See more photos here

Mütter Museum

Do not visit the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, USA, if you are squeamish. Do not visit the Mütter Museum if you have recently had a meal.


The Mütter Museum is part of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. The displays consist of all things medical and gross - things like the conjoined liver of Siamese twins, anatomical deformities and medical tools. 



I have a sort of phobia of depictions of eye injuries. I'm not sure I could bring myself to look at the wax models of faces with eye injuries. Ugh!

The Museum

Photo credit: Melissa Dixon

The Island of the Dolls

Last year I came across  a video and article about this place called the Island of the Dolls, La  Isla de la Munecas in Spanish. The island is known as one of Mexico's strangest tourist destinations. Everywhere you look, there are dolls. Dolls hanging in trees, on walls and sitting on chairs.

The island is stands between Xochimilco and Mexico City, in  Teshuilo Lake. The ghost of a little girl who drowned in the Xochimilco canal near the island is said to haunt the Island of the Dolls. The tale of the island goes that Don Julian Santana, the man who lived on the island, found the body of the drowned girl in the canal. He believed that her spirit haunted him, and so he collected dolls to hang in the trees to appease her spirit. The dolls on the island were found floating in the canal and in rubbish dumps. Santana also traded produce he grew on the island for dolls. People said that the spirits of the dolls were responsible when Santana died in 2001 - he drowned in the same canal as the little girl all those years ago.

Go here and here for more creepy doll pictures!

Photo sources:
 1, 2 , 3, 4 and 5