Every October 31st (Nevada Day, by the by), I search out the pieces and parts of a costume. I had a plan this year: Mozart. It only seemed fitting. I keep stumbling through the composer's path and he had cool clothes, at least from what I could draw from Amadeus, which we all know is the most historically accurate movie ever made.
Needless to say, Mozart eluded me for one night. I think it was the powdered wig that really did me in. However, what I didn't do in dress was entirely made up for by atmosphere.
First off, many sources say the vampire “myth” originated not in Transylvania, but here in the Czech Republic. Multiple graves have been dug up to reveal desperate measures at keeping vampires at bay. Chained coffins are unearthed and opened to reveal staked skeletons with severed limbs, their skulls chopped off and buried at the other end of the coffin.
But the granddaddy of all creepy things definitely has to be turning thousands of dead bodies into decorations. Kutna Hora is a smaller town about an hour from Prague. It has several major draws, but none outshine the Ossuary.
You walk in and are greeted by skulls grinning out at you from each wall 
while a decoration made from pieces and parts of skeletons crowns the archway. As you pass underneath and descend the stairs beneath the cemetery, the chapel opens into a cold, open space with a dirt floor. The most impressive sight is the large chandelier made with every bone in the human body. Femurs, scapulas, collar bones are all held together to form the chandelier as candles protrude from the tops of four skulls, dripping wax onto the pillars lined with human skulls below. I keep saying 'human' bones, but I'm so used to seeing skeletons at Halloween it was hard to let it sink in that I was looking at the remains of real people. It wasn't as creepy as I expected, but there is a part of my stomach that turns just thinking about it.
My enduring question was why on earth anyone would use thousands of dead bodies to decorate a place of worship. It turns out that there were just too many bodies. In the 13th century, an abbot was sent to Jerusalem and returned with a handful of dirt from Golgotha, which he sprinkled over the local monastic cemetery. This made the cemetery famous throughout Europe and hoards of people desired to be buried there. When the plague hit, the sheer number of bodies was insurmountable-- 30,000 in one year alone. Wars and other epidemics added to the number and expanded the burial ground. Roughly a century later, graves were being abolished and the Ossuary was added underneath the church to house the bones. It's vague as to when and why the bones were used for aesthetics, but what you see decorating the chapel today includes the remains of roughly 40,000 people.
It's hard to describe. The chandelier, four enormous bells (that look like cavernous kilns), a family crest, all of bones. Skulls staring out from everywhere, usually accompanied by crossbones. It's as cold as-- well, as death, and I didn't realize how close the air was until we emerged from that place and breathed in fresh air (which was kind of funny because this breath of fresh air happens in the middle of the cemetery. So you go from beneath the cemetery with bodies to above ground with headstones where it's such sweet, fresh air...weird). I coughed and then grimaced when Kristen said, “Yuck. Bone dust.”
The rest of the night was fitting for Halloween. The streets cleared out and the town was eerily silent. We kept wondering what happened to tourists in this place, but found a little restaurant where the locals seemed to gather. We then got lost in the dark town, walked for an hour to get back to the train station, but somehow made it back to Prague-- where all we had to worry about was the vampires :)=
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