The gloomy church of 40.000 skulls

Normally people like to travel to unusual places or at least get to know them in case we want to go visit them one day. In Spain and around the world there is no shortage of strange places, the kind that when they tell you about them you get goose bumps, and you can even have nightmares just listening to some stories. Some, the more adventurous, not only are enough with the stories of these places, but they look for a way to visit them and see for themselves, if all the stories they tell are real or not.

Today I want to talk to you about one of these places that can be found around the world but not everyone dares to look for the cheapest flight to go to know it. Today I want to talk to you about the Church of the 40.000 skulls, or the 40.000 corpses. And yes, it is as gloomy and sinister as it sounds.

In Czech Republic

If one day you want to visit this eerie Church, you will only have to go 90 kilometers from Prague, in the Czech Republic. You will have to get to Sedlec which is a suburb of the city of Kutna Hora.

Although it is not the best place in the world for tourism, it is the place you should go if you want to visit this unique church in the whole world –and the most sinister of all-.

40.000 skulls

This church has no less than 40.000 skulls that show its visitors the proximity of death. Do not think that they are fake skulls, because they are skulls of 40.000 corpses, that is, they are real human bones. All those bones and skulls were once people who lived in our world and had their own lives.

These human remains belonged to people of different nationalities, such as Poles, Germans, Czechs, Belgians and the Dutch. Of course, to this day you will not know who each skull belongs to and most likely their descendants do not know either, even if they go to visit this gloomy church.

The legend of decoration

Although they speak of legend, no one knows whether or not it is the real story, although of course ... some explanation must have such strange ornamentation for such a sinister and unique church in the whole world.

The story goes back to the year 1.142 when a nobleman in the middle of a trip he was making from Prague to Moravia, stopped to rest in the vicinity of a forest because he was exhausted and could not continue his journey if he did not rest in some place.

His fatigue was so great that he fell asleep immediately, entering the depths of sleep. In his dream a bird appeared to him and got into his mouth and gave him the idea of founding a monastery in that place where he was resting. Upon awakening, the nobleman listened to his dream and got in touch with the monks of the Cistercian order of Waldassen, in Bavaria so that his dream would come true –literally-.

It was in 1278, the abbot of the monastery, Jindrich, was sent to the Holy Land from where soil was brought from Golgotha to scatter around the cemetery. As a result, it was considered that this place was holy and whoever rested after death would reach heaven.

But later, the black plague at the beginning of the 30.000th century caused the death of more than 500 people and in the XNUMXth century some XNUMX monks died inside the monastery due to the Hussite wars. In this way, the burials in this place increased considerably, and there came a time when this holy field could no longer be buried because there were too many corpses and they could not cope.

It was then that the bones of the buried people began to be used to remain in the place, that is, in the Church, but in this case their use was to decorate the place. Although the decoration is a bit macabre, it was a way that all those people who were buried in the Church's cemetery, could continue, although not buried, in the same place where they were buried at the time.

The church of 40.000 skulls

Today, the church has 2 chapels, the lower one which is known as 'tomb and care' and the upper one which is known and called as 'clear and airy', representing the power of eternal light. The church of the 40.000 skulls is open to the public and they also celebrate masses except on All Saints' Day, which out of respect for all the deceased present there, they do not perform it.

If you ever intend to visit this church so gloomy but to which you can already make sense of its strange decoration - it has nothing to do with murderers or with churches that killed people to decorate their walls -, you can look at a something gloomy detail, and they are the bony lamps that there are.

People who died in their day could never imagine that their bones would end up being the key to decorating a church, whether in a chapel or on the ceiling in the shape of a lamp. Figures are even made out of bones, with sinister creativity.

If you are a person who believes in paranormal stories, imagine that there are 40.000 ghosts hanging around the walls of the Church to accompany your bones, but what soul would want to stay next to so many thousands of bones? Surely in the Church, in addition to the people who visit it or celebrate Masses inside, the only thing you can find is silence, peace and above all ... human bones. Yes indeed, I do not think it is a good place to celebrate a wedding or some religious event, Because even if it is a church with celebrations held daily, who would want to celebrate an event in their lives in a place like this? Maybe to film a scary movie would not be bad, but not for anything else. What do you think of this unusual place?