Macabre Magazine :: bloodlessness.com

This is a bit morbid. This is a cemetery in Hallstatt, Austria. Its not like any other… it’s really small. When they run out of room, they simply dig you up, paint your name on your skull and stack it with the rest of the overcrowded population. Now, I did hear if you have the money to pay for the spot, your bones will not be moved, well, until you can no longer pay the bill that is.

Click Here to see the entire gallery for hallstatt and bone art

The good news is, that your bones will be on display, nicely painted and looked on as very macabre artwork.

Actually, its very cool that people took so much time and effort into remembering people that may have died centuries before and took such care as to create something very memorable out of the bones.

The skulls are painted by hand with the family name and year of death as well as pictures of flowers, crosses and leaves.

“The Bone House” is a small chapel with adjacent cemetery in Hallstatt, Austria. The cemetery holds many of the citizens of the town, but according to the headstones, only the recently deceased reside in the cemetery. The seeming newness of the graveyard is explained by a look inside the bone house, where rows and rows of beautifully painted skulls peer out.

The tiny graveyard could never hold the centuries worth of citizens of Hallstatt. Eventually, the small graveyard could no longer be enlarged, so in order to make room for new bodies, old ones were dug up, their skulls bleached in the sun, painted, sometimes with a family name, sometimes with flowers, leaves, or crosses and set in a row. Rows and rows of beautifully painted skulls peer out from empty sockets in this Austrian bone house. The practice began in 1720, and of the 1200 skulls in the Beinhaus, 610 of them are decorated in different styles, according to the time in which they were exhumed.

From the lovingly painted bones of ancestors to the beaded trophies of headhunters, from bone house chapels to skull-laden agibas, this macabre beauty is unusual, and yet, so familiar. All over the world, every culture has its own way in which to honor the dead. Some just happen to be a little more artistic than others. from curious expeditions

Click Here to see the entire gallery for hallstatt and bone art