Ah, the magic that is Prague - a hauntingly beautiful city that is so much more than stunning architecture and greying dumplings. Prague is also home to Europe's ghosts, ghouls, vampires and all things sinister. My dear pal Phoebe and I went on a pilgrimage to seek out all that is unholy and undead in the capital city of the Czech Republic.

First stop on our horror tour was the torture museum, an underground bunker of foul instruments which could only have been masterminded by the devil and his many minions. Among the more familiar Iron Maidens and Breaking Wheels (also known as the Catherine Wheel thanks to the martyrdom of St Catherine), lay the lesser known tools of pain and punishment, such as the water torture bed, whereupon the victim lay upon a wooden slab and had water forced into their lungs until they drowned (water boarding anyone?).

Various spikes of size and length abounded, which I foolishly mistook for giant kebab skewers. Alas, these spikes (in versions for men and women) were designed to impale the victim in the most sensitive of areas. This punishment would be stretched out over a period of days; the impale-ee would be withdrawn from their spike and then re-impaled.

As a souvenir of your tour, you can buy a t-shirt with a picture of a man being garroted.  An ideal gift for nana. 
Next door to the torture museum is the museum of 'Live! Scorpions and Spiders'. However I balked at entering that display. I have no qualms about poring over the grisly tools of ritualistic death, but I don't even want to see Dead Stuffed! Scorpions and Spiders! let alone the living ones.

Just across the road from the torture museum was a sign for a shop proudly declaring 'Human Skulls sold here'. We went to check out their selection, but upon looking in the window and seeing only ornamental dogs and replica antique furniture, I figured they probably kept the skulls behind the counter and that it would be a little too ghoulish to ask to peruse their selection.

Atop the city of Prague is Prague Castle and Golden Lane, a little touristy street of restored houses. It's a medieval role players dream as there is a whole gallery of various weapons, shields, suits of armour and all the accoutrements of war. There is even a shop where you can buy your very own axe or mace! Ace!
Golden Lane was also once home to Franz Kafka so there are lots of souvenir t-shirts and books to buy. But sadly, no plastic bugs bearing the legend, "My friend went to Kafka's home and all they brought me back was this lousy cockroach". Sob.

Next on our tour of all things spooky was the Jewish graveyard, a centuries old cemetery that houses thousands of ancient and crooked tombstones. You must pay to enter the cemetery and men are required to cover their heads. Complementary yarmulkes are provided, but a cap will do just fine.

We followed a winding little path through the closely cramped tombstones. As it was forbidden to expand the cemetery, the Jewish people were forced to bury the dead on top of one another; this is what gives the graves their crooked appearance. Tiny pebbles have been placed on many of the headstones as a sign of respect and acknowledgement that those beneath the ground have not been forgotten. The graves of rabbis are placed at the corners of the cemetery so they can keep an eye on things. The tomb of Rabbi Low (famous for his tale of the Golem) is housed here also. The synagogues and cemeteries of the Jewish quarter were preserved by the Nazis with the gruesome intention of making it a 'museum of an extinct race'.

We then make the hour long trek by train to the tiny town of Sedlec which is home to the 'The Ossuary', the church which contains a strange array of human bones. It's a short, yet rather confusing walk from the station. There is no obvious signage and there seems to be a church on every corner. We skulk behind a group of similarly confused Australian tourists who eventually lead us to "the world famous bones church" (as described by the local tourism office). The church looks rather ordinary from the outside, the only clue that it is somewhat out of the ordinary is the mosaic of a skull and cross bones on the footpath. And the enormous sign which says "Ossuary".

Upon entering the church you can purchase a disposable camera, which you can use to take happy snaps of yourself posing with the bones of the 40,000 entombed within. If you bring your own camera, it costs you extra. With our fetching denim-print camera in tow we entered the bowels of the Ossuary. Enormous pyramids of bones and skulls are housed behind wire fences. The bones are merely piled up and are not held together in anyway, hence the need for some kind of screen. One curious tug of a bone and the whole structure would come tumbling down. A chandelier created from every bone in the human body forms the magnificent centerpiece of the church.
 
Surprisingly, the sight of all these bones is not as disturbing as you might imagine. Far more disturbing are the four creepy plastic cherubs that incongruously adorn the tops of the pillars surrounding the chandelier. An information sheet reveals that the idea of using bones as a decorative form came from a half-blind (presumably mad?) monk who began piling them into pyramids in 1511. The fact that he was half-blind poses the question, did he realise what he was doing? Perhaps he thought he was stacking firewood for the monastery.

We left the Ossuary, and solemnly began the walk back to the station. The Ossuary wasn't as sinister as we had expected, just kind of sad and weirdly enough, uplifting! Although it's an amazing sight, we are a ghoulish twosome and were a bit disappointed that we're not more terrified and creeped out.

However, the most disturbing sight lay in wait for us just around the corner. Walking down the street we chanced upon a butcher whose signage displayed a creepy looking young man greedily consuming enormous lengths of local sausage. Our jaded, horror overloaded minds had finally found something truly nightmarish in the world capital of the supernatural menace. Terror has a new face, and that face is Sausage Man:

 
With that final shocking image in mind, we ran off screaming into the Czech countryside. 

More about the Czech Republic.

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