Walking Amongst The Dead: Graveyards, Cemeteries, And Ossuaries With J.F. Penn

Books And Travel

“The meaning of life is that it stops.” — Franz Kafka

I’ve always felt most grateful to be alive when I walk among the dead. That might sound strange, but bear with me!

Step through a lychgate into a church yard or descend a narrow stone stair into a catacomb or ossuary, and the pace and the noise of the world falls away. In these quiet spaces—graveyards beside ancient churches, sprawling Victorian cemeteries, underground chambers decorated with bones—I consider the shortness of life, memento mori, remember you will die, and it puts life into perspective. I can hear my own heartbeat more clearly, and the stories begin to rise.

Paris catacombs, Photo licensed from Canva

In this episode, I’ll take you with me to a handful of places that have shaped some of my stories and travel memoir. If you’ve read my ARKANE thrillers or the Brooke & Daniel series, you’ll recognise many of the names.

But whether you’re here for research, reverence, or simple curiosity, I hope you’ll find something to spark your imagination and, perhaps, shift your perspective on these places that so many stay away from.

• What’s the difference between a graveyard, a cemetery, and an ossuary?
• Why am I so fascinated with these places?
• Sedlec Ossuary, Kutná Hora, Czech Republic
• Paris Catacombs, France
• Kensal Green Cemetery, London, England
• Crossbones Graveyard, Southwark, London, England
• St Louis Cemetery No. 1, New Orleans, USA
• Capuchin Catacombs, Palermo, Sicily
• Archbishop’s cadaver tomb, Canterbury Cathedral, England
• Mass grave in the Dohány Street Synagogue, Budapest, Hungary
• Graveyard of St Mary and All Saints, Boxley, Kent

First, some definitions.

What’s the difference between a graveyard, a cemetery, and an ossuary?

A graveyard is usually a burial ground attached to a church, whereas a cemetery is a stand-alone burial area, for example, found near a crematorium, or a public burial ground.

An ossuary, from the Latin ‘ossos’ for bone, is a container or chamber specifically to hold bones. It can be as small as a box, or as large as a chapel. In Europe, there are many ossuaries where the bones are used as decoration.

Why am I so fascinated with these places?

The Latin phrase memento mori—remember, you will die—has never felt morbid to me. It makes me grateful that I am alive on this day, to have the life I do, to love the people I love, and to be able to write and create. Life is indeed short, and I want to make the most of it.

I find myself drawn to these places not out of some macabre fascination but because they strip away illusion. In a world obsessed with preserving youth and denying mortality, there is something profoundly honest about these places that honour death.

The dates etched in stone. The names that no one remembers anymore, even this of the wealthy who thought they were important in life. The weathered gravestones, some leaning or sunken so deep they’re practically swallowed by the ground. All these make visible the brief span of our lives. This clarity energises me. I’m 50 as I write this, definitely middle-aged. If I am lucky to have decades left, how will I spend them? What stories will I tell? What experiences will I have? What challenges will I face?

This relationship with death might be unusual in the modern west, but for most generations, and for many cultures even right now, it is a completely normal part of life. As Franz Kafka said,

“The meaning of life is that it stops.”

Perhaps it is our modern sensibility to avoid discussing death that is the more unusual. I hope to change that a little today, so come with me on a journey of the dead.

Sedlec Ossuary, Kutná Hora, Czech Republic

It was a freezing winters day back in 2015 when we took the train from Prague to visit the Sedlec Ossuary, also known as the Bone Church. I’d already spent hours researching it online and used it in my ARKANE thriller, Crypt of Bone, so I knew what to expect, but even so, it really is a macabre place.

You enter a low arch and enter the ossuary, where candlelight glints off thousands of bones arranged in different ways. Alternating skulls and femurs are strung like garlands between larger decorated sections, a chandelier of pelvises, skulls and long bones hangs down, a coat of arms made from smaller bones and vertebrae is nailed to one wall.

Sedlec Ossuary, Kutna Hora. Photo by JFPenn

It’s really quite a small place with human skeletal remains everywhere you look, estimated to be between 40,000 to 70,000 people.

Back in the 13th century, a monk brought back earth from the Holy Land and sprinkled it on the land here, which made people want to be buried at Sedlec. With the Black Death and many wars, thousands more were interred, and later the Gothic church was built and the bones moved to accommodate more dead.

In 1870, a local woodcarver, František Rint, organised the bones, arranging them into the artistic designs you can see today. He even signed his name in bone on one wall, with a flourish of femurs and rib bones. I’m not sure if they’re his own bones, but that would be fitting.

You can get to Sedlec on a day trip from Prague, either independently by train, or there are day trips through GetYourGuide.com and other providers.

Paris Catacombs, France

Paris above ground is the city of light and romance; Paris below is the empire of death. You need a ticket and when you enter in your time slot, you walk down a spiral staircase into cool darkness, and then along tunnels lit with bulbs before finally entering the catacombs themselves, probably the most famous of ossuaries with over six million dead in the network of underground tunnels and ancient quarries.

In the late 18th century, Paris faced a public health crisis as overflowing cemeteries threatened to contaminate the water supply. The city authorities decided to move the remains beneath the city, resulting in today’s catacombs.

There are markers in each section to denote which cemetery the remains came from, and at the first entrance, there is a warning on the stone: ‘Arrête! C’est ici l’empire de la mort.’ (“Stop! This is the empire of death.)

Bone arch in the Paris Catacombs, Photo by JFPenn

The bones are mostly neatly stacked and arranged, creating what feels like an infinite corridor of skulls and femurs, all illuminated by dim, flickering lights. There are some sections made into designs of shields and even a heart of skulls.

You need a ticket to enter The Paris Catacombs, situated near the Metro station of Denfert-Rochereau. There are lots of stairs and it’s quite a walk if you are not used to it. Book well in advance since they have limited time slots at www.catacombes.paris.fr

The exit, with its gothic-themed gift shop, pops you out at a different place and I found myself quite disorientated as I emerged into the sun once more.

Kensal Green Cemetery, London

If you enjoy a peaceful walk around a beautiful park with ornate tombs and memorials, Kensal Green Cemetery in London is definitely worth a visit. You don’t need a ticket and it’s free to access.

It was established in 1832, and is one of London’s Magnificent Seven cemeteries. These were conceived in the Victorian era as park-like burial grounds to alleviate overcrowded churchyards and combat health hazards.

But it’s a world away from what we might build as a public burial ground today, with beautiful memorials, tombs above ground similar to Père Lachaise in Paris, and statues of angels, broken columns, Egyptian obelisks, and other ‘memento mori’ markers. The Victorians understood that grief needs physical expression, tangible places to visit, stones to touch. When I walked there, I was inspired to use it as a setting in my crime thriller, Delirium.

Tomb at Kensal Green cemetery, London, Photo by J.F. Penn

There are also many famous historical people buried there from industrial engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, to author of The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins, and scientist Charles Babbage, inventor of the Difference Engine, which led to the first computer.

You can find out more information at www.kensalgreencemetery.com and you can walk to it easier from Kensal Green train station, which has Overground and Underground lines.

Crossbones Graveyard, Southwark, London

Crossbones Graveyard in Southwark, London, is quite different from the formal Victorian cemeteries. It’s not even an official burial ground, and there are no graves, but in many ways, it is far more poignant to visit.

In the 1990s, during excavations for an extension of an Underground train line, archaeologists found 148 skeletons in an unconsecrated burial ground. These were the outcasts of society, the women known as ‘Winchester Geese,’ medieval sex workers licensed by the Bishop of Winchester, along with their illegitimate children, and other marginalised people. For centuries, it lay largely forgotten.

It’s now a memorial site with ribbons and mementos tied to the gates in remembrance of the Outcast Dead.

Crossbones graveyard gates, London. Photo by JFPenn

It’s compelling because it represents hidden history, the stories of ordinary people, often women, who lived miserable lives only a few blocks from the wealthy in their palaces and cathedrals. It features in the opening of my crime thriller, Deviance, which features some of the modern day outcasts in Southwark, which similar to medieval London has the wealth and power of the Shard, right next to some of the poor and outcast of society.

The entrance to the remembrance garden is on Redcross Way, a short walk from London Bridge or Southwark train stations. I recommend you visit the grandeur of Southwark Cathedral first and the ruins of Winchester Palace, before walking a few blocks to Crossbones. https://crossbones.org.uk/

St Louis Cemetery No. 1, New Orleans, USA

I visited New Orleans in March 2017 after a train journey from Chicago, and I was in serious book research mode!

Back in 2001, I’d been invited to come to the city for Mardi Gras and said I would come another time, that the city would surely still be there — and then in 2005, the floods poured in and the city was transformed. Of course, much of the French Quarter remains and so my experience was not so different, but it was an example of taking a place for granted, of not seizing the day, and when I finally made, I was determined to make the most of the city.

St Louis Cemetery No 1, New Orleans. Photo by JFPenn

Much of my experience is woven into my ARKANE thriller Valley of Dry Bones, which opens at St Louis No 1, when a storm opens up a previously undiscovered vault under the cemetery. I also weave in the St Louis Bible which is in the St Louis Cathedral on Jackson Square, and the Voodoo Museum, which is a must-visit, as well as the Louisiana bayou. I love the juxtaposition of Catholicism and Voodoo in the city, and the history of the French and the Spanish missions.

Founded in 1789, St Louis No. 1 is the oldest surviving cemetery in the city, with its tombs above ground so as to survive the flooding.

The tomb of Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau is in there, covered in lipstick X’s and colourful beads left by seekers of luck. A few rows away stands actor Nicolas Cage’s pyramid tomb, empty at the time of writing this. Nic Cage is one of my favourite actors from the 90s action movies I love — Con Air and Face Off are two of the best. “Put the bunny back in the box!”

You have to enter on a guided tour, and there are some that focus on the voodoo side, while others have a wider focus. Find out more at cemeterytourneworleans.com

You can read more about my experiences through the eyes of my ARKANE agents in Valley of Dry Bones.

Capuchin Catacombs, Palermo, Sicily

I haven’t been to these catacombs but Morgan and Jake head there in Crypt of Bone seeking the Codas Gigas, otherwise known as the Devil’s Bible. They’re on my list to visit, and they perhaps have more in common with the ancient Egyptians than the skeletal dead under Paris.

The catacombs lie beneath a Capuchin monastery in the Sicilian capital of Palermo, and instead of neatly stacked bones arranged in macabre decorations, there are fully clothed mummified bodies arranged along the walls and corridors. Monks in their robes, elegantly dressed aristocrats, military officers in uniform, and entire families displayed together, preserved through mummification.

Mummies in the Catacombs of the Capuchins in Palermo, Sicily. Photo licensed from BigStockPhoto

From the 17th to 19th centuries thousands of people, wealthy enough to afford the process of mummification, were interred in these catacombs, able to be visited by their families and honoured after death.

The website palermocatacombs.com goes into detail on this process:

“Bodies were placed in a preparation room called the colatoio, where the internal organs were removed; in their place were added straw or bay leaves, in order to facilitate the process of dehydration.

The bodies were placed in a supine position on grids made of terracotta tubes, so their bodily fluids could drain away and their flesh dessicate. The colatoio, the optimal environment for mummification, with drier air and very low humidity, were then shut off for close to a year. After which, the corpses were exposed to the air, washed with vinegar and dressed, often in clothes of their own choosing, before being inserted in the wall niches.”

Some of the bodies are embalmed, including that of Rosalia Lombardo, a two-year-old girl who died in 1920, often called the Sleeping Beauty.

The catacombs are located just a short drive or bus ride from central Palermo. Be aware that photography is prohibited out of respect for the deceased.

You can find out more information at www.palermocatacombs.com

Archbishop’s cadaver tomb, Canterbury Cathedral, England

While not specifically a grave, I wanted to mention the cadaver tomb at Canterbury Cathedral. I always keep an eye out for these kinds of tombs, as they are so memento mori! Instead of a sculpture of the deceased as they were, full of life as if they were asleep in their finery, these tombs show the person as a cadaver, a clearly dead body.

Some are even on two levels, like bunk beds, with the alive-looking human on the top, and the almost naked corpse underneath.

Cadaver monument of Henry Chichele, Archbishop of Canterbury (died 1443), Canterbury Cathedral. Photo by JFPenn

There is a gorgeous example of a cadaver tomb in Canterbury Cathedral, which I visited at the end of my pilgrimage on The Pilgrims’ Way. It’s for Archbishop Henry Chichele, a 15th-century prelate who founded All Souls College, Oxford, and commissioned the tomb for himself long before he died in 1443, so he could consider his future when he preached.

On the top level he wears bright ceremonial robes, with the mitre on his head, his hands clasped in prayer. On the bottom level, he is a corpse in a loin-cloth, hair tonsured, bones showing through his skin.

These kinds of tombs appeared in late-medieval Europe as the Black Death and a lot of wars sharpened awareness of mortality. But of course, they were expensive and only for the rich, and Chichele’s is one of the finest.

A Latin inscription runs around the base:

“I was pauper-born, then to primate raised, now I am cut down and served up for worms.”

Memento mori, indeed.

You can read more about Canterbury Cathedral in my memoir, Pilgrimage, Lessons Learned from Solo Walking Three Ancient Ways, and it also features in Tomb of Relics, when a relic from the shrine of Archbishop Thomas Becket, murdered in the cathedral in the 12th century, is stolen, and Morgan Sierra from the ARKANE secret British agency must find it.

Mass grave in the Dohány Street Synagogue, Budapest, Hungary

I love beautiful architecture and the Great Synagogue of Budapest in Dohány Street is gorgeous with its Moorish-striped brickwork, twin onion domes, and a huge rose window that scatters coloured light across the nave.

Jewish mass grave at Dohany Street synagogue, Budapest. Photo by J.F.Penn

But as with any Jewish sites in Europe, there is tragedy behind the beauty, and within the grounds of the synagogue is a mass grave. Twenty-four communal graves contain around 2,600 Jews who died of starvation, disease, or Arrow Cross Nazi bullets during 1944-45, when the synagogue marked the edge of the Budapest Ghetto.

Jewish law forbids burials beside a house of prayer, but there was no time—or safety—to reach the Kozma Street cemetery. The dead had to be interred where they fell.

At the courtyard’s far end stands Imre Varga’s haunting Tree of Life, a stainless-steel weeping willow whose 6,000 leaves each bear the name (or tattoo number) of a murdered Hungarian Jew—a living-metal kaddish against forgetting.

Weeping willow tree, Dohany Street synagogue memorial garden, Budapest. Photo by J.F.Penn

I wanted to talk about this site in particular because my father-in-law is Jewish and Hungarian and what was left of his family fled the country along with so many more refugees in the 50s. They ended up in New Zealand, where my husband, Jonathan was born, the child of two Jewish families who fled.

Our trip in 2012 was the first time Jonathan had ever been. We knew it would be a harrowing trip as Budapest has seen so many atrocities over the years — you can also visit the Shoes on the Danube, in memory of those shot and pushed into the river, and the House of Terror, where so many disappeared.

But the synagogue was particularly harrowing because three of the names on the mass grave matched his own, and if we had been there at that time, perhaps we too would have been interred beside them.

We visited in 2012 when a right wing extremist party was rising once more marching at night with flaming torches, and demanding lists of Jews be drawn up so they could be identified.

I wrote my thriller One Day in Budapest as part of my emotional response to the city and based around a modern right wing party bringing back such violence. The dedication in the front of the book reads,

“Dedicated to the memory of those buried in the mass grave of Dohany Street Synagogue, Budapest.”

You can find out more at www.greatsynagogue.hu/alap.html

Graveyard of St Mary and All Saints, Boxley, Kent

To close, I wanted to return to a more peaceful setting, a parish church graveyard similar to many in England, that I walked through on The Pilgrim’s Way. Here’s what I wrote in my memoir, Pilgrimage.

“One morning on the Pilgrims’ Way, I walked into Boxley, a village on the outskirts of Maidstone in Kent. The autumn sun was low in the sky and cast a golden light over the gravestones as I arrived at the church of St Mary and All Saints, a place of worship for nearly 800 years.

Graves in Boxley churchyard, Kent, England Photo by JFPenn

Under the canopy of the ornate lychgate (the roofed gate-way to the churchyard) were benches for the faithful to rest, and on one sat a selection of pumpkins and squash, in shades of yellow, orange and green. A handwritten sign urged, “Please help yourself.”

I wandered alone in the graveyard, one of my favourite things to do anywhere in the world. Most of the graves were so weathered that the text could no longer be read, a reminder that our names will also be forgotten one day.

Several headstones had sunk deep into the ground, leaning to one side as if they felt the pull of the dark be-neath. Wild cyclamens in shades of violet grew beneath a sycamore tree, late flowers of autumn marking new life from the bones of the buried dead.

One boundary wall was straddled by a huge beech tree, which must have started growing over it well before the World War II memorial that lay just on the other side. Our human-made barriers cannot hold nature for long.

I sat in the silence of that peaceful churchyard for a while before walking on. You might find a sparse line or two about that church in a guidebook, but it sticks in my mind as a far more special place.”

JFPenn in Boxley churchyard, walking The Pilgrims’ Way to Canterbury

It might not be somewhere you go out of your way to visit, but many churchyards in England have the same kind of resonance. You can find more details at www.pilgrimswaychurches.org.uk/our-churches/boxley

Tips for making the most of your trip if you want to visit any of these places

Do your research.

Before visiting, read up on the history of each site. Knowing why an ossuary exists or who built a particular crypt, or what you might see at a place, makes the experience far richer. But don’t get obsessed with research. It’s good to have an attitude of serendipity where you keep an eye out and follow your curiosity as you explore.

Check opening times and tours.

Many of these places have specific visiting hours or guided tours or ticketed entry. You need to book well in advance for some of them.

Be respectful.

Remember these are human remains or places where people honour the dead. Photography might be allowed (or not) depending on the site, so check the rules and always be discreet.

Take it slowly.

Walk slowly and allow the atmosphere to work on your senses and your imagination. Often, the hush and the shadows convey as much as the monuments themselves. Put the guidebook away once you’re there, and personally, I hate audio guides or anything that tells me what’s important. I prefer to look around and find what I am drawn to.

Ask yourself questions and reflect.

Most of us rush through life without considering our inevitable end, and walking amongst those who are already dead, whose names we mostly don’t even know, helps put life in perspective. Memento mori, remember you will die, so what can do you to make the most of your life now?

Books about graveyards, cemeteries, ossuaries, and death culture

I’ve mentioned many of my novels which feature the places in this article, but here are some more recommendations. Paul Koudounaris takes incredible photos and his books are a treasure trove of fascinating death culture. Try The Empire of Death: A Cultural History of Ossuaries and Charnel Houses.

Specifically for cemeteries, I recommend 199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die by Loren Rhoads, who has been on the show talking about cemeteries, graveyards and ossuaries as well.

I also enjoyed Death: A Graveside Companion by Joanna Ebenstein, who also runs the wonderful site, MorbidAnatomy.org. I also love From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death by Caitlin Doughty.

You can find my books I mentioned as J.F. Penn at Amazon or your favourite online bookstore, or at my store, www.JFPennBooks.com. You can also find photos from my research trips on the blog at BooksAndTravel.page and on instagram.com/jfpennauthor.

****

I would love to hear from you on this topic, or on anything that you find interesting from this episode or others. You can leave a comment, or email me [email protected]. Let me know about your thoughts on memento mori, any book recommendations, or your favourite graveyard, ossuary or cemetery. I look forward to hearing from you.

Happy travels – and I’ll see you next time.

The post Walking Amongst The Dead: Graveyards, Cemeteries, And Ossuaries With J.F. Penn appeared first on Books And Travel.