Visiting a House of the Dead

◆ Tourists visiting the Kudowa Czermna Chapel in Poland in 1962 spent several hair-raising minutes. This chapel is known for the numerous skulls kept in it. As the guide, Richard Makowski, was explaining the chapel’s history to the tourists, thousands of skulls (from victims of plagues and of the Thirty Years’ War) began tumbling from the walls onto the astonished tourists. The tourists panicked, but there were no serious injuries. One wall had begun to bulge out, indicating that the building was in urgent need of repair. Since they did not want to close the chapel during the tourist season, however, the repair work was postponed. But the skulls did not wait, and tumbled to the floor. In 1772 a clergyman living in Kudowa Czermna built this Skull Chapel, a veritable house of the dead. From the fields of Klody, Poland, he gathered up skulls and bones of victims of the Thirty Years’ War and also of the plague. These were then placed in the chapel. There are similar chapels—real gathering places for human skulls—to be found in the vicinity of Klody, also in Rome and in Prague, Czechoslovakia.—Express Wieczorny, September 2, 1962.