Basilica of St. John Lateran (via Wikimedia)

Roman churches usually aren’t shy about their macabre histories. At Santa Maria dell’Orazione e Morte a nun will be happy to let you photograph their crypt of abandoned bodies in exchange for a small donation. At Santa Prassede a sacristan will give you a pamphlet and helpfully point out the well where St. Praxedis and St. Pudentiana poured the blood that seeped out of the three thousand bodies of martyrs they were hiding. At the famous Capuchin crypt you can even buy postcards of the mummified monks to send to dear friends or enemies. 

But if you go to the Basilica San Giovanni Laterano looking for such morbid attractions, you’ll find you’re on your own. What happened there over one thousand years ago is still too horrible to speak of. This is the church where Pope Stephen VI put the rotting corpse of Pope Formosus on trial in January of 897.

The trial was called the Cadaver Synod or Synodus Horrenda (since everything is more colorful in Latin). It ushered in one of the most corrupt eras in the history of the papacy, a time that’s now referred to in all seriousness as the pornocracy. 

Basilica San Giovanni Laterano (photograph by Rafel Miro)

To understand what happened to Pope Formosus’s unfortunate corpse, you have to understand that the world around him was falling apart. The western empire Charlemagne had united had since crumbled away into smaller and smaller factions. Little fiefdoms were eyeing Rome’s treasures and demanding protection money while the city was still smarting from the Saracen sack of 846. Rifts formed within the church as the men who aspired to be pope found they needed the additional strength of one of the many secular leaders to achieve it.

The story of the corpse trial actually starts during the reign of Pope John VIII. At this time, Formosus was bishop of Porto (the Roman suburb, not the city in Portugal). He was also a successful missionary, known for spreading Catholicism throughout the Bulgar kingdom. But he might have been a little too good at his job. Pope John VIII turned on Formosus and accused him of violating a law that prevented bishops from ruling over more than one place at a time — a law that was supposed to prevent bishops from building up their own little fiefdoms. And perhaps more tellingly, John accused Formosus of violating a recently passed law that forbid openly aspiring to the papacy. Formosus was getting a little too close for comfort, so John had him excommunicated.

Detail of the Basilica San Giovanni Laterano (photograph by Rafel Miro)

As it turned out, John’s paranoia was justified. He was the first pope to be murdered by his own people. At first he was poisoned, but the poisoner lost patience waiting for the potion to take effect and bashed John’s head in with a hammer. After John’s death the papacy had such a high turnover rate, it’s a wonder anyone wanted the job at all. Marinus I succeed John and re-instated Formosus as bishop. The following year Pope St. Adrian III succeeded Marinus, but barely lasted a year before being assassinated himself. Pope Stephen V followed shortly thereafter. 

Finally in 891, it was Formosus’ turn. He managed to hold on to the papacy for five turbulent years before dying of a stroke. His successor, Boniface VI, was elected quickly to squelch riots, but he was an odd choice — he had been defrocked twice for “immoral conduct.” He only ruled for 15 days before he died of either gout or poisoning (again).

Next up was Pope Stephen VI. Less than a year into his papacy, he gave the order to dig up Formosus and force his corpse to stand trial for crimes Pope John VIII had excommunicated him for: seeking the papacy and ruling over more than one place a time as bishop.

Now Stephen VI’s reason for desecrating this poor corpse could have been to shore up some political alliances with a faction that hated Formosus, but more than likely it was to cover for the fact that Stephen was guilty of the exact same things he was accusing Formosus of.  Formosus had made Stephen bishop, and Stephen had become bishop of Rome (a title that comes with the papacy) while he still held that post. But if Formosus could be found guilty of that same crime (being a simultaneous bishop of two places), his actions would be null and Stephen wouldn’t have been a bishop when he was elected pope. Stephen also might have been completely insane.

Jean-Paul Laurens, "Pope Formosus and Stephen VI - The Cadaver Synod" (1870) (via Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes)

So the corpse of Formosus was dragged out, dressed in papal robes, and propped up in a chair at San Giovanni Laterano. Ironically, poor Formosus’s name means “good looking” though by then he was a horrific sight.  A deacon was appointed to speak for him, but predictably didn’t say much while Stephen screamed at the corpse. At one point in the trial an earthquake shook the basilica, damaging part of it.  But even in the face of this ominous sign, Formosus was found guilty on all counts, stripped of his vestments, and had the three fingers he used for blessing on his right hand chopped off. 

Stephen had him buried on an obscure plot of land, but then, thinking better of it, had him dug up one more time and tossed in the Tiber. At this point the people of Rome had just about enough of Stephen and his corpse trial. A mob threw him in prison where he was strangled in his cell. Later that year, San Giovanni Laterano was nearly destroyed by a fire as if to rid itself of the whole nasty business.

The next pope, Pope Romanus, annulled all the actions of Stephen VI, but was overthrown in less than a year. His successor, Pope Theodore II, was only pope for 20 days, yet managed to recover the body of Formosus. His successor, John IX oversaw Formosus’s reburial in St. Peter’s Cathedral. Today, there is still a monument that lists the names of popes buried there. There, you can see Formosus’ name carved in stone- one of the last vestiges of the Cadaver Synod.

List of popes buried in St. Peter's Basilica, includingFormosus (via Wikimedia)

Read more about the wandering body parts of the holy dead at Elizabeth Harper's All the Saints You Should Know.

Sources for this article:

The Bad Popes, E.R. Chamberlin

Keepers of the Keys of Heaven: A History of the Papacy, Roger Collins

The Ring and the Book, Robert Browning

Morbid Mondays highlight macabre stories from around the world and through time, indulging in our morbid curiosity for stories from history's darkest corners. Read more Morbid Mondays>

"Seaweeds," 1848 (all images courtesy the Brooklyn Museum Libraries Special Collections)

The Victorian period had a particular flourish for domesticating the wildness out of nature. From taxidermy animals contorted into a controlled version of ferocity to pressing flowers into collectible objects, there was both a mix of fascination with flora and fauna as well as a desire to form the natural world into a vision of refinement. Yet while some young ladies delighted in clipping flowers and pressing them in books, others scraped up seaweed and kept the specimens in elegant scrapbooks. 

One of these scrapbooks is held in the Brooklyn Museum Library's Special Collections and was recently digitized with high res images viewable online. The 1848 scrapbook created by Eliza A. Jordson was given to Augustus Graham, whose name is spelled out in seaweed on the first page of the book. Graham was on the Brooklyn Apprentice's Library board of directors and was a founder of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, both precursors to the Brooklyn Museum. On the second page is another elegant script in seaweed spelling out "prepared by Eliza A. Jordson, Brooklyn, L.I. 1848" (this was prior to the consolidation of 1898 that brought Brooklyn into New York City as a borough, so it is labeled as its own city on Long Island). 

The keeping of a seaweed scrapbook wasn't as unusual as you might think for a Victorian lady; even Queen Victoria herself reportedly made an album as a young girl. And Victorian ladies, stuck inside, definitely devoted themselves to some equally odd handicrafts, like hair art for example. Harvard Library has a detailed description of seaweed scrapbooking from A. B. Hervey's 19th century Sea Mosses: A Collector's Guide and an Introduction to the Study of Marine Algae, with the process involving washing, arranging, pressing, and then adhering the seaweed to paper in its pristine state. 

Each page of the scrapbook seems carefully considered, the seaweed a response to the curves of the lace doilies with an eye to the balance between the space and the specimen. It's definitely not a scientific work, but instead a social one, with no labels of genus or providence, just the bits of dried algae and fine paper. On one page, the seaweed has even been positioned into a tiny house, and on another it is bookended by a poem written from the perspective of the seaweed. An excerpt:

"Hm! Call us not weeds —
We are flowers of the sea."

A letter included in the scrapbook addressed to Augustus Graham reads: "I am commissioned by the above named persons, members of the Brooklyn Institute, to beg your acceptance, from them, of the accompanying volume of Algae, as a memento of their gratitude and esteem." Below are some images of that volume of Long Island seaweeds that was created for Graham over 150 years ago. 

View more of the Brooklyn Museum's recently digitized seaweed scrapbook online, and perhaps be inspired for your own mementos of the natural world. 

Objects of Intrigue is a feature highlighting extraordinary objects from the world's great museums, private collections, historic libraries, and overlooked archives. See more incredible objects here >

Grotesques from Reims, France, photographed by Joseph Trompette (ca. 1870-90) (via Cornell University Library)

Mermaids, unicorns, and fairies have been romanticized through the ages, but what about the Pennsylvanian Squonk? Here is a motley assortment of mythical beasts and beings found in folklore from around the world. From soul-sucking cats to child-thieving shape-shifters, these are the oddballs found in the magical bestiary that haven't gotten much love. 

The Squonk 

The Squonk as featured in "Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods, With a Few Desert and Mountain Beasts" by William Thomas Cox (via Wikimedia)

This sad, mythical creature hails from the legends of northern Pennsylvania. The Squonk was said to be a hideous forest animal with grotesquely loose, scaly skin entirely covered in warts and blemishes. The animal was so miserable over its own gruesome appearance and lack of companionship that it almost constantly wept. Local legend had it that the Squonk was quite easy to track; you could pretty much just follow the sound of the animal's sobs and salty, tear-strewn trail through the woods. Capturing one proved much harder: when greatly distressed the Squonk was said to literally dissolve into a puddle of its own tears.

The Tiyanak

The Tiyanak takes various forms in Philippine mythology. In one version it is an evil dwarf-like creature posing as a human baby, in another it is an actual demon child. The Christian take on this mythical monster turns Tiyanaks into the restless ghosts of children who have died unbaptized. In any case, the Tiyanak is said to mimic the cries of a human baby to lure its victims in. Once picked up, out come the fangs and things get gory.

The Tiyanak also enjoys confusing travelers into losing their way, leading them deeper and deeper into the Philippine jungle with its cries. If you ever find yourself being lured astray by this monster baby, the traditional trick for escape is to turn your clothes inside out. According to Philippine lore, this amuses the Tiyanak to no end, and he may just think that you're funny enough to let you live.

The Cat Sìth

The Cat Sìth as depicted in "More English Fairy Tales" by John Dickson Batten (via Wikimedia)

A large, dog-sized breed of black and white cat said to roam the Scottish Highlands, the Cat Sìth was believed to steal the souls from newly deceased bodies awaiting burial. In a wake called the Feill Fadalach (aka the "Lake Wake"), unburied bodies were watched over night and day to ensure that the Cat Sìth would not gain access to the corpse. Kitty distractions such as catnip and music were sometimes employed, as were games of leaping, wrestling, and riddles, all of which were thought to offer additional protection to unburied bodies.

While some believed the Cat Sìth was a type of feline fairy, a common Celtic legend proclaimed that Cat Sìths were in fact witches who were capable of morphing into a magical cat eight times. Those attempting the transformation a ninth time would be permanently trapped in kitty form, hence initiating the myth that cats have nine lives. 

The Yara-ma-yha-who

A cross between a vampire and the bogeyman in Australian Aboriginal folklore, the Yara-ma-yha-who is a strange, red-skinned humanoid that dwells in the branches of fig trees, waiting to drop on unsuspecting victims. The creature was said to have suckers attached to its hands and feet that it would use to drain its prey of blood, much like a giant leech. Once its victim was sufficiently weak, the Yara-ma-yha-who would ingest them whole, resting for awhile before regurgitating the person (still alive) and beginning the whole process again. With each regurgitation, the victim would return slightly shorter and a little bit redder in tone, finally becoming another Yara-ma-yha-who.

The Ijiraq

An elusive Arctic shapeshifter found in Inuit mythology, the Ijiraq is said to live between the world of the living and that of the dead. The Ijiraq could take many forms, including that of a half-man, half-caribou monster called Tariaksuq, generally only seen when looked at from the corner of one's eye. The shadowy form would vanish when looked upon directly.

In Inuit lore, the Ijiraq was a kidnapper of children, accused of stealing little ones to hide and then abandon in the Arctic cold. When a hunter stepped into the cursed Ijiraq's territory he would become hopelessly lost and unable to find his way home.

Oddly enough, certain areas traditionally associated with Ijiraq activity are also home to large deposits of toxic sour gas, sulphur smoke, and geothermal activity. It's possible that rising vapors sometimes created mirages; pockets of gas may even have been responsible for disorientation and hallucinations.

The Liderc

 Henry Fuseli's "The Nightmare" (1781) (via Detroit Institute of Fine Arts)

There are several types of Liderc in Hungarian folklore, all of which are said to hatch from the first egg of a black hen that has been kept warm in a human's armpit or a heap of manure. The egg eventually hatches to reveal a magic chicken, a small imp-like creature, or a full-grown woman or man, sometimes even taking the form of a deceased lover or family member. In addition to behaving as an incubus or sucubus and performing its owner's every wish, the Liderc immensely enjoys hoarding riches.

Over time, the owner of a Liderc will accumulate great wealth, but the arrangement is a deal with the devil. Periodically, the Liderc crawls atop its owner's chest, drinking his or her blood, and gradually leaves them more and more weak. The Hungarian word for nightmare is lidercnyomas, which literally means "Liderc pressure" from the feeling of having the creature's weight upon one's chest. The only way to be completely rid of a Liderc is to command it to perform an impossible task. After trying its hardest to comply, the Liderc will grow so consumed with frustration that it will essentially implode.

The Impundulu

Found in the folklore of several South African tribes, the Impundulu, or "Lightning bird," is a human-sized vampiric bird said to cause lightning by setting its own fat on fire. It is heavily associated with tribal witchcraft, and is believed to be immortal, allowing it to be passed down as a familiar through generations of female witches. The Impundulu was believed capable of morphing into human form to make love to his witch owner and to feed on the blood of her enemies, causing bad luck, sickness, and death.  

Traditionally, when a man became ill it was not uncommon for his wife to be accused of secretly harboring an Impundulu.

Puckwudgies

The forest fairy of North America, Puckwudgies are found in the folklore of several American Indian tribes. Oddly similar to their Celtic counterparts, Puckwudgies are small, magical woodland beings with poison arrows and the ability to appear and disappear at will. Legend has it that the Puckwudgies were once a friend of humans, but an accumulation of grievances and jealousies caused the little guys to turn against us. They've been known to attack people, kidnap children, burn down homes, and lead travelers astray, and are sometimes even blamed for staging suicides by pushing their victims off cliffs.

Certain forested parks and pockets of wilderness in New England are still said to be rampant with Puckwudgies.

Image from "Female Warriors. Memorials of female valour and heroism, from the mythological ages to the present era" (via British Library)

Explore even more of the world's loved and loathed mythological creatures in Atlas Obscura's cryptozoology and monsters tags. 

Preparing for the Seattle World's Fair (via Seattle Municipal Archives) 

After visiting Paris, Chicago, Barcelona, New York City, Montreal, St. Louis, and Melbourne, Atlas Obscura's next stop in our tour of World's Fair relics is Seattle, host to a fair in 1962.

World's Fair Street Scene (via Seattle Municipal Archives)

Unlike other host cities, Seattle planned its infrastructure for the 1962 Century 21 Exposition to be a permanent city improvement. Seattle’s fair came shortly on the heels of a dramatic population and income boom, following the establishment of Boeing’s manufacturing plant in the city.  However, many new Boeing workers settled in the suburbs, leaving Seattle’s downtown desolate.  City planners hoped the 1962 fairgrounds could transition into a revitalized downtown civic and cultural center, rejuvenating the city itself.

World's Fair Grounds Under Construction (via Seattle Municipal Archives)

Their gamble paid off — the entire fairgrounds, and most of its infrastructure, became today’s Seattle Center, a 74-acre park with museums, performance spaces, public art, and sports complexes.  Also unlike other host cities, Seattle managed to turn a profit with its 1962 fair.  Some of the original fairground have since been torn down or heavily remodeled, but a number still stand.

International Fountain at Night (via Seattle Municipal Archives)

The International Fountain, in the middle of the center, coordinates its jets of water to music. At times, the fountain’s keepers also project film and video images onto the water.

International Fountain at World's Fair (via Seattle Municipal Archives)

The Pacific Science Center is housed in the former United States Science Pavilion from the 1962 fair. Some of the Science Center’s exhibits inside — including a model of the Earth’s moon — also date to the fair.

US World's Fair Pavilion (photograph by Roger Wallstadt)

The eye-catching arches outside the center are also original to the fair, and are lit with different-colored lights at night to correspond with different holidays or special national or local events.

Arches at US Pavilion (photograph by Roger Wallstadt)

Seattle’s KeyArena sports stadium is on the site of the Washington State Pavilion. During Key Arena’s renovation, contractors made an effort to retain the “suspended roof” from the original building.

Key Arena (photograph by Jeramey Jannene)

Key Arena Roof (photograph by Jeramey Jannene)

Seattle’s monorail was built to provide public transit during the fair, and was retained for city use.

Seattle Monorail (via Seattle Municipal Archives)

Seattle's Armory, built in 1939, was repurposed for the fair. Originally home to Seattle's 146th Field Artillery, during the World's Fair the Armory was host to a vertical shopping mall — the first such shopping center in the United States. 

Seattle Center Armory (photograph by Doug Kerr)

Today, the Armory is home to Seattle's Children's Museum and to the Center House, a performing arts venue. On the second floor, the food court holds 14 restaurants by local vendors.

Horiuchi Mural, World's Fair (via Seattle Municipal Archives)

The Seattle Mural, a 60-foot abstract mural by artist Paul Horiuchi, originally stood over a reflecting pool on the fairgrounds. Today it serves as the backdrop for the Mural Ampitheatre, an outdoor film and performance venue.

Space Needle at World's Fair (via Seattle Municipal Archives)

Finally, Seattle’s Space Needle was built as an observation deck during the fair, and remains one of Seattle’s most iconic landmarks.

The original design also included two restaurants, which have since been combined into a single rotating eatery. At 605 feet in height, the Space Needle offers views not only of Seattle but also nearby Mount Rainer, Elliot Bay, and several of the islands in Puget Sound. At the time of its construction, the Space Needle was the tallest tower west of the Mississippi River.

Seattle from Space Needle (photograph by Roger Wallstadt)

World's Fair Memorabilia (photograph by Ronald Douglas Frazier)

 Below are more photographs from Seattle's 1962 Century 21 Exposition:

Space Needle construction (via Seattle Municipal Archives)

Science Pavilion (via Seattle Municipal Archives)

Sign in downtown Seattle (via Seattle Municipal Archives)

World's Fair signage (via Seattle Municipal Archives)

via Seattle Municipal Archives

Canada building (via Seattle Municipal Archives)

Electric Power Pavilion (via Seattle Municipal Archives)

General Motors exhibit (via Seattle Municipal Archives)

via Seattle Municipal Archives

Inside the Electric Power Pavilion (via Seattle Municipal Archives)

via Seattle Municipal Archives

International exhibits (via Seattle Municipal Archives)

Electric Power Pavilion (via Seattle Municipal Archives)

The entrance (via Seattle Municipal Archives)

World's Largest Birthday Cake (via paulsedra/Flickr user)

Stay tuned for more in our series on World's Fair relics, and be sure to visit Paris, Chicago, Barcelona, New York City, Montreal, St. Louis, and Melbourne.

The Exosuit (courtesy Nuytco Research, Ltd)

The depths of the ocean still remain one of our planet's great mysteries, despite our world mostly being water. A new atmospheric diving suit — the Exosuit — is allowing humans to descend into the sea further than we've ever gone before, perhaps changing what we know of life on Earth.

The suit created by Nuytco Research, Ltd. looks a bit like if an early diving bell-style suit — such as that from 1882 by the Carmagnolle brothers, on display at the Musée de la Marine in Paris — was crossed with the ASIMO robot. This week it made a special stop this week at the American Museum of Natural History which culminated in a discussion with researchers John Sparks, curator at the AMNH; David Gruber, research associate at CUNY; and Vincent Pieribone, research associate at the Pierce Laboratory-Yale. They noted that this was the first time an ADS system was being deployed for scientific research since the 1980s. 

The suit is constructed from aluminum alloy, weighs in at 530 pounds, is entered through the torso, can contort at several rotorary joints, and even has curious little foot pads that have pressure sensitivity — of which there is quite a bit, some 30 times that on the surface, at the 1,000 foot depth to which a human inside can safely reach. What makes it even more advanced is that it has 50 hours of life support, meaning researchers can actually spend time viewing marine life at that depth. And what they are looking for is bioluminescence.

A test of the Exosuit is planned for July of 2014 on the Stephen J. Barlow Bluewater Expedition off the coast of Massachusetts. The team has already discovered eels and sharks and other creatures with unexpected bioluminescence and biofluorescence in a previous expedition. But why does it matter that there are these little glowing creatures far beneath the waves? While every bit of our world that we understand more changes in some way our greater picture of life, bioluminescence research has already had great impact in medical research, particularly with cancer where bioluminescence imaging has revealed cell activity that was previously invisible. What next we can discover in nature may break through another barrier with this innovation in technology. 

The Exosuit at the American Museum of Natural History (photograph by the author)

The Exosuit at the American Museum of Natural History (photograph by the author)

The Exosuit in cardboard at the American Museum of Natural History (photograph by the author)

Read more about exploration on Atlas Obscura. 

A Tanuki far from home, in Brisbane, Australia (photograph by the author)

The signs and symbols of Japan can be disorientating, as Western signage such as the striped barber's pole and the green/red man of traffic lights is blended with more traditional symbols, such as the hanging drapes that indicate onsen (traditional baths), the red-caped kitsune (fox-gods), and jizo (statues of dead children, dressed to stay warm against the cold of the grave.)

One of the more curious symbols is the tanuki, a raccoon dog that represents a traditional Japanese prankster god. The tanuki is known in the West best from Super Mario Brothers 3, which features a tanuki suit that allows Mario to change form into a statue and to fly, as well as from the Studio Ghibli film Pom Poko, which is about a gang of tanuki (although in the English language version of the film they were misrepresented as badgers.)

The real tanuki (photograph by Emily/Flickr user)

Tanuki in Shigaraki, Japan (photograph by akaitori/Flickr user)

The tanuki has a mixed reputation in Japan. Statues of the full-bellied (and large-testicled) tanuki can be found throughout Japan, even if pollution and urban sprawl have taken their toll on the actual animal after which the trickster takes its name and form. The tanuki is a shape-shifter, and his testicles play an important role in his shifting. Tanukis have legendarily been known to use their testicles as makeshift raincoats, as weapons, and as drums. They knead and massage them into the shape they desire, and often impersonate humans to buy alcohol and delicacies, which is where the tanuki fits into modern Japanese culture. 

Myths and legends surrounding the tanuki are commonplace around Japan — the mischievous creature's antics even feature in a traditional Japanese children's song (sung, for some reason, to the tune of an old Baptist hymn): “Tan Tan Tanuki no kintama wa/Kaze mo nai no ni/Bura bura.” The lyrics translate as: “Tan-tan, the Tanuki's testicles ring/the wind has stopped blowing/but still they swing-swing.”

1881 tanuki woodblock print by Yoshitoshi (via Wikimedia)

Tanuki using his testicles as a rain coat, from an 1841 illustration by Takehara Shunsensai (via Honolulu Museum of Art)

Tanuki using their testicles as nets in an 1840 illustration by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (via pinktentacle.com)

Tanuki illustration (via Wikimedia)

A tanuki illustration from the Edo period by Kawanabe Kyōsai (via Wikimedia)

The earliest appearance of a tanuki in Japanese folklore comes from the Nihon Shokai (The Chronicles of Japan), which deals mostly with Japanese mythology. It was written in 720, and the chapter about the Empress Suiko expressly mentions the tanuki: “in two months of spring, there are tanuki in the country of Mutsu, they turn into humans and sing songs.” The tanuki also appears in the Nihon Ryōiki (written around 780 CE) and the Shūi Monogatari (written in the 13th century) — these works mention more of the tanuki's magical abilities: its shape-shifting, whether into human or animal forms, the ability to possess human beings, and its love of pranks.

Famous tanuki myths that have found their way into Japanese culture include that of the Bunbuku Chagama, which roughly translates as “happiness bubbling over like a tea pot.” Bunbuku Chagama tells the story of a peasant who finds a tanuki caught in a trap. He sets it free, and the tanuki decides to repay him for the favor. It transforms into a tea pot, and the peasant sells him to a Buddhist monk. Unable to stand the heat, the tanuki half-transforms back into its original form, and runs back to the peasant’s house. Together they make a fortune, as the half-tanuki, half-teapot performs tricks to make a living.

A tanuki taxidermy (photograph by FuFuWolf/Flickr user)

Taxidermied Tanuki at Morinji Temple, of Bunbuku Chagama fame (photograph by Namazu-tron/Wikimedia)

The Soko-tanuki is the story of a tanuki, who, disguised as a monk, goes to work in a temple. After many years of hard work, the tanuki was caught mid-nap in its original form. Rather than chase the trickster away, the monks instead rewarded its hard work by giving it the rank of a page and allowing it to stay in the temple. In 1795, if reports are to be believed, a tanuki masquerading as a samurai made its way into a Nagasaki brothel, and proceeded to take full advantage of all the services on offer. He was eventually discovered, again while sleeping, and was forcibly removed from the premises. All of the money he had used inside the brothel turned into dried leaves as he left the site. There is also the story of the Bozu-tanuki, who inhabits a bridge in Handa, on the island of Shikoku — if you cross his bridge the tanuki will shave your hair with a straight razor.

Using their shape-shifting abilities, the tanuki will try and pass off leaves or scraps of paper as money in exchange for goods, and the ceramic statuettes are left outside restaurants and bars in particular, in an attempt to trick the tricksters into believing that they or one of their kind have already visited the store in question. They also have a reputation of bringing wealth to a business, an association that has stuck through the ages due to a little bit of ancient Japanese word-play. Craftsmen in the medieval period used tanuki pelts to soften their hammer blows while shaping gold-leaf, and the association doesn't end there. Kin-tama, which literally translates as "gold balls," which was the Japanese euphemism for the body-part for which tanukis are most famous. 

Christmas tanuki (photograph by rumpleteaser/Flickr user)

Tanuki crossing sign (photograph by Federico/Flickr user)

Discover more of the mythological creatures of the world on Atlas Obscura. 

In the Photo of the Week feature, we highlight an exceptionally amazing photograph submitted by an Atlas Obscura user.

When Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans with flooding and destruction, one of the larger casualties was the Dixie Brewing Company, a local staple that was forced to abandon its massive production facility in the wake of the storm. Since its abandonment, the facility has become a hotspot for graffiti artists and urban explorers.

Atlas user blwilde took a picturesque snapshot of the unfortunate relic saying this about the view:

"I took this while doing a photoshoot for my friends' band. On the other side of the lens you can see the entire city of New Orleans." 

DIXIE BREWING COMPANY, New Orleans, Louisiana 

Thanks to all of our adventurous users who keep submitting such amazing shots! Want to have your photograph featured? Keep adding your captures to our ever-growing compendium of wondrous places (just click the "Edit This Place" link at the bottom of each place). And watch here each Friday for another Photo of the Week.  

all photographs by the author

On the northeast margin of Lake Baikal in Siberia, a scattering of log buildings fills the narrow strip between shore and mountain. Blue and turquoise window frames sport elaborate matching fretwork in true regional style, and on eaves and gables folk carvings of bearded men, bonneted peasant women, and strange, fanciful animals appear.

There is no one about, and shoulder high grass fills most of the yards and gardens. The vegetation casts the three dozen structures in a sea of pale yellow-green that waves in the breezes off the lake, while around the clearing the silent taiga forest stands guard. It is a place on the doorstep of decay. Its purpose would be opaque to the casual visitor, but there are no casual visitors here. In fall and spring, for nearly half the year, the place is inaccessible because of the thin and shifting ice. In winter, trucks can be driven a hundred miles on the surface, like the temporary railroad that once carried the Trans-Siberian across the frozen lake to the south. In summer, boats can gamble the crossing, but rarely do anymore.

This is Davsha — Давша — and it has been abandoned for almost a decade. Once, more than 200 people lived here: scientists, rangers, families, schoolteachers, radio operators, and huntsmen. In this land of extremes — of extreme solitude, and extreme weather — these people looked after the animals of the forest. In 1916, Czar Nicholas II was so worried that the sable was going extinct that he carved out a wilderness on the shores of Baikal, declared it forbidden to hunters, natives, and settlers, and built Davsha, a miniature village in the heart of the reserve for the rangers and biologists he sent to manage it.

The indigenous Evenks were moved out of the reserve and relocated north of the Tompa River, echoing similar moves of American Indians in the early days of the National Park System in the United States. This was the first zapovednik— or nature reserve — in Russia, and it lasted long after Nicholas’ execution and the fall of the Empire the following year. Throughout the Soviet era and into the Federation, it was a revered — and well-funded — post.

Why protect the sable? This small fur-bearing cousin to the marten and the weasel was the key to Siberian settlement for hundreds of years. Its priceless fur was the golden promise that drew the Cossacks over the Ural Mountains in the 1580s, and what spurred them to the Pacific in only 60 years. In contrast, it took the trappers, explorers, and settlers of the United States four times as long to go half the distance. As a result, this little black-furred creature — martes zibellina—was in steep decline by the start of the 20th century. Long before the idea of environmental protection took hold elsewhere, this landscape of mountain, taiga, and lake was set aside to shelter one of its smallest — and most valuable — denizens.

Today, the Barguzinskii Biosphere Reserve has no permanent residents. In 2005, its funding was cut, and the tenuous existence Davsha had maintained for almost 90 years was finished. Almost overnight, the settlement was evacuated by boat, the population leaving many of their possessions in place.

The year-round average temperature there is about 25 degrees Fahrenheit, but on the day I visited it was closer to 70. Central Siberia is so far from the moderating influence of the ocean that it experiences wild seasonal swings in temperature. In February, the forecast predicts a high of -24 degrees Fahrenheit, while in summer some areas can reach 100. 

We were in Davsha to deliver a CD of accordion music to a man named Yuri. We were told that this place was empty, but that we would still find her there. Several days before, we had pushed off from the Holy Nose Peninsula (Святой Нос), and paddled north. Everyone we talked to about the northeast coast of Lake Baikal told us a different tale. The only English language guidebook to this part of Siberia told us in five lines it was infested with bears, beautiful, impossible to get to, and illegal to land on shore. Guides and rangers and paddlers all told different stories. It would be fine, you need permits, it is 70 roubles a day, you can’t touch the shore, abandon all hope. But when we reached Ust-Barguzin, the last village and the end of the road, we found the park headquarters to be in better shape than many in the United States.

Andrei, one of the park staff, ran us through a five minute process, showing us on our maps where to look for hot springs and freshwater seals, and handed us the signed and stamped permits for an eight day crossing of the northeast coast, including the Barguzin Reserve and Zabaikalsky National Park. It is 350 km (217 miles) of pristine lake shore without a village or road anywhere.

As we were leaving, a young woman stopped us with smiles and the melodic English of someone knowledgeable but unpracticed. She asked us to deliver a small package to Davsha, where Yuri was posted temporarily for the summer, one of the handful of seasonal scientists and caretakers spread through the 1,000 square mile reserve. The package included a short note, the accordion music, and a soapstone carving of a Nerpa— the freshwater seal endemic to Baikal.

We pulled ashore amidst cedar and rhododendron, and climbed the rickety cedar stairs set into the bluff to begin our search. No one was around, but the main paths had been mown recently. Many of the houses were locked or boarded up, but in one we found old photographs, maps tacked to the wall, and a World War II-era radio set mounted next to more modern equipment. The gray photos were behind a sheet of plastic, showing harsh faces of men with ice in their beards cuddling sables or stacking crates next to a prop plane.

A poster of Lenin peeked out from the eaves of a large hut in one photo. These early champions of biodiversity went out by ski and snowshoe to tag, track, and jot notes with their bare hands in the depths of Siberian winters. They endured long periods of solitude out in the wilderness, and in their tiny, remote community created a home. They built a school for their children who ran the paths and duckboards, and watched in awe from the bluffs each July as the two trillion pound ice sheet broke up.

One photo on the wall showed a man contemplating the two infant sables in his large hands. His is Yevgeniy Mikhaylovich Chernikin, and he was the director of the reserve for more than half a century. Born in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1928, he attended the Moscow Fur Institute and bounced around the USSR from Turkmenistan to Kamchatka as a wildlife biologist. In 1964, he came to Davsha and in the Barguzin sable found his life’s work. He served as director of the reserve for more than 30 years, eventually amassing more knowledge of the animal than anyone in history, and influencing a generation of Soviet biologists and ecologists. He fought for better living conditions in Davsha, for a school and for health care, and for energy and supplies to see the scientists and their families through the long winter. And he lived long enough to see the community he had created disperse as government funding dried up.

There is a sense of order in Davsha often absent in most Siberian villages, where rutted dirt roads cut across the landscape and squat houses run chock-a-block up bare hillsides. Surrounded by the wild, inhabitants cut back the forest and created order from which they could guard and study the brown bears, the sable, the elk, kabarga deer, wolves, lynx, wolverines, and 30 types of rodents, plus the ospreys, merganser ducks, eagles, and black storks in the air, as well as the sturgeon, grayling fish, omul whitefish, taimen salmon, and lenok salmonids in the waters.

We wandered for hours, exploring the courtyards of cabins and the ruins of a workshop, the glass from its long-gone windows melted into the rubble in shining blobs flecked with debris. Scarred enamel tableware littered the char, providing color to the destruction. I imagined a fire ten years ago starting in winter, and being watched with melancholy as it consumed a structure soon to be left behind anyway.

Someone had pulled a twisted bicycle from the scene and set it atop a fence post. Melted glass clung to the rusted spokes, glinting in the sun as the wind rattled. We peaked into the schoolhouse, wondering how the students could focus with snow-capped mountains out one window, and the largest lake on Earth out the other.

The path led to a lone house that had been maintained, and we knocked on the head-high gate. Minutes later, a woman answered. Her name was Olga, and she was surprised to see us. We followed her in past a thriving quarter-acre vegetable garden, removed our shoes, and were served black tea at a table built into the wall. Yuri was in the taiga, we were told, but we could leave the package with her. She plied us with bread, honey, butter, and a Snickers bar plucked from a cold cellar under the floorboards.

We ate, shared stories, and learned about her seasonal residence there, but language was sparse in our exchange and I wondered, glancing about the neat cabin, if she was a child here many years ago, and traveled back in old age to experience it again.

In leaving, we paced the paths of Davsha, again with only the wind to accompany us. We passed the school and the rows of boarded houses, the radio aerial strung between larch poles, the grave markers, and the Natural History Museum, probably locked forever. We couldn't camp in the reserve, and so had to hurry to make the miles back before dark. Tourists are forbidden save at three spots on the shoreline.

We reached the bluff, able to see equally the emptiness of Davsha, the sharp cut glacial cirques of the Transbaikalia Ridge behind, and the deep chilled blue of the lake. Rounding the first point, the settlement disappeared and we were alone again on the border of water and taiga.

Potsdamer Platz ghost station (Max Gold / Futurerhythm, via YouTube)

The old adage of “what you see on the surface tells only part of the story” couldn’t be more true for a city like Berlin.

Having endured two World Wars, being divided by the Iron Curtain, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and rapid gentrification — all in the scope of a century — the German capital is drenched to the proverbial bone in history. Because of this, unlike other major cities like New York or Paris that have a more conventionally beautiful exterior, Berlin’s wonders are underneath the hustle and bustle of the daily grind and within the bowels of the city itself — in its century-old subway system.

Taking a ride on Berlin’s U-Bahn and S-Bahn is like stepping into a time machine, being propelled out of 2014 and into the Cold War-era where West Berliners traveled under East Berlin socialist territory on a daily basis through "ghost stations," known as "Geisterbahnhöfe."

Dimly-lit ghost station (photograph by Helmut Caspar)

When the East German GDR government constructed the Berlin Wall on the morning of August 13, 1961, not only did it end the freedom of movement between East and West Berlin, tearing apart lovers, families, and friends for nearly three decades, it also split Berlin’s public transit network into two. Some U- and S-Bahn lines fell entirely into one half of the city or the other, and other lines were divided between the two jurisdictions, with trains running only to the border and then turning back.

However, three lines — today’s U6 and U8, and the Nord-Süd Tunnel on the S-Bahn — passed through a relatively short stretch of East Berlin territory in the city center. This meant that passengers actually travelled from West Berlin beneath East Berlin. However, they were not able to leave the train until it reached West Berlin again.

"Potsdamer Platz S-Bahn Station: Ghost Station From 1961 to 1989
"

Just imagine: You’re on your typical morning commute to work when suddenly a warning comes over the loudspeaker: “Last stop in West Berlin!” You then descend slowly into the underground of a foreign country under socialist rule where you see phantom-like armed East German guards on dimly lit platforms peeking back at you through narrow slits in bricked huts. It’s no wonder these eerie stations were soon dubbed as “ghost stations” by West Berliners.

East German guard peeking in a metro watch station (Max Gold / Futurerhythm, via YouTube)

Stairways to West Berlin stations in East Berlin were sealed (Max Gold / Futurerhythm, via YouTube)

Potsdamer Platz ghost station (Max Gold / Futurerhythm, via YouTube)

Although West Berlin subway maps labeled these stations "Bahnhöfe, auf denen die Züge nicht halten" ("stations at which the trains do not stop"), East Berlin subway maps did not depict Western lines or ghost stations at all, part of the scrupulous perfectionism of the GDR’s actions in cementing the division of the city.

Old East Berlin S-Bahn & U-Bahn map without the West Berlin lines (via S-Bahn-Galerie.de)

Doing everything in their power to prevent the underground transport system from being used for an escape, barbed-wire fences were installed to prevent any would-be escapees from running into the track bed, and if someone were to break one or two barriers, an alarm would be triggered.

Potsdamer Platz ghost station (Max Gold / Futurerhythm, via YouTube)

Emergency alarm on ghost station (Max Gold / Futurerhythm, via YouTube)

As for the entrances, the signage was removed, walkways were walled up, and stairways were sealed with concrete slabs, erasing the stations from the cityscape entirely.

Bricked wall blocking the tunnel from Nordbahnhof to Potsdamer Platz station (photograph by Helmut Caspar)

On the platform itself, the guards would always work in pairs and superior officers could conduct surprise inspections at any time.

East German guards (Max Gold / Futurerhythm, via YouTube)

Despite these extreme measures, a high number of escape attempts were actually carried out by border guards themselves. Although most of these attempts failed, landing the would-be fugitive in a GDR prison, a lucky few were successful in reaching the “promised land” of the capitalist West.

Because a vital part of West Berlin’s transit network lay in East Berlin territory, maintenance work on the tracks and tunnels was a logistical, not to mention safety, nightmare. If a Western train broke down in East Berlin territory, passengers would need to wait for Eastern border police to appear and escort them out.

East German guards (Max Gold / Futurerhythm, via YouTube)

Although not a ghost station itself, the station that played the most significant role in transporting border traffic between West Germany and the GDR was the Friedrichstraße station. Not only was it the only station West Berliners could stop at in East Berlin, it was the only transfer point where East and West Berliners would pass each other unseen. Being transformed into a major border crossing, Western passengers could walk from one platform to another without ever leaving the station or needing to show papers. After passing through a convolution of tunnels and walkways designed to prevent any direct contact with GDR citizens, Westerners with appropriate papers could also enter East Berlin here. Naturally this wasn’t a two-way street, as East Berliners were forbidden to leave GDR territory, being “Gefangene im eigenen Land” (“prisoners in their own country”).

After the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9 1989, the first people to enter the ghost stations discovered that they lived up to their name, with the ads and signage on the walls remaining unchanged since 1961.

Old advertisement in a ghost station (Max Gold / Futurerhythm, via YouTube)

Jannowitzbrücke was the first ghost station to reopen to passenger traffic on November 11, 1989, two days after the fall of the wall. Equipped with a checkpoint within the station, East German customs and border control were installed to facilitate passengers heading to or coming from East Berlin. As the old signs from pre-1961 were crumbling from age and missing the terminuses of post-1961 line extensions, hand-drawn destination signs were hung up on the platforms.

Opening of Jannowitzbrücke station (photograph by Robert Roeske, via German Federal Archives)

Fast forward a quarter century to present day and it’s almost impossible to fathom that these former ghost stations, now pulsating with the everyday commotion of an urban metropolis, once belonged to a different country altogether, one where bananas and Levi jeans came in limited supply and plastic Trabi cars had a waiting period of 15 to 20 years.

Potsdamer Platz S-Bahn Station in 2012 (photograph by Ingolf/Flickr user)

Potsdamer Platz Station in 2012 (photograph by Ricardo Ramirez Gisbert)

Immediately after the Berlin Wall fell, Thomas Wenzel, Michael Richter, and Heinz Knobloch captured this unique phase of history through interviews and photos in their book Geisterbahnhöfe: Westlinien unter Ostberlin, published in 2002. Berlin’s Nordbahnhof station features a free ongoing exhibition called Border and Ghost Stations in Divided Berlin, which chronicles life in the shadow of the border installations, highlighting the sheer absurdity of the division. Exploring the city’s underground architecture, Berlin’s underworld society Berliner Unterwelten also runs tours in English of disused railway tunnels, WWII bunkers, Berlin Wall escape tunnels, Cold War air raid shelters, caverns, and derelict brewery vaults. 

On a typical morning commute to work in 2014, when a warning comes over the U-Bahn loudspeaker, it’s “Next stop: Potsdamer Platz!” and as you descend upon the now brightly lit, freshly painted station, the train stops to a halt, the doors open, and busking musicians step inside the carriage belting, “The times, they are a-changin'!”

Old inscription marking border of soviet Berlin at entrance of Stettiner Tunnel, a pedestrian tunnel closed since 1958 (2008 photograph by Beek100/Wikimedia)

The Stadtmitte Berlin ghost station in 1989 (photograph by Frits Wiarda)

Detail of a 1523 anatomical illustration by Jacopo Berengario da Carpi (via Wikimedia)

In Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery, on a well-worn headstone, you can barely make out the inscription "The Martyr" above the name Washington Irving Bishop. The rest of the long epitaph below is too deteriorated to read, but the late Bishop was renowned in his time as one of the great mentalists of the 19th century. Yet it was his curious death that would be his greatest mystery.

Washington Irving Bishop's grave in Green-Wood Cemetery (photograph by the author)

Bishop was born in 1855 and although the American started out in the spiritualist world — assisting and then managing the famed medium Anna Eva Fay— he later flipped to the side of contemporary magicians like Houdini in exposing spiritualism as superstition. In 1880 he published a one shilling book called Second Sight Explained, in which he wrote:

"There is, indeed, much reason in favour of an explanation of Clairvoyance, because knowledge of the process is still sufficiently obscure to enable unprincipled persons to use the influence that this supposed power gives them for improper purposes. Nothing can be more detrimental to morals than the prevalence of superstition; and there is scarcely a phenomenon in existence which operates so largely to the encouragement of superstition as the supposed power of Clairvoyance."

His own act was pitched as "thought reading," and he emphasized that it was not anything supernatural but instead his careful reading of the movement of the human body. Known as "muscle reading," he learned his skills from mentalist J. Randall Brown and soon soared to his own fame with a distinctly frenetic performance style, one that had an added drama with his suffering from cataleptic fits. He kept a note in his pocket that stated his seemingly catatonic state was not death, although the presence of that note on a fateful performance in 1889 would lead to a great debate of what really brought down the mentalist. 

Washington Irving Bishop (via the University of Texas)

It was May 12 and Bishop was at the Lambs Club, a theatrical society that was then at 70 West 36th Street in Manhattan. Bishop was said to have fallen into unconsciousness early in the act, and then recovered to continue. However, a second attack came from which he did not quickly recover. According to reports, an autopsy took place at 3:45 pm, just a few hours after the supposed death. This included the removing of Bishop's brain.

As Dean Carnegie wrote in his research on the strange case for his blog the Magic Detective, when Bishop's wife finally arrived on the scene and saw the slice across his skull, she declared, "they've killed my husband!" A second autopsy was later performed on May 28 in which the brain was found sewn into his chest, and "all seemed healthy, and in appearance presented no cause for death," although curiously "portions of the brain and other organs were missing."

Whether or not that note warning potential physicians of Bishop's condition was on his body, and why the brain was so quickly removed, were the subject of debate and litigation for years to come. The leader of this crusade was Bishop's mother Eleanor Fletcher Bishop, who spent the next nearly three decades of her life bringing charges against the doctors who performed the autopsy and touring the country with her story. She even published a book dramatically named: A Mother's Life Dedicated and an Appeal for Justice to All Brother Masons and the Generous Public — A Synopsis of the Butchery of the Late Sir Washington Irving Bishop (Kamilimilianalani) A Most Worthy Mason of the Thirty-Second Degree, the Mind Reader, and Philanthropist By Eleanor Fletcher Bishop, His Broken-Hearted Mother. It included a photograph of her leaning over her son's glass-topped coffin on the frontispiece, the macabre scar of the autopsy visible on his forehead. 

Irving in his coffin, viewed by his mother (via the University of Texas)

It's not clear if the Masons ever came to her aid, although the mason Harry Houdini helped her out later in life by buying what remained of Bishop's legacy. The death certificate for the 33-year-old mentalist officially read "hysterocatalepsy"; to his mother it was always murder. And while Bishop's legacy in the history of magic may have faded, there remains that worn tombstone in Green-Wood Cemetery that declares him as a "martyr" for eternity, or at least until the marble wears beyond recognition.

"The Martyr": Washington Irving Bishop's epitaph in Green-Wood Cemetery (photograph by the author)

Thanks to Dead Conjurers, a site dedicated to magician graves, for its post that helped the author to locate the final resting place of Washington Irving Bishop. 

Morbid Mondays highlight macabre stories from around the world and through time, indulging in our morbid curiosity for stories from history's darkest corners. Read more Morbid Mondays>

Image from the 1884 "Atlantic Ocean Pilot" (via British Library) 

The ocean has a rich rhythm, but it's something that's hard for us humans on land to connect with. Yet in three different places we can hear this movement through music. In Croatia, San Francisco, and England, the shores contain instruments played by the waves.  

SEA ORGAN
Zadar, Croatia

photograph by Mike Reger

Zadar, Croatia, has its Sea Organ leading right into the water. Designed by architect Nikola Bašić and opened in 2005, it uses some 35 pipes of different sizes that are louder or softer depending on the turbulence of the sea.

Some people say the sounds are like whale calls, but whatever they are is haunting and airy with a touch of melancholy. The steps of the organ, which are lined with perforations to let out sound, were cut into a somber concrete wall installed during post-World War II restorations. Adding to the revival of the sea shore is another work by Bašić — the Sun Salutation — which has glass panels collecting sunlight all day to put on an ethereal light show representing our solar system. 

photograph by EyeofJ/Flickr user

THE WAVE ORGAN
San Francisco, California

photograph by Simon Gibson

Over in the San Francisco Bay, the 1986 Wave Organ is the Sea Organ's precursor. Created by artists Peter Richards and George Gonzales, it turns the bay's buoyant movement into a sonorous island. 

The organ's jetty is actually built from granite and marble that is all that remains from a cemetery that was destroyed. It's not quite as elegant as the newer Sea Organ — its over 20 pipes that go into the water are PVC and concrete — yet its sound is low and rich. It responds to the changing tides, with lower being bubbly and the higher more resounding, impacted by the resonating air. 

photograph by Jennifer Boyer

HIGH TIDE ORGAN
Blackpool, England

photograph by R. Lee

Finally, standing at a towering 49-feet-tall, we have the High Tide Organ on the New Promenade of Blackpool England. Constructed in 2002 from metal and concrete, it was designed by Liam Curtin with John Gooding.

Curtin previously created a sound fountain in Manchester, and the High Tide Organ uses, as its name suggests, the rising of the high tide to force air up its 18 pipes. While sometimes it is silent, other hours it fills the seaside air with an otherworldly sonorous song. 

photograph by Ali Harrison

A vulture at a sky burial in 2013 for a Tibetan monk (photograph by Chensiyuan, via Wikimedia)

Sky burial isn’t a burial at all, of anything. It’s the act of leaving a corpse exposed to the elements, often in an elevated location, and only a few different cultures do it, for different reasons and in different ways. 

The concept's been on my radar for a few years thanks to happening upon the Vajrāyana Buddhist bya gtor practice primarily found in Tibet —and less so in China and Mongolia. It can be shocking to see — ex-human beings being dispassionately dragged up a mountain, chopped up, and thrown to a venue of waiting vultures. 

But then I started to think (and read) about it. One of the main tenets of Buddhism is compassion, which includes kindness toward all animals. So the idea at work here is that, if your body is just a shell for your spirit, which will be reincarnated anyway, and if your spirit has left it and it could nourish another creature, then it should. Bya gtor literally translates to "alms for the birds" in Tibetan. It’s considered important to not waste the opportunity to help another living thing. 

Sky burial site in Yerpa Valley, Tibet (photograph by John Hill)

A depiction of sky burials in Litang monastery (photograph by Antoine Taveneaux)

Once the body is kept in a sitting position for two days and a lama recites the necessary prayers, the corpse’s spine is broken so that it can be folded and carried to the sky burial site, which is usually quite a schlep. Family members may accompany the dead on this journey, beating double-sided drums and chanting. Once arrived at the site, the rogyapa, or body breakers, first burn juniper to attract vultures. The corpse is placed face-down on the stones, its hair removed, and the ropyagas begin to chop up the limbs with axes or sledgehammers, sometimes flaying meat from bones and throwing it to the waiting vultures.

When only bones remain, they’re pounded into a pulp, mixed with barley flour, tea, and yak butter, and given to the crows and hawks, after the vultures have had their fill of meat. It’s a bad omen if the vultures won’t eat, which can be a problem if the body has been treated with disinfectant or medicine, as it might be at a hospital. Typically, the yak that is used to transport the body is supposed to be set free after the ritual, which is yet another reason that sky burial can be a costly process. Most of the times that it’s practiced in Tibet, therefore, it’s a commuted version of leaving the corpse on the stones to be ritualized by the birds instead.

Sky burial is currently the preferred practice in Tibet when a loved one dies. Religion aside, a few other factors come into play here: generally, the soil in Tibet is a layer of permafrost only a few centimeters deep, and it covers solid rock, making it hard to dig. Wood is also difficult to come by, as most of Tibet is above the tree line, so cremation is a difficult process. 

Zoroastrian Tower of Silence (photograph by Nick Taylor)

It was actually only around 40 years ago that a similar death ritual was performed by the Zoroastrians in parts of Iran and India. It differed in that the corpse was not prepared — it was left intact on a short tower with a low parapet around the perimeter (a dakhma, or “tower of silence”). On the top of the tower were concentric rings: the outer one for the bodies of men, the middle for women, and the innermost for children. When the sun had bleached the bones, which could take up to a year, they were collected and dissolved in lime in an ossuary pit at the center of the tower, then filtered by charcoal and flushed away by rainwater.

The Zoroastrians’ reasons for sky burial differed greatly from the Vajrāyana Buddhists. Zoroastrianism considers a dead body as unclean and impure, as well as liable to be rife with demons. To bury a body is to risk defiling the water supply via putrefaction, and cremating one could contaminate the air.

The use of dakhmas was outlawed in Iran in the 1970s, as the country’s urban limits spread out and threatened to swallow the rural areas where the towers are built. Many of these towers remain throughout Iran and India, along with the ossuaries where the bones finally rest. Today, in order to keep impurities and demons contained, some Zoroastrians have taken to encasing corpses in cement before they’re buried.

Zoroastrian dakhma in Mumbai, India (photograph by PP Yoonus)

In northern Australia, a ritual was practiced mostly in the north by various Aboriginal tribes wherein the bodies of the departed were placed on raised platforms and covered with foliage. After several months, when all of the flesh had been depleted, the bones were retrieved and painted red with ochre. Then they could be carried around by the deceased’s relatives, or placed in a cave until they degraded into dust, or stashed inside a hollow log, or just plain abandoned. For a period of time after the death, speaking the deceased’s name was forbidden, and his or her property would be destroyed.

Aboriginal burial platforms (Gutenberg, via American Indian History)

The concept was to avoid ghosts. These particular tribes believed that the human soul has two sections, and that one of them — the ego — is what returns as a ghost to haunt the tribe. So by destroying the deceased’s property and not acknowledging the person’s name, they would basically cold-shoulder the ghost out of town.

Funeral scaffolding of a Sioux chief illustrated by Karl Bodmer (via Wikimedia)

The Sioux and Lakota tribes of North America historically buried their dead, but practices varied among tribes and situations and sometimes included air burial, which utilized wooden scaffolds, or even the limbs of trees, in order to offer a corpse to the sky. The scaffolds were approximately eight feet tall and were traditionally constructed by women.

Oglala Sioux tree burial (via National Archives and Records Administration, College Park)

An Apsaroke burial platform (1908) (photograph by Edward S. Curtis, via Library of Congress)

This air burial was typically used for the bodies of warriors who fell in battle, and the favorite horse of the dead would often be killed and tied to the scaffold or tree by its tail. Bodies were wrapped tightly in blankets and with weapons and other valuables, and they could be left aloft for up to two years before being retrieved and buried, although this didn’t happen universally. The motive was not solely to encourage the dead person’s spirit to depart into the sky: Sioux and Lakota people feared the dead as well as the diseases they can spread, so it was also an attempt to minimize contact with the body.

Some tribes within Sac and Fox Nation of the midwestern United States would also place bodies in trees, and not necessarily the bodies of warriors, and sometimes there would be several "burials" per tree. Some tribes would often leave a slain warrior at the site of the battle that killed him, to decompose naturally, believing he would rise into the sky on his own (a different kind of sky burial, perhaps).

A vulture flying near a sky burial in Tibet (photograph by Lyle Vincent)

My research on the practice of deliberately not burying your dead more or less ended around here, although in looking at all the diverse rituals of sky burial, it is hard to contest with the directness of the Tibetan tradition where your human remains are fed right to the birds and taken in flight to the sky. 

Curious things happen out on the ocean. Some of these natural phenomena are illustrated in detail in Philip Henry Gosse's compendium The Ocean from 1854. As part of their recent releasing of more than a million images into the public domain through Flickr, the British Library shared a few of these strange occurrences in their 19th century glory, and out on the seas you can still sometimes witness the otherworldly spectacles with your own eyes. 

Fata Morgana

Distortions of Irregular Refraction (via British Library)

A common high seas illusion is the Fata Morgana— described as irregular refraction here. Similar to a desert mirage, the illusion of a ship flipped upside down on the horizon is caused by light bending through temperature variations in the air, turning the atmospheric duct into a refracting lens. Sometimes this phenomenon causes ships to appear to be floating like phantoms above the waves. The Fata Morgana even had an influence on the legend of the ghostly Flying Dutchman, as Atlas Obscura's Annetta Black detailed in an article.

A contemporary Fata Morgana (photograph by Timpaananen/Wikimedia) 

Submarine Volcano

Submarine Volcano (via British Library)

Sometimes 19th century voyagers were startled to see a cataclysmic eruptions from the depths. Submarine volcanoes are incredibly active, contributing some 75% of the Earth's magma each year, although many we never sea. Those nearer to the surface, however, burst from their underwater fissures visibly, sometimes with harrowing results. In 1650 some 70 people were killed when the Kolumbo underwater volcano erupted.

The underwater West Mata Volcano in the Pacific Ocean (via NOAA Photo Library)

Aurora Borealis

Aurora Borealis (via British Library)

You might think the ethereal lights of the Aurora Borealis are only witnessed over land, but they're also visible in the skies over the ocean. The waves of vivid light are best witnessed in the Arctic or Antarctic seas, where there is the most colliding of particles and atoms in the atmosphere. 

Aurora Borealis over the Pacific (photograph by Jason Jenkins) 

Mock Suns

Mock Suns (via British Library)

Mock suns, also known as sun dogs and officially as parhelia, are the startling occurrence of sort of impostor suns in the sky. However, it is not actually another star suddenly looming into our solar system, but a refraction in the clouds on ice crystals that form in cold temperatures. 

Fargo, North Dakota, sun dogs (photograph by Gopherboy6956/Wikimedia)

The Southern Cross

The Southern Cross (via British Library) 

Not quite an earthly phenomenon, but this depicts the clarity with which you can see the greater existence outside of our planet out in the clear space of the ocean. The Southern Cross, officially known as the Crux, is a small constellation most visible from the southern hemisphere, and an icon to travelers on the waters far from home.

Deep space photograph of the Southern Cross (via Wikimedia) 

Waterspouts

Waterspouts (via British Library)

A little more terrifying, well, maybe just behind the underwater volcano, is the waterspout. Basically a tornado that has formed over water, the water from the clouds connects through the funnel to the water, causing a winding whip of watery horror. One can only imagine what this and the other ocean phenomena appeared like to voyagers venturing out to the seas with only their rickey wooden boat to accompany them into the unknown. 

Waterspout off the Florida Keys (via NOAA)

The three inch ledge lining the express track tunnel between 7th and Church Avenue on the F line in Brooklyn is an excellent place to listen to Pink Floyd. Trains occasionally clatter by on the local track just behind a cement wall, the passage is lit, and although the third rail is live it’s easily avoided by walking along the raised path along the wall. It’s just me, the steady drip of rainwater leaking through the grates, the scurrying of rats on the rails, and Great Gig in the Sky on my portable boom box.

all photographs by the author

But even walking the rails doesn’t give much insight into the impossibly complex workings of the trains. The New York City subway operates 24 hours a day, ferrying over a billion people around this fine metropolis annually. The cars roll seemingly effortlessly in and out of the stations, but in reality there is a world of maintenance required just to keep them dry.

Being below the water table, the subway requires more than 700 pumps to remove an average of 13 million gallons of water a day out of the underground. It is estimated that if maintenance ceased for a mere 36 hours, the tunnels would fill with water. 150 more years of neglect and the subway would be transformed into a labyrinth of fast flowing streams, the station ceilings collapsing with the ubiquitous platform columns which also support the streets above. As New York’s underground disintegrated, it would take the aboveground down with it.

As it is, not just constant maintenance but a massive amount of electricity is required to keep the trains up and running. Both alternating and direct current are used in tandem to operate signals, lighting, auxiliary equipment, ventilation, and the trains themselves. 2,500 miles of cable pass under 7,651 manholes throughout the city, distributing nearly 500,000 kilowatts through the system during peak hours. In a given year, the subway uses 1.8 billion kilowatt hours — that’s 18 bolts of lightning.

This power is supplied to the trains via overhead wires or the electrified third rail; a wheel, brush, or sliding shoe carries the power from the rail to the train’s electric motor. The third rail carries 625 volts of electricity, enough to fry anyone who so much as pisses on it, let alone touches it.

The rolling stock (the subway cars themselves) vary in size based on whether they were originally built by the privately owned Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) or the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corporation (BMT).

The IRT’s numbered trains are shorter and narrower than the BMT’s lettered cars. This is explained by the fact that the IRT sections of the track have narrower tunnel segments, tighter curves, and tighter platform clearances than BMT stock, which would have a large gap between door and platform if allowed on the IRT tracks.

An extensive signal system uses colored lights, infrared sensors, and short-circuits created by the cars’ wheels to prevent crashes. In the original system, train conductors needed a key to reset stop signals in order to proceed (hence the phrase keying by). It is thus that the longest lines with the oldest signal systems are the most often delayed.

So despite every strap-hanger claiming that their local line is the worst, it is in fact F train riders who take the cake — signal delays and malfunctions made the orange line the most delayed of 2013.

Finally, there are the rails themselves. Made from 39-foot lengths of carbon steel, each rail is 5.5 inches high and 2.5 inches wide. Rolling stock weighing up to 400 tons run them all day, every day, in temperatures ranging from 24 to 102 degrees Fahrenheit, with some sections exposed to the elements year round.

In order to monitor their condition, “geometry trains” travel along the tracks using mounted lasers on their front undersides to take measurements and allow employees to order repairs of any section of track more than 1.25 inches out of alignment.

The New York City subway is undeniably a feat of engineering, requiring double the annual income of riders’ fares to run. It is the crux of this city, a frequent subject of unbridled obsession, and a subject on which the detail to be studied often feels crushingly infinite.

Yet many, if not most, of us are blissfully happy to ride it without any idea of its functioning. The anatomy of the subway is an electric secret, fully understood only by those who dare walk its tracks and feel its current.

Read more about the hidden wonders of the world's subways on Atlas Obscura.

The Lewis Chessmen, berserkers. Late 12th century, Uig, Lewis, Scotland. Walrus ivory (© The Trustees of the British Museum)

The longest Viking ship ever discovered and the recently unearthed remains of some of the warriors who once roamed in the swift and sure vessels have stormed into London's British Museum. Vikings: Life and Legendwhich opened earlier this month brings together many artifacts that have never left Scandinavia, as well as some fragments of skeletons found in a mass grave in England. 

The centerpiece is without a doubt the Roskilde 6. Along with eight other vessels its timbers were found in the harbor of Roskilde, Denmark in 1996, and the bits of the oaken vessel are the longest intact Viking ship ever found at 117 feet. Only 20% of the hull survives, and the rest is structured with a metal skeleton, but through the collage of history and reconstruction you can get the time traveling sensation of the terror the Viking warriors once inspired as their curved vessels approached foreign shores.

The installation of Roskilde 6 at the British Museum in the Sainsbury Exhibitions Gallery, January 2014 (© Paul Raftery)

Of course, the Vikings as violent raiders is only part of their story. Much of the contribution to their legacy of grisly rampages is that their history was oral, so the written accounts of the people collectively known as the Vikings between the 8th and 11th centuries was predominately written by the people they attacked (people with whom they happily traded were much less verbose in their accounts). Thus you get poems like this which is included in the exhibition:

“Men will quake with terror
Before the seventy sea-oars
Are given deserved respite
From the labours of the ocean.”

Nevertheless, the warrior side of the Vikings isn't entirely myth, as the exhibition shows. The Roskilde 6 was equipped with 40 pairs of oarsmen and probably served to transport troops over the North Sea. In the British Museum's new Sainsbury Exhibitions Gallery, it is surrounded by axes and swords and even pieces of actual Vikings.

Sword, late 8th–early 9th century. Kalundborg or Holbæk, Zealand, Denmark. (Photo: John Lee, © The National Museum of Denmark)

Back in 2009 in Dorset, a gruesome Viking mass grave was discovered in a quarry with around 50 skeletons. Each one was decapitated and all the skulls tossed into a pile together. According to the BBC, the invaders were likely executed at their gravesite and quickly buried, and wounds show that the men didn't give their lives easily. Some decapitations took multiple blows (one jaw bone was totally sliced through). And although many of them were quite young, they likely presented a fierce sight to England: one skeleton showed teeth filed down to intimidating points.

After the British Museum and the exhibition's tour to Berlin, the skeleton pieces will all return to Dorset for display in their own museum, where the Vikings have come a long way from feared invaders prowling across the waters in their narrow boats to one of the more enigmatic parts of history, even in the countries who once shuddered at their memory. 

Silver Valkyrie brooch, 9th century. Galgebakken, Vrejlev, Vendsyssel, Denmark (© The National Museum of Denmark)

Brooch shaped like a ship, 800-1050. Tjørnehøj II, Fyn, Denmark. Copper alloy. (© The National Museum of Denmark)

Silver-inlaid axehead in the Mammen style, AD 900s. Bjerringhøj, Mammen, Jutland, Denmark. Iron, silver, brass. L 17.5 cm. (© The National Museum of Denmark)

Vikings: Life and Legend  is at the British Museum in London through June 22.

In the Photo of the Week feature, we highlight an exceptionally amazing photograph submitted by an Atlas Obscura user.

Full of creaking 19th century carousels in a dimly lit gallery, Paris's Musée des Arts Forains can be a scary place. In this Photo of the Week, Atlas user Katie Bush captures the eerily magical feeling of the space in one singular image. Here she describes her visit:

"This little museum is tucked away in an odd part of Paris — a section that has shops built on old train tracks, and the museum is housed in one of the city's original train stations. When you walk inside of the large gates, the whole place feels magical. There are lots of sculptures of animals sticking out of buildings, old carnival rides outside and inside of the museum, masks hanging off of the old station, pretty much everything you can imagine. The inside of the museum is very dark, but hauntingly magical. All of the items housed in the museum are of excellent quality and have a high level of craftsmanship. They were all hand painted. I especially liked the illuminated pieces, as seen in the background my image. I believe that this particular photo was of a unicorn costume used in some sort of sideshow." 

MUSÉE DES ARTS FORAINS, Paris, France

Thanks to all of our adventurous users who keep submitting such amazing shots! Want to have your photograph featured? Keep adding your captures to our ever-growing compendium of wondrous places (just click the "Edit This Place" link at the bottom of each place). And watch here each Friday for another Photo of the Week. 

Sunset at a lighthouse (photograph by Deb Nystrom)

They’re picturesque, they’re historic, they’re functional — they’re lighthouses. And in many places, thanks to changes in guidance technology like GPS units and sonar, they’re obsolete.

Often when a lighthouse is decommissioned, it gets put on the auction block in the hopes a private developer will turn it into... something. Some especially historic lighthouses end up in the hands of preservationists or non-profit foundations, hoping to restore the houses and keep the lights on, while others simply fall into ruin. But those need not be the only options. Here are ten “second careers” for lighthouses.

CASTLES  

Dover Castle, St. Mary-In-Castro Church (photograph by Malcom Manners, via Flickr)

In the south of England, the grounds of Dover Castle include the remains of a lighthouse built by ancient Roman settlers. The pharos, or Roman lighthouse, was built in the first century AD. Dover offers the closest crossing between the United Kingdom and continental Europe, so Roman soldiers selected it as the site for a port, building a pair of pharos shortly after capturing the land from the Britons. Both were still standing nearly a thousand years later when William the Conqueror won the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

On his journey to Westminster Abbey to celebrate his coronation, William built up a series of fortifications along the English coast. When he reached Dover, one of the pair of ancient lighthouses was being used as the belfry for a Saxon church, but William incorporated the structure — lighthouse, church, and all — into the fortification which would become Dover Castle. (The other lighthouse stood until the 1700s.)

Dover Castle's Roman Lighthouse (photograph by Oliver Mallich, via Flickr)

Extra stonework was added to the pharos in the 14th Century to strengthen the original structure and let it “blend in” with the other towers and battlements of the surrounding castle, but otherwise the original design was left intact. The pharos at Dover Castle is one of the few remaining examples of ancient Roman lighthouses still standing in the world today. 

CHURCHES

The early Saxons who used Dover’s pharos weren’t the only ones to think of re-purposing a lighthouse as a church steeple. Collioure in the south of France, at the foot of the Pyrénées, began as a pair of villages — Port d’Aval to the south, and Port d’Amont to the north — divided by the Douy river, passing through on its way to the Gulf of Lyon.

Notre Dame Des Anges (photograph by Jean-Pierre Dalbèra, via Flickr)

In the Middle Ages, both towns were served by a single lighthouse stationed on a small peninsula at the mouth of the Douy. By the 17th century, however, the two towns had been united, and the medieval lighthouse replaced by a larger French fort. Instead of tearing down the older lighthouse, the citizens of Collioure built a church beside it – the Notre Dame des Anges— and incorporated the lighthouse as the church’s bell tower. 

Coillioure lighthouse (photograph by Jean-Francois Renaud, via Flickr)

The Église Notre-Dame-des-Anges enjoyed a bit of celebrity in the 20th Century, when several painters from the Fauvist school — Henri Matisse and Georges Braque among them — made Collioure a favorite haunt. One of Matisse’s works, "View of Collioure (The Tower)" (1905),  is a painting of the church and lighthouse itself. 

MAUSOLEUM/COLUMBARIUM

From housing the prayerful, we move to housing the dead. Tillamook Rock Light was built on a remote rocky outcropping nearly two miles off the cost of Oregon, and suffered from such severe weather conditions and isolation that it earned the nickname "Terrible Tilly."

Tillamook Ligthhouse viewed from the shore (photograph by OCVA)

Storms battered the lighthouse with such intensity that a gust once blew a 135-pound rock through the lighthouse’s kitchen window. Another storm even threw debris up to the lantern tower, destroying the light itself and severing the lighthouse’s radio contact with the mainland. Keepers eventually had to brick up most of the windows for safety’s sake, leaving only small peepholes; the building may have been safer, but the keepers were plunged into even greater isolation, and reports of depression and even madness among keepers were frequent. 

After 76 years of service, Tillamook Rock Light was finally closed in 1957. Tillamook’s remote location and harsh weather posed a challenge to redevelopment, and the site lay abandoned for over 20 years. 

Tillamook Lighthouse (photograph by David S. Ferry III)

Finally, in 1980, a pair of investors established the Eternity at Sea Columbarium, a repository for the ashes of the deceased at Tillamook Rock. Even the dead faced a difficult time at Terrible Tilly — storms continued to batter the structure, and the roof frequently leaked on the remains. The rock of the lighthouse is in a nationally protected wildlife area, which bars any human intervention during the spring and summer breeding season for various aquatic birds, so Eternity at Sea’s owners couldn’t even tend the remains consistently. Furthermore, the site was left exposed to vandals — who once broke in and stole an urn in 1991. Sea birds also sometimes broke in and nested inside.

Eternity at Sea finally lost its columbarium license in 1999, but 30 urns remain inside Tillamook Rock Light.

WILDLIFE REFUGE & OBSERVATION

The remoteness and exposure to wildlife posed a problem for Tillamook Rock Light, but other lighthouses have turned similar conditions to their advantage, as natural scientists have developed them into wildlife refuges and animal observatories.

Low Light Lighthouse was established in 1843 on the Isle of May, five miles off the cost of Fife in Scotland. Low Light was a smaller sister light to a main lighthouse, providing an extra warning against the dangerous North Carr reef just offshore. However, after 40 years, authorities chose to station a lightship by the North Carr reef instead to offer a more immediate warning, and Low Light went dark.

Low Light Bird Observatory (photograph by Jsutcliffe, via Flickr)

Then in 1934 a team of ornithologists took over Low Light, using it as housing while they visited the Isle of May to research Scotland's sea birds.  Low Light, now re-named the Isle of May Bird Observatory, is Scotland's oldest bird observatory of this kind, and still hosts ornithologists to record data on flocks of puffins, passerines, and other birds during breading season. Occasionally researchers also come to study harbor seals and gray seals, which make their home on the Isle of May. 

Seahorse Key Lighthouse (photograph by Hspauldi, via Flickr)

A similar facility is just off Florida’s coast, on tiny Seahorse Key Island. The Seahorse Key lighthouse was built in 1854 to serve Cedar Key, a trading post on the delta of the Suwannee River. After its decommission in 1915, the University of Florida purchased the Seahorse Key light in the 1950s and turned it into housing for researchers conducting studies of the fish species and ecosystem of the Gulf of Mexico. Seahorse Key also houses younger students enrolled in University of Florida high school outreach programs. 

TIMEPIECES 

Old Fort Lighthouse Clock Tower (photograph by Jorge Lascar, via Flickr)

Some lighthouses located near cities or towns have become clock towers; or may have always served double-duty as a timepiece, as with the Old Colombo Lighthouse in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Erected in 1860, the Old Colombo Lighthouse boasted a clock made by the same manufacturer as Big Ben in London. As the city of Colombo grew, however, surrounding buildings blocked its light. In 1952, Colombo built a new lighthouse — but left the old lighthouse tower, and its clock, in place.

An Australian lighthouse became a slightly different timekeeping device: a time ball tower. The time ball was a time signaling system popular in the 19th century, used mainly by navigators on board ships. It consisted of a large wooden or metal ball on a mast erected on top of a tower; five minutes before 1 pm local time, the ball would be raised to the top of the pole, and then dropped precisely on the hour. Ships in the harbor would use it to synchronize their clocks. 

Williamstown Lighthouse at Gellibrand Point just outside Melbourne, Australia, is the second oldest lighthouse in Victoria Province. Within ten years of its construction in 1852 it was replaced by a lightship stationed out in the harbor. Astronomers at the nearby Williamstown Observatory took it over and converted it into a time ball tower, controlling the ball's rise and fall with a telegraph. They even devised a way to re-use the light as a second time signal in the evening — keepers dimmed the lights in the tower five minutes before 8 pm, and then turned them up again precisely at the hour. 

Time Ball Tower in Williamstown (photograph by Alpha, via Flickr)

Williamstown’s lighthouse-turned-time ball operated until 1926, by which time better clocks and timekeeping systems made most time balls obsolete. However, further development in the city behind the harbor had begun to obscure the existing light signaling systems in Melbourne’s harbor. So the Williamstown time ball tower was turned back into a lighthouse in 1934, with different colored lights to stand out against the white city lights. It was finally decommissioned for good in 1987, but preserved as a historic monument; its time ball still drops daily right at 1 pm. 

STUDIOS

Another popular post-career for lighthouses, particularly those with inspirational views, is as an artist’s studio.

Port Bickerton Lighthouse (photograph by Dennis Jarvis, via Flickr)

Port Bickerton lighthouse in Nova Scotia was taken out of service in the 1990s after almost a century of service. Today it is mainly open to the public as a monument and museum devoted to lighthouses in the region. However, the lighthouse keeper's home has been set aside as a summer artist’s retreat.

Port Bickerton Lighthouse (photograph by Dennis Jarvis, via Flickr)

Port Bickerton’s artist-in-residence program gives artists in any medium a week or two to themselves in the keeper's house, which features living quarters and a full studio in which to work. Participating artists are asked to offer some kind of public access at the end of their retreat — a lecture, an exhibition, or even just open house studio hours — but other than that they are left alone to wander the grounds, drawing inspiration from the nature trails and beaches surrounding the lighthouse, and to work in peace. 

Utsira Lighthouse (photograph by Eirik Newth, via Flickr)

A similar artist-in-residence program operates out of Utsira Lighthouse in Rogaland, an island community in Norway. Utsira, built in 1844,  is the highest lighthouse in Norway, sitting 78 meters above sea level. Spurn Point nature reserve in Yorkshire, England, also hosts artists in its own lighthouse, one of a pair erected in the 1850s (the other one is currently being converted into a visitors center for the reserve). 

Former Northern Lighthouse Board Depot, Granton (photograph by John Lord, via Flickr)

Edinburgh offers a much less remote option for musicians in its Granton Lighthouse complex. Technically, the Granton facility wasn’t a lighthouse; it was a training and testing facility. But as lighthouses either went obsolete or switched to automated operations, the training facility went obsolete as well. Today, the Granton complex hosts the Depot, a series of rehearsal and recording studios for local musicians. 

ART SPACES

In addition to artist studios, lighthouses have also become exhibition spaces — most interestingly for site-specific works. 

The lighthouse in Maryport in the northwest of England dates to 1796. But for much of that time it was closed to the public, and was untended for years after switching to an automated operation system. Then in 2009, an English arts collective named Fold selected Maryport as a gallery space as part of its mission to bring contemporary art to more rural English communities. Along with the gallery, they commissioned Irish-born composer Ailís Ni Ríain to compose an original piece of music for the inside of the tower itself; Ni Ríain’s “Lighthouse Lullaby” uses voice and guitar, but leaves space within the composition to incorporate the natural creaks the lighthouse made itself. 

Old Lighthouse, Maryport (photograph by Alexander P Kapp)

Fold’s festival only ran three days, however, and Fold disbanded shortly thereafter, so Maryport’s second life was short-lived. Recently there are rumors that Maryport’s lighthouse has been bought by a developer in Havasu, Arizona, who seeks to move it to a spot beside London’s Bridge. 

A longer-lasting and more visual installation has taken residence at the Point of Ayr lighthouse on Talacre Beach in Wales. The Point of Ayr was built in 1776, and operated until the mid-1800s, when the community built a taller house. Visitors to Talacre Beach over the years would sometimes explore the abandoned lighthouse — but often left feeling vaguely uneasy.

"Keeper" at the Point of Ayr Lighthouse (photograph by Mat Fascione)

Rumors spread that Point of Ayr was haunted by a former keeper who’d died of a broken heart. Some even reported seeing a ghost pacing at the top of the tower. In 2010, Point of Ayr’s owner decided to capitalize on the rumors and commissioned artist Angela Smith to create a sculpture of the ghostly keeper. Smith’s life-size work, “The Keeper,” is a series of stainless-steel sea creature shapes, including fish, starfish, and clams, assembled onto the framework of a man. Gaps in between the shapes allow the wind to whistle through. 

TRANSMISSION TOWERS

Early on, engineers saw the advantages of lighthouses as radio or telecommunications signal stations; they were often high enough to catch radio signals, and were kept unobstructed as well. While he was first developing long-distance radio transmission in the 1890s, Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi used lighthouses as receiver points to test methods for communication between vessels at sea and radio receivers on land.

Dover Cliffs, South Foreland Lighthouse (photograph by Archgangel 12, via Flickr)

Marconi worked mainly in the South Foreland Lighthouse in Dover, and successfully completed the very first ship-to-shore transmission there in 1898. The first ship-to-shore distress call also came in to South Foreland the following year, in 1899, when a steamship ran aground. The South Foreland Light not only received the message, but relayed it by radio to a lifeboat station further up the shore. That same year, South Foreland received the very first international radio transmission from France. 

Other countries soon followed suit, expanding or converting lighthouses into "Marconi stations." A new station at the Pointe-au-Père lighthouse in Quebec, Canada, was completed in 1909, just in time to catch the distress call issued by the ocean liner RMS Empress of Ireland after she collided with a Norwegian coal freighter.

Pointe-au-Père Lighthouse (photograph by Dennis Jarvis, via Flickr)

The Empress of Ireland was badly damaged and sank after only 15 minutes, but the Pointe-au-Père received the message — including vital information as to the ship's location — in time to dispatch rescue steamers within three minutes, saving 465 passengers. 

POST OFFICE

By their very nature, lighthouses often need to be in some rather remote places, making them anchors for the small communities that spring up around them. Thus they sometimes get pressed into service for the people's needs. In Fort Jupiter, Florida, this meant the lighthouse doubled as the post office.

Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse (photograph by Ed Schipul, via Flickr)

The first post office at the Jupiter Inlet Light opened in 1856 during the Third Seminole War, when Fort Jupiter was a military base. The post office closed only a few years later, but the lighthouse remained. Then in 1887, the keeper’s wife Mary Moore “Mollie” Carlin reopened the post office as her project while her husband Charles was at work. 

Peggy's Cove (photograph by Andrea Schaffer, via Flickr)

The post office at Peggy's Point Lighthouse in Nova Scotia has a quainter origin. After the Second World War, the tiny harbor town of Peggy's Cove enjoyed a surge in popularity from tourists drawn by the region’s beauty. Peggy's Point Lighthouse became a major tourist attraction, and the town opened a seasonal post office inside the lighthouse to capitalize on it, offering visitors the chance to send postcards stamped with a lighthouse-shaped cancellation mark. However, the Canada Post grew concerned at the rate of mold growth in Peggy's Point, and in 2009 shuttered the office permanently.

INNS

Turning lighthouses into inns or bed-and-breakfasts is a popular choice for entrepreneurs; some lighthouse-turned-innkeepers also cater to a more frugal clientele, and have turned their lighthouses into youth hostels. Notable options include the Smygehuk Lighthouse in Sweden, built in 1883, retired in 1975, and opened as a hotel in 2001. There is also Point Montara Light in Montara, California, which originally stood clear across the country, off Wellfleet, Massachusetts. When Wellfleet retired the light in the 1920s, the tower was moved west and became Point Montara’s lighthouse. 

Rua Reidh Lighthouse (photograph by ms.akr, via Flickr)

There's also Rua Reidh Lighthouse, near Loch Ewe in the north of Scotland. Rua Reidh’s lighthousekeeper’s quarters became a hostel in 1986 when the light was automated. The lighthouse itself is not open to the public, but a nearby heritage museum has the original workings on display. And then there's Tibbets Point Lighthouse in Cape Vincent, New York, which sits where the St. Lawrence Seaway meets Lake Ontario, and is still in operation. Tibbets Point even retains its original Fresnel lens, installed back in 1854.

Tibbets Point Lighthouse (Doug Kerr, via Flickr)

In a sense, lighthouses are obsolete technology. But most lighthouses — especially the oldest — are striking and picturesque enough to spur people to preserve them instead of discarding or demolishing them, the way we would a VCR player or a rotary phone. Thousands of lighthouses still operate worldwide, but continue to be decommissioned each year — and hopefully many will go on to enjoy second lives.

View even more luminous lighthouses on the Atlas Obscura.

"Memento Mori" engraving by Simon van der Passe after Crispyn van der Passe the Older (1612) (via Museum Boijmans-van Beunigen, Rotterdam)

The human skeleton is the most enduring part of the human body; when well-preserved, bones can survive thousands of years. The skeleton tends to be treated with reverence and honor because it is recognizably human and is all that remains of the physical embodiment of the deceased.

Human bones are often kept by religious orders or family members as relics for veneration and remembrance because many cultures believe human remains retain the physical and spiritual essence of the deceased. Bones are thought to possess supernatural powers, provide good luck, block evil spirits, or provide protection, and are often kept as amulets, talismans, or trophies.

Cultures all over the world have some pretty ingenious ways of creatively re-using human bones. Frequently human bones are carved and repurposed into jewelry, cups, musical instruments, and weapons.

Jewelry

Necklace made from hand & foot bones at the National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico. (photograph by Travis/Flickr user)

The Neolithic culture of Neuchâtel, Switzerland carved the cranial bones of their deceased into amulets. In the early 20th century cranial amulets were recovered from an archaeological site in Neuchâtel that are estimated to have been made around 3500 BC. These Neolithic amulets were oval and perforated at one end, and the edges were finished and rounded. Archaeologists have found similar amulets at sites in Port-Conty, La Lance, and Concise, also in Switzerland.

Archaeologists have also unearthed trophy necklaces made from metacarpals, metatarsals, and hand and foot phalanges associated with cultures in the Plains, Great Basin, and Mexico. This practice is related to warfare and gave warriors prestige because they were a symbol of victory.

Human cranium prayer beads at the Rubin Museum, NYC (photograph by Allison Meier/Atlas Obscura)

Cups

A carved ritual kapala or skull cup (via Wikimedia)

Kapala— Sanskrit for “skull” — are ritual cups used in Buddhist and Hindu Tantric ceremonies. These skull cups are sacred because of their ritual purpose, not because they came from a holy person or ancestor. Monks recover the crania used to carve kapala from sky burial sites or from bodies pulled from the Ganges River. Once the remains are cleaned, monks carve elaborate designs and decorate them with precious metals and jewels.

Tibetan monasteries use kapala to hold dough cakes or wine that are symbolic representations of flesh and blood as offerings to wrathful deities. Kapala are used in rituals like higher tantric meditation to achieve a transcendental state of thought and mind within the shortest possible time and to offer libation to the gods and deities to win their favor.

Musical Instruments

Tibetan "kangling" trumpet made from a human femur (via Wikimedia)

In Tibet, Buddhists play an instrument called a kangling, translated as “leg” (kang) “flute” (ling) — it is a trumpet made from a human femur. Tibetan Buddhists prefer to use the femur from the corpse of a criminal or a person who died a violent death for the instrument, but in pinch the femur of a respected teacher may be substituted. The kangling is used in Himalayan Buddhism during tantric rituals and funerals as a way of eliminating the attachments to the body and as a reminder that this physical existence is temporary.

The Aztecs used a notched percussion instrument known as a Omichicahuaztli in ceremonies. Omichicahuaztli is a Nahuatl word, omitl means “bone” and chicahuaztli means “to beat.” The Aztec preferred long bones like femurs and tibia for these instruments.

Kangling in the British Museum (photograph by Jean-Pierre Dalbéra)

Weapons 

Human bone spear tips (via Dr. Judy Flores of the CNMI Historic Preservation Office)

Archeologists working in Guam in the 1990s found evidence that the indigenous people of the island, the Chamorros, used human bones to make barbed spear tips. Archaeologists who excavated a cemetery dating between 1000 AD and 1521 AD, unearthed barbed spear points made from human bones in two burials. They found evidence that the Chamorros obtained the necessary bones from select portions of decomposed bodies, and preferred the long bones, like the tibia, fibula, and radius.

For more fascinating stories of forensic anthropology visit Dolly Stolze's Strange Remains, where a version of this article also appeared. 

Morbid Mondays highlight macabre stories from around the world and through time, indulging in our morbid curiosity for stories from history's darkest corners. Read more Morbid Mondays>

References:

Flynn, R. Two cranial amulets from Neuchâtel, Switzerland. Retrieved on March 16, 2014 from: http://www.museum.ie/en/list/documentationdiscoveries.aspx?article=45542186-e662-428c-88b0-b93378cf30ac

McNeil, J. (2002). Human spear points and speared humans: the procurement, manufacture and use of bone implements in prehistoric Guam. Bulletin of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association. Retrieved on January 24, 2014 from: http://journals.lib.washington.edu/index.php/BIPPA/article/viewFile/11818/10446

Owsley DW, Bruwelheide KS, Burgess LE, and Billeck WT. Human finger and bone necklaces from the Plains and Great Basin. (2007). In Chacon, RJ, Dye, DH. The taking and displaying of human body parts as trophies by Amerindians. New York: Springer.

Tolentino, D. (2009). Ancient Chamorro use of human bones. Retrieved on March 16, 2014 from: http://guampedia.com/ancient-chamorros-use-of-human-bones/

This month marks the return of one of the most startling spectacles of the natural world: the 1.5 million bat colony that migrates to an urban bridge in Austin Texas.

From mid-March through November, Mexican free-tailed bats congregate under Congress Bridge in downtown Austin. And as each day falls into dusk they emerge in clouds of tiny screeching creatures. This is the largest urban bat colony in the continent, although there are larger groups of the bats that inhabit caves around Texas and into Oklahoma, Arizona, and New Mexico. 

photograph by Kenneth Hagemeyer

photograph by Peter17/Wikimedia

The bats were an ominous occurrence following a bridge renovation in 1980 that added expansion joints. Unbeknownst to the bridge engineers, they were designing a perfect bat colony. However, while the initial reaction of the city was one of fear for rabies and the other reactionary beliefs that the little animals tend to provoke, Austin has now embraced the bats and there are now cruises that take boats beneath the bridge to witness the nightly departure for foraging. The local minor-league hockey team has even been named after them — the Austin Ice Bats — with a logo showing a bat gripping a hockey stick in its claws. Besides, at 1.5 million, the bats outnumber humans in Austin 2:1.

photograph by Lars Plougmann

As Bat Conservation International explains, these bats migrate from Mexico and are mostly female, using the bridge as a maternity colony (so you are likely to see baby bats out on their first fly amongst the crowd). The BCI also emphasizes that although the sight can be unsettling, the bats are "gentle and incredibly sophisticated animals" that eat some "10,000 to 20,000 pounds of insects, including agricultural pests" on the nightly flights. Each bat only weighs about half an ounce, but its consumption can seriously cut into the mosquitoes that also swarm in summer. 

The Congress Bridge bats are most numerous on the hottest, driest nights, and if you're nocturnal yourself you can witness them return to their bridge home just before daybreak. 

To find out what time the bats are departing Congress Bridge for the night, you can call a Bat Hotline (512-327-9721 Ext. 16) or check the Bat Conservation International site for estimated emergence times.

CONGRESS BRIDGE BATS, Austin, Texas

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An English hermitage illustrated in "Merlin: a poem" (1735) (via British Library)

While some gardeners might now throw in a gnome statue among their flowers and shrubberies, back in the 18th century wealthy estate owners were hiring real people to dress as druids, grow their hair long, and not wash for years. These hired hermits would lodge in shacks, caves, and other hermitages constructed in a rustic manner in rambling gardens. It was a practice mostly found in England, although it made it up to Scotland and over to Ireland as well.

Gordon Campbell, a Professor of Renaissance Studies at the University of Leicester, recently published The Hermit in the Garden: From Imperial Rome to Ornamental Gnome with Oxford University Press. It's the first book to delve into the history of the ornamental hermit in Georgian England. As Campbell explains in this video for the book:

"Recruiting a hermit wasn't always easy. Sometimes they were agricultural workers, and they were dressed in a costume, often in a druid's costume. There was no agreement on how druids dressed, but in some cases they wore what we would call a dunce's cap. It's a most peculiar phenomenon, and understanding it is one of the reasons why I have written this book."

How the live-in hermit came to be a fashionable touch to a splendid garden goes back to the Roman emperor Hadrian with his villa at Tivoli, which included a small lake with a structure in it built for one person to retreat. When the ruins of this early hermitage were unearthed in the 16th century, it was suggested that Pope Pius IV build one for himself, which he did at the Casina Pio IV. Yet from here it gradually verged away from religious devotees isolating themselves for spiritual reflection to hermitting being an 18th century profession for those willing to put up with the stipulations. 

As Campbell cites from an advertisement referenced in Sir William Gell's A Tour in the Lakes Made in 1797, "the hermit is never to leave the place, or hold conversation with anyone for seven years during which he is neither to wash himself or cleanse himself in any way whatever, but is to let his hair and nails both on hands and feet, grow as long as nature will permit them." 

John Bigg, the Dinton Hermit (via Wellcome Library)

John Bigg, the Dinton Hermit (via Wellcome Library)

Others asked that their hermits not wear shoes or even to entertain party guests with personalized poetry or the serving of wine. It might seem like a whimsical garden feature, but in fact it was all about that most celebrated of Georgian England emotions: melancholy. Introspection and a somberness of spirit were prized among the elite, and the roles they asked their hermits to play embodied this. A 1784 guide to the Hawkstone estate in Shropshire belonging to Sir Richard Hill describes its resident hermit:

"You pull a bell, and gain admittance. The hermit is generally in a sitting posture, with a table before him, on which is a skull, the emblem of mortality, an hour-glass, a book and a pair of spectacles. The venerable bare-footed Father, whose name is Francis (if awake) always rises up at the approach of strangers. He seems about 90 years of age, yet has all his sense to admiration. He is tolerably conversant, and far from being unpolite."

An English hermitage illustrated in "Merlin: a poem" (1735) (via British Library)

At other hours, the Hawkstone hermit was replaced with a mannequin, or perhaps, Campbell speculates, an automaton. Some estate owners who couldn't afford, or did not want, a real live hermit sometimes set up the hermitage as if its resident had just left. Others used the hermitages themselves. 

The ornamental hermit vanished at the end of the 18th century. In The Hermit in the Garden, Campbell chronicles the remains in a "catalogue of hermitages," listing whether they are destroyed, extant, or never built at all. However, the humble hermit may not have left us entirely. As Campbell argues, "the garden hermit evolved from the antiquarian druid and eventually declined into the garden gnome."

An 18th century hermitage that survives in Manor Gardens Eastbourne, East Essex (photograph by Kevin Gordon)

The Hermit in the Garden: From Imperial Rome to Ornamental Gnome (2013) by Gordon Campbell is available from Oxford University Press.