Staircase in the Musée Gustave Moreau (all photographs by the author unless indicated)

For Gustave Moreau, his greatest work may have been his death. He did not exhibit widely in his lifetime, and mostly stayed in solitude at his parents' home on the Rue de la Rochefoucauld in the 9th arrondissement of Paris. Yet the symbolist artist planned an entire posthumous museum that would only open after he had departed this world.

Moreau died of stomach cancer on April 18, 1898, but he still feels very present in the Musée Gustave Moreau. From the salmon-painted walls to the salon-style assemblage of unfinished work, it is almost exactly as he intended it to be experienced. This January the museum reopened its three floors following a six-month closure to preserve much of it in this state, and this fall the six floors on the rez-de-chausée will open to visitors for the first time in over a decade (you can see updates on the renovation and expansion here). Even so, the modernization is very much absent as you wander the eclectic rooms under the gaze of nymphs and mythical creatures, haunted by the hand of one of the 19th century's great artists, and great mysteries.

Gustave Moreau, "Le Poète voyageur" (via Musée Gustave Moreau)

When Moreau met his end, he bequeathed not just all the art in his home, including over 4,000 drawings, 1,200 paintings, and hundreds of watercolors, to France, but all the objects in it as they were. Lodged in heavy wood frames all over the walls are wide-eyed unicorns, otherworldly biblical scenes, mystical symbolism, and roaming classical gods. The art is both mesmerizing and arcane, and almost all halted mid-thought. Backgrounds are blank, figures are half-formed. You can flip through whole cabinets of drawing studies, where feathers, snakes, bodies, and symbols are sketched in careful detail, but never finished. He'd decided on establishing these fragments as a museum in 1892, and what's left is a collision of family heirlooms and priceless art.  

Elizabeth Gray Buck wrote in Exceptional Spaces: Essays in Performance and History: "His plans comprise a performance of an absent artist and a present art object that bears his name — a performance that at once literally demands the 'death-of-the-artist' and yet also assures the absolute survival of his name — staged in his private home." Moreau's father was an architect, and in designing the museum he collaborated with Albert Lafon to add two "grand ateliers" to the top floor, linked by a strange and stunning spiral staircase. 

The Gustave Moreau staircase

The staircase seems like a miracle, reminiscent in its shape of the spiral staircase at Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe, New Mexico. That American architectural oddity dates to 1878, and still is an unknown in how it was built with no central support, from a wood non-native to the area, and two 360 degree twists in its 20 feet. Moreau's on the other hand is cast iron. With its tongue-like shape that slopes out of the ceiling it appears to have recently unraveled down to the floor. 

On January 13, 1903, the Musée Gustave Moreau opened to the public for the first time. Gustave himself called it a "small sentimental museum," yet it feels like an artist, who was enamored with the esoteric, finding his own myth for himself in death. There is a small crowd of museums in Paris that were once private homes, and you can step inside Victor Hugo's lodgings on the fashionable Place des Vosges or visit the room where Delacroix died on the quiet Rue de Furstemburg. Moreau on the other hand was no iconic figure in his life, his art swarmed with fantasy figures not finding much ground with his contemporaries.

André Breton, one of the surrealists later influenced by Moreau's symbolist art, stated he "dreamed of breaking into it at night with a lantern." Perhaps Moreau knew in some way it was after his life that his work would find its resonance, and here in a space where the art is incomplete, but the museum is painstakingly designed, his spirit seems to guide you through.

Study in the apartment level of the museum

Heirlooms & art

Detail of a cabinet, with a cat photo and curios

Gustave Moreau, "Phaeton" (1878), oil on canvas (via Musée Gustave Moreau)

Gustave Moreau, "Self-Portrait" (1850), oil on canvas (via Musée Gustave Moreau)

Uncover more of the intrigue of art on Atlas Obscura >

Zombies at Screen Novelties (all photographs by the author)

What are you to do with your life if you love puppets, and are fascinated with old stop motion animation movies?

If you're like Chris Finnegan, Mark Caballero and Seamus Walsh, you cut your teeth on cable TV shows like MTV's Celebrity Death Match and Robot Chicken, and then carve out your own niche in the small industry, with your own production studio. At Screen Novelties — located on Los Angeles's East Side in Historic Filipinotown, near Echo Park — partners Chris, Mark, and Seamus have found a way to live out their dreams of making stop motion films of their own, and they've let their imaginations run wild.

Restored neon sign (with added x-ray element)

Los Angeles Obscura Society got an exclusive visit to Screen Novelties' historic building — marked outside by a neon giraffe sign they helped restore — where materials are collected (such as flocking, glitter, googly eyes, and feather boas), puppets are fabricated, sets are built, and the creatures of their dreams come to life.

We were sworn to secrecy as we saw some high-profile projects for major studio clients currently in production on a "hot set," where photos were forbidden. As Mark describes it, the world of stop motion animation is a bit of a secret society anyway — none of its members really want the rest of the world to know exactly how things are done.

Seaumus demonstrating some of their puppets, currently on display

But most of the techniques and processes haven't changed all that much since the original creators of the craft, and the Japanese artisans who brought it to prominence with TV specials like Ruldolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. That old-fashioned style of puppet animation continues to serve as major inspiration for Screen Novelties, who embrace whimsy and enjoy being just a little bit silly. Add a bit of technology into the mix (a little green screen here, a dash of CGI there, maybe a 3D printed head on top), and Screen Novelties has created their own unique style, which they hope will be expressed increasingly in their own original productions.

Regardless of our ages, we were each transported back to our own childhoods, witnessing the birthplace of these figures that seemed familiar yet were entirely new, waiting to be animated, one frame at a time. We couldn't believe our eyes, as we watched puppets get a new head of hair, sometimes their heads, limbs or even lips being swapped out for different actions and expressions. 

After our tours of the facilities, our sold-out crowd gathered upstairs in the office loft/gallery to sip on custom cocktails ("The Witch Doctor," a tropical drink, and a smoked bacon and maple Old Fashioned) while we watched selections from Screen Novelties' own portfolio, as well as from their extensive collection of vintage and rare stop motion animation films.

All photos by the author.

Historic corner building

Sock puppets from Oscar Telecast"Flight" parody

Set shop and green screen

Top secret soundstage

Upstairs loft / office space / screening room

Custom cocktails

Screen Novelties with field agents Sandi Hemmerlein and Erin Johnson and Matt Blitz of LA Obscura Society

Thanks to everyone at Screen Novelties for your hospitality! We were delighted to get a glimpse into your world. And now we all want to become your interns.

We hope to come back soon!

The Obscura Society is the real-world exploration arm of Atlas Obscura We seek out secret histories, unusual access, and opportunities for our community to explore strange and overlooked places hidden all around us. Join us on our next adventure, and keep up with LA Obscura Society events on our mailing list.

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The oldest patient at Massachusetts’ General Hospital (MGH) does not lie in one of the beds in a patient room, rather he’s been in a display case in its original surgical amphitheater for more than a century. This surgical amphitheater is known as the Ether Dome because this is where, in 1846, William T.G. Morton demonstrated the first public surgery using anesthetic, or ether.

Dutch merchant Jacob Van Lennep imported this mummy to the United States in 1823, the first complete Egyptian mummy to arrive in the country. It was then gifted to MGH to help raise money for the hospital. This mummified body belongs to Padihershef, nicknamed Padi, a necropolis worker from the 7th century BC.

Mummy at the Ether Dome (photograph by Curious Expeditions)

Thanks to a grant, a team of researchers consisting of conservators, radiologists, and anthropologists was able to analyze and restore Padihershef's mummy. Rajiv Gupta, assistant professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School (HMS) performed imaging analysis, that included CT scans and x-rays, in March of 2013. Jonathan Elias, director of the Akhmim Mummy Studies Consortium studied the body, wrappings, and coffin markings.

In January of 2014 the team presented its findings.

Mummy of a Necropolis Worker

Padihershef’s mummy was placed in two coffins, the styles of which date to the 25th dynasty, or about the 7th century BC. According to Elias, the markings on these coffins indicate that Padihershef’s family came from Heracleopolis Magna, south of Fayum, and that he lived and worked in Thebes.

Padi’s occupation translates to stonemason, but is a term used specifically for cemeteries. So he may have worked at the Theban necropolis searching for new burial spaces as well as looking for old tombs to recycle.

It’s ironic that a person who worked to give the dead peace and security in ancient Egypt would not receive either in his own afterlife.

Theban Necropolis (photograph by Vyacheslav Argenberg)

Padihershef’s Troubling Afterlife

Padihershef’s body sustained significant post-mortem damage in the 7th century BC before to being wrapped again in 1984 prior to a museum exhibit.

Soon after his death, Padi’s sternum was pushed inward and his ribs were dislocated. Elias argues that this damage may have been caused by decomposition and the weight of the natron, a drying substance used to mummify bodies during that period. If his corpse started to decompose before it was embalmed, the decaying body may not have been able to support the weight of the natron needed for the embalming process.

Padihershef’s mummy was chosen to be part of a temporary exhibit in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1984. Because the skull became separated from the torso, workers at the Ether Dome attempted restore the mummy for the upcoming travel and display. But they chose to reattach his head with a broom handle, a process that crushed Padihershef’s cervical vertebrae and pushed vertebral bodies into the wrappings.

Reconstruction of Padihershef’s face by Elias. (via Massachusetts General Hospital)

Analysis and Reconstruction

Previous investigations of Padihershef’s mummy include an examination of his head and neck in 1823, and radiological studies performed in 1931 and 1976. These analyses provided a foundation for the team’s work presented earlier this year.

Elias estimates that Padihershef was a male with Caucasoid features, who was about 5’9”, and between 20 and 30 years at the time of his death. Harris lines are present in both tibiae, which indicate stress caused by poor health or diet. The post-mortem damage to the remains made assessing cause of death difficult.

Embalmers removed all of the internal organs, except for the heart, and may have placed them in canopic jars. CT scans show intact nasal cells and brain tissue in the back of the skull, indicating his brain was not removed through the nose, a process called excerebration.

The embalmers used ancient reconstruction techniques to repair post-mortem damage to the body. Bandages were used to fill depressed cavities crushed by natron. Resin and linen were applied to rebuild the nose and ears that may have started to decay during the mummification process. A substance consistent with gypsum was used to preserve the eyes and create an exaggerated contour of the eye under the wrappings.

CT scans of the skull provided data for a 3D replica. Elias then used clay on the replica skull to reconstruct Padihershef’s face.

Conservator Mimi Leveque removed salts from the surface of the body and restored damaged areas of the wrappings and coffins. The Ether Dome now displays Padihershef’s mummy horizontally, in a climate-controlled case.

Neither the article nor Elias’ analysis say if the broom handle was removed.

Anubis supervising mummification in a 400 BC sarcophagus painting (photograph by André/Wikimedia)

Click here to read Jonathan Elias's complete "General analysis of the mummy of Padihershef at Massachusetts General Hospital."

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>

Brno ossuary (photograph by Kirk/Wikimedia)

The Sedlec ossuary, located just a few hours outside Prague, has been the obvious choice for morbidly curious tourists for a while now. It’s made the viral internet rounds and though the headlines insist “You’ll Never Guess What’s Inside this Church.” I bet if you’re reading this you probably can. 

It’s bones.  

photograph by the author

Tons…

photograph by the author

and tons…

photograph by the author

of  human bones.

The fact that it’s all over the internet doesn’t diminish its eerie beauty. But maybe you macabre hipsters want to find a more obscure destination. (No judgment, I get it.) Or maybe you’re concerned that the recently announced restoration of the ossuary will diminish its impact. (It will remain open but parts may be in disarray since the massive bone pyramids will have to be dismantled and re-built.) Either way, let me suggest an alternate Czech day-trip "deathstination": Brno.

photograph by Kirk/Wikimedia

Though no one has fashioned the skeletons of Brno into chandeliers, coats-of-arms, or chalices, there are 50,000 of them, all in the ossuary under the Church of St. James. Though 50,000 people puts it well behind the Paris catacombs, which houses about six million bony folks, it’s still enough to make it the second largest ossuary in Europe. Its inhabitants succumbed to cholera, the plague, and injuries sustained in the Thirty Years War and Swedish Siege.

Though the bodies may be old, it’s a relatively new tourist destination. The ossuary was forgotten for hundreds of years, then rediscovered during church renovation work in 2001. It was only able to open its doors to the public in June of 2012 after an extensive restoration.

photograph by Kirk/Wikimedia

photograph by Kirk/Wikimedia

A few skeletons in the ossuary remain intact in glass caskets, but the majority are disassembled and arranged in architectural features according to bone type — a staircase of skulls or a column of femurs. While this is initially disconcerting, the vastness and anonymity of these building-block bones eventually numbs the sense of individual loss. For a more personal experience with the dead, you can take a 10-minute walk across the Cabbage Market to the Capuchin crypt.

The Capuchin order is known for creating two of the most spectacular crypts in Italy: the crypt in Rome where decomposing monks lean out of niches built in bone, and the catacombs full of dapper mummies in Palermo. Though the crypt in Brno is smaller than both, it doesn’t disappoint. The cool, dry air and particular ventilation accidentally preserved bodies that were intended to rot naturally. The friars clutch rosaries or crosses in their mummified hands. Their bodies are humbly stored on the bare ground while their heads rest on bricks. Dignitaries are entombed in proper coffins, but somehow seem less at peace than the monks despite their fancier digs.

photograph by Kirk/Wikimedia

It’s said that the contorted features of Isabela Zinsendorf indicate she was accidentally buried alive and woke up sealed inside her coffin. Meanwhile Baron Trenck sports a replacement head inside his casket. Tourists, or one of the many enemies of the Baron, stole the original.

Getting to Brno is simple. You can either take the Student Agency tour bus (which isn’t just for students) or an express train from Prague. It’s roughly a three-hour trip or a two-hour trip from Vienna. 

photograph by Kirk/Wikimedia

photograph by Kirk/Wikimedia

photograph by Kirk/Wikimedia

photograph by Kirk/Wikimedia

Here's a short video on the ossuary from the City of Brno (keep an eye out for the plague doctor):

Uncover more ossuaries of bones on Atlas Obscura >

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

Potosí, Bolivia (photograph by Idobi, via Wikimedia)

The World Heritage Committee is currently meeting in Qatar and announced six new additions to the UNESCO World Heritage List yesterday, including meteorite-formed cliffs in Denmark and burial mounds in Costa Rica. Along with designating these sites of global importance, UNESCO is also emphasizing those places integral to history that we are in danger of losing.

Included so far on UNESCO's ongoing List of World Heritage in Danger is an ancient village threatened by division in Palestine, a Bolivian historic industrial center undergoing significant change through mining, and a Tanzanian reserve where the ivory trade and poaching has devastated wildlife. Meanwhile a decision for Australia's Great Barrier Reef was delayed until next year as UNESCO acknowledged the country's dedication to better management of the reef, while concerns remain relating to coastal development.

Battir, Palestine (photograph by Virginia Fiume)

The decisions are not without controversy, especially with Palestine. UNESCO added Battir in the West Bank as an emergency nomination by Palestine, its second World Heritage site after Bethlehem's Nativity. Citing, "the start of construction of a separation wall that may isolate farmers from fields they have cultivated for centuries," UNESCO's listing of Battir put it on both the World Heritage List and the World Heritage in Danger list.

Battir is located southwest of Jerusalem, and is dotted with grape vineyards and olive trees on irrigated terraces that date back 2,000 years. However, a barrier planned by Israel could cut through it. The United States and Israel notably lost their voting rights last year after withholding payment due to Palestine's UNESCO membership.

Cerro Rico Mountain & Potosí, Bolivia (photograph by Marcos, via Flickr)

Another community added to the List of World Heritage in Danger is Potosí in Bolivia. UNESCO included it due to "continued and uncontrolled mining operations" that put it and the Cerro Rico Mountain at risk of degradation. Back in the 16th century, the area was the biggest industrial center in the world, and there are still remains of that history of silver ore extraction in its old aqueducts and mills.

Then in Tanzania there is the Selous Game Reserve, where "widespread poaching is decimating wildlife populations on the property." The incredible 50,000 square kilometers of the reserve make up a stunning, protected natural space, yet since they were added to the World Heritage List in 1982, nearly 90 percent of the Selous rhinoceros and elephant population has vanished. The loss is in part a consequence of the ivory trade. UNESCO is hoping inclusion on the Danger List will encourage acknowledgement by the global community of the international issue of the illegal trade.

An elephant in the Selous Reserve (photograph by Michelle Gadd/USFWS)

The List of World Heritage in Danger doesn't have to be a death knell. For example, at this month's meeting the ruins of Kilwa Kisiwani and Songo Mnara were removed due to better management by Tanzania. However, with 46 places on the list as of now, located around the world, there is a real risk that a significant part of our planet's story could soon be lost. 

Discover more UNESCO World Heritage sites on Atlas Obscura > 

Tokyo from above (photograph by LuxTonnerre, via Flickr)

Tokyo, as a city, can be intimidating to new explorers, even those who speak a passing semblance of Japanese. Only the largest streets are named, and the smaller streets run like warrens behind them (the idea actually is to deny strangers easy access to neighborhoods.) If you don't know someone in the area — you're not supposed to be there.

The Japanese themselves avoid this problem by visiting the ever-present koban, or police-box, where the officer will not only be too happy to render some assistance, but will also therefore know of any strangers in the area. A side-effect is that it becomes incredibly difficult to see anything but the most obvious of tourist locations. The statues of Tokyo — although often scattered around tourist landmarks, such as Shibuya Station (which at peak-hour hosts an overwhelming sea of traveling "salary-men," the Japanese term for office workers) — offer an insight into Japan that avoids Tokyo Tower and Disneyland, instead showing what the Japanese think of themselves, and what they think are the important attributes of their country's psyche. 

photograph by Antonio Tajuelo

First stop would have to be Hachikō(ハチ公) — renowned as “Japan's most loyal dog” — at Shibuya Station. The statue stands as a memorial for a dog who waited nine years for his owner, and is a popular meeting spot in the area. Hidesaburō Ueno was a professor of agriculture at the University of Tokyo, and his Akita always waited for him at Shibuya Station.

He suffered a brain hemorrhage while at work in 1925, and never returned to where Hachikō was waiting. Each day, for the next nine years, Hachikō would wait for his master's train, arriving at the station just before it was scheduled to arrive. He died, in 1935, on a street in Shibuya, on his way to meet his master's train. His story became a symbol of the legendary Japanese sense of loyalty, and he became a national icon.

photograph by Aisyah Hifni

He was stuffed and mounted, and his remains are kept at the National Science Museum in Ueno; a monument was erected to him at the side of Professor Ueno's grave in Aoyama Cemetery, in Minato-ku. Another monument was set up at Shibuya Station in 1934 prior to Hachikō's death, although it was melted down during the Second World War, the bronze going toward the military effort. The son of the original artist was then commissioned in 1948 to cast a second statue, and this is the statue that stands today at  Hachikō-guchi, or Hachikō's Gate, at Shibuya Station. The exact location where Hachikō would wait is also marked, with bronze paw-prints in the ground.

Each year, on the 8th of April, a ceremony is held at Hachikō-guchi in memory of Hachikō; dog lovers in their hundreds turn out to honor him.

photograph by Metro Centric 

The next stop on our tour is at Ebisu Station, also in Shibuya-ku. Here stands the portly, delightful statue of Ebisu (恵比須), the Japanese god of fishermen and the only one of the Seven Gods of Fortune (the main deities of Shinto, Japan's native religion) believed to have originated in Japan.

photograph by Taichiro Ueki

The station was built in 1901, to help supply the Yebisu Brewery (and to supply Tokyo with the beer.) Ebisu is known as the Laughing God, and is now famous worldwide as the face of Yebisu Beer, first brewed in 1890. The suburb was named for the beer, not the other way around — and although the suburb and the beer's names are spelled differently, they are pronounced the same way, as the beer uses an anachronistic hiragana character in its name.

Even though Yebisu Beer is no longer brewed in Ebisu, the brewer (Sapporo Holdings) opened a museum dedicated to the beer in the nearby Yebisu Garden Place, which, for my fellow beer drinkers, is definitely worth a visit. 

photograph by Taliesin/Wikimedia

Kappabashi, also known as "Kitchen Town," is squeezed in between Ueno and Asakusa, and is becoming a bit of an off-beat tourist destination. The district is the home to shops dedicated almost entirely to the restaurant trade, from excellent quality kitchen knives to sampuru, the ultra-real plastic foods that sit on display outside Japanese restaurants.

At first glance it might seem that the statue I'm recommending is the giant chef's head at the southern end of the street — but in fact there also stands a statue of the Japanese mythical creature, the kappa. The street is named for the kappa, although not the water-dwelling yokai of the statue, but after a homophone, the traditional straw raincoats that were worn in this area of Tokyo in the Edo period. Still, he's a cool golden dude.

via Wikimedia

If you do encounter a kappa on Kappabashi, the secret to escaping is to simply bow in greeting. The kappa, not wanting to be rude before it drags you to your death by drowning, will return the gesture. In doing so it will spill the water that sits in the reservoir atop its head, and will be severely weakened, allowing you to make good your escape. Grab yourself a kappamaki roll (sushi filled with cucumber, the favorite vegetable of the kappa) and enjoy the weirdness of hyper-realistic plastic food in Kitchen Town.

photograph by Dan DeChiaro

Maman-san is a monster — although her sculptor Louise Bourgeois never intended her to be one. Bourgeois chose the form of the spider in homage to her mother, and saw spiders in their natural roles as helpful and intelligent. Standing at more than 30 feet high, Maman (the intimate French word for "mother") is like a bronze kaiju, her spindly legs touching down on the paving stones and neatly manicured garden beds surrounding Mori Tower, the home of the Mori Art Museum.

When seen from the right angle, this intimidating arachnid looms over the Tokyo skyline, looking set to crush the orange needle of Tokyo Tower in the distance which — given Japan's status as the home of kaiju, and the number of times Tokyo has been destroyed (in film) by radioactive mutants and alien invaders (again, only in film!) — "Maman-san" stands as the perfect piece of sculpture, highly representative of the Japanese obsession with kaiju and set in the perfect location. 

photograph by Shuichi Aizawa

But the Battle of Tokyo is not entirely lost to a giant bronze spider! Intended to be an only temporary installation, a giant Gundam stands watch over Tokyo from the Odaiba, a manmade island in Tokyo Bay. It was once an archipelago of forts built to protect the city from the American Navy under Commodore Perry in the 19th century. More than 20 meters tall — making it a 1:1 scale model of the fictional robot protectors of Earth — the Gundam would probably find Maman-san an easy threat to deal with.

photograph by Kazu Letokyoite

Although not strictly in Tokyo, the city of Kamakura to Tokyo's south is a destination well worth the hour-or-so long train ride it takes to get there. Once the home of Japan's Shoguns (the warlords who ruled the country for nearly 700 years, until 1867), Kamakura is the home to a series of temples erected in imitation of Kyoto, the then-capital of Imperial Japan, although the oldest is Sugimoto-dera. It is more than 1,200 years old and has two statues of the goddess Kannon, which are seen in Japan as important cultural relics.

At Kamakura resides a giant statue of the Buddha (dai-butsu) at Kotoku-in, which is the subject of a Rudyard Kipling poem in the opening chapters of the novel Kim. The dai-butsu is made of bronze, although it was originally gilded with gold-leaf (some of which can apparently still been seen near the statue's ears) and dates from 1252. It stands (well, sits) at 13.35 meters, and is hollow inside. In 1498, a tsunami washed away the temple hall that surrounded the statue, and the decision was made to leave the sculpture exposed to the open air.

photograph by John Gillespie

Discover more of the world's strange statues on Atlas Obscura >

Musée Curie in Paris (all photographs by the author unless indicated)

With all that we know about radioactivity, it can be surprising to come upon a display of radium cosmetics in the Musée Curie in Paris. The small museum in the 5th Arrondissement centers on Marie Curie's laboratory and office which she used from 1914 to 1934, but also explores the wider influence of Marie Curie, her husband Pierre, and daughter and son-in-law Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie on medicine, and even beauty.

Radium cosmetics

The alluring glow of radium was transfixing. Before the dangers of radiation were thoroughly exposed through tragedies like the Radium Girls, who were poisoned applying the supposedly harmless radium to glow-in-the-dark to watches, small amounts of radium were considered good for your health. Radium had only been discovered by the Curies in 1898, but its possibilities for self-improvement were already too alluring for advertisers to pass up.

The most infamous was Tho-Radia, a French line of face creams and other cosmetics. Its icon was a blonde woman's faced starkly illuminated from below by what looks like the flash of an x-ray. It also stated it was developed by a Dr. Alfred Curie — no relation to the famed scientists, but useful in misleading customers. Many cosmetics and other household products from cleaning solutions to children's toys also purported to contain radium, although often it was merely all talk to jump on to the Atomic Age craze. However, Tho-Radia was indeed radioactive. For every 100 g of the face cream it reportedly had 0.5 g of thorium chloride and 0.25 mg of radium bromide. 

Ad for Tho-Radia (via musee.curie.fr)

As Matthew Lavine wrote in The First Atomic Age: Scientists, Radiations, and the American Public, 1895-1945: "The connection [of radium] to physical appearance made the elision to its cosmetic use an easy one, since the care of one's skin was a matter of hygiene as well as aesthetics, and both thus fell within radium's 'marvelous powers for betterment of the skin.'" 

The Musée Curie has a small multitude of radium-related products, from literature inspired by the new possibilities of radioactive monsters to whitening toothpaste. Tho-Radia disappeared in the 1960s, surprisingly outliving Marie Curie herself who died in 1934 from complications from her long exposure to radiation (Pierre Curie had already been run over in the street and killed in 1906). Perhaps the promise of bright youthfulness will always outstay its health welcome (as tanning beds and extreme sun exposure continue to be popular, although arguably not quite as deliberately dangerous as applying radium to your pores). The Musée Curie now allows you to gaze into the laboratory which once glowed in radioactive experiments, but it was only after thorough decontamination that the public is now allowed so close to where the radium craze was rooted in science. 

Radium products

"The Radium That Kills"

A memo stating that Marie Curie does not sign autographs 

Marie Curie's Office

Marie Curie's Office

Marie Curie's Office

Marie Curie's Office

Marie Curie's Office

Marie Curie's Laboratory

Marie Curie's Laboratory 

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 >

Much of the Atlas Obscura is created by intrepid users around the world, out exploring the places no one else is noticing, or jumping into historical research that's been all but forgotten. In appreciation, we are highlighting three of our favorite recent additions to the Atlas. Have a place we've missed? Create an account and become a part of our community. 

KHOR VIRAP MONASTERY
Lusarat, Armenia

photograph by Andrew Behesnilian

In Armenia, the Khor Virap Monastery is not only gorgeous up with its view of Mount Ararat, it also has a quite curious history. Brought to us by user hoppdanson, is the story of a saint kept at the bottom of a pit for 13 years. Spoiler alert: he may have gotten out by curing the king from having the head of a boar. 

YOUR RAINBOW PANORAMA
Aarhus, Denmark

photograph by Karitxa

From user Karitxa we discovered the otherworldly "Your Rainbow Panorama." Artist Olafur Eliasson has been regularly making our world a more magical place, from waterfalls tumbling off the New York City bridges to a perpetual sunset in the Tate Modern. Here in Denmark his permanent installation at the top of the ARoS Aarhus Art Museum offers a walk through a 150-foot ring that brings a rainbow down to Earth. 

WILLIAM VANDERBILT'S ABANDONED SALTWATER POOL
Centerport, New York

photograph by Luke J. Spencer

We see a lot of ruins, from abandoned santa parks to derelict water slides, but this once-glamorous saltwater swimming pool filled in with grass has an exceptional lost beauty. Explored by Luke J. Spencer, the Long Island pool was once the 70,000-gallon center of William Kissam Vanderbilt II's lavish Eagle's Nest. As summer settles in, it's fascinating to get this glimpse back at the sunny excess of the Gilded Age.

Thanks to our intrepid users for uncovering these wondrous places, and we look forward to more! Help us show that the world is still a place of mystery by adding your own discoveries. 

Hardly known by most visitors of Greece, Meteora sits almost smack bang in the middle of the country, hardly disturbed by the tens of thousands who flock to the country's capital and its famous islands every day.

A typical monastery of Meteora (all photographs by the author)

Meteora means "middle of the sky," "suspended in the air," or "in the heavens above." The most obvious attraction of Meteora is its 24 monasteries which seem to be "suspended in the air," but are actually perched atop dramatic rock pinnacles formed by earthquakes and weathered by water and wind over millions of years.

For the very few tourists who do visit the area, most are amazed at how little visited this amazing landscape is. It almost appears as if the Greek people are trying to keep Meteora secret as to not bring on an onslaught of tourists who may spoil its surreal tranquility.

Travelers who do visit the area usually do so just for one night on a whim after hearing about Meteora from a local Athenian, or seeing photographs of the infamous floating monasteries on postcards.

One night is enough to visit several of the still active floating monasteries. However, I was lucky enough to explore the area a little more thoroughly over two nights and three days in October of 2013, taking some photographs of this seemingly magical place using the nearby town of Kalambaka as a base.

Because of the extra time, I found more than just the famous floating monasteries. The Meteora area also has spectacular hikes, ruins, caves, abandoned places, and ancient hermit dwellings. 

A map of Meteora

Apart from the obviously functioning monasteries of Meteora, there are some less evident, hidden places of worship hidden. The hiking map of Meteora above will help you hunt out some of these places, however some are unmarked and others require rock climbing and/or bouldering to reach.

The town of Kastraki with the iconic Meteora landscape surrounding it. This is the landscape that hides abandoned places and humble spaces of worship.

One small place of worship can be found atop the rock pinnacle of “Agion Pnevrna” (the large rocky mountain pictured above). The way to the top can be reached by a trail which starts in the northeast of the small town of Kastraki below. It requires a bit of climbing, bouldering, and mountain goat-dodging to reach, but has some great views along the way. 

The place of worship atop “Agion Pnevrna”

Once you reach the place of worship on Agion Pnevrna, you can also take a few steps to the south, climb a tree, and jump up to a rock ledge to reach a cross and bell which provides a great view of the area. For the really daring, the next rock pinnacle in front of the bell can be reached via some precarious wooden and rock ladders. 

The bell and lookout which can be reached by climbing a nearby tree

From multiple viewpoints in the area you can spot an interesting ruin at the foot of “Kabana” to the northwest. Upon closer inspection it appears to be an abandoned farm which at one time used the natural cave formation to its advantage. From this ruined farm, it is easy to spot multiple caves and dwellings in the distance which are only accessible by rock climbing.

The abandoned farm below "Kabana" as seen from a distance

 
A closer inspection of the abandoned farm houses & cave dwelling

Some of the ruins & caves only accessible by rock climbing 

There is however one accessible cave which contains some dwelling ruins high above on the North side of the rock pinnacle called “Kumaries”. There is no actual trail to reach the cave, but some carful bush walking will bring you to the cave entrance. The old hermit dwellings up in the roof of the cave are easily visible even from a distance.

An accessible cave complete with wooden hermit dwellings in the roof

At the time of writing, the field directly in front of this cave opening contained an abandoned rusted out Volkswagen Kombi van. It’s a little tricky to access because of some thorn bushes, but it can provide some great photos if you can reach it. 

The abandoned Volkswagen Kombi van in a field directly in front of the accessible cave.

 
A close up of the rusted-out shell of the Volkswagen Kombi van with a monastery in the background

After hiking around, you might actually feel the urge to visit one of the functioning floating monasteries. Most of them are open to the public. Some are bigger than others and they alternate their opening times to allow the Monks to still use the monasteries for their intended purpose. Keep in mind that if you are wearing clothing that does not cover your knees, then you may not be allowed to enter the monasteries or have to wear a provided garment, so plan accordingly.

I decided to visit the holy monastery of Great Meteoron, which is the largest and most visited of the monasteries and dates back to 1340 AD. I chose this one because it contains a room full of the bones and skulls of some of the previous monks who lived in the monastery. The monastery also serves as a museum and gives you an insight about daily life and the history of Meteora. 

 The bones and skulls inside the holy monastery of Great Meteoron

If the weather has been good to you and you fancy finding a good spot to watch the sunset, the best places are along the upper road to the East of the Roussanou Nunnery. There is a panorama lookout point not too far from the Nunnery where you can get a good view of some of the monasteries and the spectacular landscape. 

The view from the lookout near the Roussanou Nunnery

Another great spot is to the east of the Agia Trias Monastery at a point called the “Kalambaka Towers.” If you are feeling a bit daring you can climb up some of the rocks and get a great view of the town of Kalambaka below and the surrounding landscape as the sun sets in front of you. Just make sure you leave enough time to climb down safely before it gets too dark.

The view from the Kalambaka Towers lookout point

Another trail which I recommend runs past some ancient hermitages and other interesting dwellings and places of worship. The trail starts between Marino and Ambaria and hugs the pixari cliffs. The trail takes you past some unique monasteries which are actually built into caves in the cliffs as well as plenty of hermitages constructed in caves at both at ground level and in the rocky cliffs above.

 One of the ground level dwellings which you can access easily 

A monastery built directly into a cave in the rocks 

Some more raised hermit dwellings which are scattered through the area

If you continue following this trail and take a right past the Agios Nikolaos church, you will end up in a valley behind Pixari and Agia where you will come across the rocky pinnacle named Roka. From “Roka” there are several trails leading outward but unfortunately without proper climbing equipment none of them will allow you to continue past the surrounding rocks or to reach the religious ruins perched on top of Agia, Alissos or Modestos.

The valley is still worth the views and there is a chance you might come across some tortoises wandering around the valley, too. 

The valley which contains the Roka pinnacle… and tortoises!

There are plenty of other trails, caves, and monasteries which you can explore, not to mention the history. Hopefully this has given you an idea of some of the slightly more obscure places you an find in this seemingly magical place. I would advise exploring the area alone to truly appreciate how peaceful the area is.

All photographs by the author. To discover more, visit Skare Media. 

On January 12, 2010, Haiti was struck by an earthquake of catastrophic proportions. The death toll was estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands, while many survivors were left without food, shelter, or access to clean water. For a country that was already ranked as the poorest in the Western hemisphere, this devastating display of nature’s destructive power could not have felt less deserved.

Haitian ghettos (photograph by Darmon Richter, via The Bohemian Blog)

The ruined cathedral of Port-au-Prince (photograph by Darmon Richter, via The Bohemian Blog)

It is often out of despair and desperation that people search most earnestly for meaning; from a position of having nothing, that they more readily open themselves up to supernatural guidance. In the wake of the earthquake, many Haitians were rallied towards either one or the other of this nation’s main religions: Christianity and Vodou.

Christianity is widespread in Haiti, its scriptures often emblazoned in bold, colorful lettering across the front of shops, trucks, markets and homes. Hand-painted billboards in the capital, Port-au-Prince, bear slogans such as "School of Mary & Joseph," "Christ-is-Kind Pharmacy," or even "Jesus Saves Bakery.

Some Christians here believe that the quake was caused by Vodou, that God sent targeted shockwaves through the earth in order to punish the heretics, and put an end to this false — and dangerous — religion. For all its critics though, the traditional practice of Vodou still thrives in Haiti.

You won’t see it out in the open. It is secretive and subversive, an age-old ceremony that has been pushed further underground by the recent media focus on the country. As a tourist in Haiti, you’ll likely just see traces of Vodou, the ephemera of faith. Visit the noisy, chaotic “Marchéde Fer” — the old iron market of Port-au-Prince — and you’ll find vendors selling herbs and voodoo dolls, market stalls full of curious trinkets and esoteric carvings. 

Flooding in Port-au-Prince (photograph by Darmon Richter, via The Bohemian Blog)

A street in Port-au-Prince (photograph by Darmon Richter, via The Bohemian Blog) 

For a fee, they’ll even put on a show. Tour groups are sometimes invited to attend “authentic” Vodou ceremonies, giving roughly a month’s local salary to see a man dance, sing, and light candles. You’ll pay to see him wave his magic wand, and mumble incoherent phrases in French Creole. You’ll need to pay for the offerings, too, and the loa (powerful Vodou spirits) will settle for nothing less than a bottle of the finest rum. Cigars, too, are generally welcome. Some days the veil between worlds is heavier than on others... it might take another cash offering to help entice the spirits through.

By the end, you’ll have spent a hundred bucks and seen nothing of any real significance.

But that’s not real Vodou. To experience anything authentic, you’ll need to dig a little deeper. The Christian camp is often embarrassed to bring you nearer the truth, while for the believers this is too deep, too personal a thing to share for spectacle. If you want to see real Haitian Vodou, you’re going to have to find it for yourself.

On Boulevard Jn J Dessalines in Port-au-Prince, there’s a kind of outdoor gallery, a collection of graphic work by local sculptors and artists. The signs and sigils of practical Vodou feature heavily; hand-painted veve appear alongside masonic and new-world-order symbology, and decorate a disturbing range of sculptures formed from children’s dolls and industrial debris, hand-carved wood and human bones.

It’s not until you’ve seen a freshly exhumed human skull attached to the end of a vacuum cleaner and painted up with the sigils of a voodoo god, that you’re anywhere close to understanding the strange blend of macabre tradition and failed industrialization that inhabits the urban sprawl at the heart of Haiti’s capital.

Entrance to the "Atis Rezistans" art museum (photograph by Darmon Richter, via The Bohemian Blog)

Vodou characters in a Haitian art museum (photograph by Darmon Richter, via The Bohemian Blog)

Human bones & old car parts (photograph by Darmon Richter, via The Bohemian Blog)

Children's dolls & human skulls (photograph by Darmon Richter, via The Bohemian Blog)

For the record, this still isn’t Vodou you’re looking at — but you’re definitely getting warmer. If it’s full immersion you’re after though, an authentic encounter with the Vodou faith, then your next stop should be the capital’s chief burial ground: Le Grand Cimetière.

Vodou is more than just philosophy — it is practice. It is hands-on, and it is dirty. The bones of the dead, the earthly remains of ancestors, take on a very special significance in the Vodou faith, and so it should come as no wonder that the necropolis at the center of the capital serves as Vodou ground zero.

After the earthquake, an estimated 250,000 residential houses in Port-au-Prince were left in ruin. That’s a lot of people without homes. The capital’s Grand Cemetery — opened at the turn of the 19th century and consisting of tens of thousands of tombs and mausoleums — suddenly became a place of refuge for the destitute. Ancestors rolled over to share their roofs, their coffins, as the city’s poorest flooded through the cemetery gates in search of sanctuary.

Entrance to the Grand Cemetery (photograph by Darmon Richter, via The Bohemian Blog)

Vodou dolls pinned to a tree in the cemetery (photograph by Darmon Richter, via The Bohemian Blog)

They broke open tombs, this new wave of grave-dwellers. Many of the interred bodies were cast out into the alleyways of the necropolis, and burnt, some with, some without ritual. A whole new community grew up inside and in between the old stone monuments. In the far back corner of the Grand Cemetery, beneath the mountain slopes where tents stand amidst tumbling mounds of rubble, the citizens of the necropolis have raised a ramshackle church. The congregation moans and wails through the simple ceremonies, as the canvas awning flaps noisily in the wind.

Outside the church, a jet-black cross stands alone in a courtyard, hemmed in by mausoleums, marble walls. It is a shrine to Baron Samedi: ruler of the Vodou underworld, and lord of the death loa, or “guédé.” Le Baron typically appears dressed in funerary attire, with a black top hat and a skull for a face. In the Grand Cimetière, worshippers leave offerings for him at this shrine; they write messages in blood across the walls that surround it.

Worshippers at a shrine to Baron Samedi (photograph by Darmon Richter, via The Bohemian Blog)

Mural in a Haitian cemetery (photograph by Darmon Richter, via The Bohemian Blog)

A shrine to Baron Kriminel (photograph by Darmon Richter, via The Bohemian Blog)  

Not far away, in a quiet corner of the necropolis stands another shrine. This one is to the fearsome guédé known as Baron Kriminel. While Samedi may be seen as the master of the veils and the newly dead, Baron Kriminel is a manifestation of pure malice and violence. In the Vodou tradition he is sometimes known as the first murderer; a possible parallel to the biblical Cain. When summoned in ceremony, Baron Kriminel rides his host into a frenzy, causing them to bite and spit and slash and claw at those around them.

If any proof were needed that these shrines see active use — that Vodou today is more than simply monuments and writing on the walls — then it can be found all around this cemetery. Human bones and skulls appear nailed to the trunks of trees; Vodou dolls and votives are prolific in number, decorating tombs and branches and monuments; and of the goats that wander freely throughout the cemetery, some can be seen laying in the shadows between tombs, their throats cut deep from one side to the other.

Vodou dolls & human skulls (photograph by Darmon Richter, via The Bohemian Blog)

Haitian tombs (photograph by Darmon Richter, via The Bohemian Blog)

On the subject of sacrifice, it is not only animals that are offered up to the loa in modern-day ritual. At Léogâne — a town right at the epicenter of the 2010 earthquake — there stands a remote orphanage run by Christian missionaries. Many of the children here were born with deformities, and some still bear the scars of Vodou ritual.

According to traditional Vodou beliefs, children brought into the world with birth defects are thusly marked out as daemonic vessels, and to protect the community, such children must be offered up as sacrifice to the loa. One boy at the orphanage, a quadriplegic, was smuggled out of his mountain village and carried to safety here, after his mother had handed him over to the local Vodou priests. Another child, a girl, has thick, angry scars across her neck; she was rescued after her throat was slashed in ritual, and her body — still alive — thrown out onto a rubbish pile.

That’s the way the Christians tell it, at least.

The rooftops of Port-au-Prince (photograph by Darmon Richter, via The Bohemian Blog)

One of the Grand Cemetery's resident goats (photograph by Darmon Richter, via The Bohemian Blog)

Despite the underlying dichotomy, despite this invisible battle of minds that rages at the heart of Haitian culture, the people themselves are — for the most part — kind and welcoming and hospitable. For every baby-killing priest you hear about, there must be at least a thousand decent human beings who peacefully adhere to the teachings of this nation’s Vodou faith.

No religion should be judged purely on its most radical members. Christianity today is not the Salem Witch Trials. Islam is not Al Qaeda. Vodou, at its most bloody, is a truly terrifying spectacle — and yet the philosophy that surrounds it, the finely structured explanations of life and death, of the material and immaterial planes, is more complex, more thoughtful, and more intrinsic to Haitian culture than many would give it credit for.

Darmon Richter is a freelance writer, musician and photographer. You can find more of his explorations of the bizarre, secret, and macabre at the Bohemian Blog. 

“Sinless” desserts... Does anyone actually enjoy those bizarre chemical confections that promise no gluten, no fat, no sugar, and absolutely no enjoyment whatsoever? Get behind me, Splenda. Let me introduce you to my top ten favorite guilt-free desserts.

Sure these regional delicacies are loaded with sugar, but they were all created to celebrate Catholic saints, so what could be more sinless?  For the most authentic experience, eat them on the corresponding saint’s day in their hometowns — after all, there’s a reason these celebrations are called “feasts.” 

Passion fruit raspados (photograph by AnelGTR/Wikimedia)

10. Raspados
Where to eat it: Izapalapa DF, Mexico
When to eat it: Semana Santa (Holy Week)

Holy Week is a somber stretch of holidays culminating in Black Saturday — a day so dark that even churches stay locked up. It’s the most austere period of the liturgical year so it might seem like an odd time to think about dessert. But in Mexico, every custom leading up to Easter is symbolic.

Raspados, sweetened shaved ice, represent the sweet tears of the Virgin Mary and are particularly nice after sitting in an un-air conditioned cathedral for a few hours in the spring. Though some vendors use snow cone-like syrups, be sure to try the uniquely Mexican flavors like tamarind, mango-chili, or sweetened condensed milk with cinnamon. You can find cart vendors all over the DF, but check out the ones in Izapalapa, a borough know for its elaborate Passion play that lasts all week and includes a cast of thousands. 

The Virgin Mary in tears (detail of 15th century painting) (via Unterlinden Museum)

Kremówka (photograph by Piotrus/Wikimedia)

9. Kremówka papieska
Where to eat it: Wadowice, Poland
When to eat it: October 22

In 1999, Pope John Paul II went back to his childhood home of Wadowice and casually reminisced about a particular type of cake he used to like as boy. It was a humble little dessert — layers of shortcrust pastry, custard, and puff pastry, assembled in a sheet pan and sold by the slice. It was primarily a way for bakers to recoup costs on leftover components of fancier desserts that would have otherwise been thrown out.

Overnight, this unremarkable trifle transformed into Papal Cream Cake. Now thanks to his immense popularity and canonization, you can even buy a slice in Rome. 

Pope John Paul II at the Vatican (photograph by Bren Buenaluz)

Saint-honoré pastry (photograph by Chatsam/Wikimedia)

8. Saint-Honoré
Where to eat it: Paris, France
When to eat it: May 16

If your tastes are a little fancier than Pope St. John Paul II’s, head to Paris for a Saint-Honoré cake — a pastry so complex, it’s no wonder the pros named it after their patron saint.

It’s puff pastry, topped with a meringue-based pastry cream, topped with cream puffs, topped with caramelized sugar, topped with fresh whipped cream. The finished product is only slightly less miraculous than the legendary baker’s peel that sprouted roots and became a fruit tree when Honoré was appointed Bishop of Amiens.

Saint Honoré with some bakers (via Wikimedia)

7. Bigne di San Giuseppe
Where to eat it: Rome, Italy
When to eat it: March 19

Like many stepparents, St. Joseph doesn’t get the respect he deserves year round, but at least his feast day is a big deal in Italy where it’s essentially the equivalent of Father’s Day in the United States. No San Giuseppe feast would be complete with out the bigne, or zeppoli — sugar-covered fritters filled with custard or cannoli filling and topped with chocolate or candied cherries. 

Though most people think of Joseph as a carpenter, he’s nicknamed “frittellaro” in Rome. According to local legend, he sold fried pancakes after the flight to Egypt to support Jesus and Mary, hence their inclusion in his feast day.

"Saint Joseph and the Christ Child" (late 17th-18th century), oil on canvas (via Brooklyn Museum)

Yemas de Santa Teresa (photograph by Tamorlan/Wikimedia)

6. Yemas de Santa Teresa
Where to eat it:Ávila, Spain
When to eat it: October 15

When Spanish winemakers needed to clarify wine, they sometimes added egg whites, which allowed tannins and other unwanted particles bind together for easy removal. But what do you do with all those leftover egg yolks?

Fortunately for us, the winemakers in Ávila decided to donate them to the local Carmelite convent. There, the nuns whipped up a confection dedicated to their most famous resident — St. Teresa of Ávila. Just looking twice at these little yellow candies might raise your blood pressure. They’re essentially just egg yolks and sugar with a bit of spice and water, but their slightly crunchy sugar shell and creamy interior makes them incredibly addictive — so much so that they’re available year-round at souvenir shops.

Saffron bun (photograph by Jonas Bergsten)

5. Lussekatter
Where to eat it: Stockholm, Sweden
When to eat it: December 13

According to some versions of her legend, St. Lucy was so set against marrying her pagan suitor, when he admired her eyes she gouged them out and gave them to him. “Now leave me to God,” she quipped. He had her martyred by the Emperor Diocletian instead.

To this day, Lucy is usually depicted offering up her eyes on a plate and her feast celebrations in Sweden still honor this story. The eldest daughter in each family dons a white robe and serves her family saffron buns in the shape of eyes with raisins or currents for pupils. She wears a crown of candles to ward off the winter darkness, a symbol of Lucy’s spiritual light despite her blindness.

Domenico di Pace Beccafumi, "Saint Lucy" (1521), oil on panel (via Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena)

Cattern Cakes (photograph by Sue Scott/The Quince Tree)

4. Cattern cakes
Where to eat it: Nottinghamshire, England
When to eat it: November 25

St. Catherine of Alexandria was famously sentenced to death on the wheel, an execution method designed to bludgeon the victim to death over a course of hours or days. She’s almost always shown next to this terrifying device. A martyr’s execution method is usually what makes them identifiable in imagery originally used to teach illiterate parishioners. But sometimes when medieval guilds would pick patron saints, they would base their choices on dubious readings of these images.

For example, St. Bartholemew, holding the knife that flayed him alive, was picked to be patron of the cheese mongers since it looked like he had a cheese knife in his hand. Thus, Catherine’s wheel became associated with spinsters and lace-makers. Yet the reason the lace-makers of Nottinghamshire make cakes on St. Catherine’s day has as much to do with a second Catherine as it does with the martyr. When a sluggish market threatened to put lace-makers out of a job, Catherine of Aragon was said to have burnt her lace dresses to create a demand for work. The scone-like cakes with spices, currants, and caraway seeds are dedicated to her as well as their patron saint with the wheel.

St. Catherine of Alexandria with the wheel (14th century marble) (via Walters Art Museum)

photograph by the author

3. Minnuzze di Sant'Agata and Olivette di Sant’Agata
Where to eat it: Catania, Italy
When to eat it: February 5

If all this talk of St. Catherine’s wheel and St. Lucy’s gouged-out eyes seems a bit too much to take while you’re eating, go ahead and skip this entry. For those of you left, try two Sicilian treats commemorating St. Agatha.

Agatha was a virgin-martyr who had her breasts ripped off by her torturers. And yes, those “minnuzze” are absolutely cakes in the shape of her amputated breasts with a cherry on top representing the nipple. The cake underneath is a tooth-achingly sweet combination of vanilla sponge cake, a dome of sweetened ricotta, and a glaze of pistachio goo all topped with hardened sugar frosting.

For a less graphic take on her legend, pick up the green and black olives of St. Agatha. The green ones are sugar-encrusted marzipan, the black are chocolate-covered marzipan. These commemorate the miraculous olive tree that sprouted where Agatha stopped to tie her shoe on her way to be martyred.

Sebastiano del Piombo, "Martyrdom of Saint Agatha" (1520), oil on panel (via Pitti Palace)

Spice cookies similar to the recipe written by St. Hildegard (photograph by Slastic/Wikimedia)

2. Hildegardplätzchen
Where to eat it: Bingen am Rhein, Germany
When to eat it: September 17

Lurking at the bottom of every news website in between "shocking celebrity photos" and "unbelievable insurance savings" is that suspicious ad for "incredible diet cookies" that promise the ability to snack yourself slim. If you've ever been tempted to click on that ad, then I have a saintly dessert for you.

The recipe for Hildegardplätzchen, or "cookies of joy," was written by St. Hildegard herself around 1100. This mystical Doctor of the Church was a bit of a medieval Dr. Oz. She wrote plays and music but also wrote extensively on medicine based on her experience working in the herb garden and treating her fellow nuns. She said of her spice cookies made with cloves and nutmeg: "Eat them often and they will calm every bitterness of heart and mind — and your hearing and senses will open. Your mind will be joyous, and your senses purified, and harmful humours will diminish".

1. Huesos de Santos
Where to eat it: Madrid, Spain
When to eat it: November 1

These are my personal favorite. If you read the description of the “Yolks of St. Teresa” and thought, “Yeah that sounds good... but make them richer, sweeter, and a little terrifying,” these Spanish candies are for you.

Huesos de Santos, or “bones of the saints,” are sheets of white marzipan rolled around an egg-yolk filling. They’re meant to resemble bones with gooey marrow inside. You can find them around All Saints’ Day as a reminder of the relics or the venerated bones of the saints often found in Catholic churches. They’re the perfect accompaniment to a day spent taking in the elaborate floral displays at the local cemeteries in Madrid.

Read more about the strange lives and afterlives of the saints at Elizabeth Harper's All the Saints You Should Know.

Yankee Ferry at South Red Hook, Brooklyn, in sunset (photograph by Michelle Enemark)

For over a century, Yankee Ferry served the East Coast seas, and now stationed in Brooklyn this majestic ship is sailing into its next life as an incubator for creativity. To get the word out about one of New York City's most incredible spaces, Yankee is having an open call for the very first Yankee Ferry Media Crew.

"This is our first strong effort to get Yankee out in the digital world," Josh Rasp, Chief Mate of Yankee, told Atlas Obscura. "We figured the best way to do that is to open this opportunity to creative and eager people, where this will be their sole responsibility to document and shout it from the searchlight."

Currently the light of Yankee is shining in South Red Hook, nestled alongside the industrial coast. The Atlas Obscura team was invited to tour the vessel with the Yankee crew, and we were incredibly impressed with the beauty of Yankee and its mission. When we heard about their interest in offering a Media Crew residency, we thought it would be an ideal position for someone from the Atlas Obscura audience! If you are in New York (or willing to travel here) and interested in engaging with the unexpected, overlooked spaces of the world, especially when they are preserved by people so dedicated to making these places into creative resources for the public, this may just be the perfect position. It's a pretty amazing thing to do with the next three months of your life.

Yankee's Salon (courtesy Yankee Ferry)

Benches on the promenade (courtesy Yankee Ferry)

South Red Hook is just one of many ports Yankee has called home, from its construction in 1907 as a passenger ferry in Maine's Calendar Islands, to serving in World War I and World War II, to cruising the New York Harbor as a ferry for newly arriving immigrants to Ellis Island, and later for some of the first visitors to the Statue of Liberty.

The ship was purchased by Victoria and Richard MacKenzie-Childs in 2003, and totally transformed into a labyrinth of charmingly decorated living and working quarters where cats, dogs, and chickens live alongside the human crew. Everything is vibrantly hued and mixes form, function, and the history of Yankee — now on the National Register of Historic Places — from the preservation of the original wooden benches to the old wheelhouse converted into a sleeping quarters.

The task of the three members of the Media Crew, who will be on board from July 21 to October 21, will be to capture the spirit of the ship and convey it to a global audience. For this mission, Yankee is seeking people with experience in filmmaking, social media, web design, and writing.

"It’s a lot of work, but there’s something thrilling about it and being a part of something that inspires and nourishes people’s spirit," Rasp said. "It's an example of what we as a collective can accomplish."

After surviving a harrowing ride through Hurricane Sandy in 2012, Yankee left New Jersey where it had offered a stunning bed and breakfast on the Hudson. Now it's seeking a new homeport and funding to get it back on track so it can again open to the public. In this regard, getting a higher profile is key, and in exchange for room on Yankee, the Media Crew will rally an online presence for the ship, capturing its daily life, extraordinary events on the decks, and the stories of the people onboard. 

"I know from my own personal experience that it’s bound to be one of the most special experiences of someone’s life and they’ll never forget it," Rasp said. 

Below is a video on the Media Crew Call, as well as more photographs from Yankee. Click here to apply, the deadline is July 10.

The original ferry benches (photograph by Michelle Enemark)

Yankee passenger gallery (photograph by Michelle Enemark)

Yankee passenger gallery (photograph by Michelle Enemark)

View to the water from the galley (photograph by Michelle Enemark)

Chickens on Yankee (photograph by Michelle Enemark)

Ship curios & tools (photograph by Michelle Enemark)

Yankee's bow (courtesy Yankee Ferry)

Yankee's engine room (courtesy Yankee Ferry)

Interior passageway (courtesy Yankee Ferry)

Updated crew quarters (courtesy Yankee Ferry)

1910 photograph of Yankee (courtesy Yankee Ferry)

Click here to apply for a place in the Yankee Ferry Media Crew! Deadline is July 10.  

A close-up of glass pebbles worn down by ocean waves, originally pieces of bottles and dishes, on Glass Beach in Fort Bragg, California. (Photograph by mamajo, via Flickr)

Nobody ever really meant to make a glass beach. Like many of the best things in the world, it just happened. Mother Nature took cast-off glass bottles, dishes, and vehicle tail lights, ground them down under the ceaseless motion of the ocean, and cast them back on the land, more beautiful than before.

History's trash is now today's treasure. The smooth glass castoffs are highly sought after by collectors, crafters, and souvenir hunters. The hobby has its own publication, the Sea Glass Journal (slogan: "It's not the destination, it's the sea glass!"), which also helpfully tracks sea glass festivals and events in a database.

There's no indication sea glass harms animals, unlike junk washed ashore on the infamous Kamilo Beach in Hawaii, which collects garbage from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. And the smoothed glass doesn't rust or leach chemicals, unlike metal items fusing and rusting near one of the sea glass beaches described below.

Here are two popular and three less commonly known beaches perfect for hunters of that rare, ruby-red glass pebble or tiny sapphire-colored globe. For the closest thing out there to a global sea glass database, check out Odyssey Sea Glass's database.

Glass Beach
MacKerricher State Park
Fort Bragg, California

The waves wash over the mix of rocks and ground-down glass pieces on the site of a former trash dump, now Glass Beach in Fort Bragg, California (photograph by Ellin Beltz)

For decades until 1967, seaside communities in Fort Bragg, California — around what's now known as Glass Beach — threw their garbage in an area called "the Dumps" for the sea to take or leave. On occasion, the trash would be burned.

State and local authorities stopped the activity in the late 1960s and worked to clean up the area. The ocean took care of the rest, taking glass from the beach and surf and pounding it to pieces round and smooth. The beach, once covered in glass bits, has been depleted by excessive collecting in recent years, a discouraging find for those who come to visit the beach for the glass.

State officials have stressed that collectors must leave glass on the beach as objects of historic interest, but that doesn't seem to stop anyone. Locals have also discussed replenishing the beach with glass pebbles, artificially tumbled. For a great collection of glass pieces found on the beach, however, there is the nearby International Sea Glass Museum.

photograph by Annetta Black

Glass Beach
Kauai, Hawaii

Glass Beach on Kauai, Hawaii, is another former dump site, still at the ocean edge of an industrial area along Hanapepe Bay (photograph by Travis Thurston)

Hawaii's own Glass Beach, on the southern end of the island of Kauai near Port Allen Harbor, is partly the result of trash dumping and partly the product of a unique geological structure nearby known as the Swiss Cheese Shoreline.

The beach, in an industrial part of Hanapepe Bay, served as a trash dump for decades, and the Swiss Cheese Shoreline's hole-y lava rocks worked as the anvil upon which the waves smashed trash to bits and fused metal garbage. Like California's Glass Beach, Hawaii's version has far fewer glass pebbles than in the past. But there are still plenty to find.

photograph by Jason Popesku

Homer Spit Beach
Homer, Alaska

The gravel and stones along Homer Spit Beach in Homer, Alaska, hide gems sought after by those known as "glass hunters." (photograph by Brian, via Flickr)

Homer Spit Beach isn't commonly swarmed by glass hunters, but that's the point.

Reports indicate this Alaskan beach hosts a lot of glass treasures among its large, round rocks and gravel, although fewer in the beach's sand. Beachcombers occasionally find rare Japanese fishing floats here as well, along with shells and random flotsam.

Alexandra Battery Beach, Dockyard Beach
Bermuda

Alexandra Battery overlooks a small beach home to numerous glass pebbles & the site where in 1610 a crew of shipwreck survivors built a boat they christened "Deliverance" (photograph by Jerry & Roy Klotz MD)

Bermuda's been home to an active seaport since the 1600s, and remains a center for a significant rum manufacturing and export industry. Between shipwrecks, bottles of booze, and the usual glass garbage of several centuries, a number of Bermuda beaches are prime places to find sea glass.

Hunters say Alexandra Battery Beach, below the guns of an old fort, and Dockyard Beach reveal some sea-tumbled gems.

Sea glass on a Bermuda beach (photograph by nathanmac87/Flickr user)

Stroll more strange beaches on the Atlas Obscura >

"Satan, We'll Miss You," at the pet cemetery in Calabasas, California (photograph by Paul Koudounaris)

If you measure a society by how it treats its dead, then much of the West right now is of the burying and leaving philosophy, putting the physical aspects of death at a distance. However, it's a different case with animals, where the people who choose to memorialize their pets tend to engage deeply with mortality, a much quicker cycle for our furry, scaly, and feathery companions. 

Paul Koudounaris has taken extraordinary photographs of the human dead, with ossuaries and charnel houses in The Empire of Death and bejeweled religious relics in Heavenly Bodies. Now for the first time the California-based photographer and author is focusing on the death of animals, and how humans remember them. Koudounaris traveled to Thailand, Taiwan, Germany, Finland, Sweden, the UK, and around the United States, wandering pet cemeteries and other spaces of memory. He answered a few of our questions about the rites of dead cats and dogs. 

Cimetière des Chiens, Paris (photograph by Paul Koudounaris)

Your previous work — Empire of Death and Heavenly Bodies— has been very much about the venerations of human dead. Why the interest in pets?

Mourning of pets is, to use a modern phrase, “under represented.” We pay a lot of attention culturally to human dead and the way they are remembered and memorialized. Studying aspects of (human) death has become not only popular lately, but one might even say trendy. But not so with animal dead, even though companion animals are just as much an intimate part of our lives as any friend or family member.

There is, culturally, a discrimination against animal dead, because they are “only” animals. For instance, if a relative dies, the outpouring of empathy is such that your job would most certainly give you time off, and probably a lot. If your dog or cat died, I don’t know, in an extremely sympathetic situation maybe they would give you a day off. But in reality I have talked to more people than I can count who have told me that the loss of their pet was more painful and harder to reconcile than the death of any of their relatives had been.

Well, there are a lot of things which appeal to me about the topic of animal mortality, among them different theological approaches to dealing with the animal afterlife and the issue of whether their souls are equivalent to those of humans. But mostly it is this dichotomy between the way we treat, mourn, and respect human vs. animal dead that initially interested me. It also provided a way to move forward. I have two books dealing with the human dead and have third in the can (it will be out in spring of next year), so after three books and a lot of years, I wanted to move on to something else, and I decided to start taking a look at what I perceived a double standard when it came to dealing with animal mortality.

Animal columbarium with Buddhist altar in Taiwan (photograph by Paul Koudounaris)

You've mentioned that places involving animal mortality have a different sort of interest than humans. Do you have any examples of how you've encountered this?

Places focused on animal mortality tend to be much more raw and direct in their expressive quality than places that deal with human mortality. In our culture, mourning has been refined through a series of rituals and symbolic gestures designed to sublimate grief. You know, all this Victorian memento mori stuff that people are so in love with, and the tomb sculptures, and the poems, are all wonderful, but they are also a rhetorical language which masks the raw power of emotion. But pet cemeteries and pet memorials are different.

When I first started hanging around in them, I kept thinking of Jean Dubuffet, because I realized, this is kind of the Art Brut of mourning. There are no canonical or accepted means of expressing the loss of a companion animal in our culture, so people are left to their own devices to come up with what they think is suitable, and the result is a much more direct language of grief, without convention to fall back on.

The first time I went to photograph a pet cemetery, to really give it the full effort, was back in December, when the layouts for my forthcoming book were so delayed that I was chomping at the bit looking for something to work on. I decided, well, I’ll go down to the pet cemetery in Gardena (a suburb of Los Angeles) and see what I can come up with if I try to do a photo study of the place. Now, I have been to every monument to human mortality you can think of — if you know my books, and especially when you see the forthcoming one, you’ll know that I have seen as much death and mourning as the world has to offer. And I’m completely callous to it by now — or so I thought.

I spent about six hours in that pet cemetery, photographing. Looking at what people had left and written, to try to express the bond they had with these speechless, innocent creatures, to try say their goodbyes. At one point drops of water started to hit the camera. Oh crap, it’s raining I thought. And then I looked up, not a cloud in the sky. And I realized — no, it’s not raining, it’s me, Jesus, I’m crying — it got to me. All those monuments to human mortality could not shield me from six hours with these cats and hamsters, they got to me, they broke me in a way that no human cemetery ever had. As I said, because the grief is not conventionalized, and it can be so raw. That experience really got me hooked, because I realized if it had that power over me, what power could it have on other people?

Tierfriedhof in Stuttgard, Germany (photograph by Paul Koudounaris)

What is the state of pet mourning like now?

I don’t know that I can speak overall to the state of pet mourning, but one thing I can do is compare it here to what I have seen in other cultures. I was recently studying this in Thailand. There are four temples in Bangkok that have crematoria for animals and provide animal funerals. I went down and spoke to the monks at one, explained who I am and what my interest was, and they invited me to come back the next morning and participate in a funeral for a dog and photograph it.

Dog surrounded by flowers before its funeral in Bangkok, Thailand (photograph by Paul Koudounaris)

It was a profound experience, and one with a sense of completeness and closure that we simply lack when it comes to mourning departed animals in American and European culture. I brought the dog in with the owner, it was placed in a box. A monk came and connected us all to the dog’s body with a string, and then he led several prayers. We then took the dog, surrounded him in flowers, and we placed him ourselves in the crematorium and offered him to the flames. When he had burned, the ashes were placed in an urn, which we then topped with flower petals.

Everyone kissed the dog’s remains, and they were then wrapped into a cloth package and we all went together on a boat down river. The owner said her final goodbyes and kissed the package and let it float away, and we sprinkled the flower petals over the water. The monks told me they do between four and ten of those ceremonies a day. So what is the state of pet mourning like now? I guess it depends on where you are — if you are in that temple, it’s a whole lot more sophisticated and empathic that if you are in the USA. But remember, when we talk about Buddhists, they have never denied souls to animals, so in that culture they are deserving of the same kind of respect and ritual as a human being.

Memorial for "Judy" in Rossendale, UK (photograph by Paul Koudounaris)

Hyde Park pet cemetery (photograph by Paul Koudounaris)

Pet cemetery in Djurgarnden, Stockholm, Sweden (photograph by Paul Koudounaris)

Pet cemetery in Calabasas, California (photograph by Paul Koudounaris)

Abandoned pet cemetery in Molesworth, UK (photograph by Paul Koudounaris)

Find more on our monuments to mortality by Paul Koudounaris at Empire de la Mort. 

Continue your exploration of how we remember our dead pets on Atlas Obscura, with our visit to the Paris Cemetery of the Dogs, Hartsdale Pet Cemetery in New York, and more pet cemeteries around the world.  

Ordos, China (all photographs by Darmon Richter, The Bohemian Blog)

Ordos, a remote city rising out of the deserts of China’s Inner Mongolia region, has been dubbed by some a "City of Ghosts." On closer inspection though, the term could not be farther from the truth.

In 2003, Ordos city officials proposed the construction of a new residential district — the Kangbashi New Area, a plot covering 130 square miles that was designed to accommodate more than a million people. But something went wrong along the way.

Apartment buildings were completed, but they didn’t sell. Schools, hospitals, shopping malls, and sports grounds were raised up out of the desert, to be met by silence. Whether it was the remote location that deterred potential residents, or, perhaps more likely, the steep price tag attached to a home in this lavish, futuristic city district, only a fraction of these buildings were ever put to use.

Even when the local market crashed in 2011, with house prices falling from $1,100 to $470 per square foot, nobody came. Rather, Kangbashi saw a steady decline. Many arrivals found the place felt empty, soulless, and moved out just as quickly as they had moved in. Today, the population of Kangbashi is reckoned to be somewhere in the region of 25,000 people, and at a mere 2.5% capacity, it may seem that the term "Ghost City" is not unwarranted.

Except, for one important point: Kangbashi has no ghosts. 

This is not the lost city of Pripyat, in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone; it is nothing like Centralia, or any of those other famous ghost towns. Nowhere here will you find the ephemera of lives abandoned, but rather just the bare concrete shells of life that never was.

Ordos itself — with its airport, its old center, its shops and restaurants — is not a populous place. There seem to be more abandoned building sites than homes, more high-rise construction cranes than there are people on the streets. But still, there is life.

In the Kangbashi New Area on the other hand, it is possible to walk for hours without spying another living soul. A handful of residents congregate around the central Genghis Khan Square, they drift about the plaza, the otherworldly museum building, but get out of the center and you’re just two blocks away from a post-apocalyptic wasteland spreading as far as the eye can see.

The people of Kangbashi don’t lock their doors. They don’t need to. Visitors can walk straight inside the unfinished apartments, climb to the rooftops or explore networks of subterranean parking facilities. The hospital is fully prepared, and waiting for its first patient. Meanwhile, the schools of Kangbashi have been equipped with sporting facilities, with computers and musical instruments. Bright brass and leather grows dusty behind unlocked doors.

In fact, the only people you’ll see in the Kangbashi suburbs are maintenance crews. They sweep the streets and mow the grass. On an art installation outside the "Kangbashi Number One School," a silk scarf hangs around the neck of a young girl cast from bronze; it is removed, cleaned and then retied on a weekly basis.

Many streets in Kangbashi ring with the sound of distant construction; for every building site that has been abandoned — tools dropped and bare concrete left to the mercy of the arid desert climate — there is another where the workers soldier on. Even as many of the city’s construction firms are selling their stock at slashed prices, or going out of business altogether, others are taking up the slack and pushing on towards completion.

“They will come,” insisted a taxi driver named Wei, as he drove me back towards the airport. “You don't think our city is beautiful? You'll see. The people will come.”

The sad truth though, is that time is running out for the Kangbashi New Area. There is only so long a city can last like this. Many of the buildings are showing signs of decay, before ever having known life.

Perhaps Wei was right, perhaps those new residents are just around the corner. More likely, it would seem that Kangbashi and all its futuristic architecture is doomed to return, brick by brick, back into the desert from which it was born.

Darmon Richter is a freelance writer, photographer, and urban explorer. You can follow his adventures at The Bohemian Blog, or for regular updates, follow The Bohemian Blog on Facebook.

Tasmanian Tiger in the Room of Endangered & Extinct Animals in Paris (all photographs by the author)

Like most natural history museums, the Grande Galerie de l'Évolution in Paris is a swarm of children and corralling parents, all trailing through the stunning exhibitions of taxidermy elephants and whale skeletons. However, up on the second level you'll find a room that isn't frequented as much, where the lights are barely on. In each of the wood and glass cases is a creature that is disappearing, or already gone.

La Salle des Espèces Menacées et des Espèces Disparues, or the Room of Endangered and Extinct Species, has 257 specimens from the animal and plant kingdoms. Many are the only remaining examples of their species, such as the skeleton of a black emu (the taxidermy is so precious that it is kept in storage). Others represent a species that is on the brink of obliteration, including the Sumatran tiger. 

Compared to the rest of the museum, the Room of Endangered and Extinct Species is kept at a cooler temperature, the lights low to preserve the remains of these animals. The museum celebrates the biodiversity of the planet, yet here is evidence that its vibrancy could easily vanish. Much of the loss is from humans, like the Schomburgk's deer of Thailand chased to extinction for its ornate antlers, while the Martinique Muskrat met its ultimate end when it chose Mount Pelée as its final refuge, just before the volcano erupted in 1902. Some have been so wiped off the Earth that all that survives is a branch, or an egg, to represent a whole species. 

It's a haunting experience to walk through the hall, with most visitors struck silent by the assemblage of these ghosts. From one side of the gallery a gleaming gold clock made for Marie-Antoinette, confiscated in the French Revolution, chimes out periodically through the quiet. Yet more than a memorial, the space is meant to be a call to action, to consider what has been forever lost, but also what can be saved. 

Below are some photographs from the gallery, along with the specimen's story:

Rhodonessa caryophyllacea: The pink-headed duck of Asia suffered a loss of habitat and hunting for its feathers, and unfortunately was incapable of reproducing in captivity. The last individual was seen in 1935. Although some have reported spotting it in recent years, it is widely believed extinct. 

Alca impennis: The great auk lived in the North Atlantic, and unfortunately lacked a fear of humans, which made it easy hunting for its feathers, flesh, and skin. It was last seen in Greenland in 1815, and Newfoundland in 1840. The last specimen was believed killed in 1844 on the island of Eldey, where the final colony of birds had fled following a volcanic eruption at their former Iceland home. This specimen at the Grande Galerie is from Scotland, acquired by the museum in 1832.  

Pteropus subniger: The small Mauritian flying fox, also known as the "rougette," was once soaring all over the islands of Réunion and Mauritius. Unfortunately, it was hunted for its meat and had its population further decreased by deforestation, disappearing in the 19th century. 

Cervus elaphus corsicanus: The Corsican red deer still lives in wildlife refuges, but since the 1970s development has completely pushed it out of its original home where it had thrived for 8,000 years. 

Rucervus schomburgki: This taxidermy from 1862 in Paris is the only fully mounted example of Schomburgk's deer. The Thailand deer was extensively hunted for antlers used in Chinese medicine, and was also a victim of habitat loss. The last known example of the species was killed in 1932. Due to some antlers turning up in a medicine shop in 1991, however, some believe there may still be survivors.

Equus quagga quagga: The quagga looked like a donkey that ran into a zebra, and was named for the sound of its strange call. Due to hunting it went into decline in the 19th century, believed extinct by the 1880s. This example in Paris was brought from Africa to the menagerie at Versailles in 1784. 

Dromaius baudinianus: The Kangaroo Island emu, or black emu, was hunted for its skin in the 19th century and disappeared after 1840. This skeleton is the only one known in existence. 

Marie-Antoinette's clock, chiming in the gallery

THE ROOM OF EXTINCT AND ENDANGERED ANIMALS, Paris, France

Heaven, from Dante Alighieri's "The Divine Comedy," illustrated by Gustave Doré (via Wikimedia)

Atlas Obscura has explored many ways to enter the dark and dangerous underworld, but what about hell’s opposite?

Many cultures and religions' concept of what happens to people after death includes the idea of a reward to the virtuous, whether it be joining the gods in their realm, or simply entering a peaceful land for the soul to dwell in. Sometimes, the spirit reaches this place of divine reward through a door on Earth. 

In this Atlas Obscura guide, we’ve found the Earthly locations of many different passages into heavenly places. There are the homes of the gods themselves, there are also passageways to a magical world of eternal youth, and to a spirit world where one’s soul can join the ranks of honored ancestors, receiving godlike powers. In all of these heavens, those who are deserving receive a reward.

From the peaks of the Himalayas to the beaches of Maui, here is how you can get to the gates of Heaven.

Tianmen Shan
Zhangjiajii, China

photograph by Huangdan2060/Wikimedia

Tianmen Shan is a giant natural arch in a karst formation in the Hunan region of China. It is unique among natural arches in that its formation is part of recorded history — ancient Chinese documents report the entire opening formed when the back of a huge cave collapsed in 263 CE. After that cataclysmic event, the mountain’s name was changed to Tianmen Shan — “Heaven’s Gate Mountain.”

Local legends call this awe-inspiring geological phenomenon the connection between Earth and realm of the gods. Visitors climb 4,100 feet up 999 stone steps, often shrouded in ethereal fog, until reaching the peak of the mountain. Wooden huts along the path offer a place to rest and view the incredible scenery below and above.

If you don’t want to hike up to the entrance of heaven, travelers can take a 7.2 kilometer skytram suspended over rocky forest and mist-filled gorges.  To really get the god’s eye view, the path up also includes a 200 foot long glass-bottomed pathway built into the side of the mountain — 4,000 feet up.

photograph by huangdan2060/Wikimedia

Mount Kailash
Kailas Range, The Himalayas, Tibet

photograph by Ondřej Žváček

The Himalayan mountain range is full of holy sites and ancient temples, but one mountain in particular stands out for its sacredness to not one, but four different religions.

To Tantric Buddhists, Mount Kailash is home to Buddha Demchong, representing supreme enlightenment. To Jains, it is the site where the first Jain attained nirvana. In Bon, an ancient Tibetan religion, the mountain and its entire surrounding region are the source of all mystical power. In Hindusim, it's believed to be the residence of Lord Shiva and his consort Parvati, the land of eternal bliss. Within 30 kilometers of Mount Kailash are the sources of some of the longest rivers in Asia, including the Sutlej, the Indus, and the Ghaghara, a tributary of the Ganges.

Pilgrims make a four day offroad journey by jeep from Lhasa to the outpost of Darchen. Then they begin a 52 kilometer circumnavigation of the mountain, a holy ritual to bring good fortune, purity and enlightenment. The pilgrimage can take anywhere from a grueling 15 hours (for those seeking extra merit) to three weeks, making full body prostrations all along the way. Making 108 such journeys is said to bring assured enlightenment.

Despite Mount Kailash’s great spiritual significance, it is visited by only a few thousand pilgrims a year, mostly due to its extreme remoteness. No summits have been recorded. Climbing the mountain is in fact forbidden due to its holiness, and a permit given by the Chinese government to a Spanish climbing team in 2001 was angrily protested until it was rescinded.

Chortens & Mount Kailash (photograph by Yasunori Koide)

Mount Olympus
Greece

photograph by stefg74/Flickr user 

Olympus was the ancient court of the Greek gods and goddesses, home to Zeus, Hera, Aphrodite, and other central deities. In Greek mythology, when mortal died, his soul typically went to Hades, but if a mortal proved exceptional, like Heracles or Pollux, then the gods would allow him join them on Mount Olympus.

In Homer’s Illiad, the home of the gods was described as glorious and full of trees. In the court itself, the gods were said to enjoy perfect weather and dine on nectar while planning their next entanglement on earth.

Olympus is the highest mountain in Greece, full of gorges, small caves, clear streams, and more than 1,700 kinds of plants. Its highest peak, Mytikas, is known as the “Pantheon” and was believed to be the gods’ meeting place, while the gods themselves settled in the mountain’s ravines. The mountain, as well as the surrounding national park, is full of popular hiking trails for any ability, and there are several lodges on where you can rent a bed for overnight hikes on your journey to heaven.

View to Mount Olympus from Thermaikos Bay (photograph by Marco Spaapen)

Passageways underneath the Pyramid of the Sun
Teotihuacan, Mexico 

photograph by Antony Stanley 

A sophisticated feat of engineering and architectural knowledge, the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon in Mexico's ancient city of Teotihuacan have been intriguing visitors since their abandonment around 550 CE.

Construction of the city began around 100 BCE and the pyramids were completed by 200 BCE, though the identities of the builders remain a mystery. The Toltecs were long accepted to be the architects, though recent research has also proposed the Maya, Mixtec, and Zapotec. What is known is the city was large, sophisticated, and at its zenith the largest in the pre-Colombian Americas. The temples and pyramids were used as a the sites for elaborate rituals, including human and animal sacrifice. Interestingly, the 30 square kilometers of the city does not include any military installments or fortifications.

Much about the meaning behind the city remains arcane, like the clover-shaped caves below the Pyramid of the Sun, excavated in 1971. The cave was apparently the setting for fire and water rituals, and may have been seen as a passageway from the spirit world to Earth. In the early Mesoamerican religious traditions, this spirit land was known as Tamoanchan. To the Aztecs, who later occupied Teotihuacan, Tamoanchan became a paradise full of precious birds, fountains, and flowers.

Archaeologists hypothesize the caves may have been the original places of worship, and then pyramids were built over them to commemorate the sacred spot. The caves are not currently open to the public, though the pyramids and the surrounding buildings along the Avenue of the Dead are an awe-inspiring exploration.

photograph by Cesar Bojorquez

Glastonbury Tor
Glastonbury, England

photograph by Jim Champion

The legendary entrance to Annwn, the paradise of Welsh mythology, is said to be on the summit of Glastonbury Tor, a hill outside the town of Glastonbury in Somerset, England.

Annwn is a world of eternal youth, with no disease and plentiful food and delights, ruled by the fairy king Arawn. Legend goes, it is accessible only through death or once a year through a secret door in Glastonbury Tor. Throughout the centuries the site has also become known as the location of Avalon, the land of the fairies where King Arthur rests until he is needed again.

The Tor is approximately 518 feet high, and capped with the ruined tower of St Michael’s Church, which was first constructed in the 12th century and collapsed and been rebuilt several times since then. Excavations show evidence of human visits since the Iron Age.  The sides of the hill have seven deep terraces that might have been naturally formed or the result of Middle Age farmers sculpting the land for easier farming.

The wetlands surrounding the Tor sometimes create a Fata Morgana, where light bends through a mystical fog and creates the illusion of the Tor floating above the mist. 

photograph by Edwin Graham

Pu'u Keka'a (Black Rock)
Maui, Hawaii

Black Rock Torch Lighting (photograph by Matt McGee)

Pu'u Keka'a ("Black Rock") is a prominent lava-made landmark on Kaanapali Beach in Maui, surrounded by resorts and overlooking a gorgeous beach with renowned snorkeling spots. But there’s a deeper story behind the beautiful scenery. In the indigenous Hawaiian religion, Pu'u Keka'a was said to be a “ka-leine-a-ka-‘uhane,” or “leap of the soul” — a place where the souls of the dead jump from this world to the next. In several places throughout the Hawaiian islands, there are such leaping-off places — often high rocks facing the west.

Once a person died or came close to death, their spirit would be met by their departed friends and ancestors, often in the form of animals, who helped determine if the death was real. If they found you still had certain obligations or it wasn’t time for you to die, the spirits would help revive your body and return you to life. However, if the death was real, the spirits would help guide you to a leaping-off point, where your soul would jump to the next world. If you were honorable and law-abiding, your spirit lived with the chief god Kane, and you became a god.

The 18th-century King Kahekili was a great athlete, famous for his skill at lele kawa (cliff jumping). His favorite location for his spectacular cliff dives was Maui’s Black Rock, where his leaps had deep religious significance. Only someone with powerful mana, divine power, could jump unharmed after from the very place where the dead entered the next world. Kahekili’s impressive dives confirmed his sacred kingly status. Every evening at sunset, the nearby Sheraton Resort hosts a reenactment of the king’s impressive feat.

photograph by Matt McGee

Prefer paradise to get lost? Check out the Atlas Obscura guide to gates to hell >

Happy Fourth of July! While fireworks will be rocketing their glare into the sky around the United States and patriotic sites will be draped in flags, some monuments and remains of the American Revolution will stay quiet. 

Here are five of the overlooked and forgotten sites of the Revolutionary War:

BOOT MONUMENT
Stillwater, New York

via U.S. Army RDECOM

Before his name became synonymous with traitor when he defected to the British during the Revolutionary War, Benedict Arnold was a prominent military leader. Some of that early service is still remembered in obscure sites including this Boot Monument in New York's Saratoga National Park. The long shoe carved in the stone recognizes when his leg was badly wounded in the Battle of Saratoga, but you won't find Arnold's name anywhere on it. Just these words: 

In memory of the 'most brilliant soldier' of the Continental Army who was desperately wounded on this spot the sally port of BORGOYNES GREAT WESTERN REDOUBT 7th October, 1777 winning for his countrymen the decisive battle of the American Revolution and for himself the rank of Major General.

FIRST MARYLAND REGIMENT MASS GRAVE
Brooklyn, New York

photograph by the author

You would think a mass grave filled with military heroes wouldn't go missing, but the final resting place of the 1st Maryland Regiment was long forgotten. Located near the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, it's only recognized with a small explanatory plaque in front of the American Legion, yet around this concrete lot are over 200 dead. The "Maryland 400" were incredibly outnumbered by 2,000 British on August 27, 1776, part of what would be known as the Battle of Brooklyn. They stood their ground and made six charges, giving Washington's army time to get out. Just 10 of the group made it back to the American forces, with 256 dead, the rest injured or taken prisoner. The corpses were buried in six trenches in the area that became Third Avenue. 

ARCH OF COLONIAL TREES
San Francisco, California

photograph by Annetta Black/Atlas Obscura

Across the country is a quieter memorial. The Arch of Colonial Trees in San Francisco has 13 trees for the original 13 colonies. Each was selected to represent a colony, planted right in collected Revolutionary battlefield earth. The center tree is a hemlock symbolizing Pennsylvania, with soil from the Marquis de Lafayette's grave in Paris. The grove was planted in October of 1896 to mark the 115th anniversary of the 1781 surrender at the Battle of Yorktown, and colonial flags once topped the trees. The Daughters of the American Revolution even buried the tree roots with a silver shovel said to have belonged to Martha Washington at Mount Vernon. However, now the trees are mostly anonymous with only a small plaque indicating the non-native flora is a tribute to the war. 

EXECUTION ROCKS LIGHTHOUSE
Westchester County, New York

photograph by Luke J. Spencer

Execution Rocks Lighthouse has a gruesome tale behind its name. The island in the Long Island Sound, which got its lighthouse in the 1850s, is said to have been used as an execution site by the British. According to the Travel Channel, Colonial prisoners would be chained to the rocks and slowly drowned by the rising tide. However, some confine the story to legend, although the rocks are still an eerie sight out in the waters. 

MINERVA IN THE GREEN-WOOD CEMETERY
Brooklyn, New York

photograph by the author

Most visitors to the Statue of Liberty don't know a smaller metal lady is saluting back from Brooklyn. In Green-Wood Cemetery the statue of Minerva marks the "Battle Hill" of the Battle of Brooklyn, the first major engagement of the American Revolution. The monument was dedicated in 1920 with funds by Charles Higgins, whose mausoleum is just behind the waving bronze of the Roman Goddess, sculpted by Frederick Wellington Ruckstull. While New Yorkers will be looking away from the hill to the Brooklyn Bridge for the Fourth of July fireworks, Minerva will remain at her "Altar of Liberty," memorializing the blood shed on both sides of the war commenced on the borough's soil. 

Discover more of the overlooked sites of the American Revolution on the Atlas Obscura >

Today Seattle’s Pike Place Market is a bustling tourist destination known for its quirky shops, fresh produce, and temporarily airborne fish. During the day visitors shop for food and flowers, while in the evening, pub-goers throng First Avenue looking for a good time. But a century ago, two spots in the market were connected to a far less cheery story; in fact, a story of deprivation so extreme that it was fatal.

Pike Place Market in 1910 (via University of Washington, Seattle Photograph Collection)

“Doctor” Linda Burfield Hazzard arrived in Washington state around 1906, commuting to Seattle from her home-base in the Kitsap County town of Olalla. Despite her lack of a medical degree (she did have some training as an osteopathic nurse), she was licensed to practice medicine in Washington state through a loophole designed for alternative practitioners.

Her particular brand of “medicine,” however, was dangerously unusual. Hazzard was a proponent of fasting for the cure of disease, which was also the title of her 1908 book. The way she saw it, all disease was caused by “impure blood” that originated from poor digestion. Her cure included tiny helpings of thin soup and oranges, supplemented with daily enemas and massages so vigorous they often looked more like beatings. Within a few weeks, some of Hazzard’s patients looked like skeletons.

Linda Burfield Hazzard's "Fasting for the Cure of Disease" (via Wikimedia)

But her treatments caught on, and soon members of Seattle’s smart set were coming to Hazzard to cure any and all ailments. She treated some of them from her offices in the market’s Outlook Hotel, later renamed the LaSalle Hotel. Later, she installed some in her sanitarium in Olalla, Washington. She called the place “Wilderness Heights”; the locals renamed it "Starvation Heights."

Some of Hazzard’s patients swore by her, but other Seattleites noticed that a disturbing number of those she treated seemed to die, and that one of their last acts was often to sign away property and cash to Hazzard herself. Despite complaints and press coverage, Seattle's health director said he couldn't intervene, since the patients were all adults who had undertaken their last diet voluntarily.

Hazzard’s undoing came when the wealthy British heiresses Claire and Dorothea Williamson, both in their early 30s, came for treatment in February 1911 after seeing a newspaper advertisement for Hazzard’s book while vacationing in Victoria, BC. By April, the women were so emaciated they were transferred by ambulance to the Olalla sanitarium. Just before they left, Hazzard’s attorney convinced Claire to sign a codicil to her will granting a yearly stipend of 25 pounds to Hazzard’s “Institute.” Around the same time, Hazzard began wearing Claire’s dresses, hats, and diamonds.

Across the ocean, the Williamsons’s childhood nanny, Margaret Conway, received a strange telegram asking her to come visit Olalla. By the time she arrived, Claire Williamson was a corpse. Conway was taken to E. R. Butterworth & Sons mortuary (right next to Pike Place Market), to identify the body, but said she didn’t recognize it. Conway then did her best to convince Dorothea — who at the time weighed 60 pounds — to leave Olalla, but it took the intervention of the sisters’ uncle in Portland and a hefty sum paid to Hazzard before Dorothea was freed. 

The Williamson case brought Hazzard into an even more unflattering spotlight, and the British vice-counsel in Tacoma pressured Seattle authorities to prosecute. When Seattle said it couldn’t afford it, Dorothea offered to foot the bill. Hazzard was finally arrested in August 1911, amid lurid headlines calling her a fiend. She said she was being persecuted for being a successful woman. But after damning medical testimony proved she had starved her patients to death, the jury came back with a verdict of manslaughter. Hazzard was sent to the penitentiary in Walla Walla, where she served two years. Although she was only convicted in the death of Claire Williamson, an estimated 40 others died in her care. She died in 1938, after embarking on her own fasting cure.

Meanwhile, the E. R. Butterworth & Sons mortuary on 1921 First Avenue, now the site of Kells Irish Pub, was implicated in the press around Hazzard’s crimes. There were rumors that the mortuary had cremated Claire, and substituted a healthier-looking corpse in her stead. Worse, one of Butterworth’s employees pled guilty to the illegal removal of Claire’s body from the Olalla sanitarium. But the mortuary itself was never charged with a crime. Today the site is a frequent stop on ghost tours, and has been the subject of several paranormal investigations. While Kells operates quite successfully on the bottom floors, in recent years the top floors have been home to a string of failed businesses. As Seattle’s first full-service mortuary — and one of the first in the United States — it’s seen its fair share of disturbing sites, but hopefully none were as dangerous as Linda Hazzard.

Kells Irish Pub (photograph by Renato Lorini)

Bess Lovejoy is a writer, researcher, and editor based in Brooklyn. Her book Rest in Pieces was published last year by Simon & Schuster. 

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>

Out at the beach it's easy to get lulled into a meditative state with the rhythm of the ocean, but in some parts of the world the sand has its own sound. The phenomenon known as "singing sands," or sometimes "booming sands," is where the dunes create a low, eerie noise. 

Reasons for the "singing" were long mysterious aside from knowing it was somehow generated by the reverberating tumble of grains of sand, possibly involving a sweeping wind, and was heard from the Kelso Dunes in California to the desert of Namibia. In 2012, some biophysicists examined dunes in Morocco and Orman and discovered that the size of the sand grains was integral to the singing. According to National Geographic's report on the research, in Morocco where the grains were all about the same diameter the avalanches produced a continuous note, but in Orman where they were widely different it was more cacophonous. Here's a breakdown: 

Exact specifics of what make a singing sand dune are still vague. Below are a few of our favorites where you can have this strange sonorous experience, where the sand hills seem to come alive with their own moody music. NOVA states that there are around 30 such places around the world, so listen close next time you're at the dunes and just maybe with the right sand grain size, humidity, and motion you'll hear them sing. 

BOOMING DUNES OF BADAIN JARAN DESERT
Mongolia

Droning like a low-flying plane, the world's tallest stationary dunes in Mongolia's Badain Jaran Desert make for an exceptionally otherworldly place. Dunes can reach over 1,600 feet tall, acting as some of the Earth's biggest bass instruments. 

SAND MOUNTAIN
Nevada

photograph by Rick Cooper

Sand Mountain in Nevada was once home to an ancient lake; what remains is a dune out in an isolated terrain. The sand accumulated in the basin seems to respond with a lonely moan as the wind blows over the dune.

SINGING SAND DUNES OF LIWA
United Arab Emirates

photograph by stillepsilon/Flickr

The tessellated pattern of the sands of the dunes in the Empty Quarter of the United Arab Emirates along with their roaring noise can turn the area into a labyrinth. Guides are extremely recommended. If you want to be sure to hear the singing of the dunes, you can perform this seemingly exhausting and possibly rash-inducing method:

EUREKA DUNES
California

photograph by zackofalltrades

Over in Death Valley, 680 feet above the ground, are California's tallest sand dunes. The Eureka Dunes also have some of the planet's most optimal singing sands conditions, where you're most likely to be surrounded by the low humming on any given visit to the remote landscape. National Geographic even made a visit, although found the sandy wind that contributes to the singing phenomenon can also be unpleasant to the eyes:

Interested in more sound exploration? Here's our article on musical roads.