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By Root 686 0

there’s a terrible price to be paid for beauty. Just ask Veronika of Desinic, a lovely 15th-century maiden who captured the heart of Frederich, son of Count Herman II of Celje, who resided in the castle known as Veliki Tabor. The star-crossed lovers eloped and were married against the wishes of the evil Count. He had Veronika tried as a witch; the judges, however, took pity on the beautiful woman and set her free. Not one to be easily dismissed, the furious Count had her drowned and her body bricked up inside Veliki Tabor’s pentagonal tower. During a 1982 renovation of the castle, a woman’s skull was supposedly discovered; it now resides in a place of honor in the castle’s chapel. Some say the ghost of Veronika can still be heard. www.visitcroatia.net.

Choeung Ek, Cambodia: Choeung Ek is one of the sites known as the Killing Fields, where the Khmer Rouge regime slaughtered some 17,000 people between 1975 and 1979. Over 8,800 bodies have been discovered at Choeung Ek; many of the dead were inmates in the nearby Tuol Sleng prison, where tours are also available. Open pits where mass graves were found are scattered around the site; the bones of those killed here still litter the area. A tall monument, now a Buddhist stupa (or reliquary), contains skulls carefully arranged by age and gender—it’s 17 stories high, to remind visitors of the April 17, 1975, date the Khmer Rouge seized power.

The Catacombs of St. John, Syracuse, Italy: The catacombs of St. John, accessed through the ruins of the Chiesa di San Giovanni, were originally developed by the ancient Greeks as an underground aqueduct. Early Christians used it to bury their dead because they were forbidden by the Romans from using city graveyards. The site now contains roughly 20,000 tombs, housed in long tunnels that are honeycombed with coffins; they’re now empty, having been looted by grave robbers long ago of any artifacts or remains. Turismo, Via San Sebastiano 43 ( 39/931-481232).

Kostnice “Bone Church,” Kutna Hora, Czech Republic: For sheer creativity, it’s hard to match the interior design of this Gothic church. A widely used graveyard since the Black Plague, the church cemetery had plenty of skeletal remains at hand, and what better material to decorate the inside of the church? Apparently Frantisek Rint, the fellow hired in 1870 to put the countless heaps of bones in order, thought they were the perfect decorative touch to liven up his plain little church. Rint used human bones and skulls to create, among other charms, a chandelier of bones, necklace-like strands of skulls draped from the ceiling, a coat-of-arms—even the artist’s signature was written in bone. www.kostnice.cz.

St. Michan’s Church, Dublin, Ireland: The limestone walls of this church’s burial vault act as a preservative, so the bodies buried here are remarkably well mummified. Visitors can see the remains inside four of the vault’s opened coffins; sharp-eyed viewers will note that two of the bodies were cut into pieces before they were put in their caskets. Rumor has it that Bram Stoker visited the site as a child, inspiring him to write Dracula some years later. www.visitdublin.com.

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Winchester Mystery House

An Unsolved Mystery

San Jose, California, U.S.A.

Staircases that lead directly up to a ceiling and stop. Doors that open onto solid walls. A séance room with a floorless closet and a secret passageway. A window with a spider web design featuring 13 colored stones, to match the 13 palm trees in the driveway, and the 13 bathrooms, and the 13 coat hooks in the closets, and the chandeliers with 13 lights. Even if you don’t believe in the supernatural aura that surrounds the Winchester Mystery House, you can’t deny that there is something utterly bewildering and spine-tingling about this immense, ornate Victorian mansion.

According to legend, Sarah Winchester was devastated by the deaths of her daughter and her husband William. As president of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, Mr. Winchester was renowned as the man whose rifles tamed the American West—at a cost of thousands of