![]() Fees from living families helped maintain the collection. The monks dried the bodies on racks, applied vinegar, glycerine and other chemical preservatives, and dressed the corpses in various styles of clothing. Like many catacombs around the world, this communal tomb is not just a burial site but a place intended for preservation and display. The chambers were originally meant to serve only friars, but the Palermo catacombs eventually expanded operations to include members of the public, whose families paid fees for the housing of their dead loved ones. This resting place of some 8,000 people was born in the 1500s when the cemetery serving the local Capuchin monastery ran out of bunk space, requiring the monks to dig out a new tomb to lay their dead. Still other chambers feature virgins, priests, monks and professionals, many preserved in varying states of life-like quality. On one wall of the Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo, Italy, are deceased men, on another women, and another children. These bodies have been essentially mummified others have been treated with glycerine and remain almost as life-like as the day they died. Preserved bodies of Sicilians dead for centuries line the walls of the Capuchin Catacombs beneath Palermo. Some have suggested that high mineral content in the soil preserved them, while others believe the mummies are simply the result of a warm and dry climate. Scientists have speculated how the bodies became mummified. The bodies are of real people who died only several generations ago and, in some cases, may even have been buried alive. Visitors to Guanajuato should be warned that the mummy museum is not an attraction for the timid-or one to treat irreverently. The assembly of the dried-out dead features more than 100 bodies displayed behind glass, where they grimace unhappily at about a million tourists per year-people with that familiar urge to see up close the feared but fascinating face of death. So was born Guanajuato’s famed mummy museum. These were placed in storage-and they became, gradually, a draw for curious visitors. Bodies of families unable to pay were exhumed-and some, it turned out, had been naturally preserved in the awkward poses of death. The mummies of Guanajuato. Around 1865, the local government in the town of Guanajuato, in the mountains of central Mexico, decided to begin collecting a cemetery tax from relatives of the deceased. Perhaps camp out in order to get the full Burkittsville experience, and before you go be sure and watch the movie. No-that’s not a witch in the woods behind you worse, it’s your own imagination. Instead of bugging the locals, who have had to replace their town sign several times in the wake of film-fan thievery, take a walk in the nearby woods after dark-and try not to panic. If you go, you won’t be the first, as countless film buffs and Blair Witch believers have already swarmed this little hamlet of 200. The film was partially shot in the real-life town of Burkittsville. ![]() They never caught the mean old lady on film, but she began visiting them each evening after they retired to their tent, and, night by night, turned the expedition into a nightmare. The story follows three film students into the rural backwoods of Maryland to interview locals on-camera and explore the dark forests as they documented a local legend about the so-called Blair Witch. The movie never showed a single image of ghouls or supernatural forces, yet it scared some of us almost to death and ruined camping for the rest of the summer. The Blair Witch Project, that terrifying low-budget cult film of 1999, reminded millions that we may have nothing to fear in a dark and gloomy forest but our own imaginations. And though these legends and rumors often terrify us, and though our instincts tell us to run, curiosity kills the cat-and we often go tiptoeing into the tombs, graveyards and forests of our nightmares. This Halloween, indulge in the nerve-zapping thrill of being afraid, and consider visiting these real-life destinations of ghostly legends and dark history: Who can resist the thrill of fear? We imagine that hotels and churches are haunted, and we love to believe it when locals tell us that witches, werewolves and the undead lurk in the nearby woods. Photo courtesy of Flickr user The Spider Hill. If you were a witch, could you imagine a nicer place to dwell? This abandoned church is located in Burkittsville, Maryland, filming location of 1999′s The Blair Witch Project.
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