The Catacombs of Paris is a famous burial place in Paris, France. It is a network of subterranean tunnels and rooms located in what were Roman-era limestone quarries. The quarries were converted into a mass tomb near the end of the 18th century. It is most widely known as "the catacombs", but the official title is "les carrières de Paris" or "the quarries of Paris."

The use of the depleted quarries for the storage of bones was established in 1786. At the time, the Les Halles district in the middle of the city was suffering from disease, due to contamination caused by improper burials and mass graves in churchyard cemeteries, especially the large Cimetière des Innocents. It was decided to discreetly remove the bones and place them in the abandoned quarries.

Remains from the cemetery of Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs were among the first to be moved. Bodies of the dead from the riots in the Place de Greve, the Hotel de Brienne, and Rue Meslee were put in the catacombs on August 28 and 29, 1788.

Now that's a lot of bodies!!

I bet you're scared now! I know I am!

One of the most impressive sights in Prague is the Old Jewish cemetery in Josefov, the former Jewish ghetto. This cemetery was used from 1439 to 1787 and it is the oldest existing Jewish cemetery in Europe. The Nazis made it a policy to destroy Jewish cemeteries, sometimes using the tombstones for target practice, but Hitler ordered that this cemetery be left intact, since he was planning to build a Jewish museum in Prague after all the Jews in Europe had been exterminated according to his diabolical plan.

There are more than 100,000 Jews buried in this small plot, the graves being layered 12 deep in some places. This is not unusual for European cemeteries where space is at a premium. In Germany where the graves are also 12 layers deep, the tombstones mark only the top layer of the buried coffins. In the Old Jewish Cemetery in Josefov, there are around 12,000 tombstones, crowded closely together with almost no grass between them. Some of the tombstones look like beds, like the one on the left in the photograph below.

I think it's a jello mold... looks pretty real doesn't it?

Oh yummy! Bloody too!

I wonder if these are mashed potato brains...

Now that's just icky looking!

Oooh yummy!

Eyeballs and red wine... That's fun!

And how about this centerpiece?

Here's a close up!
Are you hungry now?

Here are some cool desktop wallpapers to get you into a Halloween mood.

These images are hosted at Slide. When you download the wallpaper, the word "slide" is not going to be anywhere on it. To download, click the image. A window will open to the photo page at Slide. Right click the picture and choose "save target as". Save the picture to your "My Pictures" folder. To set it as wallpaper, open your "My Pictures" folder, right click on the image and choose "set as background". Enjoy!

It's pretty easy, but if you have any problems, let me know, and I'll do what I can to help.