I’ve always felt most grateful to be alive when I walk among the dead.
Step through a lychgate into a churchyard, or descend a narrow stone stair into a catacomb, and the noise of the world falls away. In these quiet places, I think about memento mori, remember you will die, and it puts life into perspective. Then the stories begin to rise.
Many of my novels grew out of these visits. The Paris Catacombs, Sedlec Ossuary, Cross Bones Graveyard, and the anatomical museums of London all appear in my ARKANE thrillers, Brooke & Daniel crime novels, and horror.
This page gathers everything on Books and Travel about the darker side of travel: catacombs and ossuaries, graveyards and cemeteries, anatomical museums, cities with a macabre streak, folklore, and the occult.
Whether you’re planning a trip for Halloween or just want to explore from your armchair, I hope you find something here that shifts your perspective on the places so many people avoid.
Catacombs and ossuaries
An ossuary is a place where bones are stored once the flesh has gone, often arranged into patterns, walls, and even chandeliers. Catacombs are underground burial chambers. Both hold thousands of lives in a single space, which is what makes them so powerful to visit.
Visiting the Paris Catacombs. The remains of more than six million people lie beneath the streets of Paris, moved from overcrowded cemeteries and arranged into walls of femurs and skulls. My photos from a visit in 2023, practical tips, and an FAQ on who built the tunnels and whether anyone lives down there.
15 Unusual Crypts, Catacombs and Ossuaries. From the bone chandelier at Sedlec and the mummies of the Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo to Douaumont, the Towers of Silence, and the memorial stupa at Phnom Penh. Sedlec is the setting for the finale of my thriller Crypt of Bone.
Walking Amongst the Dead: Graveyards, Cemeteries and Ossuaries. A solo podcast episode where I explain the difference between a graveyard, a cemetery, and an ossuary, and walk you through the places that shaped my stories, from Kensal Green to the cadaver tomb at Canterbury Cathedral.
Two Days in Porto, Portugal. Gothic and Baroque churches, the riverfront, and the catacombs beneath the Igreja de São Francisco, visited before I set off on the Camino Portuguese.
Graveyards and cemeteries
Graveyards sit beside a church. Cemeteries stand alone, and the great Victorian ones were designed as parks for the living as much as resting places for the dead. Nature often reigns in both, in peace and beauty.
Cross Bones Graveyard, Southwark, London. The unconsecrated burial ground of the Winchester Geese, the medieval sex workers licensed by the Bishop of Winchester, now a memorial garden for the Outcast Dead within sight of The Shard. It features in my crime thriller Deviance.
Life Obsessed: Cemeteries, Graveyards and Ossuaries with Loren Rhoads. The author of 199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die on why above-ground tombs were built, the most beautiful cemeteries in Europe and North America, and why loving these places makes you life-obsessed, not death-obsessed.
Memento Mori: How Travel Can Help Us Deal with Death and Grief with Dr Karen Wyatt. A hospice physician on how travel helped her face loss, and on living well because life is short.
Mexico’s Day of the Dead with Luisa Navarro. What goes on the altar, why the sugar skulls are so colourful, and how visitors can experience the tradition respectfully.
Anatomical museums and cabinets of curiosity
Medical museums are fertile ground for a thriller writer. They are also a way to get the details right, and to face what we are made of.
12 of the World’s Best Anatomical Museums. The two Hunterians, the Mütter in Philadelphia, the Old Operating Theatre in London, Museum Vrolik in Amsterdam, and more.
12 of the World’s Most Unusual Museums. Shrunken heads at the Pitt Rivers in Oxford, the Museum of Death in New Orleans, the Museum of Holy Souls in Purgatory in Rome, and the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Boscastle.
8 Unusual Museums to Visit in Paris. A vampire museum, the Museum of Magic, the police museum, and the oldest collection of medical instruments in Europe.
Cities with a dark side
Every old city has layers of the macabre if you know where to look. These are the ones I keep going back to.
25 Quirky and Unusual Things to See in London. The Hunterian Museum, Highgate Cemetery, the Old Operating Theatre, Jeremy Bentham’s skeleton, the crypt gallery at St Pancras Church, and Cross Bones. London is my muse for the Brooke & Daniel crime novels.
14 Unusual Things to See in Prague. Sedlec Ossuary, the Old Jewish Cemetery, the Golem, a museum of torture instruments, and the Museum of Alchemists and Magicians.
12 Unusual Things to See in Vienna. The Imperial Crypt, the catacombs under St Stephen’s, the Funeral Museum, the Narrenturm, and the Cemetery of the Nameless. Then hear Austrian author Katharina Bordet on Vienna’s cathedrals, dark history, and coffee culture.
13 Strange and Unusual Places to See in New Orleans. The tomb of Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Museum, the LaLaurie Mansion, and the Museum of Death. Then join native New Orleanians Laura and Dan Martone for The City of Life and Death, on hauntings, cemeteries, vampires, and Creole food.
Macabre Montreal with Mark Leslie. A Canadian horror writer on the city’s haunted places, its cemeteries, and what a ghost tour adds to knowing a place.
15 Unusual Things to See in Europe. The Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, the South Bridge Vaults in Edinburgh, Houska Castle, the Capuchin crypts of Rome, and Pripyat. Many of these are ARKANE research trips.
Brussels, Belgium: Gothic Churches, Bruegel, and Memento Mori. Bruegel’s grave, demons carved on the Town Hall, and the churches of a city I first knew as a commuter in the 1990s.
Folklore, darkness, and the occult
The places are only half of it. The stories people tell about them, and the books they were afraid of, are the other half.
10 Mysterious Occult Books of Magic. The Codex Gigas, the Voynich Manuscript, the Grand Grimoire, and the Galdrabok. A book bound in human skin appears in my A Thousand Fiendish Angels and again in Deviance.
English Folklore with Icy Sedgwick. Plague folklore, the Green Man, how body parts play a part in old stories, and why folklore clings to particular places.
Exploring Darkness and Accepting Our Animal Nature with Tiffany Francis-Baker. Walking at night, the moors, pagan fire festivals, and why we need dark skies.
Blood, Wine, and Sacrifice: Folk Horror Inspired by England’s Biodynamic Vineyards. Poisonous plants, blood sacrifice, and the strange rituals of biodynamic winemaking behind my folk horror novel Blood Vintage.
If cathedrals are more your kind of dark, the cadaver tombs and crypts are gathered on my Gothic Cathedrals page.
Dark fiction for the season
These places became these books. All are available in ebook, paperback, and audiobook from the usual stores or direct from me.
Catacomb
A father hunts for his daughter in the tunnels beneath Edinburgh. Adventure horror.
Crypt of Bone
The Devil’s Bible, a curse, and a showdown at Sedlec Ossuary. ARKANE thriller book 2.
Desecration
A body in the Hunterian Museum and a secret society that wants yours. Dark London book 1.
Blood Vintage
The perfect wine needs the darkest sacrifice. Folk horror on an English vineyard.
Bones of the Deep
She stole their saint. Now the ocean wants her back. Folk horror on a tall ship in the South Pacific.
A Thousand Fiendish Angels
Three stories descending through Dante’s hell, bound by a book of human skin.
You can find all my books at jfpenn.com, and you can hear more dark travel on the Books and Travel podcast.
Wherever you go this season, remember to look up, and look down. The dead have a lot to teach the living.