Paul Koudounaris is an American author and photographer from Los Angeles. He has a PhD in Art History, and his publications in the field of charnel house and ossuary research have made him a well-known figure in the field of macabre art and art history. He is also a feline historian whose book entitled, A Cat's Tale, [1] told feline history in the voice of his rescue cat, Baba the Cat. He is a member of The Order of the Good Death. [2]
In 2006, he started extensively studying the use of human remains in religious ritual and as a decorative element in sacred spaces. He began writing about and photographing them for European newspapers, [3] and became an important contributor to magazines which specialize in the paranormal, such as the Fortean Times, covering unusual and spiritual phenomenon surrounding sacred remains throughout the world. [4] [5] [6] In the process, he also compiled material for the first ever history of bone-decorated religious structures, visiting over 70 sites on four continents, some of which had never before been photographed or open to the public. [7] [8] [9] [10]
In 2011, his ossuary research and photographs were published by Thames and Hudson as The Empire of Death, [11] the title taken from a caption at the Catacombs of Paris, one of the sites included in the book. The book included other famous ossuaries, such as the Sedlec Ossuary and the crypt of Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini, where he had been granted special permission by the monastery and Italian cultural authorities to photograph. A host of similar, previously unknown sites were also included in the book, however, and the text created a context for understanding the construction of these types of elaborate ossuaries as a Catholic phenomenon that was initiated during the Counter-Reformation. The book received extensive media coverage, and was lauded in publications internationally and was named among the best books of the year by the London Evening Standard and awarded Coup de Coeur by the Association of Paris Librarians. [12] [13] [14]
His book Heavenly Bodies was released in 2013, and delved even deeper into study of obscure macabre art history by presenting the forgotten story of a group of skeletons taken from the Roman Catacombs in the seventeenth century and completely decorated with jewels by teams of nuns. The book described how these bodies, known as catacomb saints, were identified as Early Christian martyrs, then sent primarily to German-speaking lands where they were decorated and placed into Catholic Churches. Such skeletons were mostly removed and destroyed during the Enlightenment, but Koudounaris tracked down all the surviving examples and photographed them for the book. [15] The book received a tremendous amount of press, and Koudounaris was dubbed "Indiana Bones" by the UK press, in reference to his curious and macabre discoveries,[ citation needed ] and the book was named by Dazed and Confused as one of the ten best art and photography books of the year. [16]
The third book by Koudounaris on macabre visual culture involving human remains was released in 2015 and entitled Memento Mori. In interviews for the book he indicated that it was intended to present a much more global perspective than the previous books by including lengthy sections involving material from Africa, Asia, and South America—especially from the country of Bolivia, where he had been studying skull rituals (involving an annual festival to skulls called Natitas in La Paz) for the last ten years. He said that unlike the previous books, this one was primarily a photographic rather than historical and anthropological study, and that he intended it to be his final work on sacred human remains. [17] [18] The book garnered honors as one of American Photo magazine's ten best new photography books. [19]
Koudounaris has long been interested in animal history, and as a follow-up to his death books he planned initially to write a history of pet cemeteries. During the research, however, he became aware of how many exceptional stories of heroic animals had been left out of standard history books, especially involving cats. He had previously been involved in cat rescue, and owned a tabby named Baba with whom he had already commenced a photograph series of costumes. Acquiring mostly old doll and teddy bear costumes, Koudounaris would tailor them for Baba, who would model famous historical characters and popular culture figures. Koudounaris decided that instead of writing the pet cemetery book, he would write a feline history book, but using Baba as the narrator, and illustrating the book with her wearing costumes of the historical eras she discusses. [20] The result was A Cat's Tale: A Journey Through Feline History, released in November, 2020. Baba was listed as the co-author. The approach of attempting to tell history from a cat's point of view, and in a feline voice, was novel, and A Cat's Tale was lauded by Smithsonian Magazine as "The most unique cat history book ever published," [21] and selected by Barnes and Noble as one of the best new books of 2020. [22]
During the research for The Empire of Death, he acquired huge amounts of corollary folklore relating to different macabre subjects. One of these was otherworldly erotic encounters between the living and dead. He refers to the phenomenon as Sex Ghosts, but indicates the history of this type of encounter can be dated all the way to the ancient world. While it is now attributed to ghosts, he says it has previously been attributed to any number of sources. He has given public discussion of the topic internationally, and has done several interviews touching on the subject. [23] [24] He also began to research folklore about demonically-possessed cats, and has done interviews and lectures about this topic around the USA. [25] [26] He is also the author of A Cat's Tale: A Journey Through Feline History. [27]
The Catacombs of Paris are underground ossuaries in Paris, France, which hold the remains of more than six million people. Built to consolidate Paris's ancient stone quarries, they extend south from the Barrière d'Enfer former city gate; the ossuary was created as part of the effort to eliminate the city's overflowing cemeteries. Preparation work began shortly after a 1774 series of basement wall collapses around the Holy Innocents' Cemetery added a sense of urgency to the cemetery-eliminating measure, and from 1786, nightly processions of covered wagons transferred remains from most of Paris's cemeteries to a mine shaft opened near the Rue de la Tombe-Issoire.
Catacombs are human-made subterranean passageways for religious practice. Any chamber used as a burial place is considered a catacomb, although the word is most commonly associated with the Roman Empire.
Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, known by the pseudonym Nadar, was a French photographer, caricaturist, journalist, novelist, balloonist, and proponent of heavier-than-air flight. In 1858, he became the first person to take aerial photographs.
The Sedlec Ossuary is a Roman Catholic chapel, located beneath the Cemetery Church of All Saints, part of the former Sedlec Abbey in Sedlec, a suburb of Kutná Hora in the Czech Republic. The ossuary is estimated to contain the skeletons of between 40,000 and 70,000 people, whose bones have, in many cases, been artistically arranged to form decorations and furnishings for the chapel. The ossuary is among the most visited tourist attractions of the Czech Republic, drawing over 200,000 visitors annually.
Skull and Bones, also known as The Order, Order 322 or The Brotherhood of Death, is an undergraduate senior secret student society at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. The oldest senior-class society at the university, Skull and Bones has become a cultural institution known for its powerful alumni and various conspiracy theories.
An ossuary is a chest, box, building, well, or site made to serve as the final resting place of human skeletal remains. They are frequently used where burial space is scarce. A body is first buried in a temporary grave, then after some years the skeletal remains are removed and placed in an ossuary. The greatly reduced space taken up by an ossuary means that it is possible to store the remains of many more people in a single tomb than possible in coffins. The practice is sometimes known as grave recycling.
A skull and crossbones is a symbol consisting of a human skull and two long bones crossed together under or behind the skull. The design originated in the Late Middle Ages as a symbol of death and especially as a memento mori on tombstones.
Fortean Times is a British monthly magazine devoted to the anomalous phenomena popularised by Charles Fort. Previously published by John Brown Publishing, I Feel Good Publishing, Dennis Publishing, and Exponent (2021), as of December 2021 it is published by Diamond Publishing, part of Metropolis International.
Karl Shuker is a British zoologist, cryptozoologist and author. He lives in the Midlands, England, where he works as a zoological consultant and writer. A columnist in Fortean Times and contributor to various magazines, Shuker is also the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Cryptozoology, which began in November 2012.
Solomon Kane is a fictional character created by the pulp-era writer Robert E. Howard. A late-16th-to-early-17th century Puritan, Solomon Kane is a somber-looking man who wanders the world with no apparent goal other than to vanquish evil in all its forms. His adventures, published mostly in the pulp magazine Weird Tales, often take him from Europe to the jungles of Africa and back.
Saint Peter's tomb is a site under St. Peter's Basilica that includes several graves and a structure said by Vatican authorities to have been built to memorialize the location of Saint Peter's grave. St. Peter's tomb is alleged near the west end of a complex of mausoleums, the Vatican Necropolis, that date between about AD 130 and AD 300. The complex was partially torn down and filled with earth to provide a foundation for the building of the first St. Peter's Basilica during the reign of Constantine I in about AD 330. Though many bones have been found at the site of the 2nd-century shrine, as the result of two campaigns of archaeological excavation, Pope Pius XII stated in December 1950 that none could be confirmed to be Saint Peter's with absolute certainty. Following the discovery of bones that had been transferred from a second tomb under the monument, on June 26, 1968, Pope Paul VI said that the relics of Saint Peter had been identified in a manner considered convincing. Only circumstantial evidence was provided to support the claim.
A charnel house is a vault or building where human skeletal remains are stored. They are often built near churches for depositing bones that are unearthed while digging graves. The term can also be used more generally as a description of a place filled with death and destruction.
The Capela dos Ossos is one of the best-known monuments in Évora, Portugal. It is a small interior chapel located next to the entrance of the Church of St. Francis. The Chapel gets its name because the interior walls are covered and decorated with human skulls and bones.
John Mark Reppion is an English comics writer. He is married to Leah Moore, the daughter of Alan Moore, and he has worked with both on the comic Albion.
Wildside Press is an independent publishing company in Cabin John, Maryland, United States. It was founded in 1989 by John Betancourt and Kim Betancourt. While the press was originally conceived as a publisher of speculative fiction in both trade and limited editions, its focus has broadened since then, both in content and format.
The Capuchin Crypt is a small space comprising several tiny chapels located beneath the church of Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini on the Via Veneto near Piazza Barberini in Rome, Italy. It contains the skeletal remains of 3,700 bodies believed to be Capuchin friars buried by their order. The Catholic order insists that the display is not meant to be macabre, but a silent reminder of the swift passage of life on Earth and our own mortality.
Dave Sheridan was an American cartoonist and underground comix artist. He was the creator of Dealer McDope and collaborated with Gilbert Shelton and Paul Mavrides on The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers. As creative partner with fellow underground creator Fred Schrier, using the name "Overland Vegetable Stagecoach," they worked on Mother's Oats Funnies, published by Rip Off Press from 1970 to 1976.
Hilary Agard Evans was a British pictorial archivist, author, and researcher into UFOs and other paranormal phenomena.
Catacomb saints were the bodies of ancient Christians that were carefully exhumed from the catacombs of Rome and sent abroad to serve as relics of certain saints from the 16th century to the 19th century. They were typically lavishly decorated with gold and precious stones.
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