Chapel Of Skulls, Bulgaria

The Chapel Of Skulls is an old ossuary (костилница) in Bulgaria. The collection of human remains lay in the crypt below the chapel, nestled in the mountains. The chapel lies within a graveyard, in the grounds of a monastery. Indeed, the monastery itself is still in use. Correspondingly, the Chapel Of Skulls cannot be called truly “abandoned”.

We visited the chapel in the winter of 2017, as we travelled across Bulgaria in search of abandoned and historically interesting locations.

Inside the Chapel Of Skulls

On the wall in white lettering reads “костилница”, ossuary. An ossuary is a place where human bones are stored. The crypt has many neatly stacked mismatched boxes, each containing the remains of a person inside.

Interestingly, there is a collection of skulls are on a shelf. The skulls feature hand painted inscriptions, in cyrillic alphabet. There is also a date on each skull. The dates are from the mid to late 1800s, recording the year of death. It is not known why the skulls are lined up on a shelf. It may be this was how they were displayed, as a kind of memento mori. However, it is likely that these have been set up by an earlier photographer to stage a more “interesting” scene.

History of the site

The original monastery that once stood here said to be very ancient; perhaps dating back to 1000 years ago. The monestery was raided and totalyl destroyed by the Ottoman army in the late 14th Centaury. It was eventually rebuild in the early to mid-1800s. The exact age of the Chapel Of Bones is not known, but judging by the ages of the skulls is it likely late 19th Centuary.

Folklore and tales of cursed skulls

While researching this location, I stumbled across a few blogs highlighting some scraps of folklore surrounding the skulls. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there are tales that invoke the existence of a curse. To those who move the skulls and defile the crypt, misfortune may follow. As with a lot of these tales, evidence is subjective and sparse. Still, folklore attached to these locations always interests me so in my usual fashion I make a brief mention as a footnote.