Europe’s creepy places: Even when it’s not Halloween, boneyards and damp, creaky places can chill the bones

Haunted house attractions and ghost tours can be a lot of fun during the Halloween season. But some things are naturally spooky, without the fake blood or recorded howls.

If you want to get your thrills and chills without special effects, there are many creepy places to visit in Europe.

Take a trip to Palermo, Sicily, where the Capuchin Catacombs display skeletons and mummified corpses, some dressed in their Sunday best. Check out a couple of old castles in England, where the groaning wind and squeaking floorboards stir up images of ghosts. See the Sedlec Ossuary near the Czech town of Kutná Hora in the Czech Republic, where the bones of humans have been turned into works of art. Visit the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, where bodies of the famous lie under impressive monuments and in elaborate tombs — and the ghost of Jim Morrison is reputed to make an appearance.

Capuchin Catacombs

In the Capuchin Catacombs in Palermo, Rosalia Lombardo still looks like a 2-year-old baby taking a nap, her peaceful features framed by curly blond hair and a cute yellow ribbon.

But the toddler nicknamed "sleeping beauty" by Italians has been dead for nearly a century, and is one of the best-preserved mummies among thousands lining the catacombs beneath the convent.

Rosalia’s body was the last to be placed in the underground cemetery that was dug in the late 16th century, initially to house deceased monks and later opened to the general populace.

Some 8,000 mummies are openly exposed, stacked ceiling-high in the corridors of the catacombs, lying in open niches or propped up in standing positions, many still dressed in their original clothes. Monks wearing dark frocks, priests in sacred vestments, aristocrats in their best Sunday dress and the poor in rags as well as young children resting in their cribs were all buried in the catacombs.

While Rosalia’s body was embalmed by a doctor, most of the mummies were treated by the monks and preserved by the dry environment, leaving smartly dressed desiccated corpses that stare down with empty eyes at visitors walking through the vaulted corridors.

The 16th-century monks who built the convent outside the city walls soon realized the tufa stone in the ground helped preserve the bodies of the dead. They enhanced the process by leaving the bodies to dry for months before treating them with vinegar, lime or arsenic.

Today, the mummies may give visitors the creeps or encourage sobering reflections on mortality, but in the cemetery’s heyday they were a comforting presence for relatives and friends who could easily visit their loved ones, pray by their side and care for the body. The cemetery was also appreciated by locals because the Capuchins, an order dedicated to the care of the poor, also took in bodies of those who otherwise could not have afforded such a burial.

Over the centuries, the underground complex was enlarged to reach about 4,300 square feet. It stopped being used in the second half of the 19th century, though some exceptions were made, including Palermo’s "sleeping beauty," who died of a disease in 1920.

The catacombs are at Piazza Cappuccini 1, and are open 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and 3-5:30 p.m. daily. Entrance fee is 3 euros for adults.

The crypt of the Capuchin church of Brno, Czech Republic, offers a smaller-scale collection of similarly mummified monks.

Creepy castles

Looking for a creaky castle with an apparition or two thrown in for good measure? England has plenty. Hever Castle, in Kent, was the childhood home of Ann Boleyn, and it plays up to its haunted reputation by hosting a psychic investigation on Thursday and ghostly tours Thursday, Sunday, Wednesday and Nov. 5 and 6. For details, see www.hevercastle.co.uk.

Chillingham Castle, in Northumberland in northern England, boasts a slew of restless souls. Halloween at the castle will be celebrated with a bonfire and fireworks, pumpkin trail and

ghost tours for adults and children. Ghost tours for groups are also available throughout the year. See www.chillingham-castle.com.

Although this site might not spotlight its spook to the extent of some others, Castle Rising Castle in Norfolk is reputed to be haunted by Queen Isabella, the "she-wolf of France." In addition to daily visits, private tours can be arranged and include evening visits, night vigils and the organization of paranormal events. See www.castlerising.co.uk for details.

In Germany, the Rhine River valley is awash in myth and legend. One castle reckoned to be inhabited by a spirit is Schloss Reichenstein, between Bingen and Koblenz. The story goes that a robber baron by the name of Dietrich von Hohenfels was beheaded there, and his restless spirit still roams a nearby chapel.

Czech Republic

For a general atmosphere of otherworldliness, the city of Prague’s ancient spires, castles and other centuries-old edifices evoke a certain emotion, particularly in the late evening as the fog swirls over the Charles Bridge. The city cashes in heavily on its haunted past, and although you might find the ghost tours a bit hokey, the sights included will no doubt evoke bona-fide emotion.

To see something truly eerie, head about 45 miles east to the town of Kutná Hora and the Sedlec Ossuary, a chapel built in connection with a Cistercian monastery in 1142.

The grounds were said to have been sprinkled with sacred soil brought from Jerusalem by an abbot in the Middle Ages, and the sick and dying traveled from across Europe to be buried here. As a result, by the 16th century the small graveyard was filled with bones, which had to be collected and stacked to make room for more bodies.

In the 1870s, a local woodcarver was hired to decorate the inside of the chapel with the bones. He created pyramids and decorative furnishings with the bones, used ribs to fashion a large chandelier and coat of arms, and incorporated skulls into elaborate crowns and religious works of art. For more on this unforgettably bizarre site, see www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=103&article=58493.

Père Lachaise cemetery

Phantoms of famed souls, some doomed to early death, fill Père Lachaise cemetery, in a quiet, shady neighborhood on the eastern edge of Paris: Frederic Chopin, Oscar Wilde, Gertrude Stein, Edith Piaf — and Morrison.

Mystery still shrouds the death of the lead singer of The Doors, who was just 27 when he died in

Paris in 1971. Some speculate he overdosed in a nightclub, others say he was found dead in his apartment bathtub. Although teenage girls no longer sing and dance while downing bottles of wine by his grave site, it still attracts numerous tourists, especially during the Halloween season. A photo taken of rock historian Brett Meisner in 1997 supposedly shows a ghost on his left — an image researchers this year claimed to have verified as a ghost. No telling if and when it will appear again.

Those who go to the cemetery must do so during the day; overnight surveillance officers have replaced unruly nighttime visitors who came to sense the mystique among the cemetery’s winding, tree-lined paths and elaborate gravestones, many blackened with age.

"It’s far different from any type of cemetery we have in the States, with the Gothic look. It’s creepy. It’s mysterious," said Katie Baur, 34, a teacher from Tacoma, Wash.

The cemetery is in Paris’ 20th arrondissement, near the Philippe-Auguste Metro stop (line 2), with other entrances accessible from stops Père Lachaise (lines 2 and 3) and Gambetta (line 3).

Paris Catacombs

Catacombs aren’t necessarily haunted, but the sight of thousands of skulls in a heap is bound to conjure up uneasy feelings. When in Rome, head to the Via Appia Antiqua, where a handful of the city’s many existing catacombs are open to the public. Beneath the streets of Paris, some 6 million former inhabitants of the city have found their final resting place. The city’s catacombs are currently closed after a spate of vandalism. For more information, see www.catacombes-de-paris.fr/english.htm. And plan a visit for next Halloween.

Stars and Stripes’ Karen Bradbury and The Associated Press contributed to this report.