My Home (Left), Paul's Home Across The Street (Right)

I live on a bizarre street in Echo Park (Los Angeles) where — according to local legend — eccentric homes were built for the mistresses of Hollywood moguls in the 1930s, catering to whatever fetish or whim these women had. If true, this would explain why it's such a surreal Epcot Center of style, where a Greco-Roman villa appears to have landed like a spaceship next to a quaint New England cottage.

When people visit my house for the first time, one of the first things they do is ask who lives across the street in the place that looks like a castle designed by Gaudi on a mescaline binge. For awhile, all I could say is that it was someone I often saw pacing up and down our street in animal costumes, who hung ornate Moroccan chandeliers from the trees growing out of the canon battlements in front of his house, and adorned his front gate with a framed photograph of doctors performing open heart surgery. As we got to know each other, the truth turned out to be more bizarre and inspiring than I could have imagined.

Paul Koudounaris At Home

It turns out he's Dr. Paul Koudounaris, who comes from a family of grave robbers and is one of the world's leading experts on sex ghosts, mummies, demonic cats, charnel houses, and bejeweled skeletons. He has been carrying on his family tradition (with a twist) by traveling to over sixty countries photographing the weird and beautiful ways the dead are memorialized around the world, with the intent of showing that there is indeed a universalizing desire to preserve the dead within the society of the living, and that within that process there is incredible beauty. While neighbors, Paul published three stunning books on these subjects: Momento Mori, Heavenly Bodies, and The Empire Of Death. The following is an introduction to Paul's photography, accompanied by his words.

Peruvian Ossuary + Bejeweled Skeletons in Germany

PAUL KOUDOUNARIS: Mummies are sometimes dressed and exhibited in the Tana Toraja region of the island of Sulawesi. The people there remove their loved ones from the tomb, talk to them, offer things to them, re-dress them, and even walk them around the village. I was told that in a nearby village there was a family that had found the mummy of a young girl in a cave and taken it into their home. They treated it as a daughter, having sensed that it felt lonely and abandoned.

I asked the guide if it was considered unusual to keep mummies in the home. His response was unforgettable. No, he did not find it unusual, because when he was a boy, he and his brothers slept in the same bed as the mummy of their grandfather. He then detailed how each morning the cadaver would be removed from the bed, dressed for the day, and propped up in a corner as if it were standing; later in the evening, it was disrobed and put back to bed "because we loved him, and we wanted to preserve for him some part of his daily ritual."

In Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho,” it is precisely this act - dressing a cadaver and treating it as a family member - that defines the character of Norman Bates as unequivocally mentally deranged. But such thinking disregards the fact that, despite the modern revulsion to direct encounters with the dead, similar practices were acceptable in Western culture up to fairly modern times. For instance, through the late 19th century in parts of Southern Europe, particularly Sicily, it was customary to mummify, dress, display, and visit one’s own ancestors. To do so was not a sign of mental illness, but one of love and respect.

Ma’nene (Tana Toraja, Sulawesi)

Nowadays, at least in Western (particularly European and American) culture, death is conceived of as an impassable boundary. So the idea that we would engage them, keep the dead visibly near us, and allow them to be a part of a religious sanctuary and a part of spiritual life, seems nowadays  as queer or perverse – in our terms, it almost seems to be a violation of taboo...we push the dead away. We ghettoize them. Part of the reason I wanted to do this book is to draw from so many different cultures and periods to show people that we're the weird ones. Those people in Indonesia...they're not weird. They are what people have been doing throughout history and what many cultures still do.

It’s not just about death, it’s also about life. We have bifurcated the two, and we have created this wall between them. But, if you look historically and across cultures, it really represents a transition into another phase of being. Death and life are united. In discussing death and affirming death, we’re also affirming life. If someone ever accuses me of being obsessed with death, I’m also then obsessed with life. In the process of living, we’re also in the process of dying. And in the process of dying, we’re also in the process of living. So to me, that’s always been a philosophy I carry with me, do you want to live as if you’re living or live as if you’re dying? Because you’re doing both at the same time. We’re all terminally ill with something called “life.”

Ñatitas In Bolivia

The most emphatic modern example of the connection with the dead is found in Bolivia. As part of a continuing cultural tradition, many people own skulls known as “ñatitas” (a nickname roughly meaning “the little pug-nosed ones”), which are enshrined within the home and considered esteemed friends or family members. Ñatitas may provide any number of services, as guardians of the domicile, trusted advisors, spiritual guides, or simply good-luck charms. The roots of the practice can be traced to long-standing indigenous beliefs concerning the interaction between the living and the dead. For the Aymara Indians of the Bolivian highlands, death was never a fatalistic concept. Those who passed on had simply transcended to another phase of life, and could still function within the family or social group.

Ñatitas become a spectacular public presence on November 8, the annual Fiesta de las Ñatitas. The skulls are taken to local cemeteries for a celebration in their honor…thousands of people sometimes congregate. Many sport dark glasses to protect them from the sun’s glare and hats to ward off the cold morning air. Taken first into the cemetery chapel to hear a Mass, the skulls are then placed in altars outside where offerings are made. Cotton balls are pressed into their empty eye sockets to give them sight, and lips might be created by molding wax or metal foil over their bony jaws. They are frequently offered cigarettes, candy, pastries and breads, and cups of alcohol or soda. Often they are elaborately decorated in stunning flower wreaths. Military officers might present their ñatitas wearing their uniform hats or surrounded by their service medals, and dentists often provide their skulls with prosthetic teeth, meticulously set to ensure the jaws reveal a perfect smile. The fiesta is in no way a celebration of death, rather it is a celebration of a bond that is intimate and unique.

The identity of the soul that communicates through the skull is not necessarily that of the formerly living person. In Aymara belief, spiritual nature is complex and the soul is not a discrete entity, but rather composed of several distinct facets. When a skull is taken as a ñatita, the spirit centralized around it will reveal an identity directly to its owner, often in dreams.

Various forms of divination are believed to be possible with the ñatitas. Cigarette ashes can provide potential portents, with white being positive and black negative. Even patterns of melted wax that drip from the votive candles offered to them can be read to reveal future events.

Adherents are even found on the police force. There is a pair of ñatitas enshrined in the homicide division of the national law enforcement agency in El Alto. Named Juanito and Juanita, the latter has been with the unit for three decades, while the former’s tenure is so long that no one is sure when he arrived - come claim he may have been with the local police for a century, and he has affectionately been called the longest-serving officer on the force. By providing assistance to detectives in the form fo clues to difficult cases, the skulls have been credited with helping to solve hundreds of crimes.

Sedlic Ossuary (Kutná Horam, Czech Republic)

It was among Early Christians, however, that the fetishization of human bones most flourished. Adherents to the new faith believed that the resurrected body would be a continuation of the earthly corpus and therefore chose to preserve it through burial, preferably in churchyards where the deceased would be under the protection of the saints to whom the sanctuary was dedicated. Since churchyards tended to be small spaces, old remains were commonly removed to free room for the newly deceased, but the exhumed bones still needed to be preserved on consecrated ground. The most effective solution for storage was the charnel house, where the disinterred remains could be safe while they waited to be reanimated and clothed in Divine Glory. These structures were popularized in Middle Eastern monastic cemeteries, and the trend eventually migrated to Western Europe. It caught on especially in Austria, Bavaria, the Upper Rhine, and parts of Italy and France. By the 13th century charnels were practically ubiquitous.

Extravagant charnels became especially popular in the Czech Republic during the 18th century. Frantisek Rint (who left his signature in bones on the wall of the Sedlec Ossuary in a small chapel on the property of a Cistercian monastery in the Czech Republic) was only one of countless craftsmen to have worked in human bone, a medium that reached its zenith in the 19th century, when another great masterpiece, the Paris Catacombs, was also constructed. By the time these monuments were completed, the West’s relationship to the dead had already begun to change, and Sedlec and Paris were left as the last and most extravagant relics of a glorious past.

Capuchin Mummies (Italy)

In addition to bones, sometimes entire bodies are placed on display in memorial. The most impressive surviving collection is in Oria, Italy. Brothers of the local confraternity would be prepared by having their brains removed, their intestines replaced with fragrant herbs, and their bodies submerged in chalk for two years. Afterwards, they would be fully dehydrated and cleaned, then placed in a nice under the town’s cathedral for display. Sicily became the vanguard for displaying mummies, especially in Palermo.

Bejeweled Skeletons

The most lavishly decorated bones are those of full skeletons from the Roman Catacombs, identified as Early Christian martyrs in the 16th through 18th centuries, and transported primarily to Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The skeletons were decorated by nuns who were skilled in textile and beadwork, or lay brothers who had trained as gold and silversmiths. The bones would be articulated and covered over with jewels, or placed in finely wrought suits of armor with cutouts strategically placed to reveal their skeletal nature. Products of the Catholic battle against Protestantism, these macabre masterpieces were intended to help reinvigorate faith locally by providing an unmistakable reminder of the honors that were reserved for those who made the greatest sacrifices for the Church.

A custom wardrobe might even be devised sometimes to create the image of Miles Christi, or “soldier of Christ,” by elaborately imitating the style of ancient Roman armor. The work could take years to complete but the final effect was one of total transformation, as raw bones become tangible examples of Heavenly Glory. Miracles were often attributed to them and the most popular became inseparable parts of local identity for the towns in which they were displayed. Those that survive are a testament to a different age in which death was not an impassable boundary.

I was so obsessed with the jeweled skeletons that at one point, when I got home from photographing them in Germany, I decided to make my own–I took a dog skeleton that I had lying around, went down to the garment district and bought a bucket full of high quality rhinestones and covered it over. I also got a crown and scepter for it, and it sits in my living room in an antique crib.

Paul At Home With Bejeweled Dog Skeleton

Mummified Buddhist monks in Asia are venerated, including full-body sariras (relics) and flesh-body bodhisattvas, and their incorruptible state is seen as a sign of holiness. The mummies are created by natural processes, with the most famous school of mummification known as Sokushinbutsu. Popular in Japan during the 11th century, it was a form of preservation begun while the practitioner was still alive and involved 1,000 days of dieting, followed by 1,000 days of drinking a poisonous tea, then 1,000 days spent in a locked tomb. The practice was outlawed and few of the Sokushinbutsu mummies are preserved, but monks whose bodies remain incorrupt are still treated as sacred in the Buddhist world - some are even gilded and regarded as living statuary. There is a gilded monk body in Thailand whose nails continue to grow to this day.

Gilded Mummy (Taiwan), Kalpana (Nepal), And Preserved Monk (Thailand)

Ornate skulls known as kapala were traditionally produced in monasteries in Tibet, Nepal, and Northern India, where they were used as ritual vessels in both Hindu and Buddhist Tantra. Topped by a hinged or removable cap, the skull itself is typically lined with a silver bowl, into which wine or dough cakes are placed. The kapala aid the user in attaining a transcendental state by transferring the knowledge and personality of the deceased. Traditionally they are collected at sky burial sites - where the bodies of the dead were dismembered and scattered over open ground - the skulls were elaborately carved or decorated with precious metals and jewels, then anointed and consecrated.

Burial Cave (Indonesia)

QUESTION: Coming from a family of grave robbers, do you have tips for people who like to visit cemeteries but are still too scared to try and open mausoleums and have a look inside?


KOUDOUNARIS: Well wait — I had one relative who used to steal from cemeteries, my great grandfather, and I never even met him. It’s not like it was a family business. For those unfamiliar with this story, my great grandfather was Greek but grew up in Egypt, in Alexandria. At the time there was still a trade in mumia, which was ground mummy dust, and snorting it was thought to have therapeutic properties. If this sounds strange or barbaric: even Western pharmaceutical companies were selling it. Merck still offered it in their catalogue through the 1920s. My great grandfather was part of a crew that used to take recently deceased bodies, cover them in tar, bury them out in the Sahara for a year or so until they were really cooked, and then sell them as “authentic” Egyptian mummies for apothecaries to grind up into powder. Sometimes they would get the bodies of executed criminals, or buy them from a morgue, or yes, just steal them. Anyway, as for people who don’t want to look inside a mausoleum: just don’t look inside.

QUESTION: Please explain the difference between a succubus or incubus, which as I understand it are evil spirits that have sex with people while they’re sleeping, and a sex ghost. Are they the same thing?

KOUDOUNARIS: Ah, this is a great question. Personally I think there’s kind of a continuum between succubi and sex ghosts. That’s my term, by the way — in Sicily life in general is so involved with sex and death that to them they’re just ghosts. They just think that of course ghosts go out and have sex. I mean, Sicily is a place where nuns invented a confection called “the tits of the virgin.” It’s a weirdly sexualized environment. But you do find these stories throughout history. Even in the modern day people are having sex with spectral phenomenon. Like that singer Ke$ha.

QUESTION: How do you know if you’ve had sex with a ghost? Couldn’t it just be a dream?

KOUDOUNARIS: Some of the stories are definitely more than a hallucination. There’s one where a ghost got jealous of a guy’s girlfriend and attacked her. She ended up in the hospital. They’re not all like that. One of the more outlandish stories is about a guy who got to be called “pene grande,” which means “big dick.” He was a mummy famed in life for having a big penis. People would go down to the Palermo Catacombs and treat him as the patron saint of big cocks. Finally a newlywed woman came to see him because she was married to a guy who was not well-endowed. She took a cloth and rubbed it on the mummy’s dick, and then rubbed it on her husband’s dick. The next time she had sex with her husband, his penis seemed larger and fuller and she was about to orgasm except that at that moment she looked up and saw it was actually the ghost on top of her. Everyone thought she was crazy, but then it happened again the next time she had sex. They had to set up an exorcism for this ghost.

QUESTION: How does one expel a penis ghost?

KOUDOUNARIS: They had a blacksmith make a tight-fitting sheath made of metal, and once the husband got erect the ghost came out and got caught in the codpiece. They threw holy water at him. That expelled the ghost from the guy’s body. So forever he had a small penis, but he was free of the ghost. As for the ghost, he gained a great following among older ladies, and eventually so many were coming to see him that they had to lock the mummy in a back room, which is where he remains to this day.

QUESTION: Wow. So ghosts back then were basically the rock stars of their day.

KOUDOUNARIS: In Palermo there was a well where they would throw the heads of executed criminals and these heads had groupies — women would come to talk to the spirits of the criminals and ask them for favors. This continued through the late 20th century. It only stopped because the city put up a grate.

QUESTION: Did the criminals really help people?

KOUDOUNARIS: They were thought to be wonderful protectors. There are all these stories about women who were about to be mugged who were saved by spirits.

QUESTION: Do you really think this stuff actually happened?

KOUDOUNARIS: It’s easy to disbelieve, especially since I’m generally dealing with oral traditions. But I actually have a friend from Sicily and one of these sex ghosts turned out to be her great uncle! That was the ghost who was accused of stealing women’s underpants. So it’s real. Or at least he’s real, whether his ghost stole women’s underpants or not.

QUESTION: Wait. He was stealing underpants?

KOUDOUNARIS: They kept finding women’s panties behind a particular mummy. They would get stashed there, like trophies. Finally, a girl called the police and said she’d been having visions of a ghost entering her home. He would proposition her and when she turned him down he’d steal her panties. The monastery accused the girl of planting the underwear there herself, but then they set up a test, and sure enough another pair of undies still appeared behind the mummy.

QUESTION: How does one deal with an underwear-stealing ghost?

KOUDOUNARIS: Someone went to the mummy and told him they would bury him in the ground unless he stopped stealing underpants. After that no one’s underpants disappeared.

QUESTION: Does this kind of thing still happen?

KOUDOUNARIS: There’s a really bizarre story from the 20th century, about a guy who had severe diarrhea and chronic flatulence. He stole a skull and started saying prayers to St. Roch and St. Sebastian, the patron saints of plague and suffering, and also shitting on the skull daily. He had a theory that by crapping on the skull he could switch intestines with the body the skull had been attached to. The ghost kept warning him, quit shitting on my skull. But he kept at it and he succeeded in transferring his intestinal problems to the ghost. The problem was that the ghost had died of testicular cancer, and in return he gave that to the guy. That’s how he died. One of the dangers of necromancy is you don’t really know who’s on the other side or what they’re going to give you in return.

QUESTION: As far as sex with a ghost, do you think it can be satisfying?

KOUDOUNARIS: The girl whose husband was possessed by the ghost with the big penis was having a good time until she realized what was happening. I would assume that if the ghost was willing and capable of manifesting, I don’t know why it couldn’t be good sex.

QUESTION: Have you ever experienced anything paranormal?

KOUDOUNARIS: The first time I went down to Bolivia to document the Fiesta de las  Ñatitas, I visited a private home of a woman who had several miracle working skulls. I interviewed her and asked if I could take photos, which she said was fine. I photographed some skulls that were considered sacred and had not been previously photographed...on both 35mm and medium format film. I carried it in its own box on my lap on the plane back–like I said, it was a treasure. So I got home, went to bed, and I heard a voice saying “Where’s Ana?” I jumped out of bed, but there was no one there. I figured I must be delirious after a very long trip.

So I went back to bed, but there was a loud thump in the center of the floor. Again I turned on the lights–nothing. Like I said, I figured I must be delirious. I went to sleep, woke up in the morning . . . and the box containing the film was gone. It had vanished from my living room, just disappeared. I searched everywhere, called the airline and the airport, but at the same time I knew for a fact that it had come home with me and I placed it on the floor in the middle of the room . . . and that’s when things all came together. Wait, in the center of the room, that was exactly where I had heard that loud thump. And the name Ana–that was the name of the woman whose house I had taken the photos in. Weird. Kind of creepy. And the film was gone.

So I still had the roll of 35mm film, and I took it to a lab to be developed, I told them to do it asap. The guy calls me back a couple hours later and told me there had been a “problem”–the film had started to burn. What???? He said he had no explanation. I went down there and he showed it to me, this burned, charred film strip, melted throughout except for two images at the very start, which is all I had left and used them for a magazine article I wrote.

Well, the next year when I was in Bolivia I went back to Ana’s house, and told her this story. She said it was because I hadn’t gotten permission from the skulls to take the photos, so they had decided to essentially vacate, except apparently for the one in the first two frames who was apparently OK with it despite my lapse. I told her, but wait, I *did* ask permission, I asked you if it was OK, I wouldn’t have taken the photos without your permission. She replied, yes, I had asked *her* permission, but I had neglected to ask the permission of the individual skulls as well, which was insulting to them. She advised me to take more photos but ask their permission first. So I did exactly that–and every single one came out perfectly.

There was a very famous cat that once lived in Los Angeles. Its name was Room 8, and in the 1950s and 60s it was the mascot of a school down the street from where I live. This cat is buried in one of the local pet cemeteries. One day I decided I needed to take the most perfect picture I could of its grave. As I was leaving the cemetery, a woman was walking in, and she stops and looks at me and says, “is that your cat?” “What cat?” She looks around, shakes her head, and says, “oh I’m sorry, I thought I saw a cat following you. But there’s no cat, never mind.” I asked her what this cat looked like. She described it as a gray tabby. But I already knew that was going to be her answer, because Room 8 was a gray tabby.

From the cemetery I had to drive downtown for the opening party for the LA Art Show. As I am walking around, a lady stops me and says, “There’s a cat following you… it’s not… I don’t know how to explain this… There’s a cat following you, I can see it but at the same time I can’t see it. It’s not a real cat.” I asked her if it was a gray tabby and she said yes, and I told her, “It’s OK, I know about it.” Later that night I was in a bar. I was talking to a couple people there and girl does a double take and says to us, “Did you see something go walking by? Like an animal?” I asked her what kind of animal it was. She says, “I don’t know, it’s dark, but I thought I saw something walk past your feet about the size of a cat.”