Bats and vampire legends of the Pere Lachaise cemetery (11 photos)

Pere Lachaise is the largest cemetery in the French capital and one of the largest open-air museums of tombstone sculpture, covering an area of ​​about 48 hectares.





And in addition to the famous tombstones of Moliere, Balzac, Piaf, Wilde, Chopin and others, which have become a place of pilgrimage for tourists, it holds many hidden secret signs, messages and secrets. Like this one - related to the vampire theme.



A carved wooden bat inside Notre Dame de Paris

By the 19th century, most cemeteries in Western Europe had moved toward a softer Victorian iconography, focusing on eternal life with weeping angels with beautiful carved faces looking mournfully down to the ground. However, at Paris's Père Lachaise Cemetery, opened in 1804, a curious dark symbol recurs: the bat.





Entrance to the Père Lachaise Cemetery

Most visitors to this cemetery do not pay attention to the flying creatures carved into the stone or inscribed on the doors of the tombs. However, there are at least 14 bats hidden in the cemetery, following which you can find yourself right in front of the tomb where, according to some mystics, the real Dracula was transferred long ago.



There is a vampire mythology in the cemetery. In a 1913 German short story by Karl Hans Strobl, a man agrees to a fortune in exchange for spending a year in a countess's grave, and finds himself unable to leave. He suspects a vampire may be the cause, though the story is equally about the loss of self-esteem.



Examples of bats on tombstones

There is also a humorous 19th century book, "The Adventures of a Vampire," which is said to have been copied from a manuscript found in a cemetery.



Sergeant Bertrand

And then there is the very real and creepy story of Francois Bertrand. In 1848, some of the graves at Père Lachaise were discovered opened and the bodies grotesquely torn apart. It turned out that Bertrand, a French army sergeant dubbed the "Vampire of Montparnasse" by the press, was to blame, confessing to an uncontrollable urge to mutilate the bodies in the graves.



Many visitors to the cemetery pay attention to the eerie Wallachia Mausoleum on the "Dragon Alley." It is associated with a famous Wallachian family. Vlad II, father of Vlad the Impaler, was nicknamed "Dracul" ("dragon") because he was a knight of the Order of the Dragon, founded to defend Christianity from heretics and fight the Ottoman Empire. At the top of the tomb is a sculpture of an eagle clutching a cross and what appears to be a stake.



Despite all the fiction and coincidences, the popularity of the bat as a symbol may simply be due to its nocturnal lifestyle, and therefore, its symbolism of death. It is a rare cemetery symbol, but it can be seen in other cemeteries around the world, although not in such large numbers. An old superstition for protection against demons also involves nailing a dead bat to a door for protection.



The tomb of Robertson -- (real name Etienne-Gaspard Robert) -- the famous magician

There's also the tomb of phantasmagoria pioneer Robertson, where bat wings frame skulls as a reminder of the magician's spectral exploits, conjuring up the supernatural with his smoke and mirror tricks.





It is unknown why these different people chose bats to decorate their final resting places, but they are reminiscent of mysterious stories and emphasize the mystical component of this famous city of the dead.