Bohnický Hřbitov Cemetery (Cemetery of Fools)

Behind a rusty gate, under tall, dark trees in the outskirts of Prague lies a cryptic place. It is an old graveyard that used to belong to the nearby mental hospital, but the last dead were buried here in 1963. The graveyard has been abandoned since then.

Not many take care of this neglected cemetery today. The graves have been robbed by many thieves and marked by acts of vandalism throughout the years. Row after row you see the old graves overgrown with ivy, most of them with no tombstone or indication of who has been buried there.

It is not just the mentally ill who lie here; it’s also soldiers from the First World War, a suspected murderer, and countless people who committed suicide in the nearby facility, whose graves are referred to as the “non-believers.”

Over the years the graveyard became a place of many lonely souls searching for a dark thrill — for worshippers of Satan and their rituals in the 1980s and for others simply looking for a piece of melancholy in the everyday rush and stress of the city. Strange sounds and lights can be seen at night and many of those who visit swear to have had even stranger things happen to them.

Today, the cemetery is inaccessible to the public and very dilapidated.