5 Terrifying Real Artifacts (With Even Creepier Stories)

The Skull Tower, aka Cele Kula, dates back to 1809, when Serbia was still under Ottoman control. The First Serbian Uprising wasn't going too well, and the rebels were waging a losing battle against 36,000 surly, mustachioed Turks. But rebel leader Stevan Sindelic wasn't about to let his men be immortalized on the bitch side of history. During one desperate last stand at Cegar Hill, he fired a round into a keg of gunpowder inside a fully stocked armory, triggering a massive explosion which killed him and his men ... along with all the Turkish soldiers storming their trenches.

Hellbent on posthumous revenge, the Turks collected the slain rebels' bodies and decapitated them. 952 rebel heads were skinned, and the skins filled with straw and sent to Constantinople as trophies. The skulls were used to decorate a 15-foot-high stone tower which the Turks built right at the entrance of the town.

Djina/Wikimedia Commons

The Skull Tower was intended as a reminder to never mess with the Ottomans, but this showed a fundamental lack of understanding of human nature: Now armed with a kickass "blaze of glory" story and a metal as fuck skull tower, the Serbs doubled down. In 1815, they rebelled again, ultimately winning independence in 1830.

Kulmalukko/Wikivoyage

It eventually occurred to the city of Nis that having a real-life Dio album cover staring at them 24/7 is cooler on paper than in practice, so in 1892 they built a modest chapel around it as a kind of architectural NSFW tag.

To show their devotion, Cybele's followers chose to symbolize the self-castration of Cybele's lover, Attis by ... actually castrating themselves. Apparently they didn't understand the concept of "symbols" too well back in the day. The scrotum goes between the serrated edges of those vicious-looking clamps. You close them tight, and then, when the clamp is firmly locked down, a knife is used to remove the, uh, extra parts.

This self-mutilation continued unabated until Christians started gaining traction around the 4th century CE and began doling out punishments to curb the practice. It says a lot about Christianity's tenacity that they looked at a dude who worshiped a fertility goddess by clamping off his own nutsack, and thought: "Hey, we can figure out ways to punish that guy."

Scientists believe that the children (all younger than 14, but mainly between four and ten), were sacrificed to Chaak, a Mayan rain god. The Mayans believed humans to be made of corn (as opposed to the corn syrup we're mostly made of now), so each sacrifice "fed" the gods. Until the gods switched to all-organic fair trade cane sugar, of course. Now the problem is getting them to shut up about it.

In 2013, archaeologists excavating a necropolis in Spain unearthed an unusual burial: 1,600-year-old remains of a woman buried with her entire lower half encased in roof tiles. That's ... pretty unusual, right?

International Journal of Paleopathology

When they removed the tiles and rummaged around, they discovered a calcified, baseball-sized tumor in her pelvis -- a tumor which, you guessed it, had sprouted teeth.

International Journal of Paleopathology

The researchers aren't 100 percent clear what was up with the tiles. They suspect it may have been just cheap burial material, but we know the truth: Clearly, some prior archaeologist / grave robber opened up the poor woman's final resting place, and then hastily reburied the body for fear of the Cronenbergian terrors lurking within.

Adam Wears is on Twitter and Facebook, and has a newsletter about depressing history. It's really good, honest.

Add some awesome, yet tasteful skull decor to your own place all year 'round because it's cool and you're an adult who makes the rules now!

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