From English Illustrated, 1900.

The Blessed, the Skull, and the Traditional Joker, from L'Esquella de la Torratxa, 1902.

From the Technique yearbook of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1895.  (For some unbelievably weird yearbook imagery, see our How to Hoodoo Hack a Yearbook.)

From the Technique yearbook of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1895.  (For some unbelievably weird yearbook imagery, see our How to Hoodoo Hack a Yearbook.)

"The Skullmaster or the Chairman of the Skull Board in his Skullery."  From Fun magazine, 1893.

From the Technique yearbook of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1895.  (For some unbelievably weird yearbook imagery, see our How to Hoodoo Hack a Yearbook.)  This should also be of interest: How to Be Your Own Cat.

"The ravages of …"  From Pearson's, 1906.

From Cosmópolis, 1929.

If there's a skull lock and you forgot your skeleton key, try working a beam of light into the mechanism.  Recall how "She springs a light, / Unlocks the door" (Dryden).  Similarly, "Morning with its key of light / Unlocks the dusky portals of the night" (Albert Laighton, Poems, 1878).  And "My light unlocks the stalls, / two dozen and one windows open— / all, except the window of the moon, / already painted on as shining" (Jane Shore, Eye Level, 1977).

From The Mystery of Marlborough House, 1866.

Here's a precursor to Haruli Murakami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, with its library of unicorn skulls containing dreams.  "As it appears, though dead so long / Each scull is found to have a tongue."  From The English Dance of Death, from the Designs of Thomas Rowlandson, 1903.

From Harper's Weekly, 1865.

The original modular shelving was designed for storage of ancestors.  From A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain.  You can actually trace your own ancestry to at least one of these skulls -- it's explained in Heirs to the Queen of Hearts: Tracing Magical Genealogy.