Cabaret de l'Enfer (Cabaret of Hell)

Le Cafe de L'Enfer was a Hell-themed cafe in Paris' red light district (aka Pigalle, the neighborhood of the Moulin Rouge).

According to one 1899 visitor, the cafe's doorman, dressed as Satan, welcomed diners with the greeting, "Enter and be damned!"

Hell's waiters also dressed as devils.

An order for three black coffees spiked with cognac was shrieked back to the kitchen as: "Three seething bumpers of molten sins, with a dash of brimstone intensifier!"

Roughly translated: "L'Enfer (Hell), the only cabaret like it in the world, every night from 8 to 2:30 in the morning, devilish attractions, torment of the damned, round of the damned, the boiler, metamorphoses of the damned."

Cabaret du Neant (Cabaret of Nothingness)

When entering into this cafe a man dressed as a pallbearer would pull back a heavy black curtain and patrons would walk into what looked like a black hole. The first thing they'd hear is: "Welcome, o weary wanderer, to the realm of death! Enter! Choose your coffin, and be seated beside it!"

Looking above, there hung a large candelabra intricately devised of three real human skulls of different sizes.

The first skull was a fetal skull connected to a small spine, which attached itself to a larger fetal skull. That skull sat on the end of a large femur bone, and in front of this bone were two crossed femur bones, giving the impression of a triple cross. On the other end of the large femur bone is the third and final adult skull. Visitors were told that all three skulls came from the same person at different ages.

The walls were decorated with skulls, bones, skeletons, (most likely pilfered from the Paris Catacombs) and hanging bodies and body parts, and pictures of La Madame Guillotine - all of it embellished with miscellaneous funeral accoutrements.

This room, Caveau les spectres, looked very much like an underground mausoleum, complete with dozens of arched doorways and hanging lamps. The guests would sit on stone benches facing a small dark stage, set back into the main arch.

A volunteer was asked to sit in a chair with a table. Suddenly, a live spirit would appear out of nowhere and would walk around the sitting volunteer. The Cabaret du Neant acquired an important place in the history of Visual Media and optical trickery. A variant of the optical stage technique "Pepper's Ghost" was performed there often.

"Drink, Macchabees!" an undertaker would wail. "Drink these noxious potions, which contain the vilest and deadliest poisons!" And with that, the master of ceremonies would then hold up a human femur bone and begin to tell grim stories of war and death and torture.