I have always found it strange that people apologise for liking bats.
They say it with a small laugh — I know it's a bit much — as though finding beauty in a creature that navigates by sound, sleeps upside down, and belongs to the night is somehow an eccentricity to be explained. It isn't. It's one of the oldest aesthetic instincts humans have. Bats have been woven into art, mythology, and sacred symbolism for thousands of years. Gothic decor didn't invent the bat. It just remembered what everyone else forgot.
What the Bat Actually Means
Before the Victorian era turned the bat into a shorthand for horror, it carried a much richer symbolic vocabulary.
In Chinese tradition, the bat (fu) is a symbol of good fortune — five bats together represent the Five Blessings: longevity, wealth, health, virtue, and a peaceful death. In Mayan cosmology, Camazotz was the bat god of the underworld, a figure of transformation and the night. In medieval European heraldry, bats appeared on coats of arms — not as omens, but as symbols of vigilance, of creatures that see in darkness when others cannot.
The association with vampires came later, and even that carries its own mythology: the idea of something that crosses the threshold between life and death, that belongs to both worlds without being fully claimed by either.
In witchcraft, the bat is a liminal creature — a symbol of transition, of the space between dusk and dark, of the ability to navigate what cannot be seen. It appears in folk magic as a protective figure, a watcher, a guide through the in-between.
This is why bats belong in gothic decor. Not because they are frightening. Because they are meaningful.
Bats in Art History
Gothic architecture was already full of bats before anyone called it gothic. Gargoyles — those carved stone creatures meant to ward off evil — often incorporated bat wings. The wing shape itself became a visual shorthand for the supernatural: angels have feathered wings, demons and creatures of the night have the membranous, veined wings of a bat.
In the Romantic period, bats appeared in paintings alongside ruins, moonlight, and melancholy figures. Caspar David Friedrich's landscapes are full of the atmosphere that bats inhabit — the edge of the forest, the last light of evening, the moment before darkness becomes complete.
Francisco Goya used bats explicitly in The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters — creatures of the unconscious, of what emerges when rational thought steps aside. Not evil. Revelatory.
By the time the Pre-Raphaelites and Symbolists were working, the bat had become a fully established figure in dark art: a creature of the threshold, of the sacred and the profane existing in the same space.
How I Work with Bats
I use real bat specimens in my work — preserved with care, displayed with intention.
A bat in a shadowbox or under glass is not a curiosity. It is a relic. It carries the same weight as a medieval reliquary — a real thing, preserved, given a frame worthy of what it is.
My Bat Wooden Coffins are built entirely from scratch — each coffin cut, shaped, and finished by hand from raw wood. No pre-made frames. No shortcuts. The bat specimen sits inside against deep velvet, surrounded by bones, symbolic elements, and metallic details. Each one is a shrine. Each one is different. Starting from €217, made to order — message me first before placing an order, so we can discuss what you want.
Vampiria is something else entirely — a handcrafted wooden shadowbox built around a two-headed bat skeleton, set against deep velvet with ornate decorations, miniature bat details, and a metal nameplate with the Latin species name. A ritual display. A relic. Made to order, ready within 10 days.
Bats in Your Space
If you're drawn to bat imagery in your home, you're working with one of the oldest and most layered symbols in dark art. A few thoughts on how to use it well.
A single bat specimen in a shadowbox reads as a relic — intimate, quiet, deeply personal. It works on a shelf, on a mantelpiece, anywhere you want something that rewards close looking.
A coffin-shaped frame changes the energy entirely. It's larger, more theatrical, more of a statement. It belongs on a wall, in a space that can hold it.
Bat imagery pairs naturally with velvet (especially deep violet, crimson, or black), with candlelight, with other liminal symbols — moths, skulls, snakeskin, crystals that catch light in low conditions.
You don't need to explain why you find them beautiful. The symbolism has been there for thousands of years. You're just paying attention.
A Note on the Specimens I Use
Every bat in my work is a preserved specimen — handled with care, displayed with intention. I don't treat them as props. They are the centre of the piece, and everything else is built around what they are.
If you're curious about a specific piece, or want something made to order with bat elements, my shop is the place to start. Some things are ready to go. Others we can build together.
The bat has always known where the threshold is. Some of us just needed a frame to see it.