Goosebumps, on their way yet?
Are you brave enough to explore the world's scariest and spookiest places? Then this story is just for you! I researched and shortlisted nine places from around the world that have a scary past and a haunting history that is sure to send chills down your spine. From Australia to Mexico to Japan, all these countries around the world have towns that are ghostly and haunted.
Here is the list of 9 such places which are not just hard to reach but also scary as anything.
1. Island of the Dolls, Mexico
A hermit named Julian Santana Barrera resided in L'Isla de las Muñecas, isolated on the Xochimilco canal. Legend says that this man found a girl drowned in the canal and hung dolls all around the island to appease her spirit. The island had become a popular tourist attraction with many visiting with their own dolls to add them to the collection.
Santana Barrera deceased in 2001
After the sad demise of Barrera in 2001, he was found drowned, in the same place as the girl he had once found. Well, the story is scary enough or you'd like to visit the place to experience this on your own?!
2. Hashima Island, Japan
This island is also popularly known as the Battleship Island, which turns out to an abandoned coal mining facility in the jungle where you would find crumbling concrete buildings and the dust-covered remnants of its former inhabitants. It lacks human inhabitation since 1974!
At one point of time, there were 5000 workers made to live on this petite island so much so that it made this island the most densely populated place on the face of the earth. In 1974, the inhabitants were forced to leave as inhospitable conditions made it impossible to live there.
3. Pripyat, Ukraine
(Once the most populated place on the planet)
After the Chernobyl disaster of 1986, Pripyat was abandoned. It was once the thriving home of 50,000 people before the worst nuclear disaster in history Ukraine hit it.
Debacle
For most of them, this place is just a sad reminder of the debacle, and the mistrust people felt towards the Ukranian government. The city remains frozen in time wherein the nuclear power caused the city's clocks to stop ticking.
4. Oradour-sur-Glane, France
The Nazi massacre of 1944 wiped out the majority of the town's population, including primarily women and children. They killed a total of 642 people, and since then the place remains abandoned and untouched.
Memorial of Nazi cruelty
The town also remains unoccupied as the General Charles de Gaulle stated it should remain a memorial to the cruelty of the Nazi occupation. On this date, it is a popular tourist attraction where people can find streets lined with rusted cars and ruined stone buildings. Despite it being busy during the day, locals say they wouldn't dare enter at night because they claim there have been sightings of figures roaming the empty streets.
5. Kolmanskop, Namibia
Kolmanskop was once a home to German miners who sought wealth and prosperity as it used to be a diamond mining village. After the World War I the price of diamonds deteriorated, and the once-thriving hub of German architecture and culture in the middle of a vast African desert was abandoned.
Otherworldly place
It has been an eon since these houses have been used and now they are all filled with sands turning them something otherworldly place.
6. Humberstone, Chile
This place used to be the world's largest 'saltpeter' (potassium nitrate) deposit. Thousands of people lived and worked here for over 60-years.
Concentration camp
When it was abandoned it got converted into a concentration camp during the Pinochet dictatorship. Although not completely abandoned, this place still houses 250 odd people.
7. Port Arthur, Tasmania
This small town on the Tasman Peninsula is reportedly considered as one of the most haunted places in Australia as it operated as a penal colony for years and being the home for criminals, it is the site of the awful Port Arthur massacre that took place 1996.
Ghostly figures
People who have visited this ghostly town, claim that they have seen ghostly figures and heard odd noises and the sound of a church bell that has been out of order for decades.
8. Bodie, USA
Situated in the hills of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California, Bodie is one of the most famous ghost towns in North America. This former gold mining town still has a few buildings stocked full of dusty treasures from the town's past.
Ghostly experience of souveniers
However, if you wish to take something back along with you as a souvenir, you can always take the memories of the ghosts that roam around the town, probably trying to protect it.
9. Grytviken, South Georgia
This whaling station was abandoned in 1966 after hunting had plunged down the whale population to the point where so few were left, it wasn't worth continuing. All that remains as of now in this place are ghostly ships and rundown buildings, as well as a creepy graveyard where former workers were buried.
Cherry on the cake
Grytviken is surrounded by snow-capped mountains, further adding to the chilling, and decidedly chilly, atmosphere.
