14 Abandoned Places Around the World That Are Terrifying to Visit
There can be something so enticing about abandoned places – it’s intriguing and awe inspiring, as you imagine how it became so deserted. Their eerie beauty speaks with the echoes of its past, a contrast that is almost creepy in images, and deeply moving in person. Beyond their use as haunting backdrops, these sites around the world are also silent archives of lives that were once vibrant, but vanished. The hallways are vacant and the streets, deserted, these seem to whisper secrets and dare the brave to continue on. If the mysterious and eerie is your thing, these sites are not just great to look at, they are portals into inspiration and adventure.
Whether it’s ghost hunting, urban exploring or you take pleasure in the reality of decay and history, something sucks you into these places. And these are asylums with somber tales behind them, ghost towns with stories of disaster and the intrepid going out there. Explorers step into the depths from their forsaken entrances and allow the stories of abandonment to be profound and poignant.
Hashima Island, Japan
Popularized by the SNK arcade game and manga series, Hashima, or Battleship Island, off the coast of Nagasaki, used to be a bustling mining town—but is now a slumbering concrete maze of crumbling buildings and dead streets. When the coal reserves were depleted in 1974, nature and salt air have been reclaiming this isolated island ever since. The eerie atmosphere it has is the subject of the James Bond film “Skyfall” and is a chilling site for thrill seekers and film buffs alike.
Centralia, Pennsylvania, USA
A fire in a coal mine in 1962 ignited beneath Centralia and has been burning ever since, leaving a ghost town with smoke rising from cracks in the desolate, heat buckled roads. Visitors often report that walking through Centralia is a chilling silence broken by the unsettling sound of the ever burning fire.
Pripyat, Ukraine
Pripyat became a ghost town overnight in 1986 when the Chernobyl disaster occurred. At its height, the city’s population approached 50,000 people, but by the time of the nuclear threat the sudden evacuation left behind a city so frozen in time, personal belongings were still where they’d been dropped in their hasty flight to escape the nuclear threat.
The Paris Catacombs, France
Underneath the busy streets of Paris is a depressing labyrinth of tunnels filled with the bones of more than six million people. The catacombs were established in the late 18th century to solve the city’s overflowing cemeteries and offer a macabre underground adventure through neatly stacked skulls and bones, making it one of the most chilling underground adventures in the world.
Bhangarh Fort, India
Local legend has it that the Bhangarh Fort in Rajasthan was cursed and abandoned. Today it is one of the most haunted places in India and restricted for entry post sunset. Now a ruined fort with palaces and temples buried in grass it is whispered to be the wind of whispers of the fort’s dark history.
Bodie, California, USA
Bodie is an intact ghost town in the heart of the Sierra Nevada mountains where people lived during the gold rush and then left when the mines were depleted. Bodie preserves a picture of the bustling past of miners, gunfighters, and families. Stocked with goods, the buildings still stand, as if its residents might return at any moment.
Humberstone and Santa Laura, Chile
Humberstone and Santa Laura were once thriving saltpeter mines, but were abandoned in the 1960s when synthetic saltpeter production reduced demand. The desert winds blow through classrooms still full of textbooks, theaters still empty of seats, an eerie echo of daily life that was suddenly still.
Oradour-sur-Glane, France
The village of Oradour-sur-Glane has been left practically untouched since June 10, 1944, when a German Waffen-SS company killed 642 of its inhabitants and burned down the village. The charred remains of cars and buildings on display serve not just as a memorial and museum, but as a powerful tribute to the cruelty of the Nazi occupation in France and to the terrible loss of so many lives here in such a quiet place.
Maunsell Sea Forts, United Kingdom
During World War II, these alien looking forts were built in the Thames and Mersey estuaries to help defend the United Kingdom from German air raids. Now they stand decaying, contained in their steel and concrete military platforms as if out of a dystopian novel, waiting for the sea to take them.
Wittenoom, Australia
Wittenoom was a thriving mining community once, but it was abandoned once the dangers of its blue asbestos mines were revealed. The carcinogenic dust rendered the town too hazardous for habitation, and today it’s mostly scrubbed from maps, a dusty, toxic ghost town that is a real danger to anyone who wanders through its silent streets.
Disclaimer: This list is solely the author’s opinion based on research and publicly available information.
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10 Best African Photo Safaris You Must Experience
Even if you’ve been on a safari in the past, an African photo safari is something you want to experience or at the very list add to the top of your bucket list.
But first, what is a photo safari? The phrase “photo safari” is not a common sentence structure but its meaning can be deduced easily. An African photo safari in general context means going on an adventure with the sole purpose of taking high-quality pictures.
10 Best African Photo Safaris You Must Experience
