Random Scariest Real Places on Planet Earth (28 items)

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  (#1) Aokigahara

  • Japan

  Known as the “Suicide Forest,” Aokigahara is the site of dozens of suicides each year.Volunteers sweep the forest each month looking for bodies and cleaning up the belongings of the dead.

   
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  (#2) The Island of Dolls, Mexico

  The island's caretaker, Don Julian Santana Barrera, supposedly found a little girl drowned in a canal with her doll floating nearby. He hung the doll in a tree in her honor, became obsessed with the mystery of who she was, and continued to hang dolls in tribute for fifty years until he died in the exact place where she died.

   
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  (#3) Poveglia

  Poveglia is a small island with a terrifying past. In 1922, a mental hospital was constructed on the island. According to local legend, one doctor was particularly interested in running torturous experiments on his patients. Patients were butchered horrendously before falling, or being thrown from, a bell tower. Locals believe that at least 160,000 unfortunate souls resided on the island over its forty or so years as an asylum. Unsurprisingly, the island attracts ghost hunters, fans of the paranormal, and curious tourists. 
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  (#4) Kenmore Insane Asylum, Australia

  This mental asylum was opened in 1895 in Goulburn, a town in New South Wales, Australia. Initially, Australians were impressed by the structure and it housed a relatively low number of patients, allowing them to be well taken care of. However, patients were increasingly being committed for unnecessary reasons - alcoholism, learning disabilities, and depression were all afflictions that could lead to one's entry to Kenmore. Shock therapy was used casually to "treat" homosexuality or frequent masturbation. Problematic patietns were housed in solitary confinement and frequently hosed down. It's not a surprise that fingerscratch marks line the doors inside patients' rooms. 

  Kenmore did not completely shut down its operations until the 2000s. Australians believe that the abandoned grounds are haunted. 
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  (#5) West Virginia State Penitentiary

  • Moundsville, West Virginia, USA

  This penitentiary in operated for over a century until its closure in 1995.  Over the course of its run, 83 men were hanged for their crimes and 9 more were killed by electrocution. Visitors to the old prison have reported seeing a "Shadow Man," a creepy silhouette figure who roams the prison grounds, who many assume is a former prisoner. The prison was also constructed upon the Adena Native American tribe's sacred burial site. 

   

   
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  (#6) Bell Witch Cave

  • Adams, Tennessee, USA

  This place was so haunted, it even scared an American president away. Andrew Jackson had heard of the hauntings in Adams, Tennessee, and after spending a night there once, he vowed never to return. The Bell Witch supposedly set out to kill landowner John Bell and ruin his daughter's life in the mid-1800s.

   
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  (#7) Danvers State Hospital

  • Danvers, Massachusetts, USA

  Danvers was one of the biggest insane asylums in the late nineteenth century United States, Danvers State Hospital was constructed on a 500 acre plot of land and housed thousands of patients who underwent early experiments with lobotomies and electroshock therapy. The structure was converted into apartments in 2008.
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  (#8) Cecil Hotel

  • Los Angeles, California, USA

  The Cecil, at the heart of Los Angeles's Skid Row, was the site of a mysterious death in 2013. "Night Stalker" Richard Ramirez called one of its rooms home in the '80s, and an Austrian serial killer stayed there in the early 1990s.

  Many have committed suicide from its heights, one guy even kidnapped a person on the sidewalk below. It was also the inspiration for American Horror Story: Hotel.
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  (#9) Catacombs of Paris

  • Paris, France

  Ever taken a walking tour of the Notre Dame church? Did you know that 20 meters below your feet lay the remains of millions of Parisians? Built in the late 18th century when traditional cemeteries posed a disease risk to the public, the long, bone-lined tunnels cover some 11,000 square meters.

   
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  (#10) Pripyat amusement park

  Once home to almost 50,000 people, Pripyat is the town closest to the nuclear meltdown site Chernobyl, which exploded in 1986. Its inhabitants were given little time to evacuate and left their belongings and pets behind, thinking they would return. The town is now a strange kind of time capsule, where toys are strewn about in a schoolhouse where they were dropped by evacuating children. There is also a heavy amount of radiation in the area. 
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  (#11) The Villisca Ax Murder House

  The site of one of the state's grisliest, and still unsolved, murders is this innocuous property where an entire family was bludgeoned to death in their beds in 1912. Now you can stay there for a night, if you dare.
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  (#12) Yungas Road

  • Bolivia

  Three meters wide, 2,000 foot drops, rain, fog, cyclists, and dust. Oh, and no guardrails. Until 1994, almost three hundred visitors were killed here every year.
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  (#13) Helltown, Ohio

  Mostly abandoned, other than the Satanists said to worship there, Helltown has crybaby bridges and haunted streets and everything you'd expect - even a street called The End of the World.
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  (#14) The Stanley Hotel

  • Estes Park, Colorado, USA

  Sure, it looks inviting enough, nestled at the base of the Rockies. But this hotel that Stephen King based The Shining on is a little more ominous than it looks. Many residents have heard strange bumps in the night, seen ghosts wandering its halls, and even had their belongings rearranged overnight. 
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  (#15) The Dargavs (City of the Dead), Russia

   Out in the middle of nowhere in North Ossetia, Russia are these ancient crypts, the oldest of which might date back to the twelfth century. The village even has its own watchtower, possibly to look over the souls that can’t escape.
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  (#16) Sedlec Ossuary

  • Czech Republic

  This church has a chandelier built with nearly one of every bone in the human body. In fact, this church has the bones of some 40,000 to 70,000 skeletons, many of which were shaped by a local woodcarver into pyramids, crosses, even a coat of arms. 
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  (#17) Leap Castle, Ireland

  This castle was constructed by a wealthy Irish family between 1100 and 1400, but various other families have claimed - and taken - ownership of it over the centuries. Phantom lights, banshee ladies, and a putrid smell are just some of the creepy goings-on at the site. 

   
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  (#18) Door to Hell

  • Derweze, Turkmenistan

  The Darvaza Crater in Turkmenistan, also known as the "Door to Hell," has been burning for over four decades. Soviet geologists discovered the crater in 1971 and it continues to burn. One particularly adventurous explorer has donned a special suit and actually dived into the hole. 
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  (#19) Capela dos Ossos

  • Portugal

  This monastic cemetery was built in the late 16th century for purely practical reasons: the monks were out of room for their deceased. Rather than bury the bones, however, the Franciscan monks decided to expose them as a way to remind everyone life is fleeting. And lest you forget that fact, the inscription above the entrance reads, "We bones, are here, waiting for yours." 
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  (#20) Pluckley

  • Kent, United Kingdom

  Pluckley, England was recognized in 1989 by the Guiness Book of Records as the most haunted place in England. What appears to be a quaint, attractive town by day is a town besieged by rumors of paranormal activity. In fact, it is said that there are at least fifteen different kinds of haunting in the town, ranging from haunted horses, the ghosts of a monk and gypsy, and spirits that will steal from you.
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  (#21) Okefenokee Swamp

  • Georgia, USA

  Indigenous tribes knew the "Land of Trembling Earth" as a place riddled with supernatural activity. This hasn't changed much over the years, with weird goings-on explained away as "swamp gas," plus stories of alien abduction, ghost ships, and the "Hangman's Oak."
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  (#22) Tower of London

  • London Borough of Tower Hamlets, United Kingdom

  One of the world's best known structures also has one of it's bloodiest histories. From its beginnings in the early 1000s, the massive building was meant to serve as a fortress. Over the centuries, royal rivalries helped turn it into a prison and execution ground where many prisoners, aristocrats, and royals met their demise. 
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  (#23) Riddle House

  This house seems pretty innocuous, until you find out that it started out as a funeral parlor in the early twentieth century. The house has been the site of suicides, ghost hauntings, and unexplained paranormal events. 
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  (#24) The Hanging Coffins of Sagada, Philippines

  First off, just hanging one of these seems like a great way to end up in one, but that's a worry for another day. This tradition came about not only to bring the elders closer to heaven, but also for more practical reasons: nobody wanted to be buried in the rain forest's wet ground or get dug up by head-hunting plunderers and hungry animals.

  The Igorot tribe in the mountains has been doing this for centuries. 
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  (#25) Hashima Island

  • Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan

  Some 9 miles off Nagasaki's coast lies this decrepit coal mining site built in the 1880s that Japanese engineering company Mitsubishi turned into a huge facility to house workers and their families. By the 1960s this dreary, dank place was "home" to around 5,000 people.

  During World War II, it was a far from pleasant home to Korean and Chinese war prisoners, and as many as five workers a month died as a result of accidents.
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  (#26) Tequendama Falls Museum

  Opened in 1928, the hotel catered to wealthy visitors for 60 years until the Bogota River below became so polluted, the place shut its doors in the 1990s. It sat abandoned, the site of suicides and reported hauntings, until 2011 when it was turned into a museum.
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  (#27) Stull Cemetery

  • Stull, Kansas, USA

  Known to be one of seven gateways to hell, Stull Cemetery earned a reputation for Satanic sightings, ghostly apparitions, strange banging and voices, and drunk teenagers. But if you want to get to hell, you'll have to find one of those other six gateways. You supposedly entered this one via an old church which collapsed and was torn down in 2002. 
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  (#28) Hill of Crosses

  • Lithuania

  It is thought that crosses were placed on this hill by families of rebels who had fallen in the 1831 revolt against Russia. The Russian government tried to remove them, but the Lithuanians weren't having it, and now there are hundreds of thousands of crosses on the hill.

  Pope John Paul II blessed the place in 1993. There are no stories of hauntings in the area as of yet, but it would still make a great setting for a horror movie. 

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