Who needs horror movies when there are places like this in the world? If you want to be creeped out, just book a flight and head to these 10 creepy abandoned locations around the world and feel your skin crawl.
#1.) Kolmanskop, Namibia
A town in the Namib Desert, Namibia, founded in the early 1900s by German settlers looking for precious stones, Kolmanskop was abandoned in the 1950s. You can still walk among the empty shells of the houses, strewn with the desert sands.
#2.) Hashima Island, Nagasaki
From the late 19th to early 20th century, Hashima Island (also known as Ghost Island) housed a busy coal mining facility. Now in a state of disrepair, the island might be familiar to some as the lair of the villain in the Bond film Skyfall.
#3.) Island of the Dolls, Mexico City
Isla de las Muñecas, on the edge of Mexico City, is home to countless broken down and damaged dolls, hanging from trees and on the walls. There’s just nothing quite so creepy as a doll, and that goes double for broken ones.
#4.) Marlboro Psychiatric Hospital, New Jersey
Open from 1931 to 1998, the Marlboro Psychiatric Hospital saw countless incidents of patient death: chokings, suicides, freezing to death, they had it all. Eventually it got bad enough to warrant an investigation.
#5.) Garnet Ghost Town, Montana
Once home to hundreds of residents during the push westward and subsequent gold rush, Garnet is now one of hundreds of ghost towns dotted across the US. The town is abandoned, left exactly as it was when it was abandoned in the 1930s.
#6.) Pripyat, Ukraine
A town in the Ukraine, Pripyat was abandoned because of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant meltdown in 1986. Few signs remain of the hundreds of workers and their families who once lived there.
#7.) Six Flags New Orleans
An amusement park in New Orleans, Six Flags was established in 2000 and did good business up until 2005, when Hurricane Katrina hit the area, devastating literally everything. The park never reopened and stands deserted.
#8.) Beelitz Heilstatten Military Hospital
Built in the 1800s to help the area cope with an outbreak of TB, the old sanatorium was later converted into a military hospital and used throughout both World Wars. During World War One, a young Adolf Hitler recovered from a leg wound here. Abandoned since the fall of the USSR, the hospital has steadily fallen deeper into decay.
#9.) Lehigh Acres, Florida
In the 1950s, a pair of businessmen bought up a huge tract of land in Florida and sold small portions of it for hardly any money at all. It took decades, til the real estate bloom of the 90s, for houses to spring up. Eventually, there were far more houses than there were people living there and today it stands empty, a modern ghost town.
#10.) Anderlecht Veterinary School, Brussels
Standing abandoned since the 90s, the veterinary school’s rooms are filled with syringes and scalpels and jars filled with unknowable liquids – there is even a section called the “Horror Labs”, where creatures of various shapes and sizes (some sewn together!) are stuffed into jars.