I was originally paid for this article to appear on the now defunct Outloud Magazine website. I suppose it demonstrates that I can write low-effort listicle clickbait?
With Halloween approaching there’s still time for some terrifying tourism and horror holidays. So we’re going to take you through the top 5 scariest places in the world.
5. Chernobyl
Chernobyl has been still since the nuclear disaster that irradiated this area of Ukraine 29 years ago. It’s creepy in the traditional sense: a once bustling city left deserted for decades, it’s the modern day Pompeii. In our busy 21st century lives, silence and solitude can be alien and disconcerting, never more so than in a city that should be so alive. As well as being horror-film-creepy, it’s a truly scary reminder of the effects of nuclear fallout.
4. The Hill of
Crosses
The Hill of Crosses is a historical place of pilgrimage in Lithuania. Started as a memorial of those who died in Lithuania’s rebellion against the Russians in the nineteenth century, it’s now a haunting mound of 1,00,000 crucifixion style crosses. It’s supposedly a spiritual and peaceful place and has been visited by Pope John Paul II, but there’s something very scary about a hill top army of Roman torture devices.
3. The Island of the Dolls
Child’s Play, Magic, Poltergeist, Saw - all very scary films with one thing in common: some very creepy dolls. You would be forgiven for thinking that ‘The Island of the Dolls’ was just the name of another such film. Its back story is just as unbelievably scary. The island, which is in Mexico, is part of a huge canal system which has many islands. The owner of one of these islands discovered the corpse of a dead girl in the canal one day and started hanging the ragged heads, clothes and bodies of dolls on his island to ward off bad spirits. Now it’s covered in the unseeing eyes of mutilated plastic children. If anything was ever going to attract bad spirits, it would be this place.
2. Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo
All graveyards are
scary, no matter how big or small. You’re surrounded by dead people and you can’t
quite shake the worry that you may be in the epicentre of the zombie
apocalypse. There are some cemeteries,
graveyards, and mausoleums where they seem to have decided that skulls make
excellent decorative items. There’s only one thing creepier than that: in the
Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo in Italy they have mummified remains. This isn’t
the Egyptian, toilet paper style of mummy, it’s preserved corpses in glass
cases staring back at you looking just like the day that they died. The star
attraction is a little girl who was two years old when she died of pneumonia.
It is chilling.
1. The Tower of London
This wouldn’t be a proper list of scary places without any kind of prison, and the Tower of London has it all: torture, the murder of two young princes (if William Shakespeare is to be believed), beheadings, ghosts. The tower was a prison from 1100 to 1952, among the last ever prisoners were the infamous London gangsters the Kray Twins. Today it remains open to the public so that the ghosts have plenty of fresh blood.