Our planet is very big. It contains many attractive places for tourism and recreation. For people who are fond of extreme sports, there are also many interesting places full of terrifying secrets.
Mag Slicht, County Cavan, Ireland
In ancient times, the Magh Sleacht plains in County Cavan were a place of worship for the local people to the god Crom Cruach, whose iconic image consisted of a golden figure in the centre surrounded by twelve stone figures.
Crom Cruach was a very ruthless god, and to appease him, people sacrificed their firstborn son in exchange for good harvests of milk and grain. He often took the lives of his worshippers during worship.
Once, on the eve of Samhain, the High King Tigernmas, along with three quarters of his army, died while worshipping Krom. But despite this, the locals, trembling with fear, came to worship him.
According to legend, this continued until St Patrick destroyed the iconic image with a sledgehammer, but to this day, residents can still see a shadow circling the site when the sun goes down.
Catacombs, France
In 1780, after prolonged rainstorms that washed away the city’s cemeteries, the streets of Paris were covered with bones, pieces of corpses and old scraps of clothing. In order to clean up the city, residents collected the remains, washed them thoroughly and stored them in the city’s old catacombs.
According to modern researchers, there are about six million people’s remains there, as corpses continued to be transported from overcrowded cemeteries until the mid-nineteenth century. Excursions through the catacombs, where human bones and skulls are lined from floor to ceiling, are accompanied by an eerie sense of the presence of something otherworldly.
The catacombs stretch for 250 km under Paris. They are called Empire Of The Dead, which means “Empire of the Dead” in French.
Palmyra Island, Pacific Ocean
The island of Palmyra, located in the southeast, 1,500 miles from Hawaii, looks like a paradise, but has a reputation for death and darkness.
This mystical atoll island was discovered in 1798 when the American ship Betsy came across the reefs. Bloodthirsty sharks killed almost the entire crew. Only ten of them made it to shore, but only three of them were rescued. The newly discovered island was named Palmyra.
In 1802, another American ship called the Palmyra sank here. During the Second World War, an American garrison was stationed on this island, and its soldiers told of the incredible horror that filled the souls of people during their few days on the island. It came to deadly fights and suicides. Throughout the time, there were many people who wanted to visit the island, but not everyone managed to survive. Those lucky ones who returned recalled with horror the mysterious disappearances and deaths.
Since 2011, visits to Palmyra have been possible only with the permission of the US Department of the Environment.
Modern researchers consider it to be a monster that attracts and kills travellers. There is also a fantastic version – it is a portal to another mysterious world.
Concentration camp 731 Manchuria, Harbin, China
“Detachment 731” is a place where the Japanese massacred Chinese prisoners or their families during the Manchurian War, located twenty kilometres south of the city of Harbin.
According to Imperial Army documents, this secret unit was coded as the “General Directorate for Water Supply and Prevention of Kwantung Army Units”. 300 Chinese peasant houses were ruthlessly burned to create a site for this complex. The detachment was commanded by Lieutenant General Shiro Ishii. This unit was created to prepare for bacteriological warfare, and cruel experiments were carried out on living people of different nationalities who were captured by the gendarmerie or special services of the Kwantung Army. It has been determined that more than three thousand people were usually killed in a single day, and 250,000 were held in captivity until their death, which followed shortly afterwards.
This place has become infamous as the “Nazi concentration camps in Asia”.
Dracula’s Castle, Romania
Bran Castle, or known worldwide as Dracula Castle, attracts many tourists, despite the fact that Vlad Cepes, Prince of Wallachia, better known as the vampire Count Dracula, never lived here permanently. He visited the castle several times as a passing through. The mansion is located on a hillside near a cliff and has a gloomy appearance. Due to the special design of the chimney, strong gusts of wind create a terrible whistling and roaring sound that frightens visitors.
The count was nicknamed Cepesh because he used to put his victims on stakes and they would bleed to death. Dracula’s bedroom, where he enjoyed drinking the blood of his victims, looks no less terrifying.
The reconstruction restored the castle, but preserved its original appearance. In 1897, this extraordinary place inspired Irish writer Bram Stoker to create the world-famous gothic horror novel Dracula.
Colosseum, Italy
The Colosseum is an amphitheatre built by the Flavians, who built it in eight years. This amphitheatre is the largest in the world and was created for the purpose of holding various types of battles:
- Gladiatorial. Preparations for them lasted several months. These battles were fought until one of the participants died. Participants were divided into categories according to:
- height
- weight
- qualifications;
- fighting style.
- Naval. For these battles, the arena was flooded with water and detailed reconstructions of warships were used.
- Fights with animals. This is a terrifying and fascinating spectacle at the same time. Tens of thousands of animal battles were fought throughout the event. During the opening ceremony alone, about nine thousand lions, tigers, bulls, elephants and other large animals were killed.
Mausoleum at Greyfriars Kirkyard, Edinburgh, Scotland
This place is considered the most terrifying cemetery in the world. Residents passing by feel the cold air and stench. At night, horrific screams and the sound of breaking glass can be heard from inside the cemetery. There is a mausoleum of George Mackenzie, who was a lawyer and Lord Advocate during the reign of Charles II.
He gained a reputation as one of the most zealous persecutors of the Covenanters, the people who in 1638 rebelled against the king’s policies and signed the National Covenant. He was nicknamed Bloody Mackenzie for his incredible cruelty. Through his fault, many covenanters were imprisoned in Greyfriars Kirkyard prison, where they were subjected to terrible torture and then their heads were decorated on the top of the gates. The ghost of Bloody Mackenzie sometimes appears near the mausoleum and terrifies people.
The mysterious Winchester House, San Jose, California
Sarah Winchester, the widow of William Winchester, a firearms magnate, moved to California in 1886, bought an eight-room ranch with an area of 161 acres and began building a mansion. She never felt happy, and her little daughter died a few weeks after her birth. Her husband died of tuberculosis. Mrs Winchester was convinced that she was haunted by the spirits of her husband’s gunshot victims. On the advice of her pastor, she decided to atone for her sins by building a building for these spirits. The work continued around the clock without interruption for 38 years. One day, Sarah stopped the construction, and a day later an earthquake hit, partially damaging the house. The construction resumed. On the fifth of September 1922, the day Sarah Winchester died, the construction process was completed.
A total of $20 million was spent on this mansion. The house has 161 rooms, two basement levels, hundreds of windows, a lot of doors and stairs that lead nowhere. The number thirteen and spiderweb motifs were of great importance to her, so they are found throughout the building.
Nowadays, this puzzle house attracts tourists. The number of doors and windows in this house has not yet been counted.
Whitechapel, East London
Whitechapel is a historic district of London that became famous in the late 19th century as a result of the serial murders committed by Jack the Ripper. This place has the highest crime rate in the world. Since the beginning of the 19th century, thousands of murders, rapes and mutilations have been recorded in the area. The most famous of these cases are the serial murders of Jack the Ripper. The spirits of many of the victims roam the area as if looking for their killers.
Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, Poland
From late May 1940 to January 1945, the German concentration camp Auschwitz was considered the most effective camp where hundreds of thousands of Jews from all over the world were killed. It consisted of three central camps and several smaller adjacent camps. In the spring of 1943, additional crematoria ovens were put into operation at the expanded Auschwitz-Birkenau camp.
The first “test” batch of people sent to the ovens consisted of 1,100 men, women, and children who had previously been gassed with the poisonous gas Cyclone B. Ninety per cent of the victims of this camp were Jewish. Their ashes were scattered over the surrounding lakes.
The spirits of the dead do not leave this terrible place. Today, a state museum and a memorial in honour of those who died in World War II have been established here.
