From UFOs and ghost sightings, to derelict torture chambers and insane asylums – there’s so many spooky and terrifying places you can visit in the world.
For a fright night you’ll never forget (even if you wanted to), these terrifying destinations are the places of nightmares.
Read on… if you dare.
1. Area 51, USA
The world’s largest conspiracy or just a tall tale? Whatever you believe about this top-secret US military operation, it’s a place that has fascinated the world for decades. Deep in Nevada’s Mojave Desert, Area 51 is rumoured to hide everything from UFOs to atomic missiles. This classified US government site is now open to visitors – well, some of it anyway. Tours are available that will take conspiracy theorists and alien enthusiasts to the Extraterrestrial Highway and Alien Research Centre.
2. Island of the Dolls, Mexico
These are toys you definitely don’t want to play with! In the canals of Xochimilco in Mexico City lies an island overflowing with mutilated dolls. Decapitated heads, severed limbs and gorged-out glass eyes are strung up on trees and fences. As the story goes, the island’s only inhabitant Don Julian Santana, found the body of a drowned girl 50 years ago and started collecting discarded dolls to ward off evil spirits and appease her tortured soul. In a mysterious twist of fate, Don Julian Santana also drowned in the same canal in 2001, and the island is now one very spooky tourist attraction.
3. Varosha, Cyprus
Just near Famagusta in northern Cyprus is the ghost town of Varosha. Once one of the most popular holiday destinations in the world, Varosha has been abandoned since the Turkish invasion in 1974. Locals fled the town, fearing a massacre, and it has since become an embattled warzone, torn between two countries. Everything remains frozen in time – as though life simply stopped in 1974.
4. Kayakoy, Turkey
Another ghost town, albeit a bit older than Varosha. Up in the dry mountains of southern Turkey are the ancient ruins of an 18th century Greek settlement. Scattered across the land are the rundown remains of 500 houses and churches, now filled with rubble and wildlife. The whole area along the Turquoise Coast is also famous for its ancient Lycian tombs carved straight into the rock faces.
5. Poveglia Island, Italy
A night on a remote Italian island sounds like a dream come true… but Poveglia is more of a nightmare. This small island is between Venice and Lido and was once used a ‘plague pit’ where tens of thousands of bodies were burned and buried during the Black Death. Local legend says that it was also a mental asylum, where a doctor butchered and tortured his patients before being driven mad by their ghosts. It is closed to all visitors.
6. Old Changi Hospital, Singapore
Are you afraid of ghosts? If so, you’d better steer clear of this abandoned hospital, one of the most haunted places in all of Asia. Built in 1935, the hospital was turned into a prison camp during WWII, where it was used as a torture chamber by the Japanese secret police. After the war, the hospital admitted patients once again, but it finally closed in 1997. Since then, there have been many ghost sightings, in particular a little boy crying and a woman with a black halo.
Are you ready to face your fears? Book a spooktacular trip today and find out for yourself what really goes bump in the night!
