Some of these places are shrouded in secrets and legends handed down from generation to generation, others are much more recent. However, each of them has its own colorful past, and regardless of whether these places are from the 12th or 20th century, each of them is able to give everyone a real emotion.
A place with a population of no less than 50,000 inhabitants and an average population density of no less than 1,500 people per square kilometer can acquire the status of a city. As of March 2022, there are more than ten thousand such cities around the world, and half have appeared in the past four decades.
The United Nations General Assembly has designated 31 October as World Cities Day, which has been celebrated since 2014. The purpose of this day is to promote the success of urbanization or solve specific problems caused by urbanization.
The overall goal of World Cities Day is “Better City, Better Life”, with a different theme chosen each year. This year it’s “Act Local to Go Global”.
In honor of World Cities Day and even Halloween, National Geographic offers interesting facts about the world’s most haunted cities and other places.
Abandoned city in the Arctic
At the time of mining in the 1980s, this abandoned town in the Svalbard archipelago was home to more than 1,000 people. Pyramiden takes its name from a nearby pyramid-shaped mountain. At the beginning of the 20th century, the rail movement was stopped, which led to the decline of the mining industry, and in 1998 the mine was completely closed. Soon all its inhabitants left the city.
Today it is mainly inhabited by seabirds, arctic foxes and even bears. In the past there was a gas station, a library, a school, a kindergarten, a hotel, a restaurant, a theater and even a concert hall with the only grand piano behind the Arctic Circle.
Thanks to the Arctic climate, many buildings have been preserved in their original state. There are still cups and other plates of former residents on the tables, newspaper clippings on the walls and abandoned ski equipment can be seen in the corridors.
Currently, Piramidena is a popular tourist attraction, which is why the only hotel in the city was renovated in 2013.
The town where the Church of the Bones is located
Kutna Hora is a city in the Czech Republic, located east of the capital Prague. It is known for the Gothic Church of Santa Barbara with medieval frescoes and the Sedlec Chapel, decorated with the skeletons of around 40,000-70,000 people.
Their bones are artistically arranged in ornate ornaments and furniture. It is one of the most popular tourist attractions in the Czech Republic and is visited by 200,000 people every year.
A particularly impressive chandelier, made with all the bones of the human skeleton, is installed in the ceiling of the Bone Church.
The ghost island of Venice
Venice is known not only for its glamorous carnival and gondolas, but also for the island of Poveglia, which is often referred to as the most haunted place in the world. The deserted island where plague victims were exiled is a popular destination for ghost hunters.
After the black plague epidemic of 1576, there were so many corpses in Venice that the smell became unbearable and they were taken to the island of Poveglia, thrown into the pits and then burned. However, the plague had not yet been defeated and anyone with symptoms, including children, was forcibly removed and abandoned on the island with the corpses. Historians claim that about 160 thousand people died on the island of Poveglia.
In 1922 a hospital was built here for the mentally ill, who claimed to have seen the ghosts of the plague victims. The institute was run by a doctor who practiced the brutal treatment methods of the time. Legend has it that he committed suicide by throwing himself from the bell tower and that his ghost still resides there. The abandoned hospital is a popular tourist destination on the island, popularly known as Death Island.
A city that has been burning for 60 years
Centralia is almost a ghost town in the Pennsylvania mining area in the United States. The city was evacuated in 1962 due to dangerous underground fires.
The fire of the mine began on May 27, 1962. Unlike in previous years, it was not completely extinguished and continues to rage 60 years later.
According to estimates, the fire in the mines under Centralia will last for at least another 250 years. But despite the noxious fumes, there are people who still live here. The number of inhabitants begins to decrease – if in 1980 there were a thousand residents, in 2020 – only five thousand.
Most of the abandoned buildings were demolished, only a few houses remained intact. The four cemeteries in the city are kept in good condition. One of them is even at the top of the hill from which smoke continues to come.
Interestingly, Centralia’s cathedral, the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, is still in use and attracts worshipers from surrounding towns, including people who were once residents of the country. A geological investigation revealed that the church was covered with solid rock, not coal, so it was not threatened by an underground fire.
The creepy island of dolls in Mexico
One of the most haunted tourist attractions in the world is Doll Island, in the south of the Mexican capital, Mexico City. It should be noted that the island of the dolls or “Isla de las Munecas” was never designed as a tourist attraction.
Legend has it that an island keeper named Julián Santana Barrera found a drowned girl in the 1940s and tried to revive her, but unfortunately failed. Shortly after the tragic event, he saw a doll floating in the water, which most likely belonged to the drowned girl.
He pulled it out of the water and hung it on a tree, thus honoring the girl’s spirit. But she started to haunt him. For the next 50 years of his life, he continued to build other dolls, which he swapped for vegetables he grew. It should be noted that in 2001 Hulianu was found hunched over in the exact spot where he once found the girl.
The only “inhabitants” of the island are the ghostly dolls, the number of which continues to grow, as after Barrera’s death, the island has become a popular attraction, to which tourists bring more and more toys. It certainly wouldn’t be welcoming on this island in the dark.
