From catching a brain-eating amoeba at a water park, to haunted islands filled with ghosts,
here are 9 real places straight out of a nightmare!
Maybe don’t watch this before you go to bed...
8.
Hill of Crosses, Lithuania
Hundreds of thousands of crosses cover a hill outside the city of Šiauliai in Lithuania.
While its not clear when this hill of crosses actually started, these crosses and rosaries
remain a testament to Catholicism and the Lithuanian Spirit.
This spooky hill is known for its legends of ghosts, miracles and heroic acts of defiance.
In Lithuania, religion has been threatened time and time again and yet the local people
have managed to preserve their faith.
Monasteries and castles are said to have been on the hill and the ghosts of the slain come
out at night.
When the Russian Empire took over Lithuania, the locals rebelled against the Tsar but they
were soundly defeated.
The tsar limited national identity by repressing religious expression so the families of the
rebels were unable to bury their dead.
Instead they started placing crosses on the legendary hill in memory of their loved ones.
In the 1900s, when Germany and then the Soviet Union held a strong grasp on northern Lithuanian,
the locals continued to post crosses on the hill as a way to protest their occupiers presence.
Under the Communist regime, religion was also forbidden and even though the sight was bulldozed
several times over, the crosses kept popping up!
They even set up KGB agents to watch the site and everyone bringing crosses was immediately
fined and thrown in prison.
Whenever the hill was destroyed over the centuries, crosses would pop right back up.
This sacred hill became a symbol of Lithuanian culture and history.
Nowadays, the hill stands full of rusted metal monuments and cracking statues.
This local, historic landmark really means something to the people who maintain and expand
it, but to anyone who doesn’t know its story it can be quite an eerie place, especially
when the sun sets.
7.
Disney’s River Country
In 1976, Disney debuted its first ever water park, River Country.
It was their “slippery slidingest, raft ridingest, rope swingingest, old fashioned
good, clean, wet, American fun you’ve ever had!”
Sounds fun right?
It was built on the edge of Florida’s Bay Lake.
The park had a number of water slides, swimming holes, man-made boulders, and even featured
a lagoon that had been creating by damming up a portion of the nearby Lake.
Fast forward to the modern day, and the water park is completely devoid of any human life.
Everything’s there except the park has been completely abandoned for more than 13 years.Slides,
signs, and all of the off-limits destination’s trappings are still there, even though people
are not -- or, at least, they’re not supposed to be.
In 1980, an eleven year old boy passed away because of a brain eating amoeba lurking in
the park’s waters.
The amoeba enters through the nose, goes up the nasal passage and attacks the nervous
system, including the brain.
If this isn’t one of the scariest things that could happen to you, I don’t know what
is.
There were three other deaths attributed to the same disease from Florida waters although
none of them involved River Country.
The park remained open for many more years after that until one year, it wasn’t.
Parts of the abandoned park are still visible and despite some security guards trying to
keep people out, some have managed to sneak in and take pictures and video.
The former tourist attraction that used to bring in millions of people is overgrown by
weeds, trees, and plants, making it look like a jungle.
There is a rumor that Disney will punish trespassers in River Country by banning them from all
of their parks for life.
6.
Capuchin Catacombs
The Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo are a vast and extensive network of burial catacombs
in Palermo, Sicily, in southern Italy.
In the 16th century, the monks of the Capuchin monastery began to excavate a place to bury
their dead friars underneath the ground.
However, over time the locals of the nearby town began to see being buried in the crypts
underneath Capuchin as a sort of symbol of power and status.
During the 17th century, the wills of many of the Italian town’s residents requested
that they be buried within the catacombs.
Some of the richer and pickier residents even demanded that they be buried in certain outfits
or that their outfits be changed and rotated on their corpse.
Who wants that job??
The catacombs were maintained as long as the relatives kept paying and donating on behalf
of the deceased.
As long as a steady flow of money kept coming in, the corpses of the dead were kept on display
and properly maintained; however, if the money ceased to flow then the bodies of the non-paying
family members were put onto a shelf until further notice!!
Fun fact: the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo are home to the largest collection of mummies
in the world.
The last person to be entombed in the catacombs was a local friar who was inducted in 1871.
Nowadays, Capuchin is open to the public and is a very creepy kind of tourist attraction.
The bodies of the dead are mummified, clothed, and on display for any and all that wish to
see them -- some are put up on shelfs, others are enshrined in glass cases, and still others
are sleeping eternally on the crypt’s many shelves.
How would you like to be locked in at night there?
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5.
City Of Sand
Kolmanskop is a small, abandoned ghost town located in southern Namibia.
This former diamond mining town used to be home to 1,000 people.
In 1908 a railway worker discovered some diamonds in the sand and he showed them to his supervisor.
Maybe the biggest mistake of his life!
The German railway inspector spread the word so the German government took over and started
exploiting the area.
For a long time, the area generated a massive amount of income for its residents and their
government.
Because of this, an entire small city sprung up around the diamond mines with massive German
estates, along with a hospital, ballroom, casino, all kinds of things!
This diamond rush made it one of the wealthiest towns in the world and the hospital had the
first x-ray machine in the southern hemisphere.
After WWI, the diamonds began to run dry in Kolmanskop, and the people started to abandon
the town for greener pastures.
Without anyone to upkeep the city and fight off the sand of the surrounding desert, the
city has been getting slowly swallowed up.
This spooky ghost town has been abandoned for years and today it is in a restricted
zone, but you can get permission to take a tour there and see how diamonds are not always
forever.
4.
Cameron Lake Monster
Cameron Lake is a massive and isolated body of water that’s located on Vancouver Island,
just off the coast of Canada.
The lake is chilly, expansive, and surrounded by beautiful mountain ranges.
However, there just might be something a bit darker lurking under the surface of Cameron.
For years, nearby locals have reported sightings of some kind of giant creature swimming in
the Lake.
Unlike with most reports of cryptids or unrecognized creatures, there is actually some tangible
evidence to support the claims that there might be some form of sea monster living within
Cameron Lake.
British Columbia has more reputed lake monsters than anywhere in the world!!
In 2008 and 2009, the radar of a group of researchers picked up on something odd and
especially big swimming near a normal-sized school of fish.
They couldn’t take any pictures since they lost their camera, but the more conservative
experts theorize that it could have been an especially large, world-record-sized sturgeon
that was discovered.
Others suggest that some kind of sea serpent or giant salamander might be living under
the waters of the lake.
I don’t know about you, but if I’m out on a boat and a huge, dark shape is lurking
below I think I would kind of freak out, no matter what it was!
3.
Hashima Island, Japan
Just off the coast of Japan, only nine miles away from the famous city of Nagasaki, lies
the abandoned island of Hashima.
Not a single living person lives on Hashima, although its towering, grey buildings still
remain, along with the massive concrete walls that trace the borders of the island and protect
it from the surrounding harsh sea.
Speaking of abandoned mining towns, established in 1887, the island was once used to mine
undersea coal reserves.
Over 5,000 people once lived in the island but it was abandoned after WWII during which
it was used as forced labor camp where the Japanese Government made their people work
to fund their war machine.
More recently it has become a popular, ghostly attraction and it is now protected by Japan
as a historic landmark.
It appeared in the Bond movie “Skyfall” and recently, Google Maps was allowed to make
an online street tour of the island that anyone who's interested can view.
See, you don’t even have to leave your house to visit this spooky place.
Even though people can now once again walk its streets, the abandoned city looks eerily
post-apocalyptic and barren.
Might be a great place to go if there’s ever a zombie apocalypse.
2.
North Brother Island, New York
North Brother Island is one spooky reminder of dark asylums, prisons, medical research
centers and haunted places right near Manhattan.
This patch of land is in the middle of the East River between the Bronx and Rikers island,
ominously named “Hell’s Gate”.
The first building was the notorious Riverside Hospital in 1885 which served as a quarantine
for those suffering from smallpox and tuberculosis.
Then they started to expand to bring in people with other infectious diseases lole scarlet
fever, typhus, and even leprosy.
Everyone lived in the hospital or ramshackle huts and tents until they died.
Over the years, those that were doomed were forced to live out their days on the island
to keep New York City clean.
This place became a black hole that drew in death and disease and the general public was
terrified.
Unimaginable suffering and horrors went on there.
The famous Typhoid Mary, who was an asymptomatic carrier for the infectious disease was confined
here in 1907.
The island has been used as everything from a drug rehabilitation center to housing for
veterans over the years.
Currently, North Brother is closed to the public and is designated as a bird sanctuary.
The hospitals and buildings of the island have been covered and overgrown by forests
and the dark history of the island leads many to whisper that it's quite a creepy place
and ghosts are everywhere.
1.
Oradour-sur-Glane, France
On June 10, 1944, the village of Oradour-sur-Glane in France was overrun by German forces.
The soldiers of the Nazi regime burned, looted, and massacred the men, women, and children
of the town.
Many were herded into a church and burned to death.
The SS not only killed the people in the village, but also random French citizens who just so
happened to be riding their bicycles nearby.
Less than thirty of the village’s hundreds of inhabitants survived.
Oradour is now left as a monument and memorial to the many French and other Allied citizens
who suffered during WWII.
After the war it was decided to neither demolish or rebuild it so it was left frozen in time
for 69 years.
With crumbling buildings and an air of sadness that surrounds the village for anyone who
knows its history, Oradour is a sad reminder of one of the world’s darkest hours.
Thanks for watching!!
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