10: Sunken Village In 1978, villagers in the western Romanian
village of Geamana were forced by the then-communist regime to flee their homes.
What remains of the settlement today can only be described as something out of a nightmare.
Today, the settlement is slowly drowning, hidden beneath a deluge of toxic waste.
Four decades after its residents were pushed out, nothing more than the tips of the rooftops
can be seen now and again.
In fact, the only constant reminder that the town of Geamana ever existed is the church
spire sticking out from the toxic lake.
In the shallower waters away from the village center, abandoned pieces of farm equipment
and ruined houses can sometimes be seen as well.
So how did this happen?
Villagers were forced from their homes because of an incoming toxic flood from the nearby
copper mine.
Nobody wanted to flee, but they didn't have any choice.
The toxic sludge came pouring into the village and destroyed everything in sight.
Today, the village is still hidden beneath the yellow, bubbling toxic gunk.
And to make things truly tragic, it was all on purpose.
In 1977, the communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu made plans to build the biggest mine in Romania,
and he was ultimately successful.
At one point, it was the highest producing copper mine in the region.
However, waste products from the mine washed into the man-made valley where Geamana was
located, turning the community into a catch-basin for the toxic, acidic, gray and red waste
that flooded the area.
Ceausescu didn't mind if toxic waste flooded the town.
He gave the villagers, many of whom had families that had been living there for generations,
less than $2000 each to forsake their homes and abandon their lives.
Some 20 families initially refused to leave, simply moving to higher ground.
Geamana now serves as a potent reminder of the tragic effects humans can have on the
environment.
9: Illusions in the Hudson Valley Mine The Widow Jane Mine in the Hudson Valley,
New York was at one time the main source of concrete for the entire United States.
This was way back in the early 1800s, the mine supplied the concrete that was used to
build much of the country’s infrastructure at the time.
The mine can be found today in Ulster County, just a short drive from the town of Poughkeepsie.
While many abandoned mines and other locations similar to this are off-limits, this is one
of the few that can be accessed without breaking any laws.
It's creepy, it's been abandoned for decades, it's partially flooded, and it is rumored
that sometimes those who visit its eerie underground passages come face to face with the dead.
Locals say a woman named Jane LeFevre Snyder lived at a nearby estate.
She was a beloved figure in the community and became a widow at the young age of 31.
She also lost all four of her male children when they were just infants.
The Snyder family owned and operated the mine from 1825 to 1970, and apparently, The Widow
Jane’s spirit is said to still lurk in the darkest depths of the mine.
Those who have ventured down into its dark chasms say they witnessed her ghostly specter-
a woman in a long white dress -wandering through the blackness.
Though nobody can say why she refuses to leave the abandoned mine.
8: Creepy Cottage Colin Smith is a plumber who likes to go urban
exploring in his spare time.
The UK native was recently traveling the countryside looking for interesting places to explore
when he discovered a horrifying abandoned cottage in Devon.
Naturally, he broke into the cottage and took a look around.
The cottage proved to be a goldmine of abandoned relics from a bygone age.
He discovered bizarre photographs of indigenous communities from across the globe, family
photos that look like they came from the Victorian days, broken furniture, and heaps of dusty
books.
There was a TV from the 1990s, a cast-iron stove, and the whole place was filled with
vegetation growing through the walls.
It's been abandoned for at least 20 years, but Colin has no idea why.
The door was wide open when he showed up, leading Colin to suspect that someone had
explored the abandoned cottage before him.
The sheer volume of personal effects, items, and belongings left the whole scene feeling
sad and eerie.
Colin went on to say, “All of their possessions were left in the house, which makes me think
that maybe whoever lived here, lived alone and had nobody to sort out their stuff after
they died or ended up in hospital.”
7: Lost Theme Park The Enchanted Forest amusement park in Maryland
opened its doors in August of 1955.
This was about a month after Disneyland opened.
The park was dreamt up by a man named Howard Harrison, who based all the rides and attractions
on family nursery rhymes and popular fairy tales.
The park included boat rides, antique cars, a petting zoo, and plenty of cute, animated
characters.
For about 30 years, the park was a big success.
The park was ahead of the times, welcoming all to enjoy their rides and make-believe
even during the time of segregation, making it a standout from other attractions across
the country.
But alas, after some time people stopped taking their kids to The Enchanted Forest, and the
whole place fell into disrepair.
In the 80s, malls, video game arcades, and the success of bigger and more impressive
parks like Kings Dominion and Hershey Park drew away business.
Ultimately it was abandoned.
In 1987, the Harrison family didn't have enough money to maintain the park and were forced
to sell the land to a shopping center developer for millions.
But the company never developed the shopping center.
They just left the Enchanted Forest alone to be reclaimed by nature.
Decades later, a woman named Martha Clark discovered the abandoned theme park and decided
to claim it for herself.
In 2004, she purchased all the pieces of the theme park and started moving them to her
farm.
It took her nearly a decade to move all the attractions, but she managed to take every
single one of them and bring them onto her own property.
She even moved the giant dragon and its castle.
The original site of the amusement park is still abandoned today, but now all of its
props are sitting on some random woman’s farm just a few miles down the road.
6: Discarded Boats The coastline around Devon and Cornwall in
the United Kingdom is plagued by abandoned boats.
Fishermen and boating enthusiasts have dumped hundreds of plastic boats and derelict vessels
off the coast, and they always end up washing back to shore in the same place.
This has created one of the most shocking boat graveyards in the world.
The wreckage of the Dignity is caught in the muck of a tidal creek in Devon, shedding toxic
paint into the water where swans feed.
Other vessels have batteries and oils leaking into the water.
While it may look fascinating from the outside seeing hundreds of boats that people have
literally just dumped here, it's actually quite terrible for the environment.
Some of these boats contain asbestos, which gets into the water and kills the local wildlife.
According to the local officials, the problem is just getting worse.
A brief trip through the area makes you think of a post-apocalyptic landscape with boat
hulls sticking through the sand, boats tipped over and cracked on the shore, and random
anchors rusted and covered with crustaceans. 5: Polar Bear Invasion
When a Russian photographer visited a series of abandoned buildings at a derelict meteorological
station on a small island, he discovered the impossible.
The island is located in the Chukchi Sea, extremely hard to get to in the middle of
Russia and Alaska.
The photographer had to take a sailing yacht along the coast over 1200 miles (1931 km)
along a totally empty landscape.
The villages here are all abandoned, there isn't a single person living for hundreds
of miles around, and the only residents are the local wildlife.
When the photographer reached the meteorological station on Wrangel Island, he was shocked
to find that the abandoned buildings had been taken over by polar bears.
A polar bear literally walked out of the front door of one of these buildings, while another
leaned out of the window and stared at him.
Some of the houses had as many as four polar bears living inside them.
They acted as perfect shelters for these hungry predators, making great use out of the decaying
1930s structures.
It's amazing because it goes to show that once humans leave an area, wild animals come
back almost immediately.
And if there are houses left behind, they have no problem taking them over.
If your neighborhood was abandoned today, what kind of animals do you think would take
over?
Let me know in the comments and don't forget to hit subscribe before the end of the video!
4: Eight Feet Under Investigators in Alabama came across something
horrifying beneath the floorboards of an abandoned home in Georgetown.
Underneath a room in the house, 8 feet below the foundation, the unidentified remains of
a man were uncovered.
According to Sergeant Mark Bailey, he’d never seen anything like it in his 23 years
of law enforcement.
The body was disposed of and then the floor put back together to hide it.
The body was buried deeper than it would have been in a grave at a cemetery.
Nobody knows whose bones these are.
The remains have been beneath the abandoned structure for at least 14 months, which has
so far made identification impossible.
There are no persons of interest, no arrests have been made, and nobody has any clue what
happened.
Somebody knew the abandoned house was the perfect place to bury a body – and they
buried it in the cleverest way possible.
The only reason the cops found it was because they had been called to the home for suspicious
activity and brought their canine unit with them.
The canines managed to sniff out the corpse.
3: Abandoned Wisconsin The Paradise Springs Nature Trail leads directly
to a series of creepy abandoned buildings in Wisconsin.
It's part of a larger natural area, filled with hiking trails and beautiful springs.
People normally visit the trail to enjoy the peace and quiet of nature.
But urban explorers have discovered that if you go to the end of the trail, you reach
a creepy old bottling plant.
This natural spring was previously the location of a number of different things - at one point
it was a resort hotel.
Close enough to Milwaukee but far enough to count as a getaway spot, the area also previously
played host to a horse track that was built in the 1920s.
The area also used to be extremely popular with trout fisherman until the dam broke,
washing the fish downstream and leaving only the spring behind.
Up until the 1960s, spring water was bottled at this facility.
That's why it's so deep in the woods, where the spring water is the freshest.
But it was abandoned and disassembled, and now there are only a handful of ruins.
Some of the stone walls just refuse to fall over.
The few buildings still standing will probably remain here for the next hundred years.
2: Abandoned Farmhouse An urban explorer named Daniel Sims stumbled
upon a deserted farmhouse in the UK.
The farmhouse appeared to have been abandoned abruptly, just after its residents put breakfast
on the table.
The farmhouse proved to be one big goldmine of creepy.
Daniel entered the house and was immediately shocked by the memorabilia dating as far back
as the 30s littering every surface.
There were creepy dolls, kids’ toys all over the floor, and personal effects everywhere.
The calendar on the wall was from 1996, suggesting the place had only been abandoned for about
20 years.
Yet in all this time, nobody has ever returned to clear the stuff out or demolish the structure,
which is located in the middle of the rural countryside.
It's so far off the road you would never find it unless you were really hunting for it.
But the real mystery has been trying to figure out where the people went and why they left.
Daniel discovered milk and jam still on the kitchen table, with plates laid out as if
they had been preparing breakfast.
Something must have spooked them, because they never got around to finishing their toast.
1: The SS Leopoldville On December 24, 1944, the SS Leopoldville
was deployed to fight in the battle of the bulge.
It was carrying 2000 American soldiers.
When the ship neared its destination, just five miles from France, it was hit by a torpedo
from a German submarine.
The torpedo decimated the ship, causing mass panic and chaos through the decks.
300 soldiers were killed immediately by the blast, with another 463 dying in the frigid
waters of the English Channel as they desperately tried to reach the shore.
It was one of the biggest tragedies in the history of the US.
And it was made all the more terrible because it happened on Christmas Eve!
The ship sank to the bottom of the channel.
And there it has remained abandoned ever since.
In a recent special by National Geographic, they took a look at the ship on the ocean
floor, except they took away the water.
The special was called “Drain the Oceans.”
They were looking at famous wrecks across the world and what they might look like if
all the water suddenly evaporated.
What other kinds of crazy things do you think we’d find if we drained the oceans?
Let me know in the comments and thanks a lot for watching!
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