10.
SUBMARINE CABIN
In the Russian city of Vologda, there’s a park with a seemingly out-of-place submarine
just sitting in the grass, as if it was just plopped there one day for unknown reasons.
But the decommissioned vessel was put there on purpose and restored as an attraction for
visitors.
It can be found at Victory Park, where it functions as both a centerpiece and a museum.
Moving the 30-ton (27 metric tons) diesel-electric powered sub to the site was no easy undertaking.
It took just a month alone for workers to lay the foundation for the display.
The vessel was delivered in parts, and it took a crew around two months to weld them
together.
Before the submarine was installed at the park, it served in the Russian navy.
It was built during the early 1980s and was temporarily part of the Black Sea Fleet based
out of Sevastopol.
In 1986, the sub became part of the Red Banner North Fleet based in the city of Polyarny.
It had the honor of traveling to the UK in 2001 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of
the British Royal Marines.
The vessel’s career may be over, but it’s found a new purpose educating the public about
the country’s naval history.
Visitors get the rare opportunity to go inside and explore the cabin’s seven compartments
firsthand.
There’s a living quarters, a control room, a medical isolation room, a latrine, and a
shower, along with some torpedo compartments, navigation equipment, a hydroacoustics cabin,
and an air supply system.
During guided tours, guests learn about what life on a submarine is like.
The tours are offered in multiple languages and have become a big hit among tourists from
other cities.
9.
DUNDAS CASTLE
A castle in the woods?
Is this a Disney movie?
Not quite.
During the late 19th century, architect Bradford Gilbert designed a summer retreat for himself
and his wife in Roscoe, New York.
Known as Beaverkill Lodge, the home was nestled in a forest in the Catskill Mountains.
The couple enjoyed the property until 1903, when they sold it to a new owner.
A wealthy businessman named Ralph Wurts-Dundas bought the home in 1907 with plans to expand
the existing structure into a mansion resembling a fairytale castle.
He imported a lot of the materials from Europe, including the Italian marble that he used
for building the floors, fireplaces, and staircases.
The castle grew to include 30 rooms, but Dundas died in 1921 before it was finished being
built.
His wife, Josephine, had a history of mental illness and struggled to cope with her husband’s
death.
She ended up in a sanatorium a year after Ralph passed away.
The couple’s daughter, Muriel, inherited the homestead.
But she never lived there.
After getting married in 1930, she moved to England.
Soon enough, Muriel began showing signs of mental instability and was committed to a
sanatorium just like her mother had been.
Meanwhile, the castle remained empty and neglected.
In 1949, Muriel sold the property to an African-American chapter of the Freemasons for $47,000.
The fraternity originally planned to use the castle as a home for the elderly and indigent,
but the plan failed to pan out.
Instead, they turned it into a resort and recreational center, as well as a summer camp
for inner-city youth.
The site still partially functions as a camp but the castle was abandoned and became derelict
at some point over the years.
A new owner bought the property in 2018.
8.
THE ENCHANTED FOREST OF ORRIUS
The small village of Òrrius in northeastern Spain is home to a seemingly enchanted forest
filled with a collection of carved rock figurines.
Most of them resemble the famous heads of Easter Island, but there are other shapes,
including a giant elephant.
The sculptures were allegedly crafted by local artists, who left their signatures on a stone
at the site.
There are many legends attached to the statues.
Based on their placement, some people suspect that they have mystical or mythical significance.
Others believe that a community of gnomes or dwarves live in and around the sculptures,
including a strange rock that has a door and is big enough to fit a few people inside.
Located roughly an hour’s drive outside Barcelona, the whimsical site offers an intriguing
escape from the city for those who manage to find it.
7.
FORDLANDIA
Henry Ford dreamed of creating a community based on the values that made the Ford Motor
Company successful.
He was iconic for revolutionizing the assembly line and also had a reputation for treating
and paying his employees well.
This made them better workers, he believed, and in turn, it made the company look good.
In 1928, Ford saw an opportunity to bring this vision of a utopian workers’ community
to life.
At the time, the price of Sri Lankan rubber was skyrocketing, leading him to search for
a new source for the raw material.
If the Ford Motor Company could produce its own rubber for tires, it would cut costs considerably.
The settlement, known as Fordlandia, would be in the Amazon jungle in northern Brazil,
which seemed like an ideal place for growing rubber trees.
Located along the Tapajos River, the property was raised and would naturally prevent flooding.
Construction materials could only be transported to the site during the rainy season, but workers
managed to build homes, hospitals, schools, a cafe, a dance hall, a golf course, a sawmill,
and more.
The complications only continued from there.
Numerous efforts to grow rubber trees failed, even after experts were called in to help.
In the meantime, the sense of community at Fordlandia wasn’t anywhere near as idyllic
as Ford had envisioned.
American workers were housed in a separate, nicer part of Fordlandia while Brazilian workers
were put in an area that lacked a nice view and had no running water.
Skilled employees were also given better accommodations than entry-level workers.
These divisions led to tensions among the workforce.
Things reached a boiling point in 1930, when a fight broke out between a brick mason and
his supervisor.
Workers rallied behind the mason and began vandalizing and destroying the city.
Managers escaped by ship and had to return with the military to suppress the riot.
Despite all this, Fordlandia remained in operation until Ford died in 1947.
His grandson, Henry Ford II, inherited the company.
His first order of business was to cut costs, and he sold Fordlandia back to the Brazilian
government for just $250,000 after his grandfather invested more than $20 million in the property.
In the following years, the population dropped to around 100.
But Fordlandia is seeing a revival and now has around 3,000 residents, who have started
to reoccupy the rusting, derelict buildings.
Have you heard of this place before?
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6.
BOHEMIAN VILLAGES
After World War II ended, more than 50 displaced German villages and hamlets in the Bohemian
Forest along the Czech border were abandoned.
The zone remained off-limits to the public until the 1990s, when it opened up to visitors
interested in seeing the derelict cottages, schools, churches, and other buildings.
Some of the settlements have all but vanished, with little to no visible traces remaining.
Others are filled with the ruins of buildings or are in the process of being uncovered.
In recent years, numerous buildings have been excavated in the former village of Lučina/Grafenried,
including a church, pub, and brewery, as well as a cemetery.
One abandoned settlement, known as Neratov, has been reinhabited by around 250 residents.
Around 80 percent of them live with disabilities.
They’ve turned the village into a self-sustaining and accommodating community that has pretty
much everything they want or need, including a school, grocery store, souvenir shop, pub,
cafe, and more.
5.
DADIPARK
During the 1950s, a Belgian priest named Gaston Deweer wanted to give bored kids something
to do while their parents visited the nearby Basilica of Our Lady of Dadizele, which is
a popular pilgrimage site.
So he built a playground and started expanding it into an amusement park a few years later.
By 1980, it was filled with rides and had gotten rid of all its playground equipment.
Known as Dadipark, it was the country’s first private amusement park.
Deweer made sure the admission stayed affordable so that local kids could visit, as well as
the children of tourists who visited during religious pilgrimages.
At its peak, the park welcomed a million visitors annually.
But the rides became run-down over time, and in 2000, a little boy lost his arm in a horrifying
accident.
The park closed down shortly after that, citing plans to renovate.
But no updates were ever made, and Dadipark never reopened.
Nature reclaimed the property as plans were made to demolish the rusting rides and attractions.
The site became popular among urban explorers before finally being torn down in recent years.
4.
SARAJEVO OLYMPIC VILLAGE
Sarajevo hosted the Winter Olympics in 1984, marking the first time the games took place
in a communist country.
Like with most other cities, an entire Olympic village and all the necessary facilities were
built for the event.
As soon as the games were over, these structures were abandoned and soon became reclaimed by
nature.
Less than a decade later, Sarajevo was ravaged by civil war.
Many of the former Olympic venues were destroyed, while others remained deserted as the siege
continued for four straight years.
Some of the structures were repurposed for war-related uses.
The Olympic hotel functioned as a prison and a bobsled track became an artillery stronghold.
Today, the crumbling ruins consist of what’s left of the bobsled track, a ski jumping venue,
spectator stands, and more.
The structures are covered in graffiti and overgrowth.
Kosovo Stadium, where the welcoming ceremony was held, has been taken over by stray dogs.
Abandoned Olympic venues are a persistent problem among host countries and cities, especially
those that aren’t particularly rich and who have no use for the multibillion dollar
facilities once the games end.
If the government can afford it, they often demolish the fixtures.
But this isn’t always an option, and it’s also a waste of money to upkeep the buildings.
So the easiest and most affordable thing to do is to ignore their presence as they deteriorate.
3.
BEELITZ-HEILSTÄTTEN HOSPITAL
Located roughly 30 miles (48.3 km) outside Berlin, Beelitz-Heilstätten is an enormous
complex that was originally built as a tuberculosis sanatorium during the late 19th century.
It consists of around 60 buildings and was once the world’s largest treatment center
for tuberculosis and other lung diseases.
During World War I, the site functioned as a field hospital for wounded soldiers.
Adolf Hitler was admitted there in 1916 for a leg injury he incurred in the Battle of
the Somme.
That first visit marked the beginning of his involvement with Beelitz-Heilstätten, which
the Nazis used as a field hospital during World War II.
Red Army forces occupied the property in 1945 and stayed there until 1994, when they finally
cleared out following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union’s collapse.
Parts of the complex are still in use today, but most of the buildings are abandoned aside
from their occasional use as movie sets and as an attraction for urban explorers.
The decaying buildings stand seemingly frozen in time, with their elegant yet haunting architecture
set against the backdrop of the surrounding forest.
They’re mostly empty minus a handful of items, including two pianos that were left
behind.
Visitors can access Beelitz-Heilstätten via a 700-foot-long (213 meters) pathway called
“Baum und Zeit,” or “Tree and Time.”
2.
ESQUELETO HOTEL
In 1953, construction began on what was supposed to be a 16-story hotel in the middle of the
tropical forest outside Rio de Janeiro.
The building continued for 19 grueling years before bankruptcy forced the developers to
abandon the project.
For nearly a half-century, it has sat in the woods as an unfinished shell with no elevator
or any other fixtures to make it livable, earning it the nickname of the Esqueleto,
or Skeleton Hotel.
This didn’t stop street dwellers and criminals from turning the decaying structure into their
home at one point.
They eventually cleared out, and now the site mostly attracts curious urban explorers.
Those who are brave enough to climb the exposed staircase, which has no railing, all the way
to the top are rewarded with a stunning view from the top of the building.
Loose bricks and broken concrete litter the floors of the graffiti-covered ghost hotel
that never was, and the surrounding wilderness has started to encroach upon the property.
It’s quite obviously decaying, and is starting to stick out like a sore thumb.
But it’s still there for people to enjoy, and for now, its structural integrity seems
to be holding out.
1.
CARBIDE WILLSON RUINS
Back in the late 19th century, a little-known Canadian inventor named Thomas “Carbide”
Willson developed a process for creating an industrial chemical called calcium carbide.
Later in his career, he built a lavish summer home and laboratory in what is now Gatineau
Park just outside Ottawa.
Rumor has it that Willson built the property deep in the forest because he was paranoid
that competitors would spy on him and steal his ideas.
By then, Willson was focused on making innovations in the fertilizer industry.
He began experimenting with ways to pack more phosphoric acid into the material.
The eccentric inventor expanded his estate as his needs for space to carry out his work
increased.
He even built an experimental power station next to nearby Lake Meech.
It was often blamed for dramatically raising and lowering the lake’s water levels.
Willson eventually ran into money problems after failing to meet his products’ production
demands.
He went bankrupt and handed the estate over to one of his investors, who neglected the
property and let it fall into disrepair.
What’s left of the home still stands as a hollowed-out shell of its former self.
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