Brilio.net/en - Dreadful places do exist. Mystery lingers on the places even feels more alive than youve ever felt when listening to nightmare stories in a holiday form. Even though the houses where people were murdered are restored, the temples where the mass executions took place are redeveloped, and the wicked places remain there for you to see.
Some of those creepy places are completely abandoned, making people shiver by only passing them through. You can pave over a ghost city or a place ruined by chemical disasters. And what about plunging into a creepy night, inside an abandoned office building nested in a busy city? Or do you dare enough to visit the alleyway where serial killer John Wayne Gacy, Jr. reportedly picked up many of his victims?
People will drive by, sneak in, or pay money for a ticket to enter chilling locations where ghastly tragedy happens, or terrible rumors stem from. Here are some of the most craved sites for dark tourism in the world.
1. Lizzie Borden House
Lizzie Borden
This dreadful true story happened long ago, but what makes it come to life is that the house where sadistic murders took place is now a hotel. Yes, you can spend a night there and taste the terror in the air.
In 1892, the house at 92 Second Street in Fall River Massachusetts was the scene of a wild crime that turned into legend in the US.
The body of Abby Borden was discovered in an upstairs bedroom, with horrific injuries of multiple sharp blows that left her nearly unrecognizable. Her husband, millionaire Andrew Borden was found in the parlor in an even worse condition.
Andrews sharp business instinct and thrifty nature doubled the growth of his wealth, but also contributed to a list of people who found him unfavorable. One of his daughters, Lizzie, was the main suspect. Sisters Lizzy and Emma, who at that time was in their 30s, lived in the house. However, evidences lead the judges to set their eyes only on Lizzie.
At that time, a woman commit a murder was an extraordinary affair. Her inconsistent statements, the appearance of the hatched-ridden skulls in court, and even wild rumors that contributed to the lack of evidence, including Lizzy being naked during the murder, made this one of the most outstanding crimes of its day.
After 90 minutes of deliberation, a jury of 12 men decided Borden to be not guilty. She went on to live out her days in the same town, yet remaining an outcast as she had her name publicly stained.
Lizzie was forever depicted as a murderess. Her infamy was immortalized in a macabre nursery rhyme:
Lizzie Borden took an ax
And gave her mother forty whacks.
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.
The house remains and now became the Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast Museum. You can tour the home, sit in the parlor where Andrew was hacked to death or spend the night in the very room where Abby was murdered. Periodically, the house presents bloody replication of the crime.
There are eight rooms available to overnight guests, including Lizzies, but the most popular is the one where Mrs. Borden was found dead between the bed and dresser.
Guests were reporting sightings or supernatural experiences during their stays. A woman said that she saw a Victorian-dressed figure in a mirror, while others felt something sitting on their beds. There are reports of items in the room mysteriously falling during the night, or doors slamming by themselves.
Its your choice to believe in them or not, and also your choice to spend a creepy holiday there, or stay away.
2. Pompeii
This vast archaeological site is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Italys Campania region. Once a prosperous and elegant Roman city, this ancient city became a deadly place where over 2,000 people were killed.
Back in 79 A.D, Mount Vesuvius erupted and buried Pompeii under millions of tons of volcanic ash. The dust poured across the land like a flood, one witness wrote, and buried the city in a darkness like the black of closed and unlighted rooms.
Actually, the city was remained dark and hidden for hundreds of years, until rediscovered initially in 1599 and again in 1748. During the slow excavation, engineers discovered empty human-like figures while digging through ash. Those creepy figures was determined as the spaces left by decomposed bodies.
One engineer who discovered the figures, Giuseppe Fiorelli, injected these empty voids with plaster in order to recreate the forms of the victims.
For over 250 years, Pompeii has been a holiday destination with millions of tourists around the world visiting each year.
3. Missouri State Penitentiary
The Bloodiest 47 Acres in America, is the introduction youll read on Missouri State Penitentiarys website, a name given to it by Time Magazine in 1967.
The prison operated from 1836, before it was deactivated in 2004. It was the oldest operating penal facility in the USs Midwest.
Back when the prison still functioned, it is believed that they housed as many as eight inmates in a single cell. Riots became ordinary daily occurences during overcrowding, and often several bodies lay on the prison floor when the way was cleared.
In the 1960s, there were hundreds of serious assaults reported that included multiple stabbings.
Today, you can see the remains of the prisons darkest days in its 168-days history. You will be guided through Housing Unit 1, A-Hall, dungeon cells, the Upper Yard, Housing 3 and the Gas Chamber, where 40 inmates were sentenced to death all but one by cyanide gas. The one exception was by lethal injection.
Many people believe that the old prison is haunted.
4. Saidah Tower
Image: detik
Busy city Jakarta, Indonesia has so many ghastly places where ghosts or any supernatural beings are lurking in the dark. Among the most phenomenal places is Saidah Tower, also known as Menara Saidah.
Image: detik
In its glorious time, the 28 stories office tower was shining splendidly towards the sky. Notable companies in Jakarta flocked to its floors, making it one of the most luxurious office building at the time. Sadly, the magnificence of the building is now just a story.
Since 2007, the Saidah Tower was officially closed to the public. Not many people know the reason of the abandonment. Some believe it was due to bad management, while the other say it was the skewed structure of the tower.
However, Saidah Tower has turn into a kind of dark spine-chilling place, under the shadows of the foliage. The bravest people happened to enter the abandoned building, stepping along its dark floors, only to catch sighting of a mysterious lady in red, believed to be a spiritual being occupying the tower of horror.
There are so many stories to depict the eeriness of Saidah Tower. Two security guards affirmed that they was once asked by a woman to escort her to the 14th floor of the building, and once arrived, the woman (who stood behind them inside the lift) had disappeared. Other story says that a statue decorating the towers lobby is occasionally turned its head to other side, and some people swear that they smelled something resembles blood at the basement.
Now, do you have the guts to prove the stories true? Well, the lift of this tower are still working, only if you dare to enter.
5. Pripyat
It is like something we would see in a thriller movie: a ghost town. Pripyat in Ukraine is the best example if you want to see what a post-apocalyptic city would look like. Once, the city was a home to nearly 50,000 people. It was in April 26, 1986, when a massive explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant changed everything.
The explosion unleashed radioactive particles into the air, that spread over Russia and Europe. Thirty-one people died, and many suffered long term effects, such as cancer.
At the time, residents of Pripyat were not evacuated until a day after the disaster, and by then they started experiencing severe headaches and bouts of vomiting.
During evacuation, residents were told to bring only immediate necessities, as they expected to return three days later. However, the radiation was so severe, and they never allowed to get back. Buildings and houses remain as they were, and in many cases, personal items, such as clothes and bicycles, remain where residents last left them.
Today, you can take a tour package to explore this ghost town, to see abandoned houses with a plate and a mug are still on the table, as a person is about to have his/her meal, or a classroom with math written by white chalk on the blackboard, or an abandoned autoclave in hospital, or a doll with a gas mask abandoned at a Kindergarten, or a deserted amusement park and many more everyday events.
Until now, the radiation level at Pripyat remains high, and its illegal to take items into the radioactive area, or to take any items out. Upon leaving, you will be scanned for the radiation levels. If the level is pretty high, you will be given a chemical bath.
6. Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre
In the darkest 100 days in Rwanda, starting in April to July 1994, between 500,000 to 1 million people were killed. Those victims were primarily from the ethnic backgrounds of Tutsi and Hutu. The genocide was organized by the dominant political party at the time, and included people in the military and law enforcement.
Machetes, guns, rape and mutilation were used as methods to kill. Victims were killed in their towns, their homes, schools and churches. Government sponsored radio incited some of the violence, stressing neighbors to murder each other.
Only after international intervention, the killing finally stopped. On the 10th anniversary of the genocide, the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre opened. The center was built on the location where 250,000 people were buried. Eight mass graves are located on the site, as well as burial chambers, and audio and visual accounts from survivors. Hundreds of thousands have visited the museum.
Today, discrimination on the basis of race, religion and ethnicity is outlawed.
7. Los Angeles Museum of Death
For those who have personal interest in serial killers and their victimes, the Museum of Death on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles, California offers a self-guided tour that includes the largest collection of serial killer artworks in the world.
Prepare to shiver as you find replicas of death masks, crime scene photos, as well as taxidermy, mortician and autopsy instrument replicas of execution devices and other items associated with death, including videos of death scenes.
However, its not the displays of body bags and coffins that seem to draw the most interest. It is the exhibits dedicated to cults and serial killers keep tourist flocking back into the museum. Youll find exhibits dedicated to Charles Manson and John Wayne Gacy, who would dress up as his alter ego, Pogo the Clown, and entertain his neighborhood. He would go on to be convicted of the murder of 33 boys and young men, and 26 of them were buried beneath the floorboards of his house.
Most of the of Gacys artwork was sold, and some of it was auctioned and destroyed, including one communal bonfire event where the victims families were in attendance. However, some of his work can be found on display here.
You can also spot the Heaven's Gate mass suicide includes the original beds here, as well as the head of Henri Landru. Once a year, the museum holds a Black Dahlia look-alike competition. As contestant, you will have to dress to resemble both pre and post-mortem Dahlia.
8. Isla de las Munecas
Within a swamp south of Mexico City, lies Isla de las Munecas, or the Island of the Dolls. The name is based on the story which taken place in 1960s when a little girl drowned in Xochimilco waterways around the island.
Soon after her death, Don Julin Santana Barrera, the islands only inhabitant, found a doll (thought to belonged to the little girl) in the water.
In the following days he discovered more dolls and became convinced that they were a paranormal sign. He started collecting dolls and hanging them all over the island, in the belief that they were vessels for spirits that kept the dead girl company and protected his island from further tragedy.
This went on and Isla de las Munecas became the stuff of nightmares with hundreds of mutilated dolls hanging from the trees.
Then, in 2001 Barrera died in mysterious circumstances. Many now believe that the spirit-inhabited dolls murdered him in some real life version of the Chucky movies. This rumor is further supported by claims that the dolls come alive at night. Just prove it right or wrong if you dare.
(brl/tis)
