Ghosts and goblins take warning: you are not the scariest things on the planet on Halloween. These destinations places are creepy and scary all year.
San Lucas Prison, San Lucas Island, Costa Rica – This was a maximum-security jail, abandoned in 1991. The prisoners are gone, but the isolated island remains surrounded by sharks, which helped prevent escapes. For whatever reason, prisoners here had access to knives, so life expectancy behind bars here was just five years. Be sure to visit the cell where you can still see graffiti of a girl in a bikini that was drawn with human blood.
Chapel Of Bones, Evora, Portugal – The walls and columns of this chapel are covered in designs composed from the bones of more than 5,000 exhumed skeletons. Ribs and tibias are used to form the decoration around arches and columns, and skulls and other bones are squeezed into gaps in the stone or between other bones.
Mütter Museum, Philadelphia – This small museum is part of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, and it is part medical museum, part Ripley’s Believe it or Not. Among the 20,000 body parts on display are a man’s huge colon, the body of an 1830s woman whose fat turned soapy, and a slice of someone’s face suspended in fluid.
Chernobyl Amusement Park, Pripyat, Ukraine – This playground was park built for workers at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and their families. Just days before it was schedule to open, the world’s worst nuclear accident caused the evacuation of the town and for many miles beyond. Even 25 years later, Pripyat and the amusement park remain abandoned. The government allows only group tours, tour guides carry radiation monitors, since there still are hot pockets in the bizarre and empty landscape.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula Setting, Whitby, England – This place is the inspiration for Dracula’s arrival in England, in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. On dreary days, when rolling fog enshrouds Whitby’s clifftop abbey ruins and ocean waves slam into the rocks below, you can almost see it.
Akodessewa Fetish Market, Lome, Togo – This is reputed to be one of the world’s largest voodoo markets. If you are in the market for things like monkey skulls, mummified bats or elephant feet, the stalls here have what you need for just about any type of black magic ritual.
Find more creepy and sinister places with dark history on SmarterTravel.com.