Welcome to the beautiful empire of dead - Some of world’s most haunted places

Welcome to the beautiful empire of dead

Some of world’s most haunted places

There is a lane near my apartment in Malaysia that connects a pedestrian to metro rail line. By the lane there is a Malaysian cemetery. White tombs, fruit laden trees, blossoming flowers, green iron grills with moon and star engraved on it forms a picturesque scene captivating every eye passing by. Whenever I take a walk I see children who are notorious for their noise they made, looks tight lipped with fear. The peace prevailing is disturbing to few but attract attentions of many. They bury their loved ones with pomp and show that it is a farewell to perished body and at same time celebrating rebirth of soul. Most feared human death so we cannot rule out that decorum there is to mitigate the fear. Have a look at any Chinese cemetery and you will reach to conclusion that death is more grandeur than life. Since ages burial place like pyramids of Egypt have attracted tourists. Life after death is always a subject matter of craving and curiosity and it has huge fan following.  In the same way the world’s most wanted haunted places are most admired places among tourists.

Name of the place: Catacombs of Paris

Location: Near to Metro station, Paris France

Background and what makes it a haunting place.

In the late 17^th century when cremation of bodies reached saturation level that it became public concern this cemetery of innocent was transferred to quarries beneath Paris grounds. Under stewardship of Inspector General of quarries Charles Axel Guillaumot this network of tunnels stretching to 300km was converted into graveyard with human skulls and bones embossed on the walls. With growing popularity it was opened to public in 1867 and till date it is visited by hundreds of them. Numbers they have limited to 200 visitors a day walking 2 kms in 45 minutes. Its walls, pillars, floors are made up of human bones and skulls with spell bounding beauty networked in entire tunnel and from here it got its name catacombs. Since 17^th century media has highlighted this magnificent place as place connecting to history of Paris comprising bodies of more than 6 million Parisians. A walk through this tunnel takes you out of time and pillars with paintings grasp your attention at prima facie and makes your journey an unforgettable experience

New Orleans

Location: Pennsylvania, United states

Background and what makes it a haunting place

Voted as best among 10 best haunted place of USA for 2004,2005 and 2006 consecutively New Orleans is famous for its haunted mansions too. Voodoo curses, mysterious murders, war era pirate killings, civil war causalities and on other end of spectrum is Jazz, splendid food, grand night life.These are like two sides of a coin you see when you take a tour of New Orleans. Here we welcome you to the city of ghosts and dead which is very live and beautiful at the same time. The city offers fine dining experience lasting till wee hours, X rated entertainment on Bourbon streets and ghosts like figures meandering on streets. Many of the tourists have witnessed and took photographs of free flowing spirits without bodies. They are out of the cycle of death and birth and they are harmless and have become part and parcel of residents out here. If you take a stroll on the streets and look at the balconies of the houses, it has reflections of hanging gardens of Babylon. If you take a snap of those iron grilled balconies, you might get lucky enough to have a spirit getting visible in your photo. In the legendary city of dead, is a cemetery where over 90% burials are over the ground. From individual graves to family tombs you can see skulls on the walls. Walk a little ahead towards St. Louis cemetery number 1,and there is the grave of legendary voodoo queen Marie Lavaeau. Many people from different corners of the world comes and pays their tribute to the queen. Scattered candles, flowers, fetishes and other items show their reverence towards the queen. If you visit this place during mid of June, you might be able to see the live rituals of the queen going in front of your eyes.

Sedlec Ossuary

Location: Sedlec, a suburb of Kutná Hora in the Czech Republic

Background and what makes it a haunting place

King Otakar II of Bohemia sent Henry, an abbot of monastery to visit holy land. On his arrival he bought the soil of a  holy land and sprinkled it around the monastery ,that till date it is a wish of a dying person to get buried here and is considered to be pious. It is a honor for a dead to get buried in  the catholic chapel now named as Sedlec Ossuary. In Sedlec, a suburb of Czech Republic,there are burials of 40,000- 70,000 dead bodies, arranged in a beautiful asymmetry to form spell bounding decorations of bones and skulls. After black deaths in 14^th century and Husite wars in 15^th century, the cemetery had to be enlarged. It took over two centuries to beautify place with same bones and skulls. As you enter the chapel, a magnificent chandelier made up of bones shows slog of people they put in for two centuries. These people came from every walk of life, like a half blind monk, a wood carver, painters and designers who made the remains of  the dead bodies live and gave it a grand look. Many films and documentaries have been shot here. It’s bizarre to see all this but it is worth seeing as there is more to it  than 70,000 human’s  skulls and bones put together to give it a spell binding beauty.

Edinburgh vaults

Location: South bridge, Edinburgh, Scotland

Background and what makes it a haunting place

Under the South Bridge in Scotland are series of rooms that once upon a time were used as a storage space and workshops for the South bridge businesses. After the construction of the bridge it became red light districts housing criminals, prostitutes and slum dwellers in a dingy rooms. Mystery murders, serial killings made these vaults infamous between 1835 and 1875. It came in limelight when some of the personalities like Norrie Rowan a rugby player, used it along with his friends to escape the secret Romanian police. The place is famous for adventure tourism and ghosts. People comes here to see and meet the spirits in the gloomy and candle light lit corridors. Norrie Rowan converted south gate into the caves but most of the attention has been given to the spirits like cantankerous “Mr. Boots” and young “Jack” who giggles and can be seen running in the corridors. They have appeared in UK’s top TV show “Most Haunted” as well in “Halloween”.  Plagues, witches, hangings and ghosts comprise darker side of the place but this place is getting fresh attention for opening of the underground vaults or catacombs. It became the live burial ground for thousands of people who died during the era of “Black Death” and since than it has became Britain’s most haunted location.

Colosseum- An amphitheatre

Location: Center of Rome, Italy

Background and what makes it a haunting place

Capable of seating 50,000 people this amphitheatre in Rome was used for gladiator like games,which comprised  killings of animals and more than 500,000 human beings .During early 21^st century earthquake caused visible harm to it but this spectacular icon of roman architecture still attracts attention, especially when Pope leads a torch lit “way of the cross” procession in this amphitheatre. Once upon a time it was a place for capital punishment and now it is symbol of peace. Voted as one of the “New Open World Corporations” new seven wonders of world, this was  a place of commencing the gladiators like fights during sixth century AD. Than it turned out to become the hideouts of the thieves and dwelling place for workers in 1643. Colosseum is a place, where the gladiators awaited to fight, prisoners waited for their time to die in the most ghastly of ways and still lives there the spirits, that got embedded here. Visitors and tour guides of today have reported many paranormal experiences. There have been cold spots, some have said  that they felt someone touch or push them, and heard someone whispering in their ears. The night workers of the Colosseum have reported sword clashing, sounds of crying, and noises of animals such as the roars of beasts imported from Africa and Middle East countries during time of Ceaser. Some have even seen ghostly figures sitting in the seats of the Colosseum.

Transylvania

Location: Centre part of Romania

Background and what makes it a haunting place

Known as the “cursed land” Transylvania, one of three former principalities (the others being Moldavia and Wallachia) which form the modern state of Romania, is extended to the west to Apuseni mountains. After Roman legions withdrew in 271 AD, it was ruled by various barbarian tribes. It is most famous for its temple of Dracula and you will be surprise to know that, without even visiting the temple author of the  “Dracula Bram Stoker” described it as the  headquarters to Dracula and the vampires. It is invariably represented as a mysterious and supernatural stuff  in famous Dracula films and fictions and as a matter of fact, its inhabitants are still depicted as backward peasants, who holds fast to their primitive and superstitious past, who still hang garlic on their windows to keep vampires away, and who would never venture out at night without a crucifix in hand.

For most people today, Transylvania is still a mysterious, mountainous, mist-shrouded region, deep in the forbidding Carpathian Mountains. Travel writers and Dracula enthusiasts help to perpetuate this stereotype by waxing eloquent, when they describe this region. For example, in the November 1994 issue of the” Life”, Marilyn Johnson writes: Once upon a time, the mysterious and creepy realms of Dracula seemed like a figment of Bram Stoker’s imagination. But it turns out that the inspiration of this dark kingdom is for real, found in the Romanian province. The mist-covered mountains are real, the crumbling castles are real, the howling wolves, swooping bats, peasants making the signs of the cross, all real.

A similar tendency is evident in the media coverage. Writing in 1995 for the “World Dracula Congress”, Julius Strauss of “The Guardian” noted that “Even today, Eastern Transylvania is a land of misty mountains, superstitious, rural peasants, growling bears and howling wolves.” Not surprisingly, Romanians (especially Transylvanians) today are somewhat confused, and even bemused, by such responses.

On Transylvania Mountains there located Dracula’s castle. As per folklore when Turkish army surrounded him, he disappeared in the mountains and is still meandering in the jungles, seen in the castle number of times.

Auschwitz concentration camp

Location: Oswiecim, Poland, Europe

Background and what makes it a haunting place

Now declared as the world heritage site it was one of the most infamous Nazi’s concentration camps where more than 3 million people died in the gas chambers and some got succumbed to systematic hunger, forced labor and purported medical experiments. In the remembrance of the victims, Poland founded a museum and its entrance is crowned with the words “work brings the freedom”. There are some 16 blocks and each block represents its legacy of pain, that prisoner suffered. Like, block 13 was a standing cell of 16 square feet, where 4 people stand together for the whole day and night and were deprived of food and water till they get succumbed to death. Dark cells comprised of tiny window and solid doors and the prisoners died in this as they exhausted the available oxygen. To make the process  of exhausting of the oxygen rapid,they used to light the candles in the cells. The execution yards are there in block 10 and 11, where you can still see the walls, where the prisoners were shot and were hooked on the walls. Most visited is the gas chamber, in which some 60,000 people were killed in the basement of the block 11.

Visitors paying a visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau reportedly experienced overwhelming sense of foreboding; breaking down in tears for no apparent reason. Visitors were struck not only by the horrific memory of the place, but also by the effect it has on the present day: birds still refuse to sing on the trees surrounding the death camps and no trees grows, no flowers blossoms in the environment anywhere nearby. The silence and the sense of fear they experience is strange, even after all these years.

People have reported cold spots and areas of intense emotional concentration. Photographs over the years have revealed the presence of spirit manifestations in the form of misty apparitions, shadows, light anomalies and cries.

Unit 731

Location: Harbin City, State of Manchukuo, China

Background and what makes it a haunting place

Located in Northwest China in Harbin city, district Pingfang, Unit 731 is now a tourist attraction drawing attention of people towards atrocities that a human mind can conduct to seek power. An example of power corrupt mind, every corner of unit 731 yells out brutality of Japanese army under stewardship of Shiro Ishii, the commander of the unit. In this unit they carried out purported purposeful experiments on nationalities of America, Russians and Chinese to develop weapons of biological warfare. This resulted  into possible deaths of some 200,000 people. The complex is spread in 6 square kilometer, housing some 150 buildings, 4500 containers used to raise fleas. Six giant plants to make chemicals and to fill it in 1800 containers is still present there. As for now some of the units are being used for the industrial purposes, but the rest of them reminds us of the most heinous war crimes.

At that time, the unit was disbanded into headquarters. Parts of the Unit 731 complex still remain – there are buildings where experiments were performed on man and animals, courtyards and open areas where prisoners were subjected to live bombs detonated at close range to enable researchers to evaluate the effect of explosives of the sort that Japanese soldiers were encountering in the fields.
The Chinese government sanctioned the Unit and the surrounding area as a learning center for the future generations of Chinese, and just recently visitors from the West have been allowed access to the killing fields at Harbin. There are reports of paranormal activity associated with the old charnel houses: ghost lights and apparitions are frequently seen, including a ghostly figure that walks in the empty precincts surroundings of the frostbite units. Ghostly voices have been heard and anomalies frequently appear in photographs taken in the area. Recently, during the filming of a BBC television documentary, the English film crew experienced unexplainable problems with their lights and batteries – often a sure sign of ghostly activity. Many speculate that as the story of Unit 731 is more widely told, the ghosts of those tragically tormented and murdered there are becoming more and more active, and more anxious for justice than ever before.

Gettysburg

Gettysburg – Pennsylvania USA

Background and what makes it a haunting place

It is a place where the largest battle was fought and it is the place with large number of ghost stories, this is the battlefield of Gettysburg where President Abraham Lincoln gave a very impressive speech after the war was over. This is the place where the US 20^th Marine saw ghost of George Washington that leaded them to the battlefield. On July 4^th 1863 there were some 28,000 causalities noted in Pennsylvania region. It was one of the bloodiest civil war where one third people died in the region. If lost and not been able to find the battlefield, just go around in the village and ask, and everyone will tell that you are standing in the field itself. Since the war was so close to the town, many houses were used as a  make shift hospitals, to nurse the sick, many soldiers died. People have experienced the “phantom smells” in Baltimore streets and odour of peppermint. As per rumor, ladies used to carry the  handkerchief with smell of peppermint covering their mouth to avoid the smell of the blood. That smell is still in the air. Gettysburg College now known as Pennsylvania College, consisted of three brick buildings, where some 100 students were killed, during the war. Till date one can see the physical effects but the spirits are also seen. Pennsylvania Hall is the most haunted place in the campus, with white columns, where many officers and students have seen figures of soldiers pacing back and forth in the building.

Nearby in Farnsworth hall ,the breakfast is still served as during those days. It has the original rafters and flooring with some 100 bullet holes,where many have seen a woman in her period clothes and one when tries to get closer, she disappears. The battle has left its spirits behind.

East End

Location: White chapel, London East End, London, England.

Back ground and what makes it haunting place

In the north of the Thames River is situated the East End of London. The East End came into being as the separate villages, in the east of London, spread and the fields between them were built upon, a process that occurred in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. From the beginning, East End has always contained some of the poorest areas of London. This part had became synonymous with poverty, overcrowding, disease and criminality .The White chapel / Spittal fields area of East London has been mostly inhabited by Anglos and Jewish moneylenders. It was a place of soldiers and prostitutes, brawls and bawdy houses, thieves and the most derelicts of English society.

In 1888 the White chapel area of London was the spot of some of the most brutal murders by the famous “Jack the Ripper” crimes. Murders and identity of Jack remain unsolved, even today. Some says that the killer was a psychopathic doctor; others believe that the killer, to have been Queen Victoria’s grandson, Prince Albert Victor, but it doesn’t have an iota of truth as there are no proofs to support it.

Five women, all of them poor prostitutes, were slaughtered by the mysterious Jack in the span of just four months, known collectively as “The Autumn of Terror.”  Nevertheless, it is thought that his horrible mutilation of Mary Kelly was his last act of violence and there is no evidence that Jack, whoever he may have been, killed again after November 1888.

Today, the visitors to London’s East End can walk through the streets and visit pubs and other locations that Jack may have haunted in life – and death. Walking tours of the area are very popular and Jack’s legacy is certainly the most enduring. Other ghosts that haunts the East End are those of Jack’s victims, in various stages of mutilation; a ghostly band of Roman soldiers; a murderous sea captain’s ghost that haunts a local pub; and a mysterious black carriage drawn by ghastly white horses that approaches without a sound and disappears right before your eyes. These and other haunts, combined with the long haunted history of the East End make it one of the must visit ghostly locations in the world.