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 17th 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 17th 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 14th
century and Husite wars in 15th 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 21st
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 20th Marine saw ghost of George Washington that leaded them
to the battlefield. On July 4th 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.
