10 creepy places that have become attractions
Almost every city on earth has them — abandoned ruins, broken Titans, long defeated and forgotten, but still silhouetted against the setting sun. Old factories, abandoned train stations, even entire islands that once boomed with life and were seen by generations of people, but are now abandoned and left to perish.
But sometimes the increase in entropy gives way to something breathtaking. Some ruins find themselves on the verge of something bigger than anyone could have imagined, reborn from the ashes like a Phoenix bird.
Kolmanskop
The story of Kolmanskop begins, like many African tragedies, with diamonds. In 1908, German settlers attempted to run a railway through the Namib Desert to connect the coast to the Namibian town of Kitmanshoop.
One of the workers, Zachary Levala, found an uncut diamond in the sand and brought it to his boss. The news of the discovery spread like wildfire through the German colony, and soon hundreds of stone seekers flooded the desert.
Diamonds on the surface are very rare, but legend has it that in Kolmanskop you could walk through the desert at night and pick up stones that sparkle in the moonlight from the sand. Right on the windswept sand dunes was built a town called Kolmanskop, which at the peak of the diamond boom had more than 1,200 inhabitants.
However, times are changing, and due to the fall in diamond prices after the First World War and the discovery of richer diamond deposits further south, Kolmanskop has lost its popularity. The miners and their families left their homes and left the desert.
Less than 50 years after Zachary Levala found his diamond, Kolmanskop became a ghost town. But wooden houses don't rot in the desert. After a few years, sand began to penetrate the open windows and doors of buildings — Namib sought to return everything to its former state. Today, the entire complex has become a popular tourist destination, attracting visitors with half-century-old dunes inside mansions, ballrooms, theaters, and hospitals.
Teufelsberg Radio Intelligence Station
Artificial Dome on top of an artificial hill since the days of artificial fears… This abandoned Cold War-era radar post near Berlin in Germany rises from the woods like a beacon, illuminating the pages of a tangled history.
Built in 1963, the radio intelligence station was used by the US National Security Agency during the Cold War to intercept alleged military and diplomatic communications. The surviving records are too vague and vague to determine the exact nature of the work performed there. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1991, the station was abandoned.
Perhaps more interesting than the station itself is the history of the Teufelsberg hill ("Devil's Mountain" in Russian) on which it stands. This hill is the highest point in Berlin, in fact a huge pile of the remains of the city's buildings destroyed during World War II, piled on top of the Nazi military school, which still remains intact somewhere under tons of rubble.
Since the listening station was shut down in 1991, it has changed hands frequently. Each new buyer started with ambitious plans to turn the domed antenna fairings into a hotel, museum, or something similar, but so far all the plans have failed, and only strange structures remain, like tombstones on Berlin's past.
The site is currently closed to the public, but the violators say that the view from the Devil's Mountain to the city is simply incredible.
Boston Long Island
Not to be confused with the similarly named island in New York. Boston's Long Island doesn't want to be inhabited. This nearly three-kilometer stretch of land in Boston Harbor has been the site of numerous failed projects since colonization in the 17th century.
Its rocky shores and overgrown hills hold an abandoned military fort, empty hospitals, mysterious graves, and a long list of supposed government secrets.
The turbulent history of this area began in 1675, when English settlers sent hundreds of Indians to the islands in the harbor and left them to fend for themselves among the barren rocks in the harsh winter of 1675-1676. Most of them died of starvation.
During World War II, German scientists were secretly brought to Long Island as part of Operation Paperclip. The island is considered to be the inspiration for Dennis Lehane's novel The Island of the Damned.
It most recently housed a Boston homeless shelter, but for unknown reasons was hastily closed in 2014, leaving rows of empty beds inside an old tuberculosis dispensary.
Citing security concerns, Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh closed the bridge leading to Long Island and moved all the residents to the mainland, once again turning the island into a ghost town.
Abandoned railway line in Paris
In 1841, Paris was overwhelmed by the idea of rail transport. A major fortification project around the city had recently been completed, and the military was looking for ways to transport troops and supplies from the city center to the fortress.
Struggling financially, they sought the help of various private companies to pay for the railways that soon stretched from the center of Paris to the outskirts.
The result was a mess. Each line was operated by a separate company, and nowhere did these lines intersect with each other. Commuters from the outskirts had to travel to the center of Paris only to catch another train that would take them to another point on the outskirts — sometimes within walking distance of their original departure point.
Therefore, in Paris, they decided to create a Petite ceinture, or Small Belt. This line formed a circle just inside the fortified perimeter of the city and connected other railways. It was a tremendous success, and for almost 100 years the line served as one of the main means of transportation in Paris. But at the beginning of the 20th century, the need for it steadily began to decrease, and by 1934 the line was almost abandoned.
Over the years, the Little Belt has remained almost untouched. It is overgrown with moss and ivy, and not even many Parisians know of its existence. Almost 32 kilometers of railway, several tunnels and bridges are hidden in the thick of urban development.
Dutch Island
Almost 400 people once called the Dutch Island their home. The island's inhabitants, mostly fishermen and their families, have for centuries been fed directly from the waters of the Chesapeake Bay. But in the end, the sea stopped giving and began to take away.
The coastline was washed away by waves, and the eight-kilometer island gradually shrank. Like many other islands in the Chesapeake Bay, Dutch Island is made up mostly of silt and clay rather than rock, and this makes it easy prey for wind and waves.
The last inhabitants fled the island in 1922, leaving their homes and temples as grim monuments to the people who once lived here. But they also slowly sank into the sea. All but one.
The last house on the Dutch Island has outlived its brothers, steadfastly holding on to a thin strip of land that is completely submerged by every tide. He had an assistant — a 15-year-old retired minister dedicated to preserving the two-story Victorian mansion, surrounding it with timber, rocks and sandbags in a futile attempt to contain the sea. Despite all the efforts, and this house finally gave up the ghost and collapsed in 2010.
Tesla Towers in Russia
There are very few reliable sources of information about these strange buildings located in the middle of the forest. Most of the sites where they appear have dubbed them "Russian Tesla towers". In fact, these towers are Marx generators built to convert low-voltage direct current into high-voltage pulsed current.
Systems like these Russian giants, although on a much smaller scale, are now commonly used to simulate lightning on industrial equipment.
Glass Beach in California
Not far from Fort Bragg, California, there is a secluded beach bathed in bright colors of emeralds, rubies, turquoise and diamonds. But these are not precious stones lying on the sand.
These are fragments of glass that has been polished by the sea waves for a hundred years. Starting around 1906, the residents of Fort Bragg — along with other towns along the coast-dumped their garbage directly into the ocean. While the paper was soaked, and the plastic supposedly surfaced in places far and unknown, the glass remained.
It wasn't until 1967 that a ban on dumping waste into the ocean was imposed, but the seeds of transformation had already been sown. The shards of glass, polished by the waves and sand, turned into iridescent glass pebbles and were washed ashore.
Although glass has long been a rarity, real historical relics can sometimes be found along the beach: after World War II, car companies began using plastic instead of glass in the manufacture of taillights, which makes the strange ruby-colored glass pebbles from old headlights something of a rare collector's item.
However, Glass Beach is now part of the Mckerriher National Park, and therefore it is illegal to collect any pebbles there.
Ghost Town in Angola
A few miles from the capital of Angola is a modern high-rise ghost town. Nova Cidad de Kilamba-usually shortened to "Kilamba" - includes 750 residential buildings with 2,800 apartments. The city was built to accommodate half a million people and has its own schools and retail facilities. And it's almost all empty.
The miniature city was funded by a Chinese construction company and went from overgrown bushland to a completed project in less than three years. But instead of the influx of residents they probably expected, the only life to be found on the 50 km2 complex is a few Chinese workers (who live outside the construction site) and a lot of disoriented animals.
According to the BBC, the problem is that in Angola, the class structure consists of "very poor and very rich", so there are no buyers for apartments worth $ 200,000.
Maunsell Forts
Like metal animals rising from the dark depths, the Maunsell Forts stand guard in the Thames estuary to this day. Although not as useful as they once were, the forts serve as a silent reminder of our tumultuous past.
When the threat of German air raids on Britain during the Second World War became a reality, the Ministry of Defence commissioned several naval forts to protect the country's airspace.
In addition to the four naval forts, six air defense forts were built. Three of them were installed on the River Mersey and three in the Thames estuary. Of the three forts on the Thames, only two remain: Red Sands and Quicksand.
The forts were decommissioned after the war and abandoned after their guns were removed. And one of them was captured by a lone Englishman, who proclaimed it the new principality of Sealand.
SS Ayrfield
If you sail past the mangroves at Homebush Bay in Sydney, Australia, and look to the northwest, you can see something incredible: the rusted hull of a 100-year-old steamer with forest growing on its decks.
The SS Ayrfield was built in 1911 and was used to transport coal from the mainland to coal-fueled ships on the high seas.
During World War II, the Commonwealth requisitioned Ayrfield as a cargo ship to deliver supplies to Allied forces in the Pacific. After the war, the ship returned to her work with the Miller Steamship Company, and in 1972 was decommissioned and sent to die in Homebush Bay.
For many years, Homebush Bay was a place where ships died. In fact, it was a place where everything died - down to heavy metals and dioxin. For decades, the reservoir served as a chemical waste dump, turning a once-thriving fishing land into an industrial blunder.
It has since been cleared, and now only a few rusty ships are visible above the waterline. But the SS Ayrfield remains a relic, a reminder of the bay's past and that not everything that dies must remain dead.