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No movie set can match the bone-chilling reality of these terrifying locations! Join us as we explore places where true horror lives, from abandoned ghost towns to sites of historical tragedy. Our countdown includes Poveglia Island, Chernobyl, Auschwitz, and more! Have you ever visited any of these nightmare-inducing locations? Let us know in the comments!
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00:00This is an abandoned island that legend says was formed by the ashes of the thousands upon
00:06thousands infected by the bubonic plague. Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at 10 real
00:12and terrifying places that are scarier than any horror movie. They believed they would look into
00:17their hearts and they would become penitent if they spent enough time in isolation, but of course
00:21what it did instead was just kind of drive people insane. Centralia, USA. It all began back in May
00:281962, when local officials unwittingly sparked an underground fire. A fire that would make the town
00:36uninhabitable. What happens when your hometown becomes a literal hellscape? Centralia was once
00:41a small mining community in Pennsylvania, until a coal seam fire ignited beneath it in 1962. And that
00:47was that for Centralia. And the fire spread from the garbage through an opening in the pit that went
00:54into this labyrinth of abandoned coal mines beneath the town. And that's how the mine fire got started.
00:59The fire still burns to this day, releasing toxic fumes and turning the town into a smoldering
01:04wasteland. Streets are cracked, homes are in ruins, and nearly every resident has been evacuated,
01:10turning it into a ghost town. Smoke still seeps from the ground, and the eerie silence reigns where
01:15life once thrived. It's basically an IRL Silent Hill. In fact, Centralia served as a major inspiration
01:21in designing the town for the film. November 74, when the fire caught. They tried to evacuate this
01:27place as quick as they could, but it was hellish. People were dying and disappearing. Hell, they
01:33couldn't even find half the bodies. That was the end of Silent Hill. These were good people. Most of
01:39them. Humberstone and Santa Laura Saltpeter Works, Chile. Deep in Chile's Atacama Desert sit the abandoned
01:45mining towns of Humberstone and Santa Laura. Once booming with workers extracting valuable saltpeter,
01:51also known as white gold. These towns collapsed as the synthetic version was invented, and demand
01:56evaporated. Residents fled, leaving behind rusted machinery, creaking playgrounds, and eerily intact
02:02buildings. That said, these buildings are mere shells of what they once were, haunting and decaying
02:08remnants of times gone by. Walk through empty schools and silent factories, and you'll feel like
02:12you've stepped into a post-apocalyptic film set. Only, it's much scarier. Because it's real. The town's
02:18ghostly stillness and true sense of isolation are enough to make any visitor's skin crawl.
02:2325 Cromwell Street, England
02:2525 Cromwell Street in Gloucester has become one of the most infamous addresses in Britain.
02:31For 20 years, Fred and Rose West quenched their appetite for sex and murder inside this house of
02:37unimaginable horror. Oftentimes, the most horrifying places aren't haunted by spirits. They're inhabited by
02:43monsters. At 25 Cromwell Street in Gloucester, England, Fred and Rosemary West committed a string
02:49of gruesome murders during the 70s and 80s, luring young women into their home before tormenting and
02:54murdering them, and burying their remains around the property.
02:57It's horrible to think that there are, you know, dead bodies in a garden just down the road.
03:03It's, it's just thoroughly disgusting. I mean, it's, it's horrifying to think.
03:07Among the victims was the couple's own daughter, Heather. And when their crimes went public, the house
03:12became a symbol of pure evil and was demolished in 1996 to erase its sinister legacy. Today,
03:19all that remains are some chilling photographs, including some absolutely haunting pictures
03:23of the basement where the victims were taken and murdered by the sinister couple.
03:26On March 4th, 1994, police moved their search inside the house. They had a feeling that
03:33down in the dark cellar, they may uncover even more bodies.
03:36Hashima Island, Japan.
03:38We are trying to investigate the safety of the concrete concrete concrete, which is
03:43the safety of the concrete concrete concrete. We are trying to investigate the safety of
03:49the concrete concrete concrete concrete concrete.
03:51Nicknamed Battleship Island, Hashima lies off the coast of Japan. It's crumbling buildings rising
03:56from the sea, like a concrete ghost ship. Once a bustling coal mining colony owned by Mitsubishi,
04:01it housed thousands of workers packed into narrow apartment blocks. But when the mines close, it
04:06was in the mid-1970s, everyone left, and the island was completely abandoned.
04:22Decades of exposure have left it frozen and decay, with collapsed walls, broken windows,
04:27and eerily empty classrooms. The silence is deafening. For years, Hashima was completely off limits
04:33to the public, though it's now open to limited tours, and its haunting beauty inspired Silva's
04:37villain lair in Skyfall. Hashima feels like walking in humanity's footprint after the apocalypse.
04:43The Tower of London, England. For these ancient fortifications, set in grounds the same size as those of the White House, are far more than just a castle keeping London safe from her enemies.
05:05Tourists may come for the crown jewels, but many leave convinced they've met a ghost. The Tower of London has stood for nearly a millennium, and has seen centuries of
05:11imprisonment, excruciating pain, and many executions.
05:29Its most famous spirits include Anne Boleyn, said to roam the grounds carrying her own severed head, and the princes in the Tower, two young boys who were likely murdered by Richard III.
05:39But even if you don't believe in all that, you can't deny the Tower's heavy atmosphere. It's massive, the stones are ancient, and the cold is relentless, both literally and symbolically.
05:49It's a royal fortress, an execution ground, a brutal prison, and a paranormal hot spot. The Tower has seen it all.
05:56Prison conditions at the Tower do vary enormously. People have this vision of sort of dungeons and rats, and certainly for some people that's true.
06:05It really does depend on your social status. If you had nothing, this could be a really horrible, horrible, cold, nasty place.
06:12Eastern State Penitentiary, USA.
06:15I would define dark tourism as a site or institution whose history or content or subject matter has to do with something morbid. Pain, suffering, trauma, death, dying, these kinds of things.
06:32Opened back in 1829, Eastern State Penitentiary revolutionized prison design, and not really in a good way.
06:38For one thing, look at those walls. One look is enough to send chills through your blood.
06:43But mainly, it helped popularize solitary confinement as a form of rehabilitation, locking inmates in near total isolation.
06:50Eastern State's often known as the world's first true penitentiary, and what that means is a building designed to inspire regret.
06:57And a big part of how the prison officials did that was, again, through architecture.
07:03The outside of the building resembles a Gothic castle. It's scary, it's intimidating, and it's what we would call a deterrent.
07:11The result? Widespread mental health issues and endless suffering.
07:15The prison ceased operation in 1971, but the echoes of its horrid past remain.
07:20Peeling paint, rusty cell doors, endless hallways, and a cold, damp air creating a highly unnerving atmosphere.
07:26And yes, paranormal investigators have flocked here for decades, calling it one of the most haunted places in America.
07:32This is scarier than any Gothic horror movie.
07:35Now is this how these guys were locked in here, by these kind of doors?
07:38Yeah. Well there was two, there was a metal door on the inside and a wooden door on the outside.
07:42So the metal door would have swung closed, and the sliding wooden door keeps them from talking across the hall.
07:48That would drive you insane. That would make you go crazy.
07:53That's what happened.
07:54The Catacombs of Paris, France.
07:56And although Paris is one of the world's most instantly recognizable cities,
08:01just below the surface of the City of Light lurks a mysterious darkness.
08:06Any place that has towering walls of human skulls is enough to earn a place on this list.
08:11Directly beneath bustling streets of Paris lies an underground maze lined with bones, and lots of them.
08:17The Catacombs were created in the 18th century to deal with overflowing cemeteries,
08:21relocating the remains of more than 6 million people into former linestone quarries.
08:26Today, visitors can walk through these eerie tunnels, where human skulls and femurs form intricate, macabre patterns on the walls.
08:33When you walk in there, you'll see bones stacked. They're everywhere.
08:38You'll have thigh bones stacked up in places. You'll have skulls stacked in other places.
08:43The air is cold, the dark is relentless, and the silence absolute.
08:47Straight too far from the main path, and you could literally get lost forever.
08:51It certainly adds an element of danger to an already horrifying prospect.
08:55Over the main entrance to the Paris Catacombs, there is carved a sign which, when translated, reads,
09:01Stop. This is the Empire of the Dead.
09:04Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland.
09:06For me, Auschwitz is a cemetery.
09:10I remember the hangings. I remember the horror.
09:13Auschwitz is like a terrible scar.
09:16It was a terrible place.
09:18This World War II concentration camp was the site of unimaginable atrocities,
09:22where over a million people were systematically murdered by the Nazis.
09:26Today, the preserved barracks, barbed wire fences, and crematoria serve as both a museum and memorial.
09:33Visitors describe an overwhelming stillness in the air, a feeling of sorrow and disbelief that words could never capture.
09:39When we came to Auschwitz, we felt something like burning.
09:45I didn't see the chimneys, but we felt the air burning like bones, you know?
09:53Walking through the gate reading, work sets you free, feels like stepping into the darkest chapter in human history.
09:58And places like the gas chambers or Block 11's Wall of Death obviously carry a heavy atmosphere.
10:04Even physically, Auschwitz is deeply unsettling, its architecture cold and almost inhumane.
10:10Visiting Auschwitz is a difficult task. There's no question about it.
10:14Miriam Ziegler was eight when she was experimented on here by the notorious Nazi, Dr. Joseph Mengele.
10:22And that's you.
10:23And that's him.
10:24And I wouldn't want anybody to live through what we live through.
10:27The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, Ukraine.
10:30You can see it first dripping from the ceiling, large puddles accumulated on the floor.
10:35And there's a sense of fear that comes from that.
10:38Because they tell you that if there's anything you should stay away from, do not touch the water.
10:43There is nothing that is more irradiated than the water itself.
10:47If you want to truly feel like you're living in the post-apocalypse, head over to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.
10:52Just don't stay too long.
10:54In 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploded, releasing a massive amount of radiation into the atmosphere
11:00and forcing tens of thousands to flee the nearby city of Pripyat.
11:04They never returned.
11:05What's going through my mind is, how did those masks get to those rooms?
11:11It was really shocking just to see so many of them.
11:14Because you walked into the room and we didn't know what to expect.
11:17And you kind of, you know, you turn around and there is a sea of these masks.
11:21And it was terrifying.
11:23Today, the area stands neglected, with abandoned schools, decaying apartment blocks,
11:28and even a resting amusement park left as they were on that tragic day.
11:32Nature has slowly crept back, partly reclaiming the ruins.
11:35Yet radiation lingers as an invisible threat.
11:37And meanwhile, the gigantic new safe confinement towers over all,
11:41shielding the world from the horrors that lay within the ruined reactor.
11:44The arch is designed to keep the reactor complex environmentally secure,
11:49and to allow, sometime in the future, the partial demolition of the old structure.
11:55The original sarcophagus is showing signs of deterioration,
12:00and has undergone a series of upgrades since the disaster.
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12:18Paveglia Island, Italy.
12:21This is an abandoned island that legend says was formed by the ashes of the thousands upon thousands infected by the bubonic plague.
12:30How many people would you say were burned over there?
12:34Hundreds of thousands of people.
12:36Welcome to what's often called the most haunted island in the world.
12:40Paveglia sits quietly in the Venetian Lagoon, but its history betrays the romanticism of Italy.
12:46Once used as a quarantine station during various plague outbreaks,
12:49it's said that thousands of victims were dumped here and left to die,
12:53their disease safely isolated from the mainland.
12:55They used the different islands in the lagoon in order to put the corpse.
13:04The island was eventually abandoned altogether, and locals absolutely refused to go near it.
13:09Overgrown ruins, a crumbling bell tower, and whispers of restless spirits make Paveglia feel cursed.
13:15Even fishermen stay well clear, afraid of digging up old bones.
13:19With its gruesome past and eerie silence, Paveglia is a lingering nightmare.
13:23Have you visited any of these places?
13:40What did you think?
13:41Let us know in the comments below.
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