Most people have wondered what happens after death, and there is no shortage of questions about what, if anything, follows the cessation of bodily function. Is there an afterlife? Will Elvis be there? Will my pets find me?

If the following list is anything to go by, you can be sure that you will meet little Nemo, Doggo, or Kitty again! Hopefully, they won’t be scary like the black dog of Newgate Prison or run around in circles like the chicken ghost of Pond Square. Whatever happens in the Great Hereafter, pray you don’t meet any of these devilish creatures . . . 

10 The Ghost Bear
The Tower Of London

The ghost of a bear is said to haunt the Martin Tower at the Tower of London, where the Crown Jewels were once held. One night in 1816, a guard on duty saw a huge bear and lunged at it with his bayonet. At the time, the Tower had its own menagerie that was later moved to the London Zoo and Regent’s Park in the 1830s. He could have thought one of the great bears being held in the menagerie had escaped!

The bayonet went through the bear and was plunged so deep into the wood of the door behind that it took two men to remove it. The apparition faded away after the guard attacked it. The guard fainted from shock and died two days later.^[1]

9 The Phantom Horse Of Bryn-Y-Maen
North Wales

A white horse haunts the back roads of the town of Bryn-y-maen in North Wales. It was seen on two separate occasions by different people, first by a man driving the back roads to avoid being stopped by the police, as his car wasn’t taxed. Dawn had broken, and he was driving toward a dip in the road. Suddenly, a huge white horse came over the hedge, and he thought it would crash through the bonnet of his car: “It filled the windscreen!”^[2] The car spun as he slammed on the brakes, but as he did, the horse vanished.

On the second occasion, a young couple were driving the same road and approaching the dip. Again, the white horse came over the hedge but disappeared as they hit the brakes. A possible explanation, or at least a clue, that has been offered is an account of a large horse skull being found when the road was being repaired, but no one has been able to corroborate this.

8 The Chicken Ghost Of Pond Square
London

One extremely cold day in 1626, Sir Francis Bacon was passing Pond Square in his carriage with a friend. Bacon was arguing his new idea of preserving food, whereby instead of salting meat, it might be possible to keep it so cold that it did not deteriorate. His friend, the king’s physician, didn’t agree, but nevertheless, Bacon obtained a chicken at a local Highgate farm, plucked and cleaned it, and packed it with snow, inside and out. Unfortunately for Bacon, his foray into the cold turned into a bout of pneumonia, which finished him off.

Soon after his death, news of a half-plucked chicken running around at Pond Square was reported. The chicken would allegedly vanish when anyone tried to approach it, and sightings continued throughout the years. For example, in World War II, wardens tried to capture it, but it ran through a wall to escape. Around the same time, a passerby heard what sounded like a coach and horses, but nothing was there to be seen except for a chicken running around in circles. It was also seen in the 1970s by a couple stealing a goodnight kiss in a nearby doorway.^[3]

7 The Merrivale Pigs
Dartmoor

A phantom sow and her piglets have been haunting Merripit Hill for 200 years, as the legend goes.^[4] On misty nights when walking the roads, you might stumble across them making their way to Cator Gate, starving and searching for food. As legend has it, the sow and piglets knew that if they traveled to Cator Gate, they would find a dead horse to eat, but upon their arrival, the horse had already been picked clean by crows.

The pigs are said to speak, too! The piglets cry out, “Skin an’ bones, skin an’ bones!” to which the sow replies, “Let ‘un lie, let ‘un lie.” Back they go, then, over the moor searching for food, only appearing once more when the night is foggy and dark.

6 The White Rabbit Of Thetford Warren Lodge
Norfolk

Thetford Warren Lodge was built on the Brecks, an ancient and wild landscape in Norfolk where prehistoric farmers once kept sheep and rabbits. The lodge was built in the 1400s by nearby monks in Cluniac priory as a residence for the warrener, the man in charge of maintaining and catching rabbits on the Brecks for food and their skins. The Brecks are filled with small rabbit burrows.

One enormous white rabbit with glowing red eyes is said to haunt the lodge and is an omen of death to whoever is unlucky enough to see it.^[5] Perhaps it has something to do with the old leper hospital of St Margaret close by, which was raided for silver and burned to the ground in 1304.

5 The Black Dog Of Newgate Prison
London

Newgate Prison once stood by the Old Bailey and was home to a supernatural hound that was an omen of bad luck.^[6] A prison inmate first wrote about the hound in 1596 and recounted that during a terrible famine in London, the prison inmates had turned to cannibalism to stay alive. A scholar was imprisoned at this time, having been accused of witchcraft, and no sooner had he arrived than he was overpowered by the stronger men and eaten.

Shortly afterward, the inmates began seeing a large, black dog roaming the dark corridors, and one by one, each man who had eaten the scholar was hunted down and torn apart by the beast. When the number had dwindled to only a handful of remaining men who had eaten the scholar, they were deranged with fear and broke out of the prison to escape. It is said that no man really escaped, however, and those last murderers were found by the dog and met the same fate as their fellow inmates.

4 The Demon Cat Of Capitol Hill
Washington, DC

The Capitol Building in Washington, DC, has witnessed some incredible history being made, but some might say not so incredible as the demon cat said to walk the halls at night. During the post-Civil War era, the night watchmen began seeing a black cat that would grow in size as it walked toward them.^[7] One man said that it grew to be as big as a tiger, and when it leaped at him to attack, he brought up his arms in fear of being savaged. But when he fell down and didn’t feel the weight of the cat, he lowered his arms and realized it had disappeared.

Could such stories be just the drunken ramblings of the night watchmen, who were probably just reprobate friends of powerful men who needed an easy job? You might think so, except that when concrete was poured to replace some flooring after a gas explosion in 1898, six to eight perfect paw prints were found indented in it.

3 The Black Cat Of The Hellfire Club
Ireland

Just outside of Dublin in the Wicklow mountains is the Hellfire Club, a hunting lodge that was placed right on top of an ancient burial mound. It’s said that Speaker Conolly, the builder of the lodge, used the standing stone from the cairn as the lintel. The club itself, founded by Richard Parsons in 1735, was known for Satanism and the members practicing black magic. Cats (and some say servants) were sacrificed to the Devil.

One famous story tells of a local visitor to the area went one night to see the lodge, the place that had such an intriguing and mysterious reputation. He was found dead the next morning, and his host thought with horror that he must have been murdered at the Hellfire Club during the night. He went with the local priest to find out what had happened. When they arrived at the Hellfire Club, they found a great banquet laid out and a black cat stalking the room. It was huge, and its ears were shaped like horns. The priest threw holy water over the cat, an act which tore it into pieces. When the priest went outside, he found the dead man’s host lying on the grass with his neck and face scratched deeply by what could only be powerful claws.^[8]

2 The Ghost Dog Of Airth Castle
Scotland

Airth Castle dates back centuries and has an even older graveyard just outside. As if that wasn’t enough, the place is packed full of ghosts! One of the most famous is a dog that will nip at your ankles if you’re not watching out for him.^[9] Maybe little Rex belonged to one of the children who burned to death with their nanny in the 1800s, or could he have been the groundsman’s little helper?

1 The Owl At Arundel Castle
Sussex

Arundel Castle officially opened on Christmas Day in 1067. Home to many royals and noblemen, it has been connected to such famous faces as Richard the Lionheart and King Henry II.

As well as a respectable amount of ghosts of the human variety, one apparition sometimes seen is a white owl that flies around the windows of the castle.^[10] Every time it has been seen, someone who lived in the castle or was linked to the building and its inhabitants died under mysterious circumstances. Hedwig never got this kind of press!

Alexa is a writer and lumberjack from Dublin, Ireland.

A recent opinion poll suggested that as many as 45% of Americans believe in ghosts or spirits of some kind. Certainly, people have been telling each other ghost stories since the dawn of time. We seem to have a natural inclination to believe that there is a shadow world in which departed loved ones, repentant sinners, or those who have a message for us dwell.

Perhaps this belief simply shows that we need an explanation for everything. When we lived in small groups of vulnerable hunter-gatherers, a sound in the trees at night might mean danger. Something caused it. But what? The noise might be nothing important, or it might be a predator. For survival, it’s better to assume that it could be something dangerous. Add a dash of imagination, and it becomes easy to assume something paranormal exists.

Here are ten explanations for the “creepiest” ghost-hunting encounters we found on YouTube.

Related: Top 10 Ghost Towns Inside Or Near Famous Cities

10 Weird Worley

The hospital in Worley opened in 1928 and closed in the ’70s when it ran out of funds. In 2002, a woman named Carol Peet bought it intending to turn the building into a ministry center. She aimed to create a place where vulnerable individuals could learn life skills. For some reason, the project never came to fruition, but Peet spent a lot of time at the building and said she never saw anything strange.

In our video, the new owner, Chelsea, has a different opinion. Her contractor says that there are demons behind the walls. Notice that the investigator sees a shape on his thermal image camera. He calls the shape “a figure,” this is a little misleading as it’s not a figure—it’s simply a shape. Dust in the air, moved by a draft, has high emissivity and can show up on a thermal imager as the shape we see.

The rest of the video does beg some questions. Is anybody there?

9 Meowwww

In our next video, a ghost hunting expert visited the Ancient Ram Inn in Wotton, Gloucestershire, England. The house is spooky enough—in fact, it looks like a movie set for a film about a haunted house.

The investigators swap observations that have no objective value. One of them says that he hears a cat. Probably the best explanation for hearing a cat is that there is a cat. After all, if it walks like a duck and sounds like a duck, then it’s probably a duck.

A serious investigation into the paranormal should have to meet higher standards than what is shown in the video. Unfortunately, many similar videos play on our imagination at the expense of rigorous research.

8 Mom, Are You Here?

Our next haunting has the house owner comforted that his deceased mother is still around and fulfilling her last promise to “always look over him.” After the investigation, the owner is no longer scared and deals with the fact of his mother’s presence calmly and with humor.

Naturally, we should want to believe that our departed loved ones are still with us in some way. But does this sentiment lead us to believe that they certainly are? The sound on the tape is not clear and is very brief. Could it be that the son is hearing what he wants to hear?

7 A Shocking Encounter

Land of mists and long winter nights, Scotland has a long history of paranormal phenomena. With typical good humor, our investigators here are using sophisticated equipment to track down Archie, the ghost.

One of the investigators reports that something (Archie?) touched him on the arm, a touch that he describes as being like an electric shock. Could this be simply a nervous reaction to the spooky surroundings? Or maybe wishful thinking?

Certainly, the building looks like an ideal candidate for a ghost haunting.

6 Hauntings x 3

One of the investigators here makes an interesting observation. He says that a place might be haunted, as we would expect, but also a person might be haunted or an object. You might have, he says, “a creepy teddy bear,” or I instantly think of dolls. Yikes.

The three possibilities have different qualities:

1. The Location: A ghost has a special attachment to a place. Once you leave the place, you leave the ghost behind.
2. The Person: A ghost uses a real person as a vehicle. Interestingly, a location can be haunted by good or bad spirits, but a person is usually haunted only by the bad.
3. The Item: An object must have had special significance for the departed. Though, it’s difficult to imagine how a ghost could haunt an inanimate object.

And how can we really know? Sometimes, people, places, and things are simply… people, places, and things.

5 Flicking Streetlights

In this piece, our guide takes us to a haunted town. One of the first events the guide films is a streetlight that flickers before it returns to normal. To be fair, the narrator immediately says that he doesn’t know whether this was paranormal. Probably not. It was simply a flickering streetlight.

This shows that people can be predisposed to interpret evidence as they wish to. It is a sort of confirmation bias where you give more credence to evidence that supports your view than to evidence that might contradict it. In other words, someone who believes in ghosts will readily believe that a flickering light is evidence of paranormal activity. The city maintenance department would be more likely to consider a faulty connection first.

4 Prisoner Ghosts

Well, if they’re looking for ghosts, any evidence is hidden by the fact that the investigators in this video spend a lot of time spoofing each other. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with this, but it can obscure any serious purpose behind their investigation.

The Ohio State Penitentiary defiantly looks the part of hosting ghost hauntings. The word “creepy” often pops up in these videos, and here we find a building that deserves the term. One wonders why this penitentiary hasn’t been converted or demolished.

3 The Willow Weep House

“If it wasn’t evil, it wouldn’t be hurting people,” says the owner of Willows Weep, a house that some say is the most haunted place in America. Whoever built this unassuming house in 1890 constructed it in the shape of an inverted cross. Our narrator, William Shatner, signs off by asking, “Was Willows Weep really built to attract evil spirits?” and asks himself why anyone would want to do this. The answer he offers is that perhaps the idea was to entrap the visiting demons.

The house owner is convinced that there is something inside the place. She points to four suicides and three poisonings that have happened during its history and adds that she and her son had accidents while they were doing some renovation work. Hmm, accidents while renovating. I’ve never heard of that happening. *eye roll*

Without more evidence, we might be tempted to believe that this is a case of having expectations fulfilled. The owner’s comment, “If it wasn’t evil..” presupposes that there is an “it” there.

2 School Is in Session

For this investigation, why the investigative team included four ballerinas is a mystery to me. Their role seemed to be to look decorative and squeal whenever necessary. The rest of the team seems to prep the girls and lead them to expect that this old reformatory school must be haunted.

We’ll leave the ballerinas who don’t seem to add much ghost-hunting expertise alone. But everything else is here. A dark, abandoned place, the word “creepy,” and the essential EMF meter. Why an electro-magnetic field necessarily means that there are ghosts around is a mystery. But these meters seem sufficient for many to believe that paranormal activity exists. (On Amazon, you can buy a meter specifically advertised as a ghost-hunting device.)

The whole atmosphere the narrator creates leads the team to presuppose that there are phantoms in the school. His repetition that nothing is faked is no doubt truthful but irrelevant.

1 Hollywood Hotel Hauntings

I find this one a little difficult to explain away. We will have to assume that the hotel guests are acting in good faith and are not trying to pull the wool over our eyes.

To start, there are scientific explanations of how an ouija board works that rule out the occult (it’s called the ideomotor effect if you want to find out more). But I can’t find an easy explanation for the voice heard in the video. I suppose that even a cynic like myself will have to accept that some things are not easily explained away.

In most of the videos on our list, the viewer can explain most of the phenomena—you just have to watch them with a skeptical frame of mind. Most of these videos lead you to jump to a conclusion and believe what you are expected to believe.

This last video seems a little different; the setting is not “creepy”—it’s a well-lit, modern hotel room in Los Angeles, California. Yet, the history of the Roosevelt Hotel is sinister and full of haunting ghost stories. I’ll just wait for more definitive evidence, I guess.

October: The spookiest month of the year leading up to the 31st. Before that frightful date falls, the weeks leading up to Halloween are often filled with haunted attractions, costume planning, and of course, horror film marathons. To many, a frightening movie is just that—a movie. The following ten, however, are unique in that the events surrounding the making of the films, as well as their back-story, are more terrifying than anything on screen.

Related: Top 10 Secrets Of The Original ‘Ghostbusters’ Movie

10 Ghostbusters

The celebrated 1984 comedy classic Ghostbusters had some eerie happenings on set, one of which actually made it into the film. Specifically, the now-famous scene where Dan Aykroyd comes face-to-face with a ghost, causing his cigarette to fall from his mouth but miraculously stay put on his bottom lip, was supposedly spontaneous without special effects or adhesives.

Though one can reasonably argue that saliva played a major role. According to Aykroyd, there was no trick used to keep the cigarette in place, stating, “That was a total the-gods-are-with-you comedian moment. I had the [cigarette] there, and I did the look. And they got the shot. No glue, no tape, no glycerin.” Clearly, there must be some reasonable explanation. However, to this day, Aykroyd maintains his stance, assuring that no trickery or saliva was the culprit for a once-in-a-lifetime shot. Sounds fishy, but you be the judge.^[1]

9 The Innkeepers

Ti West’s low-budget thriller The Innkeepers (2011) tells the tale of two young hotel clerks at the Yankee Pedlar Inn who set out to prove that their place of employment is indeed haunted. As luck would have it, the hotel that inspired the film was shot at the actual Yankee Pedlar Inn in Torrington, Connecticut, which is said to be a real haunted location. During filming, the cast and crew experienced baffling supernatural things.

Director West—a self-proclaimed skeptic—was petrified to witness doors slamming on their own, TVs turning on and off by themselves, and new lights continuously burning out inexplicably. Even more bizarre is that everyone on the set had very vivid dreams every single night. Actress Sara Paxton stated that she would constantly wake up in the middle of the night thinking someone was in her room with her. Following several days away from the set and a respite from the paranormal, West explained how the dreams came flooding back upon his return: “Being a skeptic, I tend to not believe it as much,” said the director. “The dreams came back the first day I walked in. The vibe was there.”^[2]

8 Candyman

The 1992 Candyman film about the ghost of a lynched slave with a hook for a hand terrified audiences across the nation and abroad. There is one scene in particular that is truly haunting, given that it was taken from actual events five years prior to the film’s release. In the movie, two women investigating one of Candyman’s crime scenes discover that the murderous phantom entered the victim’s apartment through the medicine cabinet.

Such was the case for 52-year-old Ruthie Mae McCoy, who was brutally murdered in her apartment in 1987. The murderers were able to gain access to McCoy’s apartment by crawling through an opening behind the bathroom’s mirror, as seen in the movie. There are several other elements taken from McCoy’s killing, such as the fact that Candyman also takes place in Chicago public housing. In addition, one of the characters in the film bears a familiar name to the real-life victim: Anne-Marie McCoy.^[3]

7 The Sixth Sense

1999’s box-office hit The Sixth Sense is arguably M. Night Shyamalan’s first and perhaps only masterpiece. With its Hitchcock vibe and a startling ending that flabbergasted audiences worldwide, the shooting of the celebrated film had quite an unnerving impact on one of its main stars. During production, Toni Collette—who plays the mother of Cole, a young boy haunted by unrelenting spirits—found herself slowly becoming an insomniac, which she had never experienced prior.

The nights she was afforded some sleep only intensified her discomfort, given the particular time she would awake. Collette stated to Slant Magazine in 2012, “I had a couple of weird things happening. In the hotel room I was staying at in Philadelphia, I started meditating a lot, and then I would wake up at night, roll over, and look at the clock, and it was always a repeated number—1:11, 3:33, 4:44. That started to really spook me.” Never conforming to superstitious beliefs, the unsettling experience occurred yet again years later while shooting Hitchcock, a 2012 biographical drama about the filming of Psycho in 1959.^[4]

6 Paranormal Activity

Director Oren Peli’s micro-budgeted Paranormal Activity—which centers around a demonic invasion of a couple’s suburban home—was being shopped around to studios in early 2008 when it came into the hands of Steven Spielberg. Spielberg, a co-founder of DreamWorks, was debating whether or not he wanted his studio to be part of the supernatural thriller. Immediately following the film’s screening, while alone at his Pacific Palisades estate, the door to his bedroom inexplicably locked from the inside, forcing the legendary director to summon a locksmith.

The incident shook Spielberg to the core so much that he refused to have the DVD anywhere near his home. The following day he brought his copy of the film back to DreamWorks in a garbage bag. Despite the hair-raising experience, Spielberg shared enthusiasm for the film and ultimately acquired the rights. Paranormal Activity went on to become one of the most profitable films ever made based on return on investment.^[5]

5 1408

Hailed as one of the best horror movies of 2007, 1408 follows a paranormal skeptic (John Cusack) whose investigation takes him to a grand New York hotel with an infamously haunted room—the titular 1408. In spite of the movie screaming Hollywood fantasy, audiences would be surprised to learn the film was inspired by world-renowned parapsychologist Christopher Chacon’s investigation of San Diego’s Hotel del Coronado.

The luxurious hotel was known as Hollywood’s elite playground, as well as the location of the tragic suicide of Kate Morgan in 1892. Checking in under a false name on Thanksgiving, Kate’s body would be found five days later on a flight of stairs. Since then, employees and guests have experienced paranormal activity in the room Kate occupied. From disembodied voices and footsteps to objects moving inexplicably, Chacon decided to position infrared cameras and magnetic meters in the infamous room where he and his team detected 37 abnormalities, including glasses flying off counters by themselves. Chacon’s reporting on his stay sent shivers down the spine of Stephen King so much that he was compelled to pen “1408,” which ultimately became a major box-office success.^[6]

4 Session 9

2001’s psychological horror film Session 9 is unlike any other horror movie, given that it was filmed inside a real-life abandoned mental hospital in Massachusetts. The dark and eerie premises, once known as the Danvers State Hospital, opened in 1878 and soon became infamous for being “one of the most inhumane” asylums in America. To add to the unsettling ambiance, the majority of props in the film were already present inside the building.

Official production notes report that actor Dave Caruso saw “something pass my window” while filming inside the dilapidated building: “I didn’t want to tell anybody because people would start looking at me strangely,” said Caruso. Actor Peter Mullan reported strange happenings while filming on the roof. According to Mullan, a voice in his head told him to jump off “to see what would happen.” Mullan went on to state that the hospital brought out a morbid kind of “overactive curiosity.” Fortunately, the ruins of the asylum were demolished in 2007.^[7]

3 The Conjuring

During the making of The Conjuring—based on Ed and Lorraine Warren’s 1971 investigation of a haunted Rhode Island farmhouse—the cast and crew found themselves experiencing their own paranormal frights. According to Warner Bros. production notes, people on set would be encircled by gusts of wind that had no effect on their surroundings, such as the leaves on a tree. Every time screenwriters Chad and Carey Hayes called Lorraine to discuss the case, static interrupted their conversation, unlike any other calls that were made.

During early production, everyone had to evacuate their hotel after a fire mysteriously broke out. Director James Wan had sleepless nights when his dog would growl incessantly while tracking something across the room that wasn’t there. Perhaps the most jarred by the experience was actress Vera Farmiga who found five claw marks slashed across the screen of her laptop. “I don’t know how to explain it,” the actress said. “I do know I hadn’t dropped the computer, and my children hadn’t stepped on it. So I gingerly closed it, put it away, and then my brain just went berserk.” During the entirety of the shoot, Farmiga refused to read the script at home or at night and only in “fits and spurts, lest she be overwhelmed by fear.”^[8]

2 Crimson Peak

In 2009, Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro was scouting filming locations in New Zealand for the Hobbit trilogy when he came upon the Waitomo Caves Hotel. The grand Victorian-style mansion built in 1908 was completely empty due to the off-season. Being a ghost aficionado, del Toro convinced the owners to open their doors, given its reputation for being haunted. Later that night, the director heard blood-curdling screams and whimpering coming from a vent leading to an empty room.

According to the director, “I heard a horrible murder being committed in the room. I was actually terrified. I didn’t sleep at all that night. What was strange was the next morning, I was not tired, but I was wired and scared. I never imagined having those fears. It was absolutely terrifying.” Interestingly enough, del Toro’s petrifying experience became the inspiration for his 2015 film Crimson Peak. “There is the moment where you hear a murder in the bathtub,” del Toro said. “It comes directly from that moment in New Zealand.”^[9]

1 Poltergeist

The Poltergeist franchise (1982-1988) is perhaps best remembered for the bizarre real-life occurrences surrounding the actors than the trilogy itself. Over a six-year period, the franchise saw four deaths from the cast, most notably Heather O’Rourke, who died at the age of 12 from septic shock in 1988. Six years earlier, Dominique Dunne (who played O’Rourke’s older sister) was murdered by her ex-boyfriend. Julian Beck (Kane, the evil reverend) died of stomach cancer in 1985, followed by Will Sampson (Taylor, the Medicine Man) in 1987 from post-operative kidney failure.

Nearly two decades later, Lou Perryman (“Pugsley” in the 1982 original film) was brutally hacked to death with an ax in his own home. Known as the “Poltergeist Curse,” many believe the use of real skeletons in the first film was the cause of such horrific happenings. Could it be that the spirits of the deceased whose bones were used as props cast a curse on the franchise, or is it just an awful coincidence?^[10]

You’ve probably heard of haunted houses and haunted hotels. You might even have heard about a haunted castle or two. But have you ever heard about a haunted mine? While deadly gasses have overtaken some ghost mines, others remain completely untouched for the enterprising explorer.

Some people believe ghost miners remain behind because they have unfinished business to attend to on Earth before moving on. Others believe there’s no evidence that ghosts actually exist. And while we’d love nothing more than an opportunity to clear up this debate once and for all. We’re going ahead with our original plan: listing some places where you can expect some ghostly activity.

Here are 10 ghost mines from around the world.

10 Lambi Dehar Mines

The Lambi Dehar mines, Mussoorie Range, was the first iron ore mine in India and is in the Nagar district of Uttarakhand. The workers who lived near the mine died coughing up blood because of a lung disorder caused by the poisonous gasses coming out of the mines. Children of miners would play hide and seek in the mines, and they also contracted lung disease. They abandoned the mines after being shut down in 1995.

There are stories that people who have gone into these mines have never returned. If you have plans to visit this place, then make sure you go with a group of people and are not alone. Because you might get lost inside the tunnels and not be able to find a way out.^[1]

9 Ringwood Mine

The Ringwood mine is in the town of Ringwood, New Jersey, and was once one of the largest producers of iron in the world. The mine has been abandoned since the early 1900s, but it’s still open to tourists who want to explore its dark depths.

During its time as an active mine, thousands of workers labored in dangerous conditions, and many lost their lives due to cave-ins and other accidents. The mine was also known for its poor working conditions and low pay rate. Miners were expected to work in unsafe conditions for less than a dollar per day.

Many locals claim they’ve seen paranormal activity here, such as hearing footsteps or voices coming from inside the abandoned mines. Some even say they see ghosts walking around their homes with lanterns in hand. Visitors claim to have heard footsteps, voices, or whispers while exploring this place.^[2]

8 Oaks Mining Pit

Oak’s Pit is an abandoned mine near Barnsley, West Riding, England. The pit was the site of one of the worst mining disasters in British history, when 361 men, boys, and rescuers died during two days of explosions on December 12, 1866.

It was firedamp—the gases commonly found in mines, usually coalbed methane—igniting that caused the first explosion, which resulted in an underground fire that raged for several days. The exposition would go on for two days, destroying all wooden supports and equipment in the area. About 100 tons of coal collapsed into a crater at the mouth of the shaft.

A few years ago, a team of paranormal investigators visited this site to uncover some information about what happened here so many years ago. They hoped they might communicate with any spirits who may still linger around these old tunnels and shafts. The team concluded that the land itself was cursed.^[3]

7 Tonopah Mining Park

The Tonopah Mining District in the western part of the Wrangell Mountains is now a museum. The park has many historic buildings that were used during the glory days of the early 1900s silver rush. These buildings include a hospital, assay office, blacksmith shop, bunkhouse, and more. There are guides that can tell you about how the miners lived, worked, and played during their time in Tonopah, Nevada.

Many ghost stories are associated with this region because of its history. Some say that prospectors who died in an avalanche or a cave-in haunted it. Others say that Indian spirits haunt it to scare people away.

The mineshaft has been restored so visitors can see what it was like for miners working underground. It is also possible to take part in a guided walking ghost tour at night, where you are taken into dark buildings and told stories about ghosts that others have seen over the years.^[4]

6 Sterling Hill Mine

Located in Ogdensburg, New Jersey, the Sterling Hill mine is one of the most popular ghost mines in America. The mine is over 2,500 feet (762 meters) deep and has a network of tunnels that span 35 miles (56 kilometers).

In 1897, the Sterling Hill Mining Company started mining operations at the site, hoping to find zinc or iron deposits. Unfortunately for them, their search did not meet those expectations—but not before it cost many miners’ lives! Throughout its 90 years of operation, the mine saw nearly 77 deaths from accidents and explosions.

Visitors to the Sterling Hill Mine have reported several paranormal experiences. They claim to have heard footsteps, voices, whispers, and even an apparition of a miner carrying a lantern. Some visitors even claim that unseen hands have touched or pushed them. Sterling Hill Mine has a variety of haunted tours available online that people can indulge in.^[5]

5 Vulture Gold Mine

The Vulture mine opened in 1863 and was one of the first to produce gold in Arizona. It was also one of the most prolific mines in the state, producing millions’ worth of ore by 1946. When it closed in 1917, it was one of the richest mines in the Southwest. The mine reopened during World War II when it produced $2 million worth of gold from 1942 to 1944. The mine closed again after World War II ended.

Paranormal investigators from the Travel Channel reality show Ghost Adventures visited the site during a season and were chased out by locals saying they would die if they went back there again.

They were only able to spend an hour inside before being chased out by locals who said they were trespassing on sacred land. In addition to seeing apparitions inside the mine, Zak says he heard what sounded like gunshots coming from above during his investigation on one of the upper levels of the mine shaft.^[6]

4 Nenthead Mines

Nenthead mines are a series of abandoned mines in the Lake District, United Kingdom. The mine was opened in 1737 and closed in 1961. They used it for lead, zinc, and copper extraction. The mine is near the village of Nenthead, Cumbria.

Many poor workers died in these mines because of explosions and the horrid accidents that happened here. They abandoned the mine after the first time it happened, but when it opened again in 1864, more deaths occurred. The mine closed for good in 1868 because they were losing too many workers and dwindling lead deposits.

There are stories of haunting at Nenthead over the years, with reports of ghosts and strange events, such as footsteps being heard inside empty cottages. Some people say they have even seen a ghostly priest roaming around the village. The place has been explored by many paranormal researchers, but no one has been successful in finding any evidence of ghostly activity so far.^[7]

3 Geevor Tin Mine

The Geevor tin mine in Cornwall was one of the last active tin mines in Cornwall and the last to close down. The mine opened in 1911 and closed its doors for good in 1990. At one time, it was the largest tin mine in Europe and held a significant place for years.

The mine is accessible by foot, but it’s not recommended because there are many hazardous holes and cracks in the ground. This place is considered to be haunted because of its history and the stories about ghosts that have been told.

The stories about paranormal activity at this site are many, with some claiming to see or hear ghosts of miners who lost their lives there. These “ghost miners” died at work or were killed by accidents while trying to escape the dangerous situations underground.^[8]

2 Atlas Coal Mine

The Atlas coal mine, located in Alberta, Canada, opened in 1936 and closed down in 1979. The mine was used to produce bituminous coal, primarily for electricity generation and heating purposes.

The mine had two shafts, which were both connected by a tunnel at their base. The owners of the mines also built housing facilities for their employees and families. They even built a school, library, and hospital. Some buildings are still standing even though the mine was closed in 1979.

It is said that about eight people died inside this old abandoned mine. There are many legends surrounding this haunted ghost town and its history. Many people who have ventured into this ghost town have reported seeing strange lights inside the building or hearing strange noises coming from within its walls.^[9]

1 Black Diamond Mines

The Black Diamond mine is a ghost town in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, California. It is located within the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit of the United States Forest Service.

Black Diamond was once a mining town with several hundred residents, but today only one family remains. The town was named “Black Diamond” because of the enormous amounts of coal it produced. Established by miners in 1857, Black Diamond was first known as the Mount Diablo Coalfield.

The site has been inhabited since before Gold Rush times and was once used as a staging point on the pack trail between Truckee and Reno. There have been many ghost sightings around the graves of miners who died while working in the Black Diamond mines. Several people have reported seeing apparitions in the cemetery at night. Some say they’ve heard voices coming from inside the grave site when no one is there. Others claim that they have seen shadows move along the ground while they were driving past the road below.^[10]

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, it left behind many remnants of its existence. The ex-Soviet states are dotted with abandoned villages, mines, factories, and sometimes even whole cities.

Here are 10 of the most interesting ghost cities the Soviet Union left behind.

10 Kadykchan

Kadykchan, once a thriving coal mining town, is now a collection of burned-out houses. The city was founded by gulag inmates in the 1940s. The town was soon discovered to have coal, which made it a desirable site for a settlement. The town grew, and by the late 1970s, it had a population of over 10,000.

Unfortunately, the decline of the Soviet Union had a devastating effect on the coal industry, and the town’s population dwindled. At its peak, the town housed nearly 11,000 people. But after the 1990s, coal prices began to decline, forcing it to close its mines. In 1996, a mine explosion killed six people, decreasing the population to under 300. By the early 2000s, the town was only home to a handful of residents. Visiting Kadykchan in winter can feel like a visit to a lost world. The ruins of decayed Soviet apartments and abandoned children’s playgrounds still stand on the town square.

When a huge coal deposit was discovered in Far East Siberia, the Soviet government used gulag workers to build the town and a highway, which became known as the Road of Bones. Kadykchan is completely isolated from both eastern and western Russia, and it takes at least three days to reach the nearest city center. In addition, the Kolyma highway is impassable for most of the year.^[1]

9 Skrunda-1

The abandoned Skrunda-1 military complex was once a thriving community. Unfortunately, it has fallen into ruins over the years. Several attempts have been made to repurpose the site for tourism, such as developing an industrial park. However, the site is currently under military control, so it is not possible for civilians to visit.

Skrunda-1 was first built in 1963. As a secret military installation, it was a site with a vast array of buildings and underground bunker networks. At its height, the area was home to over 5,000 Soviet soldiers and a thousand civilians. It contained two massive radars that scanned the sky to detect enemy intrusions. The complex included many buildings, including schools, factories, and barracks.

Skrunda-1 has now slipped into complete isolation. After Latvia received its 7.5 billion euro bailout from the European Union in 2008, the government was forced to auction the property. The government paid €12,000 for the town, which was significantly less than the price at previous auctions. The local government unanimously approved the purchase.^[2]

8 Neftegorsk

The quake that ripped through Neftegorsk on May 28, 1995, was the worst earthquake in modern Russian history. The quake’s magnitude was 7.6 on the Richter scale, and according to official statistics, at least 2,040 people died—more than half of the town’s residents. The city was decimated, with nearly everything destroyed; only the chapel, a cemetery, and a memorial remained.

The city was once thriving. But as the tar sands were sucked out of the earth by the prospectors, it deteriorated. Thousands of people were displaced.^[3]

7 Mologa

The relocation of the city of Mologa was a four-year project. Earlier, two nearby regions protested, imposing delays. As a result, the central government’s funding for the project dried up before the town could be relocated.

The historic town of Mologa was flooded by Stalin in 1935 to make way for a hydroelectric power station. The city’s history goes back to the 12th century, and it was an important trading post between the Baltic Sea and Asia. But the Soviet Union had other plans. They wanted to build the Rybinsk Reservoir, a hydroelectric power station. As a result, more than 130,000 residents were forced to relocate from the city, and there are reports that over 300 of them drowned.

Today, the town’s residents still gather in the nearby town of Rybinsk in mid-August to celebrate the Day of Mologa. The town’s ruins occasionally appear when the lake’s levels are low. Aerial photographs show streets emerging from the lakebed.^[4]

6 Wunsdorf

The Wunsdorf complex is located about 20 miles (32 kilometers) outside Berlin. Originally, the area was a Prussian shooting range. Later, it became the headquarters of the German armed forces. During World War II, the Nazis also used the complex as a military command center. The 60,000-acre 242-square-kilometer) complex became one of the largest military bases in Europe. When the Soviets took control of the town in 1945, Wunsdorf was closed. It then housed up to fifty thousand Soviets. Wunsdorf was the largest Soviet military camp outside of the Soviet Union. There were schools, shops, hospitals, and leisure facilities. Wunsdorf became known as “Little Moscow,” as there were daily trains to and from the Soviet capital.

By the time of the Berlin Wall collapse, the town’s population had fallen from 60,000 to just six thousand. The Soviet troops stationed in the town were called home after the fall of the Wall. The resulting chaos was exacerbated by the uncertainty of the soldiers, who had no idea where they were heading or whether they would be able to find housing. Some of them even bought buses to use as shelter.

While Wunsdorf-Waldstadt is now a thriving town, it’s still a strange post-apocalyptic landscape. Some buildings have been swallowed up by the forest, while others have been refurbished and used as homes. There is a real struggle to keep the structures that remain in the town usable. Now, a local government company is looking for investors who want to restore the buildings to reuse them for educational purposes.^[5]

5 Veszprem

The city of Veszprem was captured by Soviet troops during the Vienna Offensive during World War II. During the Cold War, Veszprem served as a major base for Soviet helicopters. The buildings at the airfield were built in the 1930s and were expanded by the Soviets during the 1980s. They have not been restored to their former glory, but you can still see the massive buildings that once filled the base.

Veszprem was home to several Soviet units, including a tank division and an armored training regiment. There was also a paratroop battalion, a chemical defense battalion, and an SGF NCO training school. In all, there were 10,400 Soviet troops stationed in Hungary at the time.^[6]

4 Irbene, Latvia

A Russian astronomer and his wife traveled 186 miles (300 kilometers) from Riga to Irbene, Latvia, to visit the largest radio telescope in Northern Europe. On their way, they discovered that the city was now a ghost town. Cafes and power plants stood abandoned. However, the buildings of the abandoned Soviet town were still in good shape when the Russian military left. There were still a few Soviet buildings, and the utilities and sewers were still functioning.

The Soviets abandoned the town in 1993. However, the radio telescope remains there, and you can even climb up near the huge dish, which is the largest in Northern Europe. But you can only visit the facility if you have a special permit.

The secret military base was more than 494 acres (200 hectares) and was used by the military unit 51429. The antennas were used to listen to phone calls in a wide area and even to communicate with enemies of the Soviet Union. The smallest antenna measured a diameter of 32.5 feet (10 meters) and was used to listen to incoming calls.^[7]

3 Klomino

Klomino, Poland, is a former Soviet-era ghost town. Though the town is currently abandoned, it was once a Soviet prison camp. Today, the town has a population of only five and no rail or bus connections. There are also no shops and no place to eat. The town has mostly been looted.

The Soviet Union occupied the village in 1945 and renamed it Grodek. Though the village did not appear on Polish maps, it was home to over 6,000 Soviet soldiers. In 1993, after the Soviet Union collapsed, the Polish military took over and began the process of selling the village. However, the Polish military was forced to leave the town after just one year because nobody wanted to purchase it, and the local authorities lacked funds for its upkeep.

Today, the only numerous residents of Klomino are the local ghosts. It is possible to walk through the empty buildings of the former Soviet Army. There are no tourist shops and no buses in the town. While it may be hard to imagine living in such a place, the few human residents are very happy despite the isolation.^[8]

2 Vozrozhdeniya Island

In 1948, Vozrozhdeniya Island, once an unassuming island in the Soviet Union, was turned into a top-secret biological weapons research facility. The island’s former village of Kantubek was turned into the military town of Aralsk-7, and laboratories were built on the island’s southern side. In this facility, scientists tested out the most lethal pathogens ever created.

In the southern part of Vozrozhdeniya Island, the Soviets built an open-air test site to study the dissemination of bio-weapon agents and methods to detect them. The testing grounds were equipped with detectors spaced at 0.6-mile (one-kilometer) intervals. The tests included anthrax, brucellosis, the plague, and typhus.

The Vozrozhdeniya Island test site remained operational even after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Eventually, the evacuation of the remaining Russian military personnel took place. In the years since, the site has fallen into disrepair and has been taken apart by scavengers. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. and Uzbek governments joined forces to thoroughly clean up the island and ensure no residual pathogens remained. As the Aral sea continues to dry up, Vozrozhdeniya Island has now become a peninsula shared by Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.^[9]

1 Tskaltubo

Tskaltubo was once a fashionable Soviet destination that drew party elites, military personnel, and even Joseph Stalin himself. The decaying hotels, bath houses, and sanitoriums that dot the landscape now appeal to new, more adventurous visitors. The resort’s past is reflected in its ruins, with many buildings depicting Georgian motifs and patriotic symbols.

Tskaltubo has a radon spring that is believed to have healing powers. Stalin ordered the health resort to become the largest balneological center in the Soviet Union. In fact, the Soviet Union built 19 sanatoriums in the city between the 1930s and 1950s. These sanatoriums would become a symbol of the Stalinist style of architecture.^[10]

In the USA, ghost towns are primarily associated with the Old West. The idea is mostly that a town sprung up next to a mine or as part of some other form of speculation, and then eventually the business opportunity dried up and forced everyone to move away.

Around the world, the reality is very different. Communities have been abandoned for reasons that have nothing to do with economic busts, sometimes so quickly that personal belongings are left strewn about the house. Let’s trot the globe to those abandoned places that are often as fascinating as they are tragic.

10. Bodie

Bodie was named in honor of W.S. Bodey, a miner who found gold in 1859, and thus began a minor gold rush years after California’s most famous gold rush had died down. The town was founded in 1861, its namesake having frozen to death the prior winter. Bodie became the site of its own rush in 1875, when a mine collapse revealed a rich vein of gold. While Bodie is hardly as famous as San Francisco or Los Angeles today, for a time it looked like it might go on to be a major metropolis since, in 1880, it was the third largest city in California with 10,000 people. It was so cash rich that there were 200 restaurants and 65 saloons. It was also a rough crowd, and there were rumors the town endured six shootings a week.  

By the 1890s, the gold supply and population had already begun to dwindle. Adding to its troubles, a fire broke out in 1892 and burned down much of the town. By 1917, Bodie was so dead that its rail lines were raided for scrap. Then in 1932 another major fire burned much of the town down. Officially the town’s mine was killed off in 1942 when all mining not essential for WWII was banned. 

Still, in 1962, since the town was cleared out so completely, it was designated a preserved historical site, which ironically turned it into a tourist boom town again with as many as 1,000 visitors a day in summer. The winter, though, is a very different story. They get so severe in Bodie that in 1999 it was the coldest recorded spot in America 71 times, the largest number of anywhere that year. Even the hardiest snowmobilers will hesitate to put up with that. 

9. Ordaur-sur-Glane

In the wake of the Allied Normandy landings on June 6, 1944, the Wehrmacht massively stepped up its operations to put down French partisan activity. Ordaur-sur-Glane was one target in the sights of the 2nd Panzer Division, whose leader was freshly arrived from the Eastern Front, where standard procedure in the wake of a partisan attack was to kill thousands of civilians in reprisal whether or not they had anything to do with the attack. On June 10, 1944, the SS arrived in the town, where the population was 650 — roughly half of them newly arrived refugees. The soldiers gathered the population in the town square, then placed the women and children into the town church and set fire to it, including throwing in grenades. All but eight of the other residents were gunned down, with the rest of the village being looted before being put to the torch. Unusually for World War II atrocities, there was a subsequent public outrage that the Wehrmacht attempted to address with a farce of an investigation and a show trial, which inevitably concluded that the atrocity had been justified. 

In 1946, the mostly destroyed town was set to be preserved as a historical site by the French government. Ordaur-sur-Glane became so prominent an event that references were made to the massacre during the Nuremberg trials. Even as late as 2013, the German government was considering reopening the cases against the SS officers involved. 

8. Craco

More than 1,400 years is a good run for any community. Craco, a village carved out of rock in the Southern Italian region of Basilicata, was founded in the 6th Century AD. It endured such crises as raids and the Black Death. What ultimately did it in was a series of earthquakes and landquakes through the 1950s and 1960s that left the village utterly unstable. The government wasn’t willing to risk the roughly 1,800 citizens being crushed or plummeting to their deaths and moved them out, a difficult process which left many of them essentially refugees in tent cities for years. 

Given that the village is still there more than half a century later, that may have seemed premature, though who knows how much more wear and tear those citizens going about their business would have added to the terrain over the years. The feeling is further reinforced by the fact the village hosts biannual festivals. Not to mention that it was judged sufficiently safe that movie productions such as The Passion of the Christ partially took place there. Who knows how many of the displaced residents want to move back now. 

7. Hashima Island

Considering that it is situated off the coast of the infamous city of Nagasaki, it’s not surprising that Hashima Island is overshadowed. In the 1850s, the island was revealed to be a rich coal mine, and it attracted miners willing to go 2,000 feet under the earth. It was such a business hotspot that it attracted 5,000 people, which might not sound like many but considering that it’s a sixteen acre island that made it for a time the most densely populated location on Earth. It should be noted that many of the miners were prisoners of war from Korea and the UK. It wasn’t until 1974 that the coal mine went dry, and in short order everyone left the island town to crumble. 

Not to say that people stopped caring about it. Japan also tried to get the island declared a UNESCO Heritage site in 2006. Considering its history of slavery, it was a surprise to many that the application was approved in 2015. Today the site accepts tourists from Nagasaki, even though much of it is considered too structurally unsound for visitors.

6. Wittenoom

Speaking of ghost towns being unsafe, this Western Australia mining town about 500 miles from Perth was founded in 1950. At its height there were roughly 20,000 residents. It lasted until 1966, when it turned out that the asbestos mine that the company town sprung up to support was filling the air with so many toxins that an estimated 300 miners died from mesothelioma. The government shut down the mine and the population rapidly dropped off. Despite the evacuations, it wasn’t until 2007 that the town was struck from government maps.   

Despite the risks, as of March 2019 three people insisted on living in the town built for 20,000. What’s more, they would invite tourists to come see one of the most contaminated places in the Southern Hemisphere. Some tourists are even willing to go down into the deadly mine shafts. The government had to resort to expensive voluntary property buybacks to clear a few of them out, with costs for unsafe homes rising as high as $325,000, not to mention $50,000 for moving costs. If the threat of death by cancer isn’t enough to clear them out, money probably won’t do much better.    

5. Fordlandia

In 1926, Ford Motor Co. began work on a community deep in the Amazon Basin to grow and harvest its own rubber trees to ensure that the company’s rubber supply wasn’t vulnerable to trade embargoes. The town housed 5,000 people, of whom 3,000 were laborers. Within eight years, it would be abandoned by Ford.

Problems included, but were not limited to, the fact that the imported rubber trees were extremely vulnerable to all sorts of caterpillars, snails, and other pests of the Amazon to the point where the workers needed to try and pick them off by hand. Other animals caused more grievous harm, such as when a large river fish bit off the arm of the manager’s maid or when a jaguar carried off a baby. The homes the company constructed were prefabs built for the American Midwest and were much too hot and stuffy for the Amazon. Over the first three years, 28 Ford employees were buried in the town cemetery.

Meanwhile the local workers, being migratory people, were not eager to be tied down to the same grueling work for prolonged periods. Consequently most would work to receive high wages for a short period and leave, aside from the unhealthy and physically disabled that needed Fordlandia’s generous medical care. Fordlandia never came anywhere near its rubber production quota, and in 1945 Ford sold the land back to the government, having lost $7.8 million overall, though some sources put it as high as $20 million (the equivalent of over $200 million today). The Ford Company people were seemingly so eager to leave that they left behind many personal belongings, such as clothing. Who could blame them?  

4. Kolmanskop

When diamonds are so pervasive in a town that all someone has to do is sift through some nearby sand, it’s understandable to think that the supply will continue forever. In 1912, the mines in the Namibian city of Kolmanskop produced roughly 12% of the world’s diamond supply, which is especially impressive for a community where the population never went above 1,000. What had once been the kind of town that was founded because its namesake, John Coleman, abandoned his ox-cart there was changed forever when a Zecharia Lewala discovered the precious gems while doing railway work in 1908. The boom times ended unusually fast, and by 1930 the town’s mines had been picked clean, and by 1956 the last holdout had left the rapidly depleted town 

The fact the town ruins are located in sand dunes are turning out to be a little bit of a mixed blessing. On one hand, they’ve threatened the bury the town for a long time. On the other, the lack of vegetation and moisture has left the buildings so well-preserved that the paint on some of the walls is still brightly colored. It’s well-situated to be a long-lasting, if well hidden, time capsule.  

3. Tyneham

In December 1943 the 225 residents of this village near the Dorset Coast were ordered out because the Royal Armoured Corps Gunnery School wanted to expand its firing range, and this village was in the way. Even after the Great War ended the UK military claimed that they still needed the land for their firing range, and despite considerable protests the villagers were never allowed to move back. Despite the proximity to the firing range, the most significant form of structural damage the village suffered was a manor house being torn down so that the parts could be recycled. 

The village was noted as being unusually well preserved and producing a number of rare plants such as dark green fritillary due to lack of human activity, aside from tourists during military down times. Not that it is anywhere near perfectly preserved. In 2019 the Ministry of Defense closed tourist access to seven of the buildings since they had been judged unsafe. Hopefully the daredevil tourists who went to the Wittenoom asbestos mines don’t consider that a sort of challenge.  

2. Dhanushkodi 

For years, Dhanushkodi had the distinction of being near the only land border between India and Sri Lanka, specifically the southeastern section of Pamban Island. It also was near a location that possessed a bridge significant to Hindu history. It was a highly successful fishing community of several thousand. This success came to an abrupt end in 1964 when the community was hit by a cyclone, a night that left as many as 1,800 people dead. The village was left to the elements, and some of what used to be the village is now submerged as the sand eroded. 

Because of the village’s religious significance, many people wanted to visit the devastated town. Pilgrims that wish to perform a ritual of walking out into the ocean water and saying prayers have come in groups numbering as many as 1,200. As far as permanent residents are concerned, only a few fishing families cut off from modern amenities want to risk being in the path of another cyclone.  

1. Pripyat

It’s the most famous community that was evacuated in the wake of the April 26, 1986 Chernobyl Disaster. On the day after the core of the nuclear plant exploded, nearly 50,000 people were cleared out, a bit under half the people that used to live in the thousand square miles that comprise the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, the area the government determined was still unsafe to live in. Due to the abruptness of the evacuation, the city became a particularly eerie place where numerous possessions, even half-finished meals, were merely left in an uncanny state as if their owners had simply winked out of existence. Since the radiation left the city so unsafe to visit, only the most daring could take photos of its creepy vistas.   

At least, that’s how it used to be. In recent years, Pripyat has become relatively lively with visitors, many of whom are quite obnoxious about it. The city has many instances of obscene graffiti that have been added in recent years, along with such curious rituals as people putting lockets around metal poles. Despite its harrowing content, the 2019 HBO/Sky coproduction Chernobyl actually increased visitors to the city. 

Even before curious people flocked to Pripyat, there was a small group that refused to stay away after the evacuation. The Exclusion Zone is estimated to be home to roughly 200 villagers. Few young people who leave the Exclusion Zone for education are willing to ever return, a situation likely all too relatable for many of our readers who live in rural communities.  

Dustin Koski is also one of the authors of A Tale of Magic Gone Wrong, a story about a village in danger of becoming a ghost town because everyone turned into monsters. 

From the mysterious icy opening of the original Frankenstein novel, written by Mary Shelley, to the arctic horror of John Carpenter’s The Thing, it’s no secret that the desolate, desert tundra biome makes for an excellent horror story backdrop. The yawning, chilling snowscapes found at the top and bottom of the planet are scary enough, should one find themself stranded in them.

But what if something supernatural dwelt out there in the winter wonderlands? Ghost stories are quite plentiful in the far north if the legends are to be believed. And though some believe that Antarctica also has its haunted nooks, this list will cover ten different stories from above the Arctic Circle.

10 King William Island Zombies

While the first entry on this list steers a bit away from a classic ghost story, the Natsilik Inuit people who lived on King William Island tell stories of invasions from another sort of undead being: zombies. Originally named “Quikiqtak,” King William Island can be found in the province of Nunavut and was first found by British explorers in 1830. However, the Indigenous people had lived there for far longer.

Being this far north, the Natsilik Inuit had never come across other indigenous before, let alone white European explorers. So when people reported witnessing shambling, blue-skinned shells of men, legends of the undead walking once more arose. Indeed, many expeditions above the Arctic Circle were ill-fated, and many explorers, most notably the 1845 British Franklin expedition, were often grisly to behold as men froze to death. These “Death Marches” were real, though some were reported when no expeditions were documented to have taken place in the area. Perhaps these doomed explorers became ghosts after all.^[1]

9 Kola Superdeep Borehole

Though many Soviet accomplishments were once obscured in Cold War secrecy, it was a known fact that the nation succeeded in digging the world’s deepest man-made hole on the Kola Peninsula, a project that went on from 1970 to 1994. The hole itself was able to breach 40,230 feet (12,262 meters) into the Earth’s crust, a depth deeper than the Mariana Trench. Although such a feat also came with a plethora of rumors.

It is widely accepted that the project was abandoned due to a lack of funding, but some rumors speculate that the drill had breached into an extremely hot cavern unexpectedly. The microphone picked up alleged “screams of the damned,” driving the scientists to madness. Some allege that the scientists had indeed dug all the way to Hell itself, though this entry on the list is by far the most likely to be a mere urban legend.^[2]

8 Ghosts of Tromsø

With a population of over 70,000 people as of 2022, the Norwegian city of Tromsø is the third most populated area above the Arctic Circle. Though it is far from the oldest town in Scandinavia, the city of Tromsø was officially founded in 1838, which leaves more than enough wiggle room for those trying to find a deep enough history to find ghost stories.

Tales are often told of sea trolls and wraith-like wights prowling the beaches on the oceans, searching for victims in the night, and ghosts have been witnessed haunting each and every building downtown. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the city center was built on an ancient graveyard. Local historian Aesgir Johansen even hosts a Tromsø Ghost Walk through the chilly city.^[3]

7 Arctic Circle Hot Springs Resort

Though the specific hot springs in question are just shy of being able to claim to be above the Arctic Circle, parts of the land first claimed by Franklin Leach in 1906 would reach northerly enough. The community of Circle Hot Springs was a boomtown for the local Yukon Gold Rush, after having been inhabited by the Athabascan people, and would eventually become a ghost town as the gold ran dry.

A resort would open far later in history, and in the nineties particularly, the owners of the establishment would report a slew of poltergeist activity. Objects would fly across the room, footsteps would be heard when no guest was present, and the translucent, gossamer-like visage of a woman would often be seen. It is thought to be the spirit of Emma Leach, Franklin Leach’s wife, who is buried at the property.^[4]

6 The SS Baychimo

This next entry takes us to the Arctic Ocean itself, as it is claimed that a ghost ship sometimes haunts the waters near the Sea Horse Islands near Point Barrow in Alaska. After twenty years of operation, the Swedish cargo steamer known as the SS Baychimo was trapped in the ice and forced to be abandoned in 1931. It dislodged and floated about the Arctic before anyone could return to salvage it.

Unlike most ghostly vessels, sightings of the SS Baychimo were indeed real sightings of an abandoned ship, and some people were even able to get on board throughout the 1930s. Sightings of the vessel would continue up to 1969, either coming from Inuit people living in the area, or other explorers, though none dared to board or salvage the ship ever again. Though the ship’s wreckage was never discovered, even after a concentrated effort to locate it in 2006, some claim that the apparition of the SS Baychimo still glides silently on the icy waters of the Arctic.^[5]

5 Salekhard-Igarka Railway

From 1947 to 1953, gulag prisoners of the Soviet Union were forced into the arduous task of building more than eight-hundred miles of railway track in the frigid North of Siberia. Only around half of the track would succeed in being built, the project grinding to a halt after the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, but the Salekhard-Igarka railway project wouldn’t end before leading to the deaths of over 300,000 people.

In time, the incomplete railway would achieve another name, “Stalin’s Railway of Death,” and the deaths didn’t just stem from overworking and exhaustion. It is said that many prisoners bled out due to the massive swarms of mosquitoes in the area. Many of the abandoned, dilapidated structures still stand to this day, and some urban explorers claim to hear tormented, ethereal screams, sounds of labor, and other ghostly activity amongst the ruins.^[6]

4 Qivittoq

The next legend on this list can be found on the less-than-aptly named Greenland. The legend of the Qivittoq pertains more to multiple beings than a single ghost, but it is a haunting figure nonetheless. The people of Greenland claim that large, brooding, spectral figures prowl the icy tundra, hunting after people unlucky enough to cross paths with them.

The word “Qivittoq” also pertains to people who are banished from communities and effectively left to freeze to death with little chance of survival. Over time, however, people claim to see these banished folks, nonetheless, somehow surviving in the tundra against all odds. Perhaps this is where their penchant for hunting people comes from; dire survival instincts. The legend of the Qivittoq was made famous by a 1956 Danish film titled simply Qivitoq, dropping one of the “T’s” in its name.^[7]

3 The Ghost of Augustus Peers

In 1853, a fur trader by the name of Augustus Peers tragically passed away in his thirties due to natural circumstances. However, before his passing, Peers made it very clear that he didn’t want to be buried where he worked; Fort McPherson. And so, a colleague and dogsled runner by the name of Roderick Macfarlane offered to transfer Peers’s body down the Mackenzie River to a new location.

What occurred during the trek, however, would leave Macfarlane very unlikely to ever agree to such a task again. According to his journal, the dogsled driver reported hearing a commanding voice ring out from nowhere, telling the dogs to protect the body from wild scavengers. The dogs complied, but this would be far from the only harrowing occurrence. A spectral form would float outside of Macfarlane’s tent during the night, frightening the man beyond words. ^[8]

2 The Myling

Harrowing tales of the Myling are told all across Scandinavia, as they are certainly in the upper echelons of Norse legend notoriety. However, unlike Thor and Loki, stories of these spirits really took off the more Christianity made its way into Scandinavia. The Mylingar are said to be the ghost of a child born out of wedlock, in which the mother leaves the child out in the wilderness to die, lest both the mother and child get punished by the church.

Many believed that since the child would be unbaptized, there was little to stop them from a doomed fate as a ghost. Unlike most ghosts, however, the Myling does a bit more than simply haunt a location. It constantly cries out for years and years and pesters passers-by, begging them to give the spectral child a name. More vengeful mylingar actively try to disclose their mothers’ secret to anyone who will listen, sometimes manifesting during her wedding day.^[9]

1 The Phantom Trapper of Labrador

A ghost haunts the snowy fields of the Canadian province of Labrador, and he goes simply by the name of “Smoker” to those who tell his tale. Sticking it out in the frigid north, the man, whose real name was allegedly Esau, first started off his entrepreneurship as a trapper. But meeting little success, he turned to brewing moonshine instead. This got him into trouble with the Mounted Police quite often, which prompted Smoker to double down on his plan.

He fastened a suit of all-white furs, adopted an all-white husky dog-sledding team to blend in with the snow, and escaped persecution. He met with success for a while, but a drunken fall prompted the bootlegger to break his back in the snowy north, where he shortly died. However, some claim to see a snowy, spectral trapper continuously sled through the snow in North Canada. It is even claimed that the man cried out to God himself before dying, begging to become a ghost out of fear that he’d be sent to Hell.^[10]