Creepy, Crazy, Cool: 11 of the World’s Most Fascinating Abandoned Destinations

Pripyat, Ukraine

On April 26, 1986, residents of Pripyat, Ukraine, were forced to flee the area within hours after the nearby Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant melted down. Nearly four decades later, tourists can visit the abandoned city that sits in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and was once home to around 50,000 people. Apartment blocks, amusement parks, supermarkets, and other dilapidated structures have become a slowly decaying time capsule of the country’s Cold War past.

The Maunsell Sea Forts

The hulking Maunsell Army Sea Forts have dotted the waters of the Thames Estuary off Kent, England, since World War II. The rusting gun towers atop stilts were built in 1942 to fend off German aircraft and eventually decommissioned in the 1950s.

Ryugyong Hotel

The pyramid-shaped Ryugyong Hotel, nicknamed the “Hotel of Doom,” towers 105 stories above the city Pyongyang in North Korea. Construction started in 1987 but halted five years later when financing dried up. Officials have since started and ceased work on the massive skyscraper multiple times through the years. The incomplete structure has never hosted a single guest and there is reportedly no opening date in sight.

Star Wars Sets

The Tozeur Desert in Tunisia, North Africa, once served as the backdrop for the planet Tatooine and Luke Skywalker’s childhood home in Star Wars. Actor Mark Hamill filmed his portrayal of the intergalactic hero in the movie franchise’s Episode IV — A New Hope back in the late-1970s, but the out-of-this-world beige building facades built on sandy sets still exist and are a big draw for tourists.

Eastern State Penitentiary, Philadelphia

Located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Eastern State Penitentiary was opened in 1829. It operated for nearly 150 years and is among the oldest standing prisons in the country. Historians believe more than 75,000 inmates were incarcerated here and often tortured in solitary confinement. The Ghost Adventures team recently investigated the maximum-security prison that is now said to be one of the most haunted buildings in the world.

Battleship Island

First settled in the late 19th century, the 16-acre Hashima Island off the southern coast of Japan sits atop a giant undersea coal mine. The micro-city was home at its peak in the 1950s to over 5,000 people and the most densely populated location on the planet. Featured in the James Bond film Skyfall, the island was completely abandoned in 1974 after the coal mines below the concrete apartment buildings were depleted and closed. The deserted offshore destination, also known as Battleship Island, earned UNESCO World Heritage status in 2015. Swedish filmmaker Thomas Nordanstad made a documentary about Hashima and has said that “there are ghosts there for sure” and something is “not right” with the island. “There is nothing pretty about it. There's nothing beautiful about it. The whole place is just death and decay.”

Varosha, Cyprus

In 1974, tens of thousands of residents of the ritzy Varosha quarter of the city Famagusta in Cyprus fled after Turkey invaded the northern third of the country. The small Mediterranean island was divided, and since then time has stood still in this restricted zone the Turkish military fenced off and now patrols. Fashions from almost 50 years ago still adorn mannequins in shop windows and there’s reportedly even an abandoned car dealership filled with vehicles in this seaside ghost town.

Wanli UFO Village

Wanli UFO Village, a formerly futuristic beachside holiday resort in northern Taiwan, is now trapped in time and an eerie nod to the long-gone midcentury trend of flying saucer-shaped Futuro and Venturo homes. The pre-fabricated residences were designed by Finnish architect Matti Suuronen in the 1960s and constructed with fiberglass-reinforced plastic. Formerly bustling, the neighborhood is now creepily quiet, according to one visitor who recently explored the area.

The Sanzhi UFO houses, pictured above, also known as Sanzhi Pod City, are deserted, pod-shaped buildings in Taiwan. Once intended to be a colorful seaside resort, the project was abandoned in 1980 because of the loss of funding and strange accidents that led to speculation that it’s haunted. Currently, little remains of these unusually designed buildings, which recently have been demolished to leave nothing but ghost lore and rubbish.

City Hall Station

The skyline of New York City is always changing, but underground there’s one place in the Big Apple that’s divorced from time. The City Hall Station in lower Manhattan was opened in 1904 and permanently closed in 1945 since the gently curving tracks couldn’t accommodate the configuration of newer trains. Now there are occasional tours of the abandoned station, but subway passengers can also get a glimpse of its stained-glass skylights, glass tilework and other ornate features by staying on the downtown 6 train after the last stop at Brooklyn Bridge and peeking out the windows as it slowly loops back around to head uptown.

Winchester Mystery House

Gun heiress Sarah Winchester was considered eccentric — but she also had an extravagant side. In 1884, she ordered workers to begin remodeling her eight-room farmhouse and decided its construction should never stop. By the time Winchester passed away almost four decades later, the architectural oddity in San Jose had cost the equivalent of $71 million today and boasted everything from staircases that led to nowhere to secret passageways. While technically not abandoned, some of the mansion’s 160 rooms were completely sealed off as soon as they were built. The 24,000-square-foot property has 10,000 windows, 2000 doors, 52 skylights, 13 bathrooms and 6 kitchens and is now a popular tourist attraction said to be haunted.