The Creepiest Abandoned Towns and Cities in the World

Translation: Island of the Dolls, and it's exactly as terrifying as it sounds. The island is situated in a canal outside Mexico City, and its trees are festooned with creepy, broken dollies. Some have bodies, some are simply heads. And it gets better, as Huffington Post writer Suzy Strutner outlines the island's backstory: "The island’s former caretaker, Don Julian Santana, said he found a young girl floating dead in the canal more than 50 years ago... Santana proceeded to collect dolls from the trash and canals for decades afterward, hanging them around the island in an attempt to please the young girl’s spirit. In 2001, Santana was found floating dead in the same spot where he said he once found the girl."

It is said that sometimes the dolls move their eyes or heads of their own accord, signifying that the girl's spirit is nearby.

This island between Venice and Lido in the Venice Lagoon had been used as a refuge and a military base since the Middle Ages, but things took a dark turn in 1776, when the island was turned into a quarantine check point for people and goods going into or out of Venice. In 1793, two ships were found to be carrying plague-infected passengers and they were held in quarantine on Poveglia. The quarantine was originally intended to be only temporary, but in 1805, Napoleon declared the island a permanent lazaretto, or quarantine station.

So many people died there, there are rumors that the island's soil is up to 50% human remains. Poveglia has not yet been searched for mass graves, but "mass graves have been found on the nearby islands of Lazaretto Nuovo and Lazzaretto Vecchio containing the remains of thousands of plague victims."

As if that wasn't bad enough, in 1922, the island's buildings were converted from quarantine buildings into a mental asylum. They continued in this capacity until the asylum was closed and whole island abandoned in 1968. Not at all surprisingly, the island is rumored to be haunted.

Oradour-sur-Glane is a haunting locale not only for its weather-beaten age, decay, and hollowed out buildings, but for the reason why this village became uninhabited. In 1944, German soldiers lead by SS-Sturmbannführer Adolf Diekmann, massacred 642 citizens of Oradour-sur-Glane, nearly the entire population of the village.

Details of this slaughter are horrendous and harrowing. Following World War II, France's president Charles de Gaulle ordered the village be maintained as-is, to serve as a permanent and grim reminder of war's devastation.

Pripyat is the site of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, and thus the location of the worst nuclear disaster in history. The town, which had been developed solely to serve the power plant, was evacuated in 1986 after an explosion and fire at the Chernobyl plant released dangerous radioactive particles into the air. Thirty-one people perished in the disaster, and long-term illnesses among former residents are still a problem to this day.

While radiation levels have dropped enough to allow photographers and even tourists to visit the area, Pripyat remains uninhabited, and the amount of decay and ruin visible there is the stuff of nightmares. Check out this drone footage of Pripyat, and see if it doesn't prickle your skin.

Villa Epecuén was a popular Argentine tourist resort destination with almost 300 hotels, restaurants, and other businesses, until a flood in 1985 burst the dam and dyke that protected Villa Epecuén from the nearby lake, flooding the town with water up to 33 feet deep. The town was abandoned and sat underwater for 24 years.

Today, the only resident of Villa Epecuén is 87-year-old Pablo Novak, who returned to his home in Villa Epecuén after the waters finally receded in 2009.

In 1858, the British designated Ross Island in the South Andamans as a penal colony for prisoners from the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and similar anti-colonial uprisings. Ross Island developed a dark and terrible reputation; prisoners referred to Ross as Kalapani, or "black water" - the name referenced a Hindu myth about crossing the sea to a hellish place.

Prisoners died from torture, mistreatment, overwork (prisoners were tasked with building roads and clearing brush from the island to make room for buildings), and illnesses like malaria and dysentery. In a four-year period, "3,500 out of 8,000 transportees had been killed or had died of fever." 

Later, the colony experimented with methods of "civilizing" the indigenous people of the Andamans, and terrible methods of torture and inhuman medical tests were performed on island inmates.

The island was invaded by the Japanese during World War II, and in 1941, suffered a massive earthquake - both events caused significant damage. The penal colony was finally abandoned in 1945, though tourists still voyage to the island to see the crumbling, overgrown buildings.