These Ghost Villages Around The World Will Seriously Horrify You. Stay OUT!

Even if you have never seen one yourself, there are more ghost towns in the world than you think. Not only are they everywhere, but they’re creepier than most people could care to admit. Humans are constantly abandoning cities and villages as the economy shifts elsewhere or disasters drive them out. Because of this hurried and negative exodus, what is left behind is usually a strange, haunted wasteland.

If you’re planning a trip to see some surreal abandoned cities, you should start with the eight on this list. Just wait until you read about what happened to #5. So tragic.

Dallol was once a prosperous mining city in the Ethiopian desert. However its inhabitants abandoned the city in the late 1960s.

Kilamba City was designed for up to 500,000 people, but the population there is much lower. 220 apartments were sold in 2013 from the first batch of 2,800 completed.

This desert city in the southern African nation of Namibia is the product of a diamond mining craze in the region. At one point, it had a casino, hospital, and school. After the end of World War I, people abandoned it as diamond sales dwindled.

Sweden built this mining outpost in 1910, although it exists in Norway, and then sold it to Russia in 1927. Russia operated it until 1998. The community notably contains the northernmost statue in the world of Vladimir Lenin (founder of the Soviet Union).

This small village was destroyed in 1944 by the German Waffen-SS. German troops massacred all 642 of its inhabitants, including 205 children. After the war, officials preserved the village and converted it into a museum to commemorate what happened.

This small Russian village across the border from Norway was completely abandoned following the Russian Revolution in 1917. The rotting houses are a fantastic example of pre-revolution wooden architecture.

In May 2008, the village of Chaitén was completely evacuated when the nearby Chaitén volcano erupted. This was the first eruption of the volcano in more than 9,000 years. Following the eruption, there was a terrible flood that hit the town hard.

This 13,500 unit development existed during the early 2000s at the height of the real estate boom. It cost almost $12 billion, and few apartments were sold. It now sits abandoned.

(Via: io9)

Most of these creepy ghost towns are worth a visit, except maybe for the ones in the desert. It’s way too hot out there to be standing in a building without air conditioning (maybe that’s why they were abandoned in the first place).