Places That Will Give You Nightmares

What’s the creepiest place you’ve ever visited? Was it spooky enough to re-appear in your nightmares? If not, you need to coat your balls of steel with an additional layer of molten metal, and visit one of the places mentioned in this article. There are some places you should really stay away from if you want to get a decent night’s sleep.

Darvaza Gas Crater: Door to Hell

The first one to start with is quite low on the spooky scale or maybe not if the name "Door to Hell" is anything to go by. The geological anomaly otherwise known as the Darvaza gas crater lives up to its nickname with its horrifying appearance, which is pretty much what you’d expect a gateway leading down to the fiery pits of hell to look like.

Located in the middle of the Karakum Desert in Turkmenistan, that football-pitch sized crater was formed in 1971 when soviet scientists searching for oil accidentally hit a methane reserve which collapsed their drilling platform. In a desperate attempt to rectify the situation, they then decided to set the gaping crater on fire to burn off all the methane and it has been burning ever since. In fact, that 20-meter deep fiery sinkhole is likely to burn all day and night until the remaining gas deposits feeding the flames die out.

Nagoro, The Village Of Dolls

Creepy dolls have been cropping up in horror movies for decades, but what if I told you there was a village out there where life-sized dolls have almost replaced humans altogether? That living nightmare exists in the small village of Nagoro in the valleys of Shikoku, Japan, which was once home to a happy, lively community. But when local resident Tsukimi Ayano returned to Nagaro and realized most of her old friends had either died or moved away she began recreating them in the form of life-size doll replicas to ease her own loneliness.

Nowadays, if you happen to visit that village and approach someone for directions it’s far more likely that they will be a lifeless doll than a real person, as the doll population now stands at around 350 against 27 remaining living inhabitants. Around the village and its surrounding areas, those human dolls can be found doing everyday things like waiting at the bus stop, attending classes at an abandoned school, heading out for a cycle or just generally minding their own creepy business.

Y-40 Deep Pool

Not all spooky places are found on dry land, and if you suffer from an unexplained fear of the ocean’s eerie depths otherwise known as thalassophobia, then check out this nightmare-inducing pool in the image below, which literally looks like a black hole capable of swallowing a human.

Located in Italy, the ironically named Y-40 Deep ‘Joy’ Pool is the deepest swimming pool on earth with a staggering 40-meter depth, which is the equivalent of an upside-down 14-storey building. In case you were wondering why anyone would want to create such a nightmare to begin with, the thermal pool was originally opened for diving training in 2014.

Although many have tried to reach the very bottom, experienced divers have even passed out from swimming to the top too fast and experiencing a phenomenon called "the bends" which is caused by air decompression and the rapid change in water pressure. That is definitely not somewhere you’d want to go for a leisurely dip, and even watching someone brave the terrifying drop without breathing apparatus is enough to warrant a solid nope.

The Burning Town Of Centralia, Pennsylvania

The town of Centralia in Pennsylvania was once home to a busy community who mostly worked in its prosperous coal mines from the 1800s to the 1960s, but nowadays if you look the town up online you will probably find it is also known under a different name, the burning ghost town. The origins of that less than pleasant nickname stems back to a mysterious fire which occurred in one of the mines in 1962 before quickly spreading through a series of underground tunnels.

At first residents took little notice of the incident until gas-station owners began reporting alarmingly high gasoline temperatures, and in 1981 a boy almost died falling into a 45-meter sinkhole which had opened up in his own back yard. Huge cracks then appeared on the streets and under houses, trees became white and petrified and people complained of breathing problems, and soon enough almost everyone had fled the town completely.

That near-ghost town is now only home to around 7 residents, who have been permitted to live the rest of their lives there before the area is shut down for good. To this day, smoke containing deadly carbon monoxide billows from fissures which tore through roads and sidewalks, and authorities have estimated that the raging fire below the ground will continue to burn for another 250 years, giving the door to hell a run for its money.

Sedlec Ossuary

The Sedlec Ossuary in Kutná Hora in the Czech Republic also has a more fitting popular name, and it isn’t too pleasant. The Church of Bones dates back to the 1300s and contains the remains of between 40,000 and 70,000 people which have been neatly arranged to resemble a scene fit for any Tim Burton movie.

As the story goes; in 1298 an abbot returned from Jerusalem with a small amount of holy soil which he scattered around the Sedlec Cemetery, making it about the most desirable burial place going. Due to the high demand of people choosing the chapel as their final resting place, the existing corpses buried there had to be exhumed and stored in a newly built ossuary. Instead of just piling the bones up, though, a Czech woodcarver named František Rint was tasked with repurposing the remains into something more visually appealing and boy did he go to town on it.

Inside, you can find a coat of arms made entirely of bones, party-streamers of human skulls and the pièce de resistance, a chandelier containing every bone in the human body. That macabre work of art is actually a pretty incredible interior design feat and would be a perfect wedding venue for anyone more in touch with their gothic side.

Hanging Coffins In The Philippines

If being turned into a chandelier or a candleholder wasn’t quite the way you planned to go, then how about resting in peace the old fashioned way in a coffin nailed to the side of a massive cliff. That ancient burial method is an ordinary practice for the Igorot tribe of the Mountain Province in Sagada in the Philippines, who have been sending their dead relatives up instead of 6 feet under for more than two millennia.

The age-old tradition is believed to raise the dead closer to their ancestral spirits, as well as protecting their bodies from the earth’s methods of natural decomposition. Most coffins, which have been personally designed by their occupier before their death are no more than 1 meter in length, and it’s not just because people shrink with old age.

In the most literal sense of "going out the same way you came in" the corpse is buried in the fetal position, which often requires cracking their adult bones to fit the body into such a small space. The typical ceremony also involves various animal sacrifices before the body is passed between the villagers in the hopes that precious bodily fluids will leak out and bestow good luck on the receiver.

Hashima Island

Abandoned buildings like hospitals and warehouses can be spooky enough, but that entire island in Japan looks like everyone just upped sticks and left one day and that’s because they kind of did. Hashima Island otherwise known as battleship island because of its warship-like appearance when viewed from above, was once an industrial powerhouse used for undersea coal mining between 1887 and 1974.

At one point over 5,200 people lived and worked on the island, but the workers and their families abruptly vacated in 1974 after reserves suddenly depleted, leaving it untouched for three decades. Nowadays it is the world’s largest abandoned city, and its greying skeletal buildings and moss-covered grounds make it look like a video game map come to life, all that’s missing are the zombies.

Its eerie appearance isn’t the only thing making that one terrifying location though, as the island is also steeped in a sinister history. During World War Two, countless Korean and Chinese prisoners of war were forced into labor at the mines, and over a thousand workers died during the 1930s as a result of harsh conditions and maltreatment. That horrifying past has led many to claim that the island is haunted, and a quick tour of the ruins using Google street view is probably enough to make you believe it, too.

Veijo Rönkkönen Sculpture Garden

Nestled in a forest near Parikkala in Finland is a truly terrifying garden populated by over 550 unbelievably creepy near-human statues which look like they could come alive at any moment. The Veijo Rönkkönen Sculpture Garden is named after an ordinary paper-mill worker and life-long recluse who populated his garden with a whole host of unusual characters with no real intent to profit from his work by opening his garden to the public.

After his death in 2010, a Finnish businessman purchased the land and visitors are now permitted to wander through the garden and gaze upon those bizarre creations, some of which date back 50 years. The figures vary in their otherworldly qualities: many are positioned in obscure yoga poses, while others are unnerving humanoids complete with sunken eyes and even human teeth overrun by spiders.

In some of the more truly bizarre hidden displays, an eyeless cloaked ghoul peers out from the bushes, two sinister looking women crouch over wash basins, a boy is whipped and a disembodied head spouts water into a pond. I don’t know about you, but I would hate to see what that place looks like when the sun goes down.

Miyake-jima, The Gas Mask Island

The image below looks so dystopian that it is hard to believe it isn’t a total work of fiction.

In fact, the horde of masked figures in that downright post-apocalyptic scene are residents of Miyake-jima island in Japan, which is also known as gas mask island. There is actually a pretty legitimate reason behind that terrifying dress-code, though, as Miyake-jima is located at the base of Mount Oyama, an active volcano which has erupted several times throughout history.

As a result, the entire population is at constant risk of falling victim to poisonous ash clouds flooding the island with Sulphur dioxide at any time. To combat that threat, all residents are required to carry a gas mask on them and listen out for sirens in case of a gas emergency, meaning that the entire island occasionally looks like an extended episode of Dr Who.

That terrifying problem got so bad in the year 2000 that the entire island was evacuated until 2005, when 2,800 brave people chose to return. If you aren’t looking to tie the knot in that unconventional get up anytime soon then it's best to steer well clear of Miyake-jima.

The Strid, Yorkshire

Definitely the most unsuspecting looking place on this article, but by no means the least deadly. This picturesque stream in the image below, located in Yorkshire in England may look like the perfect spot for a Sunday afternoon picnic, bit it is in fact a deadly death-trap with a 0% survival rate on record thus far.

Known as the Bolton Strid, that surprising watery grave has earned its reputation thanks to a dangerous combination of superfast currents and hidden rocks capable of dragging someone underwater and knocking them unconscious in an instant. Due to its narrow width and seemingly leisurely appearance many have attempted to jump across the stream but make one wrong move and fall in and its unlikely you’ll ever be seen again.

No one who has entered the water has ever made it out alive, sometimes not even their bodies in 1998, a honeymoon couple drowned in the Strid and were not recovered until a month later 10 miles downstream. In fact, the Strid seems to be capable of devouring just about anything unlucky enough to slip beneath its murky depths. By all means, that picture-perfect postcard location is actually the stuff of nightmares, and certainly isn’t anywhere you’d want to take a cautious dip anytime soon.

I hope you were amazed at these creepy places that will give you nightmares! Thanks for reading.