Written by: Anika Misra, Rishab Jain, Tanishqa Kolekar, and Annie Lin
Edited by: Tanishqa Kolekar and Rishab Jain
Have you ever heard of a city with more dolls than people? Or a maze-filled manor determined to repel evil spirits? Earth has a fair share of haunted places and mysteries that even logic and science can’t debunk. From North America to Asia, we’ve narrowed it down to the five most haunted places on Earth.
Nagaro, Japan
This unusual city in Japan began like any other - until people began leaving the village. Nagoro’s isolated location drove its inhabitants to relocate to bigger areas. Some people abandoned the small village in search for a better location, while others died. A former resident, Tsukimi Ayano, returned to the isolated place and started creating life-size dolls to represent the former people that populated the city. Ms. Ayano began by creating dolls to represent her family members in her seclusion.
Then, she began creating these straw figures for the past residents of Nagoro. She placed them in the places that they were most likely to be found when they were alive. Today, around 350 dolls currently make up the small village, which outnumbers the human population by 10:1. (unusualplaces.org).
Danvers Lunatic Asylum (Danvers, Massachusetts)
Danvers Lunatic Asylum, also known as the Danvers State Hospital, is located in Danvers, Massachusetts. The unsettling history of this hospital began in 1871, when architect Nathaniel Jeremiah Bradlee first built the facility to house and aid mentally unstable people with psychological issues. Initially, in the 1900’s, the asylum was successful, having cured more than 9,500 patients since its establishment in 1871.
But as the Danvers Lunatic Asylum’s prestige and stature grew, so did the number of patients. The maximum capacity of patients that could be accommodated was 450, but more than 2,000 patients were being crammed into the asylum. This was when everything started to go horribly wrong. Living conditions in the hospital worsened, patients were abused, and their health deteriorated drastically. They wandered aimlessly down the corridors of the asylum, with blank expressions on their sunken faces. People began to go missing, and more than 278 patients died in the year 1939. According to historyofmassachusetts.org, shock therapy and straitjackets were just two of the horrific practices used to scare the patients into obedience.
The Danvers Lunatic Asylum permanently shut down in 1992, and after the renovations, became an apartment complex. Many people believe that the dreadful events and misfortunes of the asylum began much before the building was even built, namely because the asylum was built on the same hill where the Salem Witch Trial judge John Hathorne once lived. The only remains of the Danvers Lunatic Asylum’s dark past are the 770 nameless graves that reside in cemeteries nearby.
Winchester Mystery House (San Jose, California)
William Wirt Winchester, lived in a Connecticut house with his wife Sarah. When he died in the late 19th century, his wife believed that she was jinxed. According to sftravel.com, Sarah moved to this house and began renovating it to misguide the “ghosts” that she believed wandered the halls.
The house contains “more than 2,000 doors,” but “they don’t all lead where you would expect” (sftravel.com). These doors might lead you to a bedroom, but they could also drop you dozens of feet into one of the house’s gardens.
The work stopped on September 5, 1922, because the mastermind behind the home died of congestive heart failure in her sleep. The house’s construction has not been finished to this day, and tourists can still visit it in San Jose, CA. People still debate whether or not her house was haunted with spirits, or if she had gone insane.
The Bermuda Triangle
The Bermuda Triangle, also known as the Devil's Triangle, is a loosely defined region in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean where a number of aircraft and ships are said to have disappeared under mysterious circumstances.
According to thesun.co.uk., “The USS Cyclops, a 542-foot-long Navy cargo ship with over 300 men on-board, sank somewhere between Barbados and the Chesapeake Bay.” Similar to the loss of the USS Cyclops, thousands of people have lost their lives in the past century.
In December of 1945, Flight 19, carrying five Torpedo Bomber planes, flew over the Bermuda Triangle. All 14 people aborted the flight, completely disappearing without any clue. A rescue boat assigned to find the missing passengers of Flight 19 also vanished with all of the 13 people on board, leaving no indication or trace of its whereabouts.
The Bermuda Triangle has been the cause of many disappearances of lives of people on board with the planes and ships. Are all these disappearances just mere coincidence, or is there something more sinister lurking behind the shadows?
Pripyat, Ukraine
The now abandoned city of Pripyat, Ukraine, has an extremely eerie and terrifying past, most definitely not for the faint of heart. On April 26, 1986, the worst nuclear disaster in history occurred at the Chernobyl Power Plant near Pripyat. The results were catastrophic and severely damaging.
According to listverse.com, there were sightings of a black, bird-like figure before the nuclear accident had transpired. It reportedly had “large, glowing red eyes,” and a “twenty-foot wingspan. The workers that witnessed this hideous creature appear had horrifying nightmares and received alarming phone calls every night up until the debilitating accident. Were the two somehow connected? Or was it just by chance that a horrific creature appeared before power plant workers’ eyes on the days leading up to the nuclear disaster?
A total of 31 people lost their lives to the Chernobyl Nuclear Accident, as stated by BBC News. To this day, there are still questions about the Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster and if any of the bizarre occurrences were in any way connected to the unfortunate deaths of the power plant workers, firefighters, and soldiers.
Nagoro, Danvers Lunatic Hospital, Winchester Mystery House, Bermuda Triangle, and Pripyat are just a few of the mysterious places on the planet. Many of these strange occurrences have no science behind the strange phenomenons that have occurred. And many others just need to be explored. Are you courageous enough to brave these places on your own?
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