World's Eeriest Abandoned Places

Why It’s Eerie: In 1783, this dusty, rusty city in Rajasthan was abandoned overnight after a guru cursed all residents to death, without rebirth. Today it’s forbidden to visit after sunset; locals and tourists enter during daylight hours only. What remains are eerie ruins, which include two abandoned Hindu temples, several banyan trees, and a few troops of macaque and langur monkeys.

How to Experience It: Known for its luxed-out haveli, Amanbagh, just 10 miles away, offers guided twilight tours of Bhangarh (doubles from $770).

Why It’s Eerie: Tugboats have long been thought of as stout, powerful vessels of nautical hope. Not the ones in this neglected port of little engines that couldn’t. Located on New York City’s Staten Island, this creepy postindustrial landscape is chock-full of rusting hulks: forsaken tugboats, forlorn rescue vessels, defunct dredging barges, and old ferries, each scuttled in the early 20th century, when traffic bustled in New York Harbor.

How to Experience It: Recapture New York’s old-hat spirit at the anachronistic Bowery Hotel (doubles from $375), and take its free bikes onto the Staten Island Ferry (also free) for a 45-minute bike ride to the site.

Why It’s Eerie: Few places are creepier than deserted psychiatric hospitals. At this medical complex in the town of Lier, 30 minutes south of Oslo, eight of the hospital’s buildings are still occupied by living mental health patients; the remaining four are vacant—and inhabited by nonliving former residents. The looming structure, which opened in 1926 and partially shuttered in 1986, was the site of frequent lobotomies and electroshock treatments.

How to Experience It: Before heading to Lier, spend the morning in Oslo acquainting yourself with the ghostlike paintings in the Edvard Munch Museum. The Scream will put you in the mood.

Why It’s Eerie: In 1943, a volcano in the remote mountain state of Michoacán began spewing lava, eventually burying the villages of San Juan Parangaricutiro and Paricutín under a coal-black layer of chunky lava. The crucifix-topped bell tower of the San Juan Parangaricutiro Church protrudes from the lava, while the vacated church’s altar, at the other end of the structure, appears entirely intact.

How to Experience It: Hire a local guide in the strange and sleepy Purépucha mountain village of Angahuan, 30 minutes away, and see the site by burro.

Why It’s Eerie: From 1910 to 1928, two dozen farm villages were abandoned and flooded to create six new drinking reservoirs for New York City. The 8,300-acre Ashokan Reservoir alone submerged nine villages. Fortunately, the bodies from 32 cemeteries were relocated, but the churches, silos, barns, schools, and orchards are still visible during autumn’s low water levels.

How to Experience It: Since 9/11, direct access to the water is strictly limited, but you can glimpse sights from nearby bridges. Stay in one of Stony Creek Farm’s “plushrustic” farmhouse tents (from $550; sleeps six), complete with woodstoves for fall.

Why It’s Eerie: Rising like a sunken Gothic cathedral off Ireland’s Iveragh peninsula, the island of Skellig Michael was home to Irish Christian monks for some 600 years until A.D. 1100, when it was abandoned out of fear of more Viking raids. Today it’s a UNESCO World Heritage site, and all that remains are the 600 carved stone steps to the summit, some stone clocháns (beehive-shaped huts), and the haunting cries of gannets and gulls.

How to Experience It: To heighten the otherworldliness of the Skelligs, go on an organized dive (from approximately $230) in the Gulf Stream–warmed waters around the islands to spot seals, minke whales, hard and soft coral, and steep seawalls coated with colorful anemones.

Why It’s Eerie: From Elk to Fort Bragg, Mendocino County’s Highway 1 is strewn with ghost barns and shuttered lumber plants, abandoned as redwood logging became illegal. In Fort Bragg, the rusty maintenance yard for the number 681 Skunk Train, which began operations in 1885, is the creepiest. Train employees who work late nights on the adjacent, newly restored and active Skunk Line claim that the ghost of C. R. Johnson, founder of the railroad, lurks in the old depot.

How to Experience It: Etta Wilder, who hosted many a Skunk Line train passenger at her rambling seaside farmstead, still haunts Little River’s Glendeven Inn (doubles from $160). Ask for one of the inn’s cemetery maps, and pay your respects at her gravesite.

Why It’s Eerie: Some 150 miles north of Tokyo, the city of Hobara holds on to a derelict amusement park that’s eerily similar to the one in the anime flick Spirited Away. Closed in 1999 when Japan’s economic bubble burst, the ghostly 1973 park has a rusting roller coaster, frozen Ferris wheel, and strewn-about toys that are now slowly being taken over by the fog-choked Aizu forest.

How to Experience It: To access the park from Fukushima, take Highway 4 north for about an hour, then take a left before the train station in Hobara.

Why It’s Creepy: Deep in the heart of Deutschland near Bühlertal, this rambling once-popular ski resort in the thickly forested mountains is an eerie reminder of the region’s good old days. The grand old fin de siècle hotel operated until 1957, when it was converted to a camp for miners; it became a youth hostel in 1982, then finally shuttered in 2001. Nobody’s checked in or out of the rickety turreted structure in nine years.

How to Experience It: Access the hotel by taking a drive on Germany’s infamously dangerous mountain road called the Schwarzwaldhochstrasse (a.k.a. the Black Forest High Street), which runs from Baden-Baden to Freudenstadt along the Bunderstrasse 500.

Why It’s Eerie: There’s something bluntly creepy about the abandoned exurbs of Florida. Forsaken construction sites, like the ones in the middle-class development of Lehigh Acres in Florida’s southwest, are filled with half-built McMansions, unkempt yards overtaken by alligators and snakes, and derelict cul de sacs that lead to nothing. Florida’s population is diminishing for the first time ever, and nowhere is the exodus felt stronger than here.

How to Experience It: Witness the epicenter of the subprime mortgage crisis (and maybe even scout a few good house deals) by hopping aboard real estate agent Marc Joseph’s free foreclosure boat tour in Lee County’s Cape Coral, Fort Myers, and Lehigh areas.