11 Dark Tourism Destinations That Will Chill Your Bones

Had enough of rolling hills, misty mountains and pristine beaches? If your mind inclines towards macabre, our Earth is home to plenty of morbid destinations that will strike a sense of dread into the most stoic of hearts.

Pripyat, Ukraine

The world’s worst nuclear disaster at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, has reduced the once flourishing city Pripyat to a radioactive ghost town.

Today, only a handful of people still live in Pripyat. The Ukraine government permits brief guided tours to the town and the Exclusion Zone around the wrecked reactor.

Holding inmates from all across Europe, Auschwitz was the largest of the Nazi German concentration and extermination camps. With an estimated 1.1 million to 1.5 million deaths (90% of them Jews), it is the site of the largest mass murder in history.

Cambodian Killing Fields

These fields are a number of sites where more than a million people were killed through execution, disease or starvation, under the Khmer Rouge regime.

The largest killing field of Cambodia, Choeung Ek, serves as a mass grave, with a Buddhist stupa dedicated to the unfortunate souls. The memorial contains more than 5,000 skulls of the victims.

Pompeii, Italy

An unfortunate volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius laid waste to the thriving city of Pompeii in 79 AD, and buried it under volcanic ashes.

The ancient city, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is a popular dark tourism destination for its ruins, and the human bodies that depict the last moments of their lives.

Jallianwala Bagh Memorial, India

The brutal massacre of unarmed men, women, and children at the Jallianwala Bagh by the British Army, during India’s struggle for independence, has left an unfading scar on human history.

Apart from the memorial, you can see the bullet marks on the walls, and the well in which scores of people jumped, in a desperate bid to save themselves.

Leap Castle, Ireland

The history of this 13th century castle is fraught with instances of gruesome prisoner executions and fratricide.

While the castle is rumored to be the stomping ground of a number of spirits, a particularly violent and foul-smelling spirit named Elemental is Leap Castle’s most famous, supernatural resident.

9/11 Memorial, New York

The 9/11 memorial, at the site of the World Trade Center, is a tribute to the victims and survivors of the devastating terrorist attack on the Twin Towers.

Banff Springs Hotel, Canada

With reports of ghosts of a woman who died in the hotel in her wedding dress, and a family which was murdered in the now bricked-up Room 873, the grand historic hotel is said to be the country’s most haunted hotel!

Sedlec Ossuary, Czech Republic

The small Roman Catholic chapel is probably the scariest place to pray, with its not-so-usual decorations of bones belonging to 40,000 to 70,000 people!

Aokigahara, Japan

Resting at the base of Mount Fuji, the eerie forest is said to be run over by Yūrei, a type of Japanese ghost. It has been dubbed as the “Suicide Forest”, as for some inexplicable reason, the forest has turned into a popular spot for committing suicides.

Island of the Dolls, Mexico

If there is one thing we learned from Chucky and Annabelle, it is that dolls are officially creepy! The Island of the Dolls is the living example of this, dotted with terrifying dolls having mutilated limbs, left to appease the ghost of a little girl.