Change is the only permanent thing in the world, they say. History books are one way of learning from past but real-life monuments speak of the past in their own ways.
Here’s a selection of some of the most ghostly abandoned places around the world, each one of which has its own special charm. Beneath all the dust, rust and cracks, there are stories of people who used to live their daily lives here. It’s as if the people in these places just picked up and left.
From some of these places it becomes clear that when people leave, it doesn\'t take long before the nature takes over.
Location
Pripyat
Location
After the biggest nuclear catastrophe the world has ever seen, the small city of Pripyat got a nickname ‘the ghost city’. Built in 1970 to serve as a home for Chernobyl nuclear plant workers, this city lived only for 16 years. In 1986, the evacuation order was given and over 40,000 people left their homes, not knowing that they’ll never return.
Mirny Diamond Mine
Location
Mirny is a small town, with less than 40,000 citizens, but is one of the most famous in Russia. It is fairly remote town, surrounded with cold and wild Siberian forests. During the 60´s Mirny was the center of world’s diamond production and had the biggest diamond mine in the world. As the years went by, the mine started to dry out of diamonds. Finally in 2011, the site was closed. The workers went away, leaving the 2-nd biggest hole on Earth behind.
Ryugyong Hotel
Location
Started as an ambitious pet project of Korea’s leader Kim Il-sung in the 90’s the Ryugyong hotel somehow proved to be a disaster. The construction turned to waste and the unfinished building stood in the middle of Pyongyang for years.
Upon realizing that this gigantic project would be really difficult to complete, North Korea government halted the construction in 1992 and came up with a solution. They completely ignored the vast structure – the officials didn’t talk about it, media photoshopped it from the city photos, and ordinary people just got used to it the way it is.
Chateau Miranda
Location
This is a favorite place of European ghost hunters. The mere design of the Chateau Miranda gives away a creepy aura and on the top of that, this house’s history is chilling as well. In its long history, this building served for many purposes, of which the most hair-raising was an orphanage.
City Hall Station
Location
When the City Hall station was made, in 1902 it was designed to be the showpiece of the new New York subway. This station is unusually elegant in architectural style, and is unique among the original stations, employing Romanesque Revival architecture.
Hotel Del Salto
Location
This spooky hotel seems like it came straight from a horror story. It is placed on a cliff, just above a vast abyss. If the hotel is not spooky enough as it is, the fog from below waterfall covers it from time to time giving it a thriller like daunting feel.
Hashima Island
Location
Hashima Island is an abandoned island city in Japan, near the coast of the city Nagasaki (Also known as Battleship Island). The island was populated from 1887 to 1974 as a coal mining facility. At that time the islands population reached its peak of 5,259 with a highest population density in the world, 83 500 people/km2.
The island's most notable features are the abandoned and undisturbed concrete apartment buildings and the surrounding sea wall.
Michigan Central Station
Location
A hundred years ago, the officials of Detroit decided to build a monumental train station which will be the premier landmark of their city. When it was constructed, the Michigan Central Station was the tallest train station in the world.
The desertification of the station happened gradually due to combination of reasons. The car culture was in the rise and more and more people could afford an own car. The original design of the station included no large parking facility. Also as the interurban service was discontinued less than two decades after MCS opened, MCS was effectively isolated from a large majority of the population.
Abandoned City
Location
There is not much information available about this abandoned community. For a fact it can be said that it is/was somewhere close to Keelung, Taiwan. The rest of the information there is, is scattered and not 100% waterproof.
Kruunuvuori Villas
Location
Just 3km from downtown Helsinki there is an eerie collection of luxury villas left to decay. In its days of glory Kruunuvuori was a premier spot for the richer people of Helsinki to enjoy the summer and the beautiful sea view of Helsinki. Today the nature has taken a strong hold of the area and the villas that are trying to resist the ravages of wind, rain and snow.
Underwater City in Shicheng
Location
This real-life Atlantis is a labyrinth of adorned temples, memorial arches and dragon carvings. The ancient city, which is hidden 130 feet underwater, was once Shi Cheng – the centre of politics and economics in the eastern province of Zhejiang. It is believed the city of Shi Cheng (also known as Lion City, named for Wu Shi mountain) was built during the Tang Dynasty in 621 AD, making it nearly 1,400 years old.
The Maunsell Sea Forts
Location
During the WWII, British army built small fortified towers along the Thames and Mersey estuaries in order to protect the United Kingdom from German invasion. These forts were the first line of defence, but after the war they stopped being important for the military. In the mid-fifties the British army decided that they no longer needed the forts and left them behind.
Sunken Yacht
Location
This sunken yacht is Mar Sem Fim, a Brazilian yacht that was shipwrecked, sunk and frozen in ice in Maxwell Bay, Antarctica, about 1,200 kilometers south of tip of South America, in April 2012. Luckily, all the crew members were saved by Chilean Navy that had a base nearby.
The translucent waters of the Antarctica are the reason why the Sunken Yacht became known over the globe. The ship looks really amazing looking at it from the surface through the clear water of the Ardley Bay.
