Because it’s Halloween, one of the weirdest festivals around, and you know we love quirky travel, we thought we take a look at some of the more unusual spooky sights around the world, from an eerie island of dolls in Mexico, to a bone church in the Czech Republic, and a ghost town in Spain.
Island of Dolls, Mexico
The eerie and unusual Isla de Muñecas, as it is called in Spanish, is located near the town of Xochimilco, just south of Mexico City and is reported to be one of the most haunted locations in the country.
This unusual spooky sight was inhabited by a hermit man named Julián Santana Barrera, who was driven insane when he found the body of a girl in the canal. He began to collect body parts of old dolls and hang them in the trees to ward off evil spirits and became obsessed with moving them around to various locations on the island. At night the dolls are said to walk around the island killing animals.
When Santana Barrera died in 2001 many said that he was killed by the dolls too, who drowned him in the river. Today, visitors can reach this unusual spooky sight by boat and wander around looking at the freaky looking decaying dolls, still hanging in the trees.
Belchite, Spain
The quirky town of Belchite located in the Spanish province of Aragon was bombed and totally destroyed during the Spanish Civil War in 1937.
Today, it stands just as it was all those years ago, serving as an eerie reminder of the country’s past. Crumbling churches, abandoned schools and ruins of houses all lay in a state of neglect as if the town was bombed just yesterday. Visitors can explore this ghostly town and walk among the spirits of the 6,000 former inhabitants who were killed here.
Bone Church, Czech Republic
Looking like something straight of a scary Halloween movie is Czech Republic’s Bone Church or Sedlec Ossuary, based in the town of Kutna Hora, just east of Prague. From the outside, the church looks like any normal town chapel, but enter and you’ll see the remnants of over 40,000 skeletons, lining the walls, ceilings, pews and doors.
There’s even an eerie chandelier made from skulls and various bones that swings hauntingly from the rafters. The unusual bone art was created by a local woodcarver in 1870, who was given the task of arranging the bones of plague victims, which were lying in the church.
Hill of Crosses, Lithuania
In the town of Šiauliai in Lithuania sits a decidedly strange sight – a hill completely covered with over 100,000 crosses in various states of disarray and chaos.
At first this unusual spooky sight may look like a giant graveyard, but apparently no bodies are buried here. It is believed that people began to lay crosses here after the November Uprising against the Russians in 1831, when relatives of the dead had no bodies to bury, so instead put up a symbolic cross.
