Recently updated on November 2nd, 2023 at 03:05 pm
There are creepy places that are fun to visit: like the haunted Mansfield Reformatory in Ohio, US, which is haunted but also hosts one heck of an annual rock concert called Inkcarceration. Then there are the places that are straight-up eerie, like Paris’s catacombs, where no amount of jovial chit-chat can lift the mood.
If it’s this kind of thrill (or spine-tingling chill) you seek, head to these eerie travel destinations around the world.
Paris’s Catacombs | France
The Eiffel Tower. The Louvre. Paris’s catacombs. One of these sites is not like the others.
Paris’s catacombs, dating back to the 1700s, are a labyrinth of subterranean tombs (called ossuaries) beneath the streets of the City of Lights. The remains of 6 million people are housed below. That’s three-times as many people that currently live in Paris.
The most interesting thing is that tours of Paris’s catacombs exist so you can see this massive mausoleum-like place with your own two eyes. But be prepared for an experience that’s as macabre as you can imagine.
Wandering in an underground maze full of skeletons is nightmare fuel for some.
Save for later: 12 secret hidden gems you should explore in Paris
Gettysburg Battlefield | Pennsylvania, USA
Roughly 50,000 soldiers died during the Battle of Gettysburg… a battle that lasted 3 days.
The battlefield, located in the state of Pennsylvania, is roughly 6,000 acres (or 2428 hectares) so it’s a little surreal to envision this vast stretch of empty land suddenly filled with the wounded, dying, and dead soldiers from Wednesday to Friday.
The Gettysburg National Military Park is one of the top attractions in the United States and the most popular battlefield from the American Civil War. And even if you take away the ghost stories, there’s still a sense of walking on hallowed ground as if you were wandering a cemetery.
Pass by the witness trees and you’ll almost hear them whisper what carnage they saw.
Read next: Our favorite spooky spots in Europe for Halloween
The Highway of Tears | Canada
It’s amazing how the calm and contentedness of driving in a car can suddenly turn unsettling when riding through certain areas.
Canada’s Highway of Tears is one of those places.
Linking the towns of Prince Rupert and Prince George in British Columbia, Highway 16 has no haunted hotels, spooky sites, or creepy creatures to scare you. Just the cold reality of our world.
This long, empty corridor is known as a place where missing and murdered women were last seen. As many of 600 women may have been killed while hitchhiking, prostituting, or seeking help along the road; many of whom belonged to Indigenous groups.
Serial killers have been convicted for the few bodies police have found, making it even more unsettling to realize you may be driving through a predator’s hunting ground when vacationing in the Great White North.
Poveglia Island | Italy
Venice, Italy, is a dreamy destination that loads of people want to visit.
But Poveglia island next door? That’s one dark tourism site you’re not even legally allowed to visit.
Back in the 1300s, the Bubonic Plague found its way to Italy’s eastern islands. The Plague was so deadly that one-third of Europeans died from it, which is why the citizens of Venice took no chances. People who showed symptoms were banished to Poveglia, many of whom were burned on pyres either after they died or as they lay dying.
If that wasn’t enough, it became a quarantine site again in the 1600s, an asylum in the 1800s, and hosted a mad doctor completing strange experiments in the 1900s.
Today, it’s abandoned and no visitor or local is allowed on the island. Many say evil spirits still lurk there; whatever the case, you can certainly feel eerie vibes coming from Italy’s Poveglia Island when you sail by it.
Good to know: An insider’s guide to Venice
La Noria | Chile
Picture a ghost town in the desert and the American West springs to mind. But to get to La Noria, a former nitrate town, you’ll need to head south. Much further south.
Chile’s Atacama Desert is the site of two former mining towns: Humberstone and La Noria. The latter was founded in the 1820s to export saltpeter. It was abandoned just over a century later when synthetic saltpeter was found in Germany.
Both towns are now ghost towns, but Humberstone has a daytime museum to make it less of a dark tourism site. La Noria remains desolate and would be creepy on its own without the help of its adjacent cemetery. Grave robbers and natural deterioration have made many tomb interiors visible.
Voices have been heard and specters have been seen, which is why you won’t catch any residents from the surrounding towns going near La Noria at night.
Hanging Coffins of Sagada | Philippines
One coffin is creepy. Two coffins is creepier. And unless you’re in Coffin-Mart, any more than three coffins is very creepy.
So just how creepy are 100+ coffins? Go to the Philippines on a dark travel tour and find out.
These wooden coffins dangle from the cliff sides and caves of Sagada. This burial practice is not new nor malevolent. The Sagada people have used this method of burial for thousands of years and family members are often placed to hang beside their deceased kin.
It’s a poignant sight, evoking a mix of reverence and unease as you see the former inhabitants of the land suspended in place. Their spirits are said to have an easier time reaching the afterlife when the bodies are buried this way.
But when you remove the metaphysics and focus solely on the physics of the act, it’s just as eerie to imagine these coffins disintegrating and falling away once time takes its toll.
Scare ya later: The world’s 10 most haunted places
Masaya Volcano | Nicaragua
Nicaragua is the Land of Lakes and Volcanoes, but one such volcano is a little unsettling: Masaya. Surprisingly, it’s actually one of the most accessible volcanoes to scale as you can drive to the top.
But it’s at the crater’s edge where you’ll feel a little uneasy.
You can (safely) stare down into what they call the mouth of hell: the glow of the flowing magma lighting up the interior. Though you can’t always see the flow, you can see the lone cross erected on the edge. That’s not just decor: long ago, virgins and other human sacrifices were thrown into Masaya to appease the gods and keep the volcano at bay.
Still not scared? Then check out Trafalgar’s tours that feature visits to places with haunted histories and spooky settings you’ll never forget.