7 Scariest Places For Spooktacular Visits

It's the spooky season and Halloween is here. Ghouls and Ghosts make their way through the streets in search of sweet confectionaries and even those with the most sordid of secrets let their skeletons out of their closet. If you're someone who wants to live a little on the edge, and have the minerals to brave some of the scariest places on Earth, check our 7 scariest places you can visit today.

Be warned, to survive you'll need horrorfying expertise so watch your favourite slasher movies a few dozen times to avoid the usual pitfalls of tripping on a twig, going back in the house or hiding in a closet instead of jumping out of the window!

1) Dracula's Castle

Bran Stoker was initially inspired by the Gothic architecture in Whitby, and his muse lead him to create the most iconic of all horror stories, Dracula. Dracula's lair is a gorgeous castle that perches itself like a bat on a cave wall at the top of a hill in Transylvania. Burnt orange tiles and thorny steeples leer over the surrounding trees and it's 14th century walls are crawling with an air of eeriness. Bonus fact: there's also an awesome ski resort just 8 miles away!

2) Parisian Catacombs

Under the iconic streets of Paris, laden with fresh pastries and renowned monuments lay the Parisian catacombs. A closterphobic network of narrow tunnels, teeming with cadavaers in every nook and cranny. Over 6 million bodies remains lay here and countless stories untold give the dusty corridors a bigger sense of meaning than it's cramped quarters suggest.

3) Suicide Forest

A truly humbling and mournful site at the foot of Mt Fuji. The forest itself is dense and lush, it's roots and vines coiling across the soil as though to hide something about it's nature. This makes the possibility of finding a corpse feel even more likely which adds to the sense of foreboding. Thankfully suicide prevention watch teams and other government efforts have been put in place to try and help people and avoid further suicides in the ancient Japanese forest.

4) Island Of The Dolls

If you thought Chucky was a frightening doll, he'd have been the friendly neighbour offering to borrow you sugar if he were brought to life on this island. Severed dolls heads and torched, maimed plastic limbs are strung together across chain link fences like borbols on a Christmas tree. The original owner of the island placed the first set of dolls to chase away spirits, however they make for one hell of a deterrent to regular folks too!

5) Highgate Ceremony

Over 50,000 graves make this one of the most morbid, yet melancholically beautiful nature reserves the world over. Though opened in 1893, it feels like it has been there since time immemorial, with moss gradually spreading over marble angels and headstone plaques, as if the graveyard itself is slowly trying to consume the very monuments that make it stand out. It's also home to the infamous Highgate Vampire. The vampire was rumoured to be a medieval nobleman who practised black magic in Romania.

6) Bhangarh Fort

Before you even arrive to Bangarh Fort, the uninhabited village that precedes is serves as a telltale sign that all is not right. According to legend, a practiser of dark magic tried to make the princess ratnavati fall in love with him by hiding a love potion in her perfume. When she discovered this plot and poured the potion out onto a boulder, the evil tantric was furious and cursed the town which inevitably lead to it's destruction.

7) Crumlin Road Gaol

As recently as 2019 people were selling their photos and stories to the tabloids about ghost spotting in Northern Ireland's now derelict prison. 150 years of hardened criminals, confined in the white bricks and black bars of Crumlin Road Goal make it a certain that people died here in some of the most terrifying and haunting of manners.