The archive
Featured mysteries
Bran, Romania
Bran Castle
Bran Castle stands on a rock in a mountain pass in Transylvania, Romania. It was built in the 1300s as a customs post and fortress. It has no real link to Dracula, but it looks so much like the castle in Bram Stoker's novel that it became the most photographed Dracula site in the world.
Pripyat, Ukraine
Pripyat
Pripyat was built in 1970 for the workers of the Chernobyl nuclear plant. Almost 50,000 people lived there. On 27 April 1986, the day after the reactor explosion, everyone was evacuated in a few hours. They were told it was temporary. Nobody moved back.
Şanlıurfa, Turkey
Göbekli Tepe
Göbekli Tepe in southeast Turkey is a set of stone circles built around 9500 BC. That makes it thousands of years older than Stonehenge or the pyramids, and older than farming, pottery or writing in this region. Hunter gatherers carved and raised T shaped pillars up to 5.5 metres tall.
Bhangarh, India
Bhangarh Fort
Bhangarh Fort stands in Rajasthan, India, at the edge of a nature reserve. It was a busy town in the 1600s and then it emptied out. India's Archaeological Survey has put up a sign that stops anyone entering between sunset and sunrise, which is why it is often called the most haunted place in India.
Nagasaki, Japan
Hashima Island
Hashima, known as Battleship Island, is a small concrete island off Nagasaki. Thousands of coal miners and their families lived here in some of Japan's first big concrete apartment blocks. The mine closed in 1974 and everyone left within weeks. The buildings have been falling apart ever since.
Carcassonne, France
Carcassonne
Carcassonne in southern France is a walled medieval city with 52 towers and a double ring of walls. It was almost pulled down in the 1800s and then rebuilt by the architect Viollet-le-Duc, whose pointed roofs are still argued about today. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Browse by obsession
Eleven ways to travel strangely
Haunted Places
Sites where the past refuses to stay buried.
Haunted Hotels
Check in for the night. Check out with a story.
UFO & Alien Sites
Where the sky stopped behaving as expected.
Dark Tourism
Places that hold the weight of history.
Castles & Ruins
Stone fortresses and the legends inside them.
Abandoned Places
Cities and islands the world walked away from.
Medieval Towns
Cobbled streets that never left the Middle Ages.
Viking Heritage
Longships, burial mounds and Norse sagas.
Lighthouses & Legends
Beacons at the edge of the known world.
Ancient Mysteries
Monuments older than recorded history.
Myths & Legends
The places where stories were born.
Science & Secret Frontiers
Particle colliders, launch pads and research complexes where humanity probes the edge of the known — the modern cathedrals of mystery, open to visitors who book ahead.
Interactive atlas
Every mystery, pinned
Tap a marker to open its dossier. Filter and search the full atlas on the map page.
Explore the archive
Three ways in
Contribute
Know a place we should track?
Do you know of a UFO site, haunted hotel or other destination? Enter the name here and we will put it on the site.
Trending now
Most tracked this month
Bran, Romania
Bran Castle
Bran Castle stands on a rock in a mountain pass in Transylvania, Romania. It was built in the 1300s as a customs post and fortress. It has no real link to Dracula, but it looks so much like the castle in Bram Stoker's novel that it became the most photographed Dracula site in the world.
Carcassonne, France
Carcassonne
Carcassonne in southern France is a walled medieval city with 52 towers and a double ring of walls. It was almost pulled down in the 1800s and then rebuilt by the architect Viollet-le-Duc, whose pointed roofs are still argued about today. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Estes Park, United States
The Stanley Hotel
The Stanley Hotel opened in 1909 in Estes Park, Colorado, at the entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park. Stephen King stayed one night in 1974, in room 217, and the visit gave him the idea for The Shining. The hotel now runs ghost tours all year.
Field dispatches
One mystery, delivered every month
New destinations, declassified files and travel windows worth planning around. No noise.
You can unsubscribe at any time. We never share your address.