Travel to the Darkside: The Most Haunted Places in the World #HogsAbroad #GoAbroad

Article courtesy of goabroad.com

by Kelsey Haynes

 

Ghouls, ghosts, and paranormal activity, oh my! Every year, brave and curious minds are drawn to the supernatural histories of the world. Tales of ghosts and strange sightings are an element all cultures have in common, and are an exciting theme for daredevilish travelers. Make like Scooby Doo and his gang, zoom along inside the Mystery Machine, and learn about the peculiar nature of the most haunted places in the world. Then, get ready to start your adventure travel abroad!

1. Highgate Cemetery – London, United Kingdom

Stroll through history by way of the Highgate Cemetery,
but be weary of any floating top hats!

Wander around this famous London Cemetery’s 53,00 grave sites and see if you can’t catch a glimpse of its historical ghosts. Highgate Cemetery received extensive notice from the press starting around 1960 when multiple reports were filed about the “Highgate Vampire,” a tall man with glowing eyes and a top hat. Other reported ghost sightings and horrible apparitions of the past have made this area a must-see site for horror fanatics and lovers of all things haunted.

Rooted not only in the thick, gnarly twists and turns of years of overgrown trees and brush, these grave sites are home to many historical figures. The east cemetery contains “famous” graves, including the final resting places of figures like German philosopher Karl Marx, Victorian novelist George Eliot, and author of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” Douglas Adams. 

The west cemetery is open to guided tours only as it contains preserved architectural beauties, like the Chapel, the Colonnade, Egyptian Avenue, and the Terrace Catacombs. If you’re dying for a visit to one of the most haunted places in London, make sure you purchase entry tickets to both the east and west side cemeteries.

 

2. The Stanley Hotel – Colorado, USA

Step right up and book a room, if you dare!

“Redrum! Redrum!”, is one of the most famous lines from The Shining, one of Stephen King’s bestselling horror novels, was inspired by The Stanley Hotel, which is located in Estes Park, Colorado. The book was later made into a horror/terror film (yes, that one with Jack Nicholson) and instantly became a classic in its genre. Renowned by experts in the paranormal investigation field, the hotel remains one of the nation’s most active sites for paranormal activity. For example, the late Ms. Elizabeth Wilson, the chief housekeeper in the early 1900’s, takes special care to those staying in Room 217, making her presence known by folding your clothes and sitting on the edge of your bed.

Whether you’re intrigued by the history, the hauntings, or both, the Stanley Hotel has tours catered to all. Cave into the peer pressure and book the Ghost Adventure Package for you and your friends. The experience includes a room on the fourth floor, a K2 Meter for ghost hunting, and a “redrum” mug for every person.

3. Bran Castle – Romania

Navigate the hallowed halls of magnificent Bran Castle

As the only castle in Romania that fits Bram Stoker’s description of Dracula’s home, Bran Castle is a must-see for lovers of all things vampiric. Although not directly related to the story of Dracula, the castle’s surrounding villages were supposedly home to evil spirits called steregoi. Among these spirits walked strigoi, people who lived normally during the day, and at night their souls left their bodies and haunted the village people. It is from these myths that Bram Stoker characterized his concept of “the undead” and thus created the infamous Count Dracula. 

Coupled with the castle’s mythic appearance, featuring sky-high towers that stand proudly and mysteriously on the border of Transylvania, the stunning inspiration for Count Dracula’s Castle that all Stoker fans know and love was born.

Opened recently to visitors as a museum of Romanian royal history and culture, the castle’s narrow corridors and secret chambers create an exciting and mysterious pathway into the inspiration of our favorite fictional Transylvanian villain. Combine travel with intrigue with literature and visit a fortress draped in a military history in a place built on haunted myths of immortality.

Say “Bonjour!” to the permanent residents of the Catacomb Corridors

4. The Catacombs – Paris, France

Beginning in the 18th century, the Paris underground became one of the largest burial sites. Spanning 300 kilometers (186 miles), the “Dark Underworld” winds and weaves and twists and turns through countless secret tunnels and passageways. The city above casually walks over six million skeletons below, most of which are stacked on top of each other, lining the underground walls, and sometimes even staged in artistic designs like a heart made out of skulls. Talk about haunted places!

Now an official museum in Paris, certain passageways are open for public viewing. The Catacombs have intrigued visitors since the late 18th century, including Napoleon III and Charles X. However, unless you’re a Cataphile, a (illegal) Parisian urban explorer, the general public only has access to viewing a small section of the catacombs. Nevertheless, do take a stroll among the undead and weave through history underground.

 

5. Xunantunich – Belize

A woman dressed all in white who exposes fiery, red-eyed stares to all who lay eyes on her is the Mayan haunting found at Xunantunich. This woman was so frequently reported by locals and guests alike that the site was named “The Stone Woman,” or “Xunantunich” in ancient Mayan language. Oddly enough, all reports, dating back to the late 19th century, are eerily similar in nature. The woman is seen ascending the stairs of El Castillo and disappearing into a wall. Her traditional Mayan dress and her repetitious manner of gliding up the temple intrigues history and paranormal enthusiasts, as she may indicate the ritualistic process of sacrifice common in ancient Mayan practice.

Let amazement become you while navigating ruins,
El Castillo, temples, red eyes, and all!

Grab a ticket to enter this haunted destination, along with some courage, and climb the ruins’ temple stairs yourself to see if you can meet eye to red-eye with this ghost from the past.

 

6. The Vaults and Mary King’s Close – Edinburgh, Scotland

Once a major storage space for cobblers and tradesmen, the vaults in Edinburgh’s South Bridge shifted to a paranormal activity site once two serial killers, Burke and Hare, used them to store the dead bodies of their victims. After an excavation in the 1980s found that there were toys, medicine bottles, and plates in the vaults of people that had once lived there, many people (including paranormal investigators) became curious and explored the passageways for answers. Paranormal experts have detected various voices and sounds picked up on investigative devices, making these vaults a must-visit on your list of most haunted places in the world to visit. 

Mary King’s Close was once a lively and bustling market area; however, once the plague swept through Edinburgh, the underground space was eventually sealed off and boarded up. It is behind these closed doors that countless ghoulish reports began. Many myths and legends circulate about this forgotten city, but your curiosity is best satisfied by partaking in one of the many ghost tours available through Mary King’s Close.

These are only a few of the most haunted places in the world, but these are prime examples of what awaits your curious and investigative mind. Check out GoAbroad’s Embassy Directory for visa information in case you want to begin your adventure abroad to any of these top haunted places in the world. From the dark underworld below Paris to the suspenseful hotel rooms in Colorado to the tops of ruins in Belize, the mysterious phenomenons of the world’s most haunted places are just waiting to give you a thrill. 
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U of A Anthropologist Catalogs Fossil Remains from Significant European Site #HogsAbroad in Romania

Claire Terhune with hyena skull.

Claire Terhune is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Arkansas. For the past four years she has visited Romania to analyze and “tag” fossil specimens from Grănceanu, one of the most significant anthropological sites in Eastern Europe. This year, toward the end of her visit, she and her colleagues stumbled upon an important finding. This is her account of this summer’s experience.

It may not look like it, but the Olteţ Valley in Romania is one of Eastern Europe’s most fossil-rich sites from the early Pleistocene, a geological subepoch that started roughly 2.6 million years ago and ended 781,000 years ago. We know this because during the 1960s, at the height of communism in Eastern Europe, agriculture increased in this area and, as a result, so did deforestation. In combination with the local geology of the area, landslides increased, and sometimes these landslides uncovered fossil deposits.

When this happened in the 1960s, experts from the “Emil Racoviţă” Institute of Speleology in Bucharest were called in, and these fossil sites were investigated and excavated. Grănceanu, a tremendously rich and large deposit that includes thousands of bones of fossil mammals and vertebrates, is one of these sites.

Publications about Grănceanu in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s highlighted a diversity of fossil species that date to about 1.8 million years ago. These extinct species included mammoths and saber-toothed cats and the prehistoric ancestors of giraffes, giant deer, horses, rhinos, wolves, bears, hyenas and primates similar to today’s baboons.

Sadly, though the fossils themselves were recovered and stored in the Institute of Speleology in Bucharest, all documentation from the site – excavation notes, geological information and a list of all of the fossils – were thought to have been lost, and not very many scientists were aware of this valuable fossil collection. Over the past four years, our team has been working to re-catalog and analyze the fossils from Grănceanu and other small sites in the Olteţ Valley, so that we can understand the paleo-environments in Europe at this time.

Understanding these environments is important, because this is exactly the area through which early humans would have had to travel to reach Western Europe from Africa, via the present-day Middle East.

Though we know human ancestors were present in Spain by 1.4 million years ago, we have no evidence of them in Eastern or Central Europe at this time. How and when did our ancestors disperse into Europe? And what type of animals might they have encountered when they moved into this area? Would the presence of some types of animals have made it less likely for them to be successful in their migration? These are all questions we’re trying to address with our research. And, in the process of answering these questions, we hope to find concrete evidence of the presence of early humans in this area. This could take the form of fossil human remains, stone tools made by humans, or evidence of humans cutting meat off of bones.

Scanning 3-D image of hyena skull.

Jenifer Hubbard with mammoth bones.

This May and June, our joint American and Romanian research team spent 2½ weeks working with the existing Grănceanu collections in Bucharest. We bagged, tagged and preliminarily described as many specimens as we could. We sorted giant grab-bags of fossils and identified specimens to species and part of the skeleton. For teeth, we took detailed measurements and photos, molded the teeth for microwear and sampled the teeth for isotopic analysis. Ultimately we can use these data to help understand that animal’s diet, and therefore the environment it inhabited when alive. For particularly significant specimens, we used a blue LED scanner to create 3-D models. Though the fossils have to stay in Romania, these 3-D scans allow us to make highly accurate models of important fossils for later analysis.

Terhune making a microwear molding of a tooth.

On our last day at the institute, as we packed up the specimens and reorganized them in their new bags and crates, we noticed a cabinet with the label “Oltenia,” which is the region surrounding the Olteţ Valley, on the front. Lo and behold, the cabinet was full of documentation from the Olteţ Valley work that had been conducted in the 1960s! We still need to comb through these papers, but we suspect their contents are promising. Hopefully they will help us sort through the fossils and discover more fossil sites in years to come. Wish us luck in our fossil hunting!

Other researchers involved in this project:

• Sabrina Curran, assistant professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ohio University
• Alexandru Petculescu, senior researcher, Department of Geospeleology and Paleontology, “Emil Racoviţă” Institute of Speleology, Romanian Academy of Sciences
• Chris Robinson, professor, Department of Biological Sciences, Bronx Community College, City University of New York
• Marius Robu, researcher, Department of Karst and Cave Protection, “Emil Racoviţă” Institute of Speleology, Romanian Academy of Sciences
• Jenifer Hubbard, student (recent University of Arkansas anthropology and biology alumnus)

Courtesy of the U of A Research Frontiers Blog

By: Matt McGowan June 27, 2016

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