China's "Ghost City" of Ordos (photograph by Darmon Richter)

The full-scale evacuation of a thriving human settlement is no small operation, yet many of the disasters preceding such evacuations are entirely our own fault. We’ve seen towns abandoned after nuclear catastrophes, such as Chernobyl and the city of Pripyat in Ukraine, or the recent Fukushima disaster and its resultant ghost town at Namie. Then there are those notorious ghost towns created as the result of war; such as the haunting, abandoned resort of Varosha on Cyprus, or ghost towns such as Bor, in war-torn Sudan.

In this article, however, we'll be looking at five towns you might not have heard of, each of which was abandoned following a battle between humans and nature. Some of these disasters were our own fault, catastrophes provoked by overreach and greed as we dug hungrily into the earth's crust, but others serve as a reminder that just as often, human civilization exists purely at the mercy of natural forces.

WITTENOOM
Western Australia 

The first town on our list is forgotten in the deserts of Western Australia. It’s the nation’s most notorious ghost town, evacuated in the late 1970s, and widely recognized as the site of Australia’s largest industrial disaster.

Wittenoom road sign with the town's name erased (photograph by Five Years)

From 1943 to the mine's closure in 1966, more than 165,000 tons of asbestos were extracted and shipped out of Wittenoom. However, poor public knowledge about the dangers of asbestos allowed the toxic dust to be spread throughout the town; it clung to the miners' clothing, infecting homes, gardens, and schools. Of the 20,000 men, women, and children who worked or lived in Wittenoom in these decades, it is predicted that roughly 25% will die of asbestos-related diseases such as asbestosis, lung cancer, or mesothelioma. It wasn't until 1978, however, that growing health concerns would lead to a full-scale evacuation.

Doc Holiday's Cafe at Wittenoom (photograph by Five Years)

Since then, the Australian government has seen fit to wipe Wittenoom off every map, more or less rendering this ghost town invisible. It lies in the vast, rocky landscape of the Pilbara region, cut off from travel routes, power grids, and other resources. In fact, every effort has been made to hide Wittenoom from the history books altogether,  even erasing its name from road signs. In 2013, the Department of Local Government and Regional Development circulated a flier blaring the headline: "Visiting Wittenoom is not worth risking your life."

Wittenoom's Old Convent (photograph by Five Years)

While for the most part Wittenoom’s streets and houses are now at the mercy of the desert, it may not be completely abandoned yet — as of 2006, a handful of stubborn residents still remained in the town. In 2013 it was reported that the town's gem shop was still open for business.

Wittenoom Gem Shop is still open, according to this sign (photograph by Five Years)

BEICHUAN
China

China’s "Wenchuan Earthquake" made world news in 2008 when it claimed the lives of almost 70,000 people in the Sichuan province, with a further 18,000 people listed as missing in the days that followed. The earthquake struck on May 12, registering at a scale of 8.0 Ms. It could be felt from as far away as Beijing and Shanghai in the east.

Looking out over Beichuan (photograph by Malcolm Moore) 

In the wake of the earthquake, an estimated 4.8 million people were left without homes. China’s central government vowed to invest 1 trillion yuan ($146.5 billion) into the process of rebuilding, but for the time being, some of Sichuan’s largest population centers remain evacuated and in ruins.

Once such ghost town is the former city of Beichuan.

Devastation at the heart of Beichuan (photograph by David and Jessie) 

Beichuan suffered extreme losses during the 2008 earthquake — notably, the collapse of two buildings at Beichuan High School that caused the deaths of more than 1,300 students. The city's unfortunate position on the fault line also made it the victim of numerous powerful aftershocks. One of these, on August 1, 2008, registered as much as 6.1 Ms and caused even further casualties.

Close-up of the damage around Beichuan city centre (photograph by David and Jessie)

The town is now completely deserted; 80% of its buildings stand destroyed or damaged beyond repair. In the years since the quake, the ghost town of Beichuan has been preserved as a part of the Beichuan Earthquake Museum, and visitors travel from across China and beyond to pay their respects to the many thousands lost in this catastrophic natural disaster.

Prayers and offerings in Beichuan (photograph by Malcolm Moore)

GILMAN
Colorado, United States

The 19th century saw a huge property boom in Colorado, as countless plucky pioneers travelled west in search of land, gold, and freedom. Today those golden years have left the landscape littered by a legacy of crumbling homesteads, collapsed mines, and derelict mountain outposts.

Abandoned houses in the former town of Gilman, Colorado (photograph by Matthew Trump)

Some of Colorado’s oldest ghost towns have stood abandoned for more than a century; as soon as the reserves dried up, these temporary towns were left for dead as the miners moved on to the next. The mines at Gilman in Eagle Country however, remained in active use until just a few decades ago.

Eagle Mine buildings in Gilman (photograph by John Holm) 

The town of Gilman is perched on the edge of a cliff, overlooking the dramatic mountain terrain of Eagle County. The mine itself is located directly beneath the settlement, and was in use as recently as 1984. That was when the entire community was finally closed down and evacuated by order of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Dramatic views in the region around Gilman, Colorado (photograph by Ryan Snyder)

On inspection of the outpost, the EPA discovered significant hazardous waste contamination. Their report cited “high levels of arsenic, cadmium, copper, lead and zinc in the soil and in surface and groundwater,” a risk so severe that it called for the full-scale evacuation of the town and the surrounding 235 acres.

The town of Gilman on April 28, 2005 (photograph by Matthew Trump)

Gilman has been on the EPA’s National Priorities List since 1986, and today the once prosperous town sits forgotten — looking out over the contaminated landscape from its perch in the Rocky Mountains.

ANI
Armenia

The lost city of Ani was once the capital of the medieval Armenian Kingdom, and between 961 and 1045 AD, it was the seat of power for all of modern-day Armenia and much of eastern Turkey.

The old city walls of Ani (photograph by Nate Robert) 

Situated in a highly defensive position between the ravine of the Akhurian River to the east, and the Tsaghkadzor valley to the west, it’s easy to see why this location was chosen for a highly fortified medieval citadel.

Looking out across the Armenian countryside (photograph by Nate Robert)

Once known as the “City of 1,001 Churches,” Ani was directly on the confluence of important trade routes, making this a highly cosmopolitan — and prosperous — capital. Ani was famed for its advanced architecture, from military fortifications to elaborate churches and palaces.

The remains of an abandoned church (photograph by Nate Robert)

Ani Cathedral (photograph by Natalie Sayin)

However, disaster struck in 1319. A powerful earthquake caused untold damage to the city, toppling towers and tearing up foundations. A total population of 200,000 in the region were either lost in the quake or evacuated soon after, and as a result Ani was left largely abandoned.

The city walls of Ani (photograph by Nate Robert)

The forgotten capital, once the rival of Damascus and Constantinople, is still in ruins in the Turkish province of Kars, not far from the border with Armenia.

ARKWRIGHT
United Kingdom

Arkwright, sometimes known as “Arkwright Town,” was a settlement located in the English county of Derbyshire. The area was once a hotbed for mining and industry, and Arkwright served for many years as an industrious coal mining village. 

Plaque to commemorate the former site of Arkwright Town (photograph by Peter Barr)

However, in 1988 it was discovered that emissions of methane gas from the ground beneath posed a serious health risk to the inhabitants of Arkwright, and eventually Derbyshire County Council came to the decision that the town would have to be relocated.

The now-disused Arkwright Town station (photograph by Ben Brooksbank)

Drawing up an agreement with British Coal, the ownership of the 52 properties in Arkwright Town was handed over to a housing trust, while a total of 56 new properties were constructed to the north, just outside of the area impacted by the methane emissions.

Arkwright pit wages office shortly after closure in 1988 (photograph by Dave Bevis)

The construction project was finally completed in 1995, and after the town’s residents had all been safely evacuated to New Arkwright Town, the old settlement was demolished and forgotten.

New Arkwright Town (photograph by Michael Patterson) 

In 2010, a nature walk was established which follows the disused tracks of the old railway line into Arkwright. While most of the ruins have long since disappeared under a sea of grass and vegetation, visitors are still able to make out the telltale landmarks of this abandoned mining settlement. At the heart of the former town, meanwhile, a plaque commemorates the site of old Arkwright.

Discover more ghost towns left behind by disaster or other downfalls on Atlas Obscura.

Libraries are awesome. The sharing of information and a free access to thought through books is invaluable to any place. Which is why libraries have popped up in some of the strangest places. From a forgotten cemetery to a burro's back to a repurposed tank, these are three of the most unexpected libraries that are making real change in their communities. 

The Jewish Cemetery Library
Krems, Austria

The library in 2007 (via Wikimedia)

The Jüdischer Friedhof Krems was almost completely obliterated under the Third Reich, and it wasn't until 1995 that the Jewish Cemetery in Krems, Austria was restored. Part of its revival to public mind was a library. Created by artists Michael Clegg and Martin Guttmann in 2004, the Open Public Library invites visitors to borrow or add books to its three shelves, but it's as much a memorial sculpture. 

As Guttmann explained, the library means that the place that belonged to a community that was destroyed doesn't have to be abandoned in silence, and "in order to put life into it you really need a special kind of involvement, and sometimes art can really bring [that] with it." Near the library is an over 140-foot band inscribed with 129 names of the Jews who were killed or driven out of Krems. 

Biblioburro
Colombia

A Biblioburro and Luis Soriano journeying in Colombia (via Wikimedia) 

Teacher Luis Soriano saw what a difference reading made to his students in La Gloria, Colombia, and he decided to bring books to the rest of the Department of Magdalena. His mode of transport, and the library itself, was the backs of his donkeys Beto and Alfa.

While the Biblioburros started small, the donations soon packed Soriano's house and his reach expanded in the economically downtrodden area plagued with drug trafficking. He was even profiled in a 2011 PBS documentary, Biblioburro: The Donkey Library, showing his furry hoofed library bringing essential texts on medicine, novels, and piles of children's books. 

Arma de Instruccion Masiva
Argentina

The tank library in Buenos Aires in 2008 (photograph by Carlos Adampol Galindo)

 In the 1970s and early '80s the streets of Buenos Aires were often places of conflict under a militaristic state. Artist Raul Lemesoff decided to transform one of the popular vehicles for the military — a 1979 Ford Falcon — into what he calls a "contribution to peace through literature."

The Arma de Instruccion Masiva (Weapon of Mass Instruction) has the form of a tank, but is covered in books that are free for the taking. While its path has mostly been in Buenos Aires, it's also cruised into more rural areas where access to books is limited. 

Find more of the world's incredible libraries on Atlas Obscura.

The Hyperion Water Treatment Plant (all photographs by the author)

What happens when you flush the toilet or use the the bathroom sink? I arranged for the Los Angeles Obscura Society to have a docent-led tour of the Hyperion Water Treatment Plant in El Segundo, California, to answer that question.

Our docent and LA Department of Sanitation representative Nancy Carr shared a common phrase to describe what happens after the toilet is flushed: "Zero to 48 hours." Meaning it takes about that long for the water and solids, both contained in raw sewage, to travel from your home's sewer pipes all the way to Hyperion to be processed. The goal and function of Hyperion is to treat the raw sewage and separate solids from water. This must take place so that when the wastewater is treated it is clean enough to be pumped into Santa Monica Bay. The solids are reused as an energy resource for methane gas and fertilizer for crops.

The museum had some displays made from recycled trash. Some were cute and some were creepy.

The museum inside the Hyperion plant focuses on water conservation and recycling of waste.

A map in the museum

LA Obscura Society participants playing a digital simulation recycling game.

Four major sewer lines carry sewage to Hyperion for treatment from homes and businesses of about 2/3 the total population of Los Angeles County. On an average day without rain, about 350 million gallons flow into the plant. The plant can treat up to 1,000 million gallons per day. These sewers are some of the largest in the wastewater system world. Over the past 15 years, Los Angeles has invested $1.6 billion for improvements to this system in order to make the final effluent pass environmental regulations. 

Anything can be found in raw sewage. At the headworks, bars and screens remove the largest solids — things as big as branches, plastics, and rags — and as small as sand and other gritty solids. Some of the stranger things that have been filtered out include telephone poles, a motorcycle, human body parts, and money. This is called preliminary treatment. After leaving the headworks, the wastewater continues to move by gravity to primary treatment.

Most of the solids are removed at primary treatment. After the sludge sinks to the bottom of covered, underground tanks, it is then pumped to the digesters. The tanks are covered to reduce odors. Other wastes are skimmed from the surface. The liquid is then pumped to the secondary system for further treatment.

The control room where we could watch the trucks pick up newly minted fertilizer.

Secondary treatment is a two stage process.  First, it occurs in covered, oxygen rich reactor tanks, where bacteria living in the wastewater consume most of the remaining organic particles (solids). These bacteria settle to the bottom of the tanks where they are sent to the clarifiers for final settling and collection.  

At almost 200 degrees below zero, oxygen liquefies and is separated from the air. Liquid oxygen is pumped into the reactor tanks in the secondary treatment process to help the bacteria grow.

In the second stage of biological treatment, the bacteria are separated from the wastewater during a settling process in clarifiers.  Some of the biomass (for example, processed sludge) is sent back to the reactor tanks to perform additional secondary treatment, and some is thickened and then sent to the anaerobic digesters. The biosolids are placed in storage tanks and heated to sterilize them. A few weeks later, the processed solids are picked up by trailers and shipped north to Bakersfield, where they are used as manure to fertilize crops that are then fed to farm animals. We humans eat those animals, thereby completing the circle of life, food, and sewage. There is some controversy in that many neighbors in Bakersfield don't like the manure being dumped in some of their farm fields.

Most of the animals collected for tests are preserved for identification and future reference.

It looks like a mutant creature but its a crustacean collected from the bay where the wastewater is piped into the ocean.

 Most of the wastewater that leaves secondary treatment is pumped from the plant into Santa Monica Bay through two five-mile long pipes at a depth of 190 feet. The effluent more than meets all federal and state clean water standards, and is compatible with Bay waters and the creatures that live there.

Here are more photographs from our visit to the treatment plant:

It almost felt like a theme park ride, getting to ride a tram while touring the HUGE Hyperion plant.

The tour required the use of safety helmets in case of falling objects.

The pipes served as 'odor scrubbers', and were very effective at keeping the raw sewage smell to a minimum.

Some of the buildings looked like they were assembled from giant LEGO blocks.

The LA Obscura Society got to enter several buildings — each one was a step in the raw sewage treatment process.

We watched as one of the final byproducts of raw sewage was transformed into manure and being dumped into trailer trucks to be shipped straight to Bakersfield.

Water samples of raw sewage are regularly taken to monitor what's being piped in from the sewers.

Nothing can be so captivating as watching raw sewage being processed

Many of the buildings that we visited were large and almost cavernous to handle the billions of gallons of raw sewage piped.

An Obscura Society member does her best impression of Vanna White while she showcases effluent. If the docent didn't lead her away from that spot, she would have been splattered with sewage.

No smoking or fires allowed on the campus because of the methane gas and other combustibles that are byproducts of sewage treatment.

The odor scrubbing pipes and lights made for beautiful industrial symmetry.

They looked like giant cigarettes, but this section was near where they injected liquid oxygen to feed the bacteria that broke down and digested the biosolids.

This is one catwalk you do not want to fall from because you will end up in treated sewer water. The docent said in the event of falling inside the tanks, do not swallow the water.

For whatever reason, the seagulls like to swim and feed on the treated wastewater right before they were pumped into the Pacific Ocean.

LA Obscura Society at the treatment plant

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Whaling illustration from "Narrative of the Wreck of the 'Favourite' on the Island of Desolation" (1850) (via British Library)

19th century whaling was brutal, bloody business, both for the whales and the men who set to the seas for months with metal harpoons in hand. A couple of Germans had an idea to modernize the industry: electricity.

The Electric Whaling Apparatus was patented on March 30, 1852 by Albert Sonnenburg and Philipp Rechten of Bremen, Germany. A model of this device is held by the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. Hal Wallace, associate curator of the Electricity Collections at the museum, shared with us the curious patent, as well as photographs of the preserved remains of the whale electrocution system. 

1852 patent image for the "Electric Whaling Apparatus (via US Patent Office)

As Sonnenburg and Rechten explained in their patent, the Electric Whaling Apparatus was a "new and improved mode of catching and securing sperm and right whales, as well as other animals of the sea" by "the application of electric galvanic current conveyed by a conductor to the instrument commonly called 'whale-iron' or 'harpoon,' and which is used to be thrown into the fish." The way it worked was through the power of a magneto-electric rotation-machine that was connected through a metallic wire to the harpoon.

To accommodate the hefty 350 pound device with its rotating magnets, as well as protect the human user, it was all secured in a copper-lined whale-boat, assuring that "there is no possible personal danger in using our machine or apparatus, except [if] the man who throws the whale-iron take the metallic part of it into one hand and put the other hand at the same time into the sea when the machine is in motion." When the harpoon hit whale flesh, it pounded eight shocks into the mammal, "so formidable a power that no living being can resist the same." 

Electric current, mammals that weigh tons, water... what could go wrong? Yet surprisingly the Electric Whaling Apparatus was implemented. Wallace at the Smithsonian shared a selection from Harpoons and Other Whalecraft by Thomas G. Lytle published by the Old Dartmouth Historical Society Whaling Museum in 1984. The book cites a skeptical June 8, 1852 article in Whalemen's Shipping List, and Merchant's Transcript stating: "We have great doubts of the feasibility of the project, but of course the result can only be obtained by actual experiment." And just the next month on July 5 the same publication printed a letter from Bremen reporting from an expedition: 

"Thus we had but one chance to try the experiment upon a whale, which was made with the four magnet machine. The whale upon being struck made one dash onward, then turned on his side and was rendered perfectly powerless. Although I have as yet not been fortunate enough to test the invention in more instances, I have the fullest confidence in the same, and doubt not to be able to report the most astonishing results on my return from the Arctic Seas, where I am now bound." 

The Electric Whaling Apparatus at the Smithsonian (courtesy Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, Electricity Collections, Catalog #336747)

Inside the machine (courtesy Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, Electricity Collections, Catalog #336747

The Electric Whaling Apparatus didn't take hold, though, and for a long while the fusion of electrocution with the salty ocean was set aside. But the quest for shocking the great whale to death didn't disappear. According to a 1952 article by Robert Clarke of the National Institute of Oceanography, electric harpoon experiments were carried out in 1881 and 1904, but weren't successful until 1929 when another German by the name of Weber headed a team that electroctued four fin whales. By 1938 the device was "said to have accounted for about two thousand whales during six expeditions north and south." Unfortunately, as Clarke explains, the details are slim as "Weber committed suicide in 1945," although "some account of his methods has been published. Then in the 1950s there was renewed interest in the United Kingdom where in 1958 the Lords in the UK Parliament had a debate in which it was argued that in the electric method "the whale dies much more rapidly," and was therefore less cruel. 

Although 19th century whalers never did get to the point of jolting their prey to death, it would have arguably been quicker and less gory than the repeated stabbing of the whale into its miserable fate. Nevertheless, it's probably for the best both for human and whale alike that seafaring folk in the 1800s weren't tossing electrical weapons into the water around them. 

courtesy Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, Electricity Collections, Catalog #336747

Thanks to Hal Wallace, associate curator of the Electricity Collections, and the National Museum of American History for sharing the Electric Whaling Apparatus with Atlas Obscura. For more on electrical oddities visit the museum's blog for such articles on as the story of Samuel Morse and Morse code, a 19th century electrical switch with a tale of averted tragedy, and the technology that brought the news of President John F. Kennedy's assassination. 

Objects of Intrigue is a feature highlighting extraordinary objects from the world's great museums, private collections, historic libraries, and overlooked archives. See more incredible objects here >

The Abu Dhabi Falcon Hospital (all photographs by the author)

What’s the fastest animal in the world? If you guessed cheetah, you’re way off. At 60 mph, the fastest of the big cats is nowhere close to the 240 mph top speed of a diving Peregrine Falcon. Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates is home to the world’s preeminent hospital dedicated exclusively to the treatment of these falcons and other birds of prey.

The Abu Dhabi Falcon Hospital was established in 1999, and as news of this strange facility spread among the UAE, curious visitors began showing up asking to have a look around. In response to the demand, the hospital established official tours in 2007, and is now a must-see destination for tourists in Abu Dhabi. After a few wrong turns, and an inexplicable trip through the airport parking lot, a friend and I managed to find our way there on a warm and sunny winter's day.

Our tour was led by Dr. Margit Gabrielle Müller, the chief veterinarian and director of the hospital. During a brief introduction we learned that falcons have been domesticated for thousands of years, trained to kill prey and return it to a handler. Although practiced mainly as sport in Europe, falconry was an important source of food protein in the traditional Bedouin culture of the Emirates. Their primary prey is smaller birds, but can also include rabbits, snakes, and small mammals up to 20 pounds.

Today, Emiratis continue to be some of the most enthusiastic falconers in the world, paying upwards of $100,000 for the most highly prized birds. The Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheik Mohamed bin Zayed, is a devoted fan of the sport and a major patron of the hospital.

Surprisingly, the actual practice of falconry is now banned in the UAE in order to protect endangered desert wildlife. The birds are taken elsewhere to hunt — Pakistan and Afghanistan are popular destinations. Travelers flying first class from Abu Dhabi to Islamabad may find themselves sitting next to a falcon and handler, each with their own ticket and seat. The falcons even have passports, so they can travel across international borders without running afoul of the CITES convention on trade in endangered species.

A falcon passport

On our tour, we got to see some of these falcons up close and personal. We moved to the main treatment area and waiting room, where dozens of hooded falcons sat quietly on long astroturfed perches. The vast majority of the hospital’s patients are females, as they are significantly larger than males and preferred for hunting. The hoods calm the birds and prevent them from seeing their neighbors; they are aggressively territorial and prone to attack others of their own species.

Falcon with a bandaged foot

Much of the falcon hospital’s equipment is improvised, because there are simply no falcon-specific tools for the work they are doing. We watched one bird having its talons trimmed – which, like the nails of other domesticated animals, can grow long without the wear and tear of the wild.

She was put to sleep with a plastic hood and some kind of gas mixture, and a veterinary technician used a household angle grinder to remove the excess length. The hospital also has a full operating theatre for more complex procedures. Many of their surgical tools were originally designed for operating on premature babies, which happen to be about the same size as a full-grown falcon.

Talon trimming

Hoods, feathers, & other tools

Although many supplies can be improvised, spare feathers cannot! In the hospital waiting area there are drawers containing thousands upon thousands of individual feathers collected from molting or injured birds. Falcons are extremely fine-tuned aerodynamic machines, and a single bent or broken feather can dramatically impact their flying abilities. When a feather is damaged, the staff sifts through their collection to find the closest possible match, and then replaces the damaged section using a sewing needle and super glue.

Because the birds' talons are incredibly strong and razor sharp, falcon handlers wear a heavy elbow-length leather glove for the bird to perch on. Everyone on our tour had an opportunity to don a glove and hold one of the falcons. At around three pounds, they are surprisingly heavy, and you really get a sense of their power when you’re that close to them.

If you are in Abu Dhabi, don’t miss the opportunity to see and interact with these animals. They are amazing in their own right, and the hospital is a great avenue into learning about the culture, history, and traditions of the Emirates. It is now open to visitors six days a week; however, space is limited so it is recommended to book in advance on the Abu Dhabi Falcon Hospital website.

Encounter more of the world's beautiful birds on Atlas Obscura >

via USFWS Mountain-Prairie

This weekend marks the start of one of the greatest natural spectacles in the world, when some 500,000 sandhill cranes descend on the Platte River Valley near Kearney, Nebraska. This is around 80% of the entire global population of sandhill cranes, and they stop off in the state to plump up on the plentiful food before continuing their migration north through to Canada, Alaska, and even as far as Siberia.

To celebrate this astounding avian event, there is the Crane Watch Festival (March 21 to 30) in Kearney and alongside Audubon's Nebraska Crane Festival (March 20 to 24). Like the birds themselves, participants often travel long distances themselves, eager to view the swooping wings and crowded congregations of cranes. The birds have long used the Platte River area as a breeding ground, with crane fossils in the area dating back 10 million years. The sandhill cranes are most abundant from late March through to April and are joined by the migration of millions of other birds, including Whooping Cranes, shorebirds, and eagles. 

If you can't make it to Nebraska, there's an online Crane Cam at the Roe Sanctuary to see the river roost (Audubon advises checking in a sunrise and sunset for optimal online voyeurism). 

via USFWS Mountain-Prairie

photograph by David Williss

photograph by David Williss

photograph by David Williss

photograph by betsyalice/Flickr user

via USFWS Mountain-Prairie

via USFWS Mountain-Prairie

The Crane Watch Festival is March 21 to 30, 2014 in Kearney Nebraska. 

Houdini's escape coffin in the Houdini Museum (all photographs by the author)

Today marks 140 years since Harry Houdini was born as Erik Weisz in Budapest. The Hungarian would later move to the United States and transform into the great escape artist named for his early idol — magician Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin. As Houdini he conquered the confines of handcuffs, strait jackets, and coffins, living much of his life in Harlem.

Few who walk the busy blocks around Penn Station in New York likely notice the small signs for a magic shop below the scaffolding on Seventh Avenue. Yet go through the nondescript Midtown lobby and take the elevator to the third floor and you'll find yourself in the Houdini Museum. The museum, opened in 2012, is within the Fantasma Magic shop and has a couple hundred objects on display, as well as some 1,500 items in its archives. Most is from the private collection of Fantasma's CEO Roger Dreyer and has rarely been on public view, although you may have seen the metamorphosis chest in the corner at the Houdini: Art and Magic exhibition at the Jewish Museum. 

On my visit to the one-room shop and museum, a child's birthday party was just wrapping up and there were magic tricks being demonstrated at the store counter. It's hard to imagine a more inspiring array of artifacts for aspiring young magicians, with everything from framed handcuffs to remains from the water torture cell that were salvaged from a fire. There's even the 1976 replacement bust from his grave in Machpelah Cemetery in Queens on loan from Society of American Magicians, a substitute for one that was stolen. (This bust was also later stolen and then recovered.) You can peer into the 1907 escape coffin where Houdini emerged from the lid banged down with six inch nails in 66 minutes, the burial box itself decorated with illustrations of the achievement. There are also movie posters from his film career, photographs from his life, his relics of debunking spiritualists for their frauds, and an x-ray of the bullet lodged in his hand. 

The museum is free, so keep an eye out next time you're in the Penn Station area, as even streets like Seventh Avenue that seem on the surface to be far from magical often have their hidden wonders. 

Detail of the escape coffin

Artifacts in the Houdini Museum

The bust of Houdini once on his grave in Queens

Handcuffs used by Houdini

The metamorphosis chest (on the left)

An array of promotional materials and memorabilia from movies

The charred remains of the water torture cell

A straitjacket used by Houdini

A movie still and his hand x-ray

A publicity poster for the water torture cell and other artifacts

Spiritualist & medium debunking artifacts 

A spiritualist photograph

The entrance to the museum and magic shop

The Houdini Museum is located in Fantasma Magic at 421 Seventh Avenue, Third Floor, Manhattan, NYC. 

Uncover more overlooked magic wonders on Atlas Obscura >

Detail of the Borghese Vase (via Louvre)

"Sexual intercourse began / In nineteen sixty-three," wrote Philip Larkin wryly in his 1967 poem "Annus Mirabilis." Antiquity thought otherwise.

Gods and mortals, men and women, satyrs and nymphs, all kaleidoscopically fell into and out of lust. Across the Mediterranean in the classical world, sexual norms were radically different to those in contemporary Western society. The phallus might well contend with the Parthenon as the symbol of classical civilization.

The Temple of Dionysus, Delos (via Gradiva/Wikimedia)

Ancient Athens was not only the brightest cultural light of antiquity, but also, as Eva C. Keuls puts it in The Reign of the Phallus: Sexual Politics in Ancient Athens, "a society dominated by men who sequester their wives and daughters, denigrate the female role in reproduction, erect monuments to the male genetalia, have sex with the sons of their peers, sponsor public whorehouses, create a mythology of rape, and engage in rampant saber-rattling."

Nor was Athens an exception. In Alexandria, in 275 BC, a 180-foot-long gold-plated phallus was paraded through the streets of the city, flanked by elephants, a rhinoceros, and a giraffe — and decorated, as the Greek Athenaeus noted, with ribbons and a gold star. Those who failed to join in such festivals enthusiastically were more likely to attract criticism than those who did:

Someone at the court of King Ptolemy who was nicknamed ‘Dionysus’ slandered the Platonic philosopher Demetrius because he drank water and was the only one of the company who did not put on women’s clothing during the Dionysia. Indeed, had he not started drinking early and in view of all, next time he was invited, and had he not put on a Tarantine wrap [women’s clothes], played the cymbals, and danced to them, he would have been lost as one displeasing to the king’s lifestyle.” (Lucian, Calumnies, 16).

Rome, needless to say, took these aspects of Greek culture and ran with them — the young Julius Caesar was known as the "Queen of Bithynia," so fond was he rumored to be of cross-dressing. But that isn’t to say that there weren’t taboos, and strict and unforgiving moralities — or limits which most were disinclined to transgress. A benign drunken phallic procession was one thing — an emperor’s debauch could be quite a different matter.

Here are six sites from the perverted past — some have been shocking for over 2,000 years, while others were once upon a time no more controversial than the corner grocery-store. 

VILLA JOVIS
Capri, Italy 

Reconstruction of Villa Jovis by C. Weichardt (1900) (via Wikimedia)

In the northeast of Capri, atop a cliff looking out to sea, are the remains of a place of sexual legend. The mere mention of Villa Jovis, home of the Emperor Tiberius for many years, could made even the most debauched Roman blush.

It was completed in 27 AD. Tiberius retreated there from Rome, governing the Empire from behind its walls until his death ten years later. Tiberius was brilliant, depressive, and increasingly isolated — an ancient Howard Hughes, brooding on the world and disliking what he found. Secluded in Villa Jovis, his pastimes — reported and almost certainly exaggerated by hostile later authors — grew increasingly elaborate:

Teams of wantons of both sexes, selected as experts in deviant intercourse, copulated before him in triple unions to excite his flagging passions. The villa’s bedrooms were furnished with the most salacious paintings and sculptures, as well as with an erotic library, in case a performer should need an illustration of what was required. Then in Capri’s woods and groves he arranged a number of nooks of greenery where boys and girls got up as Pans and nymphs solicited outside bowers and grottoes: people openly called this “the old goat’s garden,” punning on the island’s name. He acquired a reputation for still grosser depravities that one can hardly bear to tell or be told, let alone believe. For example, he trained little boys (whom he termed tiddlers) to crawl between his thighs when he went swimming and tease him with their licks and nibbles. (Suetonius, Tiberius, 44).

 
Bust of the Emperor Tiberius at the Louvre (photograph by Catchpenny/Flickr user)

Many of the most outrageous stories of Roman imperial excess are almost certainly invented; gossip spread by authors writing generations later. We should not put too much faith, for instance, in stories of Messalina, wife of the emperor Claudius, competing with a prostitute to see how many men each could have sex with in one night (Messalina won, with 25, according to Pliny.)

Therefore how many of the legends of Villa Jovis are true or not is uncertain — but, for obvious reasons, it has fascinated later authors and artists ever since Tiberius’ death. Today, streams of tourists still climb the steep slope to gaze at its ruins, peer over the cliff-top (from where errant subjects were hurled, the legend has it), and wonder just how the afternoons passed, when all the world’s depravities were gathered under one roof.

 
Ruins of Villa Jovis (photograph by Satoshi Nakagawa)

THE THESSALONIKI BROTHEL
Thessaloniki, Greece

Almost all of our sources on love and sex in the ancient world have one thing in common: they were produced by men, and for men. Recovering women’s perspectives is exceedingly difficult, and an ongoing challenge for scholars. For "respectable" women, the great Athenian leader Pericles says in his Funeral Speech, the greatest glory is simply to disappear: "not to be talked about for good or for evil among men" (Thucydides, 2.45).

Yet Pericles himself is said to have fallen in love with one of the most remarkable and visible women we know of from the ancient world — the brilliant courtesan Aspasia:

Aspasia, as some say, was held in high favour by Pericles because of her rare political wisdom. Socrates sometimes came to see her with his disciples, and his intimate friends brought their wives to her to hear her discourse, although she presided over a business that was anything but honest or even reputable, since she kept a house of young courtesans. […] Twice a day, as they say, on going out and on coming in from the market-place, Pericles would salute her with a loving kiss. (Plutarch, Pericles, 24).

Fresco from a brothel in Pompeii (via Wikimedia)

Ancient Greek, it’s frequently said, has many more words for "love" than English. That’s true. It also has many more words for "prostitute." Few — very, very few — of these prostitutes had the independence and security of Aspasia, or other educated and prosperous hetaerae.

At the other end of the scale were the pornae (from whom we get the word "pornography"). It's a word for which any English translation must be both dismissive and degrading; "street-walker" or "bus-station whore." Their lives were not bright things. Often slaves, rarely with any control or agency of their own, they were frequently confined in brothels.

Ancient Greek erotic art (via Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

A number of ancient brothels have been excavated – most famously in Pompeii. In Thessaloniki, a brothel dating from the second century BC was discovered in 1997 attached to a public bathhouse, in the ancient agora, or marketplace of the city. This was an exceedingly well-equipped house of debauchery: on the ground floor was an elaborate dining room and a direct link to the bath-house — while above, there was a warren of tiny rooms.

Most eye-opening were the artifacts: a large phallus-shaped alabaster vase, jars with phallic mouths, even parts of an ingenious hand-cranked sexual aid (briefly displayed in a side-room of the local museum, but now gathering dust in storage). It’s one of the few windows we have into the everyday sexual life of an ancient city.

SEXUAL CURSE TABLETS
Agios Tychon, Cyprus

Curses of all kinds were big business, across the ancient world. Threatening tomb-curses were a feature of many Egyptian burials, and they lingered to trouble overzealous Victorian archaeologists. For example: "Anyone who does anything bad to my tomb, then the crocodile, hippopotamus, and lion will eat him."

Collected together, they make for fearsome reading: "I shall seize his neck like that of a goose." "His face shall be spat at." "A donkey shall violate him, a donkey shall violate his wife." "He shall be cooked together with the condemned."

Greeks and Romans would scratch these messages to the gods onto sheets of lead now known as curse-tablets, and promise rewards if the gods did their vengeful bidding: "may [the thief] neither piss, nor shit, nor speak, nor sleep, nor stay awake, nor have well-being or health, unless he bring what he has stolen to the temple of Mercury."

An ancient Roman curse tablet found in London (via British Museum)

Many of these curses were explicitly erotic in nature, impotence and sexual misery wished on many a target. Ovid, having disappointed a lover, did not hesitate to blame a witch: "Perchance ‘twas magic that turned me into ice."

Love-magic can be traced all the way back to Homer's Odyssey, where Calypso weaves spells to make Odysseus forget his home. There are, as John Gager notes in Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from the Ancient World, "spells to curse rivals, to divorce or separate couples, to cause a downturn in a pimp's business, and to attract a lover." Gager points out the vivid urgency of these tablets: "Bring her thigh close to his, her genitals close to his in unending intercourse for all the time of her life."

Amathus, Cyprus (photograph by Shonagon/Wikimedia)

In 2008, while excavating the city of Amathus, on the south coast of Cyprus, archaeologists found a curse which went straight to the point: "May your penis hurt when you make love."

This was inscribed once again on a lead tablet, in Greek. Perhaps most surprising was the date of this tablet — the seventh century AD, hundreds of years after the sack of Rome, and the spread of Christianity across the Mediterranean world. While many of the old pagan beliefs had disappeared or been suppressed by this period, it is clear that people’s love of — and need for — sex-curses had not gone anywhere.

THE TEMPLES OF KHAJURAHO
Chhatarpur, India

Temple carvings at Khajuraho (via Wikimedia)

No guide to sexuality and the past could be complete without Khajuraho. In Madhya Pradesh, far distant from the old imperial cities of India, are a remarkable group of temples, eye-popping in their erotic intensity. They were built, it is believed, between 950 AD and 1150 AD. Women, men, and questionable beings embrace athletically and relentlessly in their carvings.

Khajuraho is sometimes said to have been "discovered" by British colonial officers during the 19th century — though as the temples were well-known to Indians for centuries beforehand, such accounts are problematic. Nevertheless, Khajuraho’s fame in the Western world was sparked in great part by the 1860s account of Alexander Cunningham.

Cunningham, while fully aware that he should seriously disapprove, was entirely enraptured. He described "a small village of 162 houses, containing rather less than 1,000 inhabitants," overshadowed by gigantic sacred sites: "All of these [sculptures] are highly indecent, and most of them are disgustingly obscene. […] The general effect of this gorgeous luxury of embellishment is extremely pleasing." In his published illustrations, however, the faces of the temples — alive with carvings in reality — are blank, subdued, and nonthreatening. 

The temples of Khajuraho (via Wikimedia)

Despite its remoteness, Khajuraho has become one of the most popular attractions in India. Scholars still puzzle over the purpose of its erotic carvings — which comprise only around 10% of the total number of sculptures: were they a sex-education manual for cloistered young men, a Tantric text, or something very different? And when exactly — was it at the point of Cunningham’s arrival? — was it that Khajuraho became "obscene," part of the perverted past?

GABINETTO SEGRETO
Naples, Italy 

Mosaic of a satyr and a nymph from Pompeii's House of the Faun (via Museo Archeologico Nazionale)

Ancient sexuality has a long history of making people uncomfortable. Explaining that 180-foot-long, gold-plated Alexandrian phallus was not a task which many scholars fancied in Victorian London, for instance. The 19th century was one of the great periods of rediscovery of the classical past: from sculpture, to poetry, to archaeology, to history, knowledge became sharper and more fascinating. But it was also one of the greatest periods of censorship; antiquity was systematically mutilated to fit with contemporary Christian morality. 

The "Venus Kallipygos" — or "Venus with the lovely ass" — from the Gabinetto Segreto (via Wikimedia)

The forthright lewdness of many ancient authors was hacked down into a school-room whine: "I have carefully omitted," wrote one editor of Aristophanes, "every verse or expression which could shock the delicacy of the most fastidious reader." Even Gibbon, known for his appetites, put all of his most salacious footnotes in the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in Latin — so much so that one historian remarked that Gibbon’s sex life was mostly lived out through his footnotes.

But one of the most notorious cases of censorship came when Pompeii began to be systematically excavated. There were stone phalluses by the dozen, erotic mosaics, an entire ancient brothel, phallic wind-chimes, and a particularly detailed carving of a satyr having sex with a female goat, her cloven feet pressed up against his chest as she gazes back at him, with an expression rarely found on the face of a farm-animal.

The Gabinetto Segreto's goat (via Wikimedia)

King Francis I of Naples visited Pompeii in 1819 with his wife and young daughter. He was given the complete tour, and promptly ordered the censorship of an entire ancient city’s erotic life. All vaguely sexual objects were whisked away from public view. Metal shutters were installed over frescoes. Access was restricted to scholars or enterprising young men, prepared to pay the going rate to bribe the guards.

Predictably, this censorship cemented the fame of Pompeii’s secret history, and the forbidden collection became a semi-obligatory stop on young aristocrats’ Grand Tours. Remarkably, the Gabinetto Segreto, as it was known, remained hidden throughout the 20th century, and was only opened to the public in 2000. Today, at last fully acknowledged, it remains Pompeii’s best guilty pleasure.

BABYLON
Hilla, Iraq

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon by Maerten van Heemskerck (1498-1574) (via Wikimedia)

"The perverted past" is always at least half-invented: later cultures look back, and judge, and condemn. Nowhere is this truer than in Babylon— city of whispered sin, and ever-taller tales.

One of the oldest and most storied cities on earth, Babylon was first settled around 4,000 years ago. From a small city-state, it grew to a seat of empire, wealth, and power. Nebuchadnezzar II turned Babylon into perhaps the most astonishing city on earth, its walls lined with a hundred gates, its Hanging Gardens one of the wonders of the ancient world (though their historical form is disputed). Tales of Babylon — and Babylonian depravities — spread across the world:

The Babylonians have one most shameful custom. Every woman born in the country must once in her life go and sit down in the precinct of Venus, and there consort with a stranger. Many of the wealthier sort, who are too proud to mix with the others, drive in covered carriages to the precinct, followed by a goodly train of attendants, and there take their station. But the larger number seat themselves within the holy enclosure with wreaths of string about their heads […] and the strangers pass along them to make their choice.

A woman who has once taken her seat is not allowed to return home till one of the strangers throws a silver coin into her lap, and takes her with him beyond the holy ground. When he throws the coin he says these words: “The goddess Mylitta prosper thee.” (Venus is called Mylitta by the Assyrians.) The silver coin may be of any size; it cannot be refused, for that is forbidden by the law, since once thrown it is sacred. The woman goes with the first man who throws her money, and rejects no one. When she has gone with him, and so satisfied the goddess, she returns home, and from that time forth no gift however great will prevail with her. Such of the women as are tall and beautiful are soon released, but others who are ugly have to stay a long time before they can fulfill the law. Some have waited three or four years in the precinct. (Herodotus, Histories, 1.199, trans. Rawlinson).

The site of Babylon, viewed from Saddam Hussein's summer palace (via Wikimedia)

In October of 331 BCE, Babylon fell to Alexander the Great, and Alexander would die there, in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar, eight years later. Babylon’s greatness was soon a memory — its inhabitants scattered, its temples devastated in the wars which followed. The city swiftly passed into legend. The "whore of Babylon," an allegory of the Roman Empire, marched through the Book of Revelation: "Babylon the Great, the Mother of Prostitutes and Abominations of the Earth." Herodotus’ narrative of the sex temples of Babylon was taken up, unquestioned, by generations of scholars — yet most now agree that it was, at least in great part, fictional; a tale of the "perverted other," told to raise eyebrows and pulses amongst his Greek readers.

Each generation reinvents the sexual histories of the past, to suit its own desires. From Victorian censorship, to contemporary fascination with "the perverted past," the history of many of these places is the history of our own shifting and often uncomfortable relationship with ancient sexuality. They show us a different world — they demand we look it straight in the eye, and acknowledge what it is: as potently erotic as it is profoundly alien.

Winter's over and spring is here, are you ready for the fire, snakes, and elephant processions? Here's your calendar for how to have the strangest and most wonderful April and May with 12 festivals and celebrations from around the world. 

BUZKASHI
Bishkeke, Krygyzstan: Spring

Note the Soviet tank helmets (photograph by Peretz Partensky)

The Central Asian sport of Buzkashi has been compared to polo — except instead of a ball there is a decapitated goat carcass and victors get prizes like motorcycles. The brutal sport is part of spring festivities in Bishkek, Krygyzstan. 

The dead goat is dragged (photograph by Peretz Partensky) 

LAND DIVING
Pentecost Island: April-May

Starting the descent (photograph by Paul Stein)

A tower of wood between 80 and 98 feet tall is built each year on Pentecost Island in the South Pacific, and then the people jump. During the Nagol festival men from the Sa tribe climb up the tower and, with vines linked to their ankles, soar into the air. Injuries and even death are common, and the treacherous tradition influenced the bungee jump, a more subdued pastime in comparison. 

Preparing to jump from the tower (photograph by Paul Stein)

KANAMARA MATSURI
Kawasaki, Japan: April 6

The 2012 festival (photograph by TAKA@P.P.R.S/Flickr user)

On the first Sunday of each April, Kanamara Matsuri absolutely overflows Kawasaki, Japan, with everything phallic. There are penis processions, candy, souvenirs, sculptures, and costumes. The festival dates back to the Edo period with the Kanayama Shrine that has long been a place of veneration for sex workers seeking protection from disease, but the festival has morphed into a playful celebration of fertility and prosperity.  

The 2007 festival (photograph by elmimmo) 

SONGKRAN WATER FESTIVAL
Thailand: April 13-15

An elephant at Songkran (photograph by JJ Harrison)

With water guns, buckets, and even elephants dousing people with their trunks, pretty much everyone gets soaked during this Thai New Year festival. Songkran is basically the world's biggest water fight, but it's also a tradition to symbolically wash away the woes of the previous year and start clean. Plus it's a welcome respite from the hottest month of the year. 

The water festival in Burma (photograph by Theis Kofoed Hjorth)

SEMANA SANTA DE SEVILLA
Seville, Spain: April 13-20

The penitents in the cathedral (photograph by Jesús León)

During Easter Holy Week in Seville, Spain, there are some 60 processions with ominous hooded figures and large-scale effigies. The nazarenos — who have an uncanny resemblance to the KKK — wear pointed hoods to mask the identities of these penitents. Some say it's meant to symbolize a reach to the heavens. Others might say it looks like the end days. 

Nazarenos in 2003 (photograph by Albert Besselse)

WALPURGIS NIGHT
Central and Northern Europe: April 30

Walpurgisnacht in Heidelberg (photograph by Andreas Fink)

Walpurgis Night — or Walpurgisnacht — takes its name from St. Walpurga whose Saint Day is in close calendar proximity, but it's far from a Catholic affair. Instead its pagan origins, which started as rituals against witches and have now turned into rituals celebrating sorcery, flame through with bonfires and burned effigies. People gather in hordes in Central and Northern Europe, dressing as witches and engaging in crazed dancing around the pyres. 

photograph by Aske Holst

BELTANE FIRE FESTIVAL
Edinburgh, Scotland: April 30

The 2006 festival (photograph by SixSigma/Wikimedia)

Alongside Walpurgis Night is the debaucherous Beltane Fire Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland. Like the continental Europe celebrations there is plenty of fire in the marking of the end of winter and beginning of spring. The Celtic festival was revived in the 1980s into a celebration of the area's pagan roots, with thousands of people participating in wild dancing around the flames. 

 The 2012 festival at the National Monument of Scotland on Calton Hill (photograph by Stefan Schäfer)

FESTIVAL OF THE SNAKES 
Cocullo, Italy: May 1

St. Domenico and the snakes (photograph by trebbyeah/Flickr user)

St. Domenico Abate is said to have cleared the area around Cocullo, Italy, of snakes, but since then his story has fused with pagan traditions into an annual festival that brings the serpents back. The Processione dei Serpari — Festival of the Snakes — starts with a mass and then the statue of Domenico is paraded through the town. Along the way snake charmers wrap the statue with the reptiles. You can even buy a local special bread shaped like an ouroboros — a snake eating its own tail. Afterwards the snakes are let loose into the area around Cocullo, seemingly undoing Domenic's good work.  

A festival participant (photograph by Cristian Roberti)

THRISSUR POORAM 
Thrissur, India: May 9

The 2013 festival (photograph by Ramesh NG/Flickr user)

Thrissur Pooram is sort of the Super Bowl of elephant processions. Centered around the Vadakkunnathan Temple in Thrissur, India, 30 elephants are decked out in finery with the mahouts on their backs participating in carefully choreographed rhythmic performances with parasols. And if that isn't enough, there's an abundance of fireworks. 

Parasol performance (via Wikimedia)

ROCKET FESTIVALS
Laos and Thailand: May 10-11

Rockets in Yasothon in 2013 (via Wikimedia)

Each year before the rainy season, Bun Bang Fai is held around Laos and Thailand with the biggest festivities in Yasothon. These "Rocket Festivals" culminate in their revelry with a homemade rocket launching competition. The rockets are traditionally built from bamboo, or more recently PVC pipe, and the contest is for the highest, furthest rocket. Those whose rockets don't take off are thrown in the mud. 

Rocket parade float (via Wikimedia) 

CARABAO FESTIVAL
Pulilan, Philippines: May 14

A water buffalo race (photograph by Roger Alcantara)

Carabao — or water buffaloes — are vital animals to farmers in the Philippines, and in May in Pulilan the creatures are carefully brushed, rubbed with oil, and draped with garlands of flower and ribbons and brought to the church square. There the large animals kneel for a blessing. It's the culmination of the Carabao Festival around the saint day of San Isidro Labrador, the patron saint of farmers. Alongside are water buffalo races and pomp-filled parades. 

The Carabao parade (photograph by Keith Bacongco)

GLOUCESTERSHIRE CHEESE ROLLING
Cooper's Hill, England: May 26

The 2013 race down the hill (photograph by Dave Farrance)

In this annual questionable sport, competitors bound down an especially steep and uneven hill in Gloucestershire after a nine pound wheel of Double Gloucester cheese. The Cooper's Hill Cheese-Rolling competition regularly results in injuries, although that hasn't stopped the enthusiasm for the English festival from going international: an American won the race last year. 

The Master of Ceremonies holding a Double-Gloucester cheese (via Warwick University Real Ale Society) 

Fill your year with more curious and potentially hazardous festivals with Atlas Obscura >

One of the Cottingley Fairy photographs from 1917 (via lhup.edu)

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle believed in fairies. While his most famous creation Sherlock Holmes would have debunked the 1917 Cottingley Fairy photographs in short order, Doyle championed the authenticity of the images of two young girls with the tiny flying beings. He, like thousands of others, wanted to believe that modern technology could prove that the magical folklore that was so much a part of his culture heritage was real.

Of course, the Cottingley Fairy photographs were not real, but the genuine belief in fairies and other magical creatures that they tapped into still permeates northern Europe. 

Frances Griffiths with the Cottingley Fairies (via Wikimedia)

While the believed appearance of fairies has evolved over the centuries, lately it’s been somewhat settled that they are creatures of magic, appearing young and attractive with gossamer wings. It should be noted that in this belief, fairies are a fully separate species from humans and exist primarily in a different dimension, though that dimension is close enough that the thin veil between worlds can occasionally reveal them to human eyes. There is also a consensus that humans should not anger fairies, since everything from flood, pestilence, disappointing rugby seasons, and the recent bankruptcy of a billionaire have been blamed upon them.

In an effort to avoid the wrath of the fairies, communities of the British Isles and Ireland have protected the fairy "homes," and as a result have preserved sites of great beauty from development and destruction, which is a kind of magic in itself. Conversely, more than a few lovely spots have become damaged and even threatened with destruction by enthusiastic fairy hunters. 

A 3rd or 4th century ring fort in Ireland (photograph by amanderson/Flickr user)

Ireland's Fairy Forts — more properly known as ring forts — are the remains of strongholds and other dwellings dating back as far as the Iron Age. However, local tradition holds that fairies make their home in these ring forts and terrible luck will come to anyone who participates in their destruction. These folk beliefs seem to only date back to the 12th century, but they were strong enough to allow thousands of ring forts to grow wild as the rest of the land was being cultivated for human use.

In modern times, folk beliefs alone have often not been enough to preserve these archaeological sites. In Iceland, protection of elf homes (elves being supernatural cousins of faeries) is codified into building codes and even made a semi-official vocation at Elf School,  and yet some cynics avow that non-believing environmentalists might be exploiting folk beliefs to protect the island's pristine eco system.

One the other hand, Irish fairy advocates have focused on promoting laws preserving sites of ecological and historical importance, while publicly warning of the consequences of angering fairies. One such example, the Ballyalban Ring Fort, has been preserved for historic reasons, but local fairy communicators hold that it's guarded by a pooka in the shape of a pony. Pookas are malevolent fairies which take the shape of animals. There are also tourist attractions like Brigit's Celtic Garden preserving fairy forts for human enjoyment and protection, and their fairies are apparently far more benevolent. 

The Glen (photograph by Heather James)

Faeries also purportedly like to populate wooden glens. A visit to the Glen, a tiny valley tucked into Knocknerea Mountain in Sligo, Ireland, also holds promise for fairy hunters. The mountain itself has multiple pre-historic sites, including a likely but still un-excavated passage tomb at its base. The Glen also contains a stone cairn that legend calls the grave of Queen Maeve — a figure from Irish Mythology often equated and/or conflated with Queen Mab of the fairies.

Unlike the ring forts, the Glen has required protection from fairy seekers as much as developers; with curious hikers and tourists carrying off stones from the cairn, locals have started conservation efforts to protect the site. Lately, travelers have been told that bringing a rock to Maeve's Cairn will bring one good luck, which has caused the ever-evolving site's rock pile to be replenished. 

The cairn of "Queen Maeve's Tomb" (photograph by Kelly H.)

Meanwhile, deep in the Glen Brittle Forest on the Isle of Skye is a series of pristine waterfalls pools that humans can only reach by hiking on foot. Stunning in their natural beauty and evocative of fantasy worlds, these Fairy Pools attract hikers and fairy hunters, as well as those people who enjoy an icy dip. While some sites might discourage tourists, the proprietors of the local hostel and B&Bs often outright encourage — some would say even invent — mythology surrounding this highly isolated and fantastical looking spot.

A Fairy Pool on the Isle of Skye (photograph by Christian Hacker)

Imagination also plays a part in the history of Dunino Den. In the woods behind a Christian Church in Dunino, Scotland, is a spot that has long been associated with ancient pagan worship and the presence of fairies. A well sits atop the den, with a vivid but totally unconfirmed legend that it was a site for human sacrifice. The lack of historical veracity hasn’t stopped fairy hunters and neopagans from leaving all sorts of modern offerings to the gods, like booze, cigarettes, panties, coins, and ribbons. Fantastical and celtic graffiti, old and new, also defaces (or enhances) the den’s rock face.

Similarly, the ecologically and geologically precious St. Nectan’s Kieve, with is waterfall, rock basins and arches, also swirls with stories of being a home to fairies that inspire visitors to create shrines out of ribbons, crystals, and other ephemera. While all this generates a complicated relationship with a real natural and historic place, the mythical creature attention may also help it and these other places survive.

1930s fairy reenactors (via National Library of Ireland)

Discover more of the mystical and mythical creatures of the world on Atlas Obscura >

The Sinai cinema in 2011 (photograph by Derek Cave)

Hang a left off the highway asphalt near Sharm el-Sheikh, turn away from the warm sea lapping against Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, and head into the desert hills. Now you’re on sand packed from the wheels of a million four-wheel motorbikes — transport for tourists who may never see what you'll see. Cross a wash of grey-brown dust, hang another left, but don't go too far. You'll miss the movie.

The desert, open-air cinema stretches before you with row after row of wooden seats — 700 of them — each with painted designs, rising at a reasonable rate to what looks like a projection house. Welcome to the Seventh Art Cinema. There's no longer a movie screen, just a view onto desert hills which darken as the sun sets, the furthest hill blackening first until the rising stars light them all. 

The Seventh Art Cinema could seat hundreds, but it never has. The cinema could imaginably star the place that premiered Lawrence of Arabia, but it never did. It's not even that old. In the late 1990s, Frenchman Diynn Eadel decided to build a cinema near the southern tip of Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, close to the growing tourist resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh, or Sharm as it's often called. A flyer from Eadel featuring the cinema states it was his childhood dream to build such a theater in the Sinai. In France, moviemaking is called the seventh art, hence the cinema’s name.

Flyer for the cinema (courtesy Diynn Eadel)

Eadel, a former drama student and occasional actor, says he got all the necessary permits to build the theater, and told a visiting photojournalist the first show, in October 1997, would feature Jurassic Park.

"We're very excited about this as it's a first for the area," Eadel said at the time, according to the South African photographer Jeremy Jowell, in his retelling of the meeting. "The seats and screen are in place and we're looking forward to opening night."

Yet the show never happened.

Details are sketchy as to what exactly shut the cinema down. After an Estonian photographer brought the site back into public view in 2014, Eadel stopped talking to the media about it, according to a filmmaker friend. After an initial exchange about the cinema, Eadel fell silent, neither answering questions sent directly or even through his friend.

The Sinai cinema in 2011 (photograph by Derek Cave)

While Eadel seems to consider the cinema an aborted triumph, it still drops the jaws of visitors who zoom into the cinema on their motorbikes. Derek Cave, a British tourist on a “quad-bike” tour got an impromptu visit in 2011, spurred on by his guide. Cave described the cinema’s screen as a box of steel, rusting away in the sand. The seats are still ready for theater-goers, “a few were in need a repair, but most were in working order.”

While Jowell, the South African photojournalist, bemoaned the cinema as an example of Sinai overdevelopment, Eadel seemed to see his project as a chance to add a cinematic flavor to an area already overgrowing with chain hotel and resort umbrellas along the beaches, sprouting like mushrooms. According to the cinema’s introductory flyer, Eadel with the cinema “attempts to prove that tourism is not necessarily a destructive element and that the Great Theatre of Nature can reconcile us with the elements.”

If you visit the site, you won’t see a movie, and there here aren’t any concessions. But take a moment, take an intermission, and think kindly on Eadel for the site he built that opens up not to a white screen for a movie projector, but to Sinai’s hills and a sky full of stars.

Take a seat. If you time it right, you can catch the evening show.

The cinema in the Sinai hills (via Google Maps)

These islands are fortresses. Whether built up to consume tiny landforms or constructed on manmade foundations, sea forts are outposts of military might now left stranded in the seas. With accessibility reliant on the tides or boats, some sea forts are abandoned after they become obsolete, others take on second lives as hotels, bird nesting sites, or even game show sets. Here are some strongholds for if you ever want to get away for some impenetrable solitude. 

Fort Louvois
Bourcefranc-le-Chapus, France

Fort Louvois at high tide (photograph by Lionel Maraval)

Built: 1691-1694
Purpose: Protect the Château d'Oléron, didn't see any action until WWII
Current Use: Oyster farming museum

Fort Louvois at low tide (photograph by Roromain69/Wikimedia)

Shivering Sands Army Fort
Thames Estuary, England

photograph by Hywel Williams

Built: 1943
Purpose: Anti-aircraft defense
Current Use: After a post-military career in pirate radio and employment as search lights, they were abandoned.

photograph by Hywel Williams

Murud-Janjira
Maharashtra, India

photograph by Sagar Jadhav

Built: 15th Century
Purpose: Protection from pirates
Current Use: Abandoned 

photograph by Himanshu Sarpotdar

Fort Boyard
Pertuis d'Antioche Straits, France

photograph by Mpkossen/Wikimedia

Built: 1801-1857
Purpose: Protect a navy arsenal
Current Use: French game show set

The fort in the distance from the beach (photograph by Frédérique Voisin-Demery)

Fort Jefferson
Dry Tortugas, Florida, United States

Arriving by boat to Fort Jefferson (photograph by Matt Kieffer)

Built: 1824-never finished
Purpose: Stop pirates
Current Use: National Park

Fort Jefferson moat wall (photograph by Matt Kieffer)

Fort Alexander
Saint Petersburg, Russia

photograph by Serh113/Wikimedia

Built: 1838-1845
Purpose: Fortify the Gulf of Finland
Current Use: After serving as a research center for the plague and rave party site in the 1990s, it is now open to tours

photograph by Florstein/Wikimedia

No Man's Land Fort
Isle of Wight, England 

photograph by Colin Babb

Built: 1867-1880
Purpose: Protect Portsmouth
Current Use: Served as a high end private hotel, closed for health reasons, now under new owners who intend to reopen it as a hotel 

photograph by Andrew/Flickr user

Nab Tower
Isle of Wight, England

photograph by JOG/Flickr user

Built: WWI
Purpose: Stop submarines
Current Use: Lighthouse, and sailboat race destination

photograph by JOG/Flickr user 

Fort Carroll
Baltimore, Maryland, United States

photograph by Jon Dawson

Built: 1848
Purpose: Protect Baltimore
Current Use: Abandoned

photograph by Cristina/Flickr user

Spitbank Fort
Portsmouth, England

photograph by Amanda Retreats

Built: 1861-1878
Purpose: Protect Portsmouth
Current Use: Luxury spa and hotel

 via Wikimedia

Fort Brehon
St Peter Port, Guernsey

photograph by Unukorno/Wikimedia

Built: 1854-1856
Purpose: Protection from the British
Current Use: Was an anti-aircraft site in WWII, now is ruins and a Common Tern breeding ground

photograph by Man vyi/Wikimedia

Fort Denison
Sydney Harbour, Australia

photograph by icameronbps/Flickr user

Built: 1841-1857
Purpose: Protection from foreigners after the appearance of American warships
Current Use: Tourist site

photograph by Mike Brand

Trekroner Fort
Copenhagen, Denmark

photograph by Thue C. Leibrandt

Built: 18th Century
Purpose: Protect Copenhagen
Current Use: Tourist site

photograph by denkrahm/Wikimedia

St Helens Fort
Isle of Wight, England

View from shore (photograph by Andrew/Flickr user)

Built: 1867-1880
Purpose: Protect Portsmouth
Current Use: Privately owned, although people walk there during the few hours of low tide in the summer

The St. Helens Fort walk during low tide (photograph by Richard Heaven) 

Dubai's coastal expansion over time on Google Earth (via Google)

Since its debut, Google Earth has been a kind of a double-edged sword. It’s a stupefying modern marvel, more or less indispensable to those who use it. Even a decade after its release, the idea that we have the ability to navigate just about any terrain in the whole world, places we’ll never even come close to personally seeing, is still jaw-dropping. But by the same token, how much of ourselves do we want to be seen? And who's looking? It seems that some folks have been less than thrilled at suddenly being so accessible to the public.

Google Earth began blurring or pixelating certain locations upon request. It started with governments. When the site first launched in 2005, images of the White House and the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, DC were blurred. (They're not anymore, but the censored version has been replaced with outdated imagery.) Following suit, several countries have official contracts with Google to blur specific sites, among them India and Australia. Meanwhile, somewhat ingeniously, the government of Malaysia went the opposite route and realized that it would reveal its sensitive locations if they were visibly censored, so it chose to leave them unblurred.

But then things opened up a little. The owners of a house in Arkansas, that was photographed by Google Street View while it was on fire asked that the imagery be removed, and the request was granted less than a year later. In 2008, the city of North Oaks, Minnesota, requested that Google remove all imagery of its streets, because the land there is privately owned, and Google complied.

Today, anyone can file to have just about any location blurred, and plenty of people have had their requests honored by Google. Some censored locations are private properties that are open to the public, like amusement parks or racetracks. Some are fast food joints. Some are governmental, such as nuclear facilities or airbases. Some are entire islands. Some are just regular people's houses, and some are both governmental and residential, like the Dutch royal palaces. Here are a few of the more compelling examples

Marcoule Nuclear Site
Chusclan, France
44.144520, 4.706259

An enormous atomic energy site in the south of France, Marcoule works with plutonium and uranium oxides and was the scene of an explosion in 2011. No real mystery as to why this one's censored.

Volkel Airbase
Uden, Netherlands
51.654597, 5.686496

Here is another dramatic censoring. Belonging to the Royal Netherlands Air Force, Volkel Airbase has been rumored to have nukes stored within it since the 1960s, and this was finally confirmed by former Dutch prime minister Ruud Lubbers in 2013.

Koninklijk Paleis Amsterdam (The Royal Palace of Amsterdam)
Amsterdam, Netherlands
52.373154, 4.891227

Several of the buildings related to the Dutch royal family — including the Koninklijk Paleis in Amsterdam, the family’s residence — are pixelated on Google Earth. Huis ten Bosch as well as the royal stables have also been similarly inaccessible at times. What's curious about the obscuring of Koninklijk Paleis is how someone sat and lovingly, carefully blurred out every single pixel along the border of the building's roof, rather than slapping a huge-gauge pixel-mask over the whole thing, as the Dutch seem wont to do. Seems... not very obscured.

Chekhov
Near Moscow, Russia
55.148392, 37.479011

A city of 60,000 in the Moscow Oblast and the seat of the oblast's Chekhovsky District, Chekhov's roads are perfectly visible from Google Street View but, not so when you switch to the bird's eye view. Zooming in doesn't help. No one seems to know why it's blurred — a satellite malfunction, or perhaps it was intentional. It's hard not to notice that the high resolution of the much smaller village of Chudinovo, only 5.5km to the east, stands in sharp contrast to the hazy layout of Chekhov.

Somewhat relatedly, it's rumored that the nearby Russian General Staff wartime command post, located underground, is connected to the Kremlin via an underground Russian Federal Security Service train, the Moscow Metro 2 line. Could that be a factor in not wanting the town to be visible by air? 

The Faroe Islands
Denmark/The North Atlantic Ocean
62.118920, -6.919588

A fair chunk of the islands in the autonomous archipelago-country of the Faroes are fuzzed out, including the old WWII military base on the island of Vágar. However, it's possible that Google Earth just didn't bother zeroing in, because outside of the country's capitol — Tórshavn — there's not so much going on up there. You know, in the way of people. Still, it seems like it'd be conscientious to at least get the borders sharpened out on the satellite view.

Gabčíkovo Power Plant
Gabčíkovo, Slovakia
47.884081, 17.541023

The switch yard of power plant near Gabcikovo in Slovakia is obscured for perhaps sensible reasons, but in an interesting way. It's a composite image of a grass field slapped over the yard, with patterns repeated. It blends in nicely until you really look.

Personeelsvereniging Tankwerkplaats
Amersfoort, Netherlands
52.122640, 5.357492

Personeelsvereniging Tankwerkplaats, a Dutch tank manufacturer near the city of Amersfoort, is also censored for rather assume-able reasons, and in the very fantastical Army-camouflage way that the Dutch are wont to use. 

Valencia City
Philippines
7.907765, 125.092966 

A large part of the Philippine city of Valencia is pixelated, even when zoomed-in on. It might be just an oversight on Google's part, except that Valencia, with a population of over 160,000, is pretty sizable— and is the largest city in the province of Bukidnon. You'd think it would be hard to overlook.

Army Logistics Command Headquarters Building
Taiwan, China
25.047424, 121.591454

This military logistics headquarters in China is likely censored for obvious reasons. And also probably because it kind of looks like a scary Transformers face. 

2207 Seymour Avenue
Cleveland, Ohio, United States
41.472554, -81.697886

One of the saddest censored images on Google Earth is the former home of Ariel Castro, who kept three women imprisoned for more than a decade until their escape in May 2013. The house itself was demolished three months later, but at the time of this writing, it remains visible on the aerial view and blurred on the Street View.

Colonel Sanders's Face, Every KFC

Lastly, and somewhat hilariously, Google Earth is prevented from showing the faces of real people, both living and dead. Colonel Sanders used to be one, which means that his smiling visage is blurred out on the logo of every one of the world's KFCs.

The 1958 World's Fair 1958 (photograph by Charles Roberts)

After visiting Paris, Chicago, Barcelona, New York City, Montreal, St. Louis, Melbourne, and Seattle, Atlas Obscura's next stop in our tour of World's Fair relics is Brussels, host to four World’s Fairs.  As with most other cities, only a handful of relics survive — but one of them still turns heads today.

Brussels' first fair in 1897 — the Brussels International, or Exposition Internationale de Bruxelles — left a definite impact on art history, as the fair planners used an Art Nouveau style for all the fair's architecture and advertising, helping to promote the then-new art movement. The one building from 1897 still standing is the intriguingly-named Temple of Human Passions. The Temple is actually a pavilion meant to show off  "Human Passions," a huge marble relief mural depicting various human obsessions, with unsavory acts such as war and rape among more startling pursuits.

Detail of "Human Passions," Jef Lambeaux, detail (photograph by Travis Nelson)

Architect Victor Horta was commissioned to design the Temple in the more traditional neoclassic style, but Horta had already begun exploring the Art Nouveau movement, and experimented with some subtle Art Nouveau details for its design. Minor as they were, the relief sculptor Jef Lambeaux objected to the design. In particular, he wanted a wall between his relief and the Temple's entrance. Horta fought back, insisting on an open design with part of the relief visible from the outside. The conflict between them went on so long that the Temple was still unfinished by the start of the fair. However, critics weren't fond of Lambeaux's work anyway; one was especially harsh on the tableaux:

"...a pile of naked and contorted bodies, muscled wrestlers in delirium, an absolute and incomparable childish concept. It is at once chaotic and vague, bloated and pretentious, pompous and empty."

Fair organizers dealt with the mess by building a barricade around the Temple to keep out fairgoers. Then Brussels left up the barricade. After Lambeaux's death in 1908, Horta — who went on to world renown as a master of Art Nouveau architectural design — finally built the wall, but the Temple stayed closed to the general public until 2002. Today, the Temple is only open for one hour a day, every day, except Mondays. 

Temple of Human Passions (photograph by William Murphy)

A landmark from Brussels' most recent fair in 1958 — Expo 58 — is equally eye-catching, but in a much more modern way. Designed to resemble a single cell from an iron crystal, the Atomium consists of nine 59-foot stainless steel spheres, connected by a series of hollow tubes. 

photograph by O Palsson

The inside of the spheres are hollow, and offered exhibition space during the fair; the tubes are also hollow, to allow guests to travel from one sphere to the next. 

Atomium stairs (photograph by Harald Hoyer)

 In 2004, the city of Brussels began extensive renovations on the building. Wind tunnel tests proved that the original design was actually unsafe — the structure rested entirely on the bottommost spheres, and engineers proved that the whole building could have toppled over in a high enough wind. Renovations included support columns meant to anchor the building in place, and today only five of the spheres are open to the public. 

View from Atomium (photograph by Björn Láczay)

The top sphere today serves as a viewing platform, offering guests a panoramic view of Brussels, while lower-level spheres are home to a series of exhibits about the 1958 fair itself.

Inside the Atomium (photograph by Jerry Pank)

The Atomium in 1958 (photograph by Charles Roberts)

 Here are some more photographs from the World's Fair in Brussels: 

The Venezuela Pavilion at Expo 58 (photograph by Wouter Hagens)

Part of a ship in the Dutch pavilion at Expo 58 (photograph by Wouter Hagens)

USSR Pavilion at Expo 58 (photograph by Wouter Hagens)

United States Pavilion at Expo 58 (photograph by Wouter Hagens)

Yugoslavia pavilion at Expo 58 (via Wikimedia)

The UK Pavilion (photograph by Wouter Hagens)

Expo 1958 Brazil pavilion (photograph by Wouter Hagens)

Expo 1958 Belgium scale model (photograph by Wouter Hagens)

Expo 1958 Philips Pavilion (photograph by Wouter Hagens)

Expo 58 (photograph by Charles Roberts)

United States Pavilion at Expo 58 (photograph by Charles Roberts)

Expo 58 (photograph by Charles Roberts)

Expo 58 (photograph by Charles Roberts)

Expo 58 (photograph by Charles Roberts)

Expo 58 (photograph by Charles Roberts)

Expo 58 (photograph by Charles Roberts)

Stay tuned for more in our series on World's Fair relics, and be sure to visit Paris, Chicago, Barcelona, New York City, Montreal, St. Louis, Melbourne, and Seattle.   

To appreciate the 700 years of bespectacled fashion, head to Amsterdam where eyewear from the likes of John Lennon, Buddy Holly, Elvis Costello, and Franz Schubert is collected in a 17th century optician's shop.

Exterior of the Nationaal Brilmuseum, note the eyeglass sign (photograph by Frank Weber)

The Stichting Nationaal Brilmuseum — or National Spectacles Museum — is a labor of visually impaired love by the Theunissen family. The first floor of the building is still a working store overflowing with eyeglasses, and feels like a transportation to a more elegant medical past. But as the two floors above it show — accessible by an incredibly narrow and steep staircase — the roots of eyewear go back much further.

Fede Galizia, "Portrait of Paolo Morigia" (detail) (16th century), oil on canvas (via Pinacoteca Ambrosiana)

Although some seven centuries into the past are covered in its packed display cases, it's the recent fashion that is most popular in this equally fashionable neighborhood. There are pince-nez, monocles, and of course the four-eyes frames. From Dame Edna Everage to Elton John to 19th century Austrian composer Franz Schubert with his thin and stylish frames, you may leave disappointed if you don't happen to be a glasses wearer yourself. 

Josef Abel, "Franz Schubert" (1814), oil on canvas (via Kunsthistorisches Museum)

STICHTING NATIONAAL BRILMUSEUM, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Curious Facts of the Week: Helping you build your cocktail party conversation repertoire with a new strange fact every week, and an amazing place to explore its story. See all the Curious Facts here>

Maestro della Maddalena di Capodimonte, "Maddalena penitente" (17th century), oil on canvas (via Museo Regionale di Messina)

Attitudes toward corpses and death in 20th century Western society range from morbid fascination to forbidden subject. So it’s unusual when the news reports stories about people who are found living with a dead relative. Typically these tend to be people who are grieving and can’t let their loved one go, or who don’t want to report the death for fear of losing public assistance, or who simply have mental illness. It’s even more rare to find entire neighborhoods that live with the dead.

Communities of people who choose to live among the dead often do so for religious or economic reasons. The Aghori sadhus of India embrace death as part of their religion and rely on human remains for ritual and food. There are also large populations of people who dwell in cemeteries in Egypt and the Philippines for economic reasons. For these people there is nothing unusual about living among the dead since corpses and tombs are part of their communities.

Aghori sadhu in Nepal (photograph by Mike Behnken)

The Aghori sadhus are a group of Hindu holy men who are devoted to Shiva, the god of destruction and transformation, and immerse themselves in death and filth as part of their faith. They are considered social outcasts because their beliefs and rituals contradict orthodox Hinduism.

Most Aghori live in Varanasi, a city in northern India on the banks of the Ganges, that is believed to be the favorite city of Lord Shiva. Varanasi is closely associated with funerary rituals due to the belief that death and cremation at Varanasi brings salvation in the afterlife. The city has several ghats, or stone embankments, along the Ganges where Hindus cremate the bodies of their dead loved ones.

Funeral pyres on the Ganges (photograph by Dan Ruth)

The Aghori cover their bodies with cremation ashes from the ghats or pull corpses from the Ganges to use in their rituals. They use dead bodies as altars, consume the flesh, and use the bones to make bowls and jewelry. Unlike holy men from other Hindu sects who are vegetarians and abstain from alcohol, the Aghoris will drink alcohol and cannibalize dead bodies. They believe that eating the flesh from a corpse will give them special powers. While embracing death for the Aghori is a religious choice, for others it’s an economic one.

A tomb turned into a home in Cairo's City of the Dead (via Wikimedia)

Cairo, with a population of about 20 million people, is one of the largest cities in the world; compared to New York and London that each have a population of about 8 million. Just southeast of Cairo there is a neighborhood known as al-Arafa — or City of the Dead— where an estimated 500,000 residents live in an ancient necropolis.

The City of the Dead was a founded in 642 AD as an Arabic cemetery during the Islamic conquest of Egypt. Some families have lived here for hundreds of years after they were displaced by rural and urban migration, a shortage of affordable housing, and natural disasters. They are considered outcasts by the middle and upper classes of Egyptian society.

Cairo's City of the Dead (photograph by Dennis Jarvis)

The City of the Dead consists of a grid of mausoleum structures that stretches for four miles. This community has limited electricity and running water, and leadership in the form of a neighborhood headman. Egyptian tombs in this neighborhood look like small houses, many of which have a garden. Families have set up kitchens, living areas, and bathrooms in these tombs. Traditionally the dead bodies of men and women are placed on shelves in separate underground rooms that are covered with stone slabs.

Since the revolution in 2013 there has been a rise in crime because the area is used for drug deals and to store weapons.

Families live among the graves of Manila's North Cemetery in the Philippines (photograph by Hywell Martinez)

The Cemeterio del Norte, or the Manila North Cemetery in the Philippines, dates to the 19th century and is the country’s largest public graveyard that spans over 130 acres. Hundreds of families have made the Manila North Cemetery home for decades because of urban population pressures and an affordable housing shortage in Manila, which has a population of 13 million.

Since the graves at the Manila North Cemetery are reused, its 6,000 residents live and work among human remains that lay out in the open. They have converted mausoleums into family homes, cafes and shops are run out of crypts, and children play among tombs. Many tomb dwellers care for the dead and provide services to mourners and visitors during All Saints Day.

Unlike the City of Dead in Cairo, this cemetery community lacks running water, electricity, and sanitation. Despite political pressure and a growing crime problem, residents prefer life among the graves to the unknown problems outside the cemetery walls. 

To glimpse inside Manila's city among the dead, here's a short documentary from National Geographic, which includes one two-story home where the residents regularly exhume the dead, as well as plan to be buried in their own crypt house. 

For more fascinating stories of forensic anthropology visit Dolly Stolze's Strange Remains, where a version of this article also appeared. 

Morbid Mondays highlight macabre stories from around the world and through time, indulging in our morbid curiosity for stories from history's darkest corners. Read more Morbid Mondays>

References:

Indian cannibal sect eats human corpses, believing it give them supernatural powers. (2005 October 27). Retrieved on March 30, 2014 from: http://english.pravda.ru/news/world/27-10-2005/69336-0/

Bernardo, D.M., Candela, M. (2011 November 17). Gallery: Life among the dead — Manila’s cemetery residents. Retrieved on March 30, 2014 from: http://travel.cnn.com/explorations/life/gallery-life-among-dead-manilas-cemetery-residents-217066

Hodal, K. (2013 May 23). Philippines cemetery provides Manila’s poor a place to live among the dead. Retrieved on March 30, 2014 from: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/may/23/philippines-cemetery-urban-poor-home

An array of locks and the tools to pick them at the Lock Picking Party
(all photographs by Steven Acres, visit http://stevenacr.es to view more of his work)

Last Friday, the New York Obscura Society invited one of the world's best lock pickers, Schuyler Towne, to join us in hosting a lock picking extravaganza and cocktail soiree in the beautiful John M. Mossman Lock Museum and reading room of the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen.

The Beaux Arts grandeur of the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen.

Attendees were greeted with their own personal lock picking kits along with either a key or a lock strung upon red ribbon to wear around their necks. Guests were encouraged to seek out their match, and paired locks and keys were awarded prizes at the end of the night. 

Schuyler started the night off strong by wowing the crowd with his ability to pick one lock after another all while blindfolded, before delving into a detailed demonstration on the inner workings of the lock and the various methods of lock picking.

Schuyler Towne breezes blindly through a table of locks.

Craft cocktails named in honor of history's most notorious heists were enjoyed along with the lavish surroundings of the General Society's Mossman Museum, home to the world's largest collection of vintage bank vault locks, with early locking mechanisms dating all the way back to 4000 BCE.

Guests admiring the Mossman Lock Collection.

Beautifully crafted vintage lock pieces on display.

A balcony level lock picking station encouraged guests to practice the tricks of the trade on an array of locks with Schuyler's enthusiastic guidance, while downstairs Jason Prover and the Sneak Thievery Orchestra kept the night in full swing.

A tabletop assortment of locks, waiting to be picked.

Guests go to town with their new lock picking kits.

Patience and concentration...

The swinging sounds of Jason Prover and the Sneak Thievery Orchestra set the mood.

Later in the evening guests competed to pick burlesque star and Schuyler's assistant for the night, Clara Coquette, free from a Houdini-esque binding of locks and chains.  The competition was nothing short of fierce, with lock picking novices demonstrating their newfound talent with surprising amounts of precision and ease.

Audience members compete to pick the greatest number of locks and free the beautiful Clara Coquette from her chains.

Celebrating Clara's great escape.

As our soiree wrapped up and came to a close, 270 guests exited into the New York City night with a brand new set of tools and the knowledge and skills to use them.

Here are a more photographs by Steven Acres from our lock picking gala:

Obscura Society New York's Lock Picking Party took place March 28, 2014 at the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen.

The Obscura Society is the real-world exploration arm of Atlas Obscura We seek out secret histories, unusual access, and opportunities for our community to explore strange and overlooked places hidden all around us. Join us on our next adventure!

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A man stands in the massive crater left by the 1918 Morgan explosion

In 1918 the United States was standing at the latter years of World War I, a conflict that tore the globe apart at the seams and let out incalculable waves of questions and fear. The munitions that brought such horrors had backgrounds as diverse as the soldiers themselves; in the United States production plants sprung up across the country in order to meet the product demand.

One small town transformed by the need for munitions was Morgan, New Jersey, and in October of 1918 the town would feel the horrors being delivered overseas when a massive explosion rocked the central coastline, plunging it into a raging inferno.

Gillespie plant power house in July 1918

The T.A Gillespie Company Shell Loading Plant was one of many constructed in New Jersey as Middlesex County was a prime location situated on the coast. Despite the seaside advantage, some were uneasy with the placement of the Morgan facility due to its proximity to towns, something normally avoided with the construction of a munitions factory. When production began in June of 1918, the massive complex covered approximately 2,200 acres including ­­­­700 buildings used for the complicated process of manufacturing explosives. Composed of galvanized steel, concrete, and brick, some buildings were constructed to be protected against accidents and explosions. Brick firewalls were installed in buildings with loading rooms, melting kettles, and ammonium nitrate/TNT storage, and service magazines (each capable of storing 150,000 pounds of TNT) surrounded by earth-filled bulkheads served as a buffer should an explosion occur. Other structures meant for the storage of completed shells were constructed of wood and concrete, a use of materials that would be criticized in the days following the disaster.

It was 7:40 pm on October 4, 1918 that Morgan, New Jersey, and its surrounding towns felt the earth shake. The Gillespie Plant’s building 6-1-1 exploded into a raging fireball, cutting power and severing water mains. Firefighters arriving on scene faced severely depleted water pressure and were left helpless while the fire ignited other magazines, which caused further destruction. Additional firefighters were unable to access the plant’s hydrants situated in between and near buildings that were igniting. Plant employees flew into a panic and those that could ran, leaving behind all belongings in their attempts to escape. Shells whistled through the air and fires shot into the skies while people scrambled in the punctuated darkness looking for escape while trying to avoid glass, shrapnel, and explosive shells falling like heavy rain.

While employees of the Gillespie plant were trying to escape the inferno, citizens of nearby South Amboy were trying to escape their town which was crumbling around them. The stream of people evacuating upon the initial explosions grew to a mass exodus with blasts shaking houses and shattering nearly every window. Residents became refugees walking the streets, seeking shelter in neighboring towns, while those who stayed were forced to camp outside out of fear of their homes collapsing. Others headed toward the burning complex in hopes of finding missing family members.

Morgan residents fleeing the explosion (via New York Times)

The now refurbished site of the Gillespie plant power house (all present day photographs by the author)

Original wall of the Gillespie plant power house

It would be days before the explosions and fires would cease and the extent of the devastation could be assessed. Of the 700 buildings at the T. A. Gillespie Loading Company, 325 were destroyed. The property was heavily pocked with craters, with one measuring 30 feet deep, 140 feet wide, and 150 feet long where an ammonium nitrate storage containing 1,000,000 pounds of the substance had once stood. Of the 30 million pounds of explosives located in the magazine storage and freight cars, 12 million pounds were destroyed, and of the over one million loaded shells on site that night, over 300,000 were detonated or destroyed.

Though the material loss was astounding, the human toll was devastating. The nature of the disaster made an exact death toll difficult to confirm (there were accounts of family members disappearing that night without a body ever being found), but it is estimated that approximately 100 people died on the grounds of the plant. Of the estimated 62,000 people who were displaced by the explosions and left with little protection against the elements, nearly 300 people would die as the result of a flu epidemic sweeping the area around the time of the incident.

Remains of the Gillespie plant

Exterior of a surviving Gillespie plant building

Another view of the plant building

Theories about the cause of the accident spread as quickly as the fires, with some wondering if this was an act of sabotage. Days later T.A. Gillespie himself spoke to newspapers, describing his belief that a kettle of amatol — a mixture of TNT and ammonium nitrate — had overflowed, resulting in the first blast despite employee efforts to keep the material under control. A later investigation by the army determined that the blast was not preceded by a fire and had occurred without warning. Further investigation confirmed that the initial explosion occurred in building 6-1-1, and subsequent explosions occurred in areas including shell storage, shipping cars, and finishing rooms causing massive fires and the launching of shells. An official cause of the explosion was never confirmed.

The blast that shook central New Jersey is now a faded memory, with many current residents unaware of what happened in their town. Of the 700 plant buildings, only two remain, hardly recognizable in their transformation into local businesses and as part of a marina. The Ernst Memorial Cemetery located in Parlin New Jersey is home to a memorial honoring those lost in the explosion. Erected in 1929, a stone sits above a mass grave reading: “In memory of the unidentified dead who gave their lives while in the service of the United States of America, at the Morgan Shell Loading Plant in the explosion of October 4-5, 1918.”

Memorial stone and mass grave for those killed in the Gillespie explosion 

It is in this 20 foot by 35 foot grave, and within the few remaining walls of the ruined buildings, that the last memories of a terrible event that shook New Jersey rest, reminders that the tragedies of war can turn any location into a site of unspeakable disaster.

Find more disaster areas on Atlas Obscura >

Double moonbow over Victoria Falls! (photograph by Calvin Bradshaw)

Spectacular rainbows are an Instagram feed a dozen, but what about moonbows? These rainbows of the night, also known as "lunar rainbows" or "space rainbows," are a rare weather phenomenon you can only catch in a few of our world's locales.

The moonbows are created by moonlight refracting through moisture in the air, which is why they're easiest to see on full moon nights over waterfalls that fill the air around them with water droplets. This particular occurrence, because there can never be enough names for something so spectacular, is a "lunar spraybow." 

The buoyant naturalist John Muir wrote of the one at Yosemite Falls:

"Lunar rainbows or spray-bows abound in the glorious affluence of dashing, rejoicing, hurrahing, enthusiastic spring floods, their colors are distinct as those of the sun and regularly and obviously banded, though less vivid. Fine specimens may be found any night at the foot of the Upper Yosemite Fall, glowing gloriously amid the gloomy shadows and thundering waters, whenever there is plenty of moonlight and spray."

Many times the moonbows appear white as it's hard for our human eyes to discern their colors at night, but through a timelapse photograph the whole spectrum comes through. When scouting the world's waterfalls and rainy terrains, it's important not to get tricked by the "false moonbows." These are rainbow rings around the moon, which, as cool as that is, are a different kind of light refraction through a cloud. 

Moonbows at Yosemite Falls are fairly reliable — you can even find moonbow predictions calculated by the University of Texas. They're also a regular apparition at the Cumberland Falls in Kentucky, Victoria Falls in southern Africa, and in Costa Rica's cloud forests. So mark your calendar for the next full moon and get to the nearest waterfall to see if you can spot this rare and wondrous spectacle. 

Moonbow over Wallaman Falls, Australia (photograph by Thierry Legault)

Moonbow over Jerome, Arizona (photograph by Alan Stark)

Moonbow at Yosemite Falls (photograph by Brocken Inaglory)

Moonbow over the Canterbury Plains in New Zealand (photograph by Ben/Flickr user)

Discover more weird weather phenomena on Atlas Obscura >

Children's room in the Villisca House (photograph by Jennifer Kirkland)

On a summer night just over a century ago, two adults and six children where bludgeoned to death while they slept in the sleepy town of Villisca, Iowa.

Josiah and Sarah Moore had returned home from a special evening service along with their four children, as well as two of their daughters’ friends. Mary Peckham, who lived next door to the Moores, stepped out early next morning to hang her laundry and noticed that her neighbors hadn’t let out their chickens. Sensing that the house was unusually quiet, she called Josiah’s brother, who unlocked the house. He only had to go as far as the parlor to see that terror had struck his brother’s home.

The forms of two small bodies rested beneath blood-soaked sheets.

“It sent the town into a panic,” said Johnny Houser, who now offers tours of the house where this bloody 1912 crime took place.

“Crime in small town Iowa was very uncommon,” he explained via email. “Especially to a family who had no known enemies.”

A state senator, traveling preacher, and known serial killer were all suspected of the crime, but no culprit was ever convicted of the murders despite a five year long investigation.

That’s what makes the Villisca House so compelling decades after the blood stains have disappeared.

Ina & Lena Stillinger were friends of the Moore children. They stayed the night in the house after a church service & were found dead in its guest bedroom the next morning. (courtesy Villisca Ax Murder House)

The Moores (photograph by Jo Naylor)

“People hate the fact that it's unsolved,” Houser stated. “This poor loving family deserves justice and many who visit want to piece together the clues and sort of solve it themselves.”

Although evidence at the crime scene — including two hunks of bacon found on the floor of the home — was tampered with as the townspeople converged on the house, the site retains much appeal for those interested in true crime mysteries.

“Some come for only history while others come for ghost stories,” Houser says. “The crowds are of all walks of life from doctors and homicide detectives to college students and bikers.”

Tours of the house, which has been restored to look as it did in 1912, are available offered year-round except during the winter. A small group of guests can stay overnight in the house for just over $400.

The Villisca Ax Murder House (courtesy Villisca Ax Murder House)

The house has a special appeal for those interested in the paranormal. One such visitor wrote in a testimonial on the Villisca House website:

I believe the spirits of all eight victims still dwell within that house. The burning question is, 'Why?' Is it due to fear and trauma as a result of the incident itself or is it because that house is the last place they knew? Or all of the above? [...] I believe there are many secrets embedded within the town of Villisca concerning the axe murders that may never be revealed.

There are American inns thought to be haunted from the Red Garter, a former bar and bordello in Williams, Arizona, where an old call girl — Evie — is said to lurk, to the Historic Farnsworth House in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, which is thought to be crowded with the ghosts of Confederate solders and those who cared for them. But few sites in stand out in macabre hotel lore like the Lizzie Borden House.

The 31-year-old Lizzie Borden was arrested for killing her father and stepmother — Andrew and Abby Borden — in their Fall River, Massachusetts home in 1892. The two were murdered in a manner similar to the Moores and their guests: thrashed in the head with repeated hits from a hatchet.

Exterior of the Lizzie Borden House (photograph by David/Flickr user)

Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast (photograph by Pamela Bohnenstiehl)

The killing of this wealthy couple sent shockwaves through the community, and although at the time few women had stood trial for such violent crimes, Lizzie was taken in as the prime suspect. This was not only because of her embittered relationship with her stepmother, but also because she was said to be hugely frustrated with her father’s frugality.

Visit the Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast today, and you may meet co-owner and manager Lee-Ann Wilber, who often gives tours of the house. Standing in the room where Abby was bludgeoned, Wilber tells guests:

She was facing her attacker. When her attacker came into the room, she turned and faced him, so she knows who killed her. We know this because the first blow to her face was on the left side, just by her ear. She went down. The killer, whoever they were, then straddled the body, delivering 18 more hits. Seventeen to the side of her head crushed her skull and one caught her between the neck and the shoulder blades.

Wilber has taken care to reconstruct the two rooms where the murders occurred based on crime scene photographs, which are displayed to give visitors a sense of what took place within the very walls where they stand. The room where Abby was killed is among the most popular, she said over the phone from the Borden B&B.

 The John Morse Room, where Lizzie Borden's stepmother was killed (photograph by Pamela Bohnenstiehl)

Inside the Lizzie Borden House (photograph by Amy Meredith)

 
Replica skulls of the victims (photograph by Amy Meredith)

Tours are offered several times a day to cover the history of the site, with a focus towards the otherworldly in the evenings. Wilber explained that she prefers to let visitors form their own opinions.

“I want the guests to come up with their own theories as the story’s being told,” she said. “I don’t want to interject too much of my own personal reasoning and personal theory until we get to the end.”

But Wilber does have her own take on the matter: “Personally, I think [Lizzie] was involved. If she didn’t commit the crime herself, she has to know who did, because of the layout of the house.”

The house is a traditional Victorian-era home, but with a series of locked doors between rooms and two separate staircases which would have made it difficult, Wilber argues, for someone unfamiliar with the house to find and murder two residents, all while one them — Lizzie — was inside.

“You can look at drawings of its layout,” Wilber said, “But you can’t really put it into perspective until you’re actually standing in those rooms.”

Second floor plan (via Guy F. Wicke)

Many who have an interest in the case come to see how easy it might have been for suspects to move through the home, but there’s just as many, of course, who are there to convene with those killed as well. Many are eager to get a clearer sense of the vexed Lizzie, who was eventually acquitted of all charges against her. She returned to live for a short time in the house where the murders occurred, but was treated as a social pariah by much of the town which felt certain of her guilt.

“There’s so many angles [that] we’ll never know the truth of what happened,” Wilber says. And in that way, the Lizzie Borden House, the Villisca House, and others are almost doubly haunted — not only by what occurred in them, but by the mystery that still hangs over them all these years later.

Lizzie Borden's House (photograph by Kimberley Jones)

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