Photo by Jens Petersen via Wikimedia

Lionfish, though stunning creatures, are very, very dangerous to marine life, given their venomous spines, sophisticated hunting techniques, and extremely high reproduction rate (a mature female can produce up to 2 million eggs per year). Though native to the Pacific and Indian Oceans, in the 1980s the aquarium trade brought these creatures into the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea, where they have no natural predators. As Lionfish are also voracious and wide-ranging eaters, they have been decimating their surrounding reef life ever since. They are now considered an extremely invasive species, and it has been suggested that they are poised to become the most disastrous marine invasion in history.

Scientists and conservationists are trying many different tactics to curb the lionfish population. In Roatan Marine Park, Honduras, efforts have been made to convince people to eat the fish themselves — they are said to be delicious once the venomous spine is removed. Although spears and harpoons are illegal in Honduras, the park has also gotten special government approval give local divers licenses to hunt lionfish with fishing spears, even sponsoring contests to see who can kill the most in a day. 

photo by Judy Baxter via Flickr

Over in Cuba, Jardines de la Riena National Marine Park dive operations manager Andrés Jiménez has been trying a different tack: Since 2010 he has been working on coaxing reef sharks into eat the exotic lionfish, since they are among the only potential predators not affected by the venom in its spine. Somewhat gruesomely, Jiménez skewers the fish onto a spear like a kabob, then brings the struggling creatures over to the sharks, who gobble them up. 

The goal is to train the sharks to prey on the lionfish of their own volition, which some say is working. Antonio Busiello, a marine photographer who has documented the attempts, witnessed sharks hunting lionfish shortly after the spoon-feeding attempts. But others, like marine ecologist Serena Hackerott at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, believe that this plan could definitely backfire if the sharks begin to associate divers with an easy snack. Ian Drysdale, who coordinates the Healthy Reefs Initiative in Honduras, also believes this method could lead to problems. “You don’t want to relate human divers with shark feed," he told the Washington Post. "It can get out of hand.”

To convey the lives of the people buried beneath them, and the expectations for what comes after death, symbolism has long been part of tombstones. Below is our guide to some of the most prevalent cemetery symbols. Take it along on your next wander through the necropolis! 

Graphic created by Michelle Enemark, text by Allison C. Meier. 

All this month we're celebrating 31 Days of Halloween with real tales of the macabre and strange. For even more, check out our spooky stories from 2011 and 2013.

The entrance of the Lemp Mansion (photograph by Scott Neale)

St. Louis, Missouri, has always been a beer town. There, 1854 was known as “the year the beer ran out” because the city’s residents simply drank it all. But in the days before Anheuser-Busch was king, another brewery, now decaying in the shadows of the 140-acre Busch complex, was synonymous with St. Louis lager: Lemp. Their name, affixed to the top of their highest tower, still looms above windowless grain silos and casts a pall over the red brick warehouses surrounding them.

The Lemp brewery tower (photograph by Scott Neale)

For a place to feel as dead as the Lemp brewery does, it has to feel alive first. After William Lemp moved his father’s brewery to this site in 1864, the complex was as lively as Sir John Falstaff, the namesake of Lemp’s most popular beer. William and his wife Julia built a brick mansion near the brewery where they lived with their eight children: Anna, Billy, Louis, Charles, Fredrick, Hilda, Edwin and Elsa.

 The ceiling in the front parlor of the mansion (photograph by Scott Neale)

The new brewery complex was situated on top of natural caves that were perfect for storing ice and aging beer. William took full advantage of the underground space and even made tunnels that connected the house to the brewery. But something snapped in him when his favorite son Frederick died of heart failure at 28.

William had the largest mausoleum in Bellefontaine Cemetery built for him, as if he knew his family would need such a monument sooner rather than later. From then on William seemed to sink into the caves under the house. Eventually he avoided the outside world entirely and walked to work and back home through the dark tunnels. In 1904, a month after his close friend and fellow brewer Frederick Pabst died, he excused himself from the breakfast table at Lemp mansion, returned to his bedroom, and shot himself in the head.

The interior of Lemp Mansion (photograph by Scott Neale)

William’s oldest son Billy immediately took over the brewery with his vivacious society wife, Lillian — “The Lavender Lady” — a spoiled St. Louis debutante with a lavender horse-drawn carriage for every day of the week and an endless supply of custom-made lavender dresses to match. Unlike his father, Billy never cared about the business of brewing beer so much as he cared about the lifestyle it afforded him. When refrigerators replaced the lager caves, he turned the caves into an underground swimming pool and private theatre. There he held underground parties that turned into lurid, booze-fueled debauches until Lillian divorced him in a nasty public trial.

The entrance to the caves from the sub-basement (photograph by Scott Neale)

While Billy’s proclivities for pistols and prostitutes were trotted out in divorce court, the youngest Lemp, Elsa, was also suffering through a rocky marriage. Though it didn’t make the papers, her neighbors were still well aware of her and her husband’s problems thanks to the screams and crashes coming from their house. When she was found shot in her bed one morning in 1920, her husband was quick to call it a suicide just like her father’s, despite her friends’ belief that she was never so melancholy. Still when Billy heard the news he only said, “Well that’s the Lemp family for you.”

The abandoned brewery (photograph by Scott Neale)

Did Billy feel it in himself then? Was that a comment on Elsa’s state of mind or his own? It was no surprise that prohibition caught the Lemps off guard under Billy’s leadership that same year. They tried to scrape together alternate business plans until Billy abruptly closed the building and auctioned the brewery off for eight cents on the dollar. Two years later Billy excused himself from the breakfast table at Lemp mansion, went into his office, and shot himself in the chest.

The William Lemp Suite (photograph by Scott Neale)

In 1929, Charles moved back into Lemp mansion. He lived there with the last two remaining servants while his eccentricities morphed into a severe form of obsessive-compulsive disorder. By 1949 he was a complete recluse. One of the servants found him in his bed with a self-inflicted bullet wound to the head.

Of all the Lemp children, Edwin lived the longest. He and Billy had discovered their father’s body and rushed to their sister’s house when she killed herself. He had shown up to make arrangements when Billy shot himself and overseen Charles’ strange request to be cremated and buried in secret. It had taken a toll on him and in his old age he grew terrified of ever being alone. He hired a caretaker to stay with him at all times. When he died in 1970, his final wish was for his caretaker to burn every piece of art in his house and all the Lemp family papers and heirlooms. The caretaker obliged and much of the Lemp family history was lost forever in the fire.

Cave spring water in the basement (photograph by Scott Neale)

Today, the brewery basement is transformed every Halloween to a haunted maze that does everything just shy of promising real ghosts and a taste of the Lemp’s madness. Beyond the basement, the caves go so deep that eyeless cave fish swim through the pool and a match will sputter out as soon as it's struck. Above, the Lemp mansion is a bed and breakfast that trades on rumors that the unhappy family still haunts the halls at night. Occasionally paranormal investigators show up with dubious devices and tests, certain they can make contact with the Lemps.

Though there was only one terse suicide note between the four of them, the ghost hunters hold out hope that William, Billy, Elsa, Charles, and an assortment of other wholly invented characters might still talk. Their silence, after all, is scarier than any specter; we can only look back and see four people silently following each other into the family mausoleum, consumed by an unspeakable urge to die.   

The interior of Lemp Mansion (photograph by Scott Neale)

The back staircase at Lemp Mansion (photograph by Scott Neale)

Sources:

Missouri's Wicked Route 66: Gangsters and Outlaws on the Mother Road by Lisa Livingston-Martin

Movers and Shakers, Scalawags and Suffragettes: Tales from Bellefontaine Cemetery by Carol Ferring Shepley

Suicides and Spirits: The True Story of the Rise and Fall of the Lemp Empire by Troy Taylor

All this month we're celebrating 31 Days of Halloween with real tales of the macabre and strange. For even more, check out our spooky stories from 2011 and 2013.

As the international medical community works to deal with the current Ebola outbreak, a lot of work is being done to isolate the disease vector, the animals that carry and spread the disease. Most theories currently point to bats as the carriers, although there is more work to be done before this is accepted as truth. This conclusion would not be surprising, however, as bats are known vectors for many other diseases. After years of diligent study, scientists have often been able to pinpoint not just the species that spreads the disease, but also the specific location where it began. Here are four such instances. 

Marburg Virus: The Kitum Cave

Herd of elephants inside Kitum Cave, photo via Dr. Ian Redmond

In the 1980s, a new strain of Marburg — a hemorrhagic fever virus similar to Ebola — proved fatal to a Frenchman and a Danish teenager, both of whom had visited Kenya's Kitum Cave. Kitum is one of five "elephant caves" in Mount Elgon National Park, so-called because it has been dug out by a variety of animals seeking the salt in the cave's walls. Elephants in particular use their massive tusks to break off chunks of the wall, which they masticate to extract the salt. The cave is also home to a large population of fruit bats, which were proven, after decades of study, to be the Marburg vector: the virus was propagated by inhalation of powdered guano.

Lloviu Virus: The Lloviu Cave

Schreiber's long-fingered bat, image by C. Robiller/naturlichter.de via Wikimedia

Though it has not yet been shown to be pathogenic for humans, the Lloviu Virus, a filovirus like Ebola, has proven deadly to the bats that carry it. It was first discovered in 2002 in the Spanish cave Cuevo del Lloviu, and was also traced to substantial bat die-offs in other caves in France and Portugal. This was the first time a filovirus was found outside of Sub-Saharan Africa or the Phillipines, suggesting that filoviruses may be mutating.

Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome: Four Corners

View to Canyon del Muerto from Junction Overlook, photo by Nikater via Wikimedia

Bats are by no means the only small animal that can act as a disease vector. In the case of the hantavirus, there are many, many different strains, each transmitted to humans via contact with the urine or feces of a different species of mouse. The Bayou virus is linked to the rice rat, the Black Creek Canal virus to the cotton rat, the New York-1 virus to the white-footed mouse, and Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome (originally called the Muerto Canyon virus) to deer mice. In 1993, the Four Corners outbreak marked the first instance of a hantavirus outbreak in the United States. The cause was the fact that there was significant rain-and snowfall that year, after several years of drought, leading to a revival of plant life and a large jump in deer mice, a rodent that lives in close proximity to people. 

Legionnaires Disease: The Bellevue-Stratford Hotel

Philadelphia's Bellevue-Stratford Hotel, photo by Jack E. Boucher via Wikimedia

Sometimes it's much easier to trace the source of a disease than spending years testing various animal. Legionnaire's Disease, an illness similar to pneumonia, is not airborne or communicable person-to-person, instead it travels through aquatic systems, such as whirlpool spas, air humidifiers, grocery store misting systems, and ornamental fountains. The first recorded incident of the disease occurred in 1976 at convention at the Philadelphia Bellevue-Stratford Hotel of the American Legion — hence the name of the virus, Legionella. During that outbreak, 221 cases were recorded, of which 34 were fatal. The disease was ultimately traced to the air-conditioning cooling tower on the nearby Stafford District Hospital roof.

If Halloween is the time of year for frightening tales of apparitions, night monsters, tombs, and vampires, these hauntingly normal ghosts of the Southwest dispel the myth that the supernatural beings are always out to haunt us. Sometimes, they are just doing what they do best — being themselves. Here are five tales of the odd and unpredictable way that some ghosts are reported to hang out in the afterlife.

Illustration from "Phantastes: A faerie romance" (1894) (via British Library)

Miss Julia Lowell: The scorned prostitute who can’t stop working
Copper Queen Hotel, Bisbee, Arizona

The demise of Miss Julia at Arizona's Copper Queen Hotel is much like the demise of many a scorned woman. One night, she serviced a new client, fell madly in love, wanted to marry, and, after he revealed that she wasn’t marriage material, decided to kill herself. While one might think that this Miss who never became a Mrs. would be freed from the shackles of her job, nearly a hundred years of sightings logged in the book at the reception confirm that she’s more active than ever.

Our scorned prostitute, as flirtatious and alluring as always, only appears to men in scantily-clad attire and dances seductive stripteases at the foot of their beds. Sometimes she whispers in their ear, sometimes she appears with a bottle of liquor in her hand, and sometimes she flits around the hotel, tapping only on the doors of male guests. Poor, poor Julia — never a vacation day for this lady of the night.

Mr. Thomas James Wright: The poker player who’s stuck in his room
Room 18, St. James Hotel, New Mexico

The St. James Hotel is no stranger to supernatural sightings and is reputably swarming with ghosts. Perhaps the most unusual is Mr. Thomas James Wright, an ill-tempered poker winner who was shot from behind after he won the rights to the hotel in a tense poker match. His murder was grizzly: he slowly bled to death, right outside of his room.

As you can imagine, he is not a happy ghost, and before the staff permanently locked his room, he would haunt people by pushing them down in the hallway or turning into a ball of angry-looking orange light above their heads. Today, though, the room is still locked (but the staff have kindly decorated it with a coat rack, a rocking chair, paraphernalia from the Old West, a bottle of Jack Daniels, and a poster of a half-naked woman), so while he can't really do much haunting these days because he apparently can't get out of the room, he can still be heard bumbling around, grumbling, and refusing company.

Parlor at St. James Hotel (photograph by Cyborglibrarian/Flickr)

Kate Morgan: The lovely young lady who likes to shop and watch TV
Hotel del Coronado, California

Kate, reputedly a “beautiful young woman,” checked into California's famous Hotel del Coronado in 1892 and waited for her lover for four days. He didn’t show up. In what was determined a suicide, she was found dead on the exterior steps of the hotel leading towards the beach after realizing that her lover would never come.

She’s supposedly been at the Coronado ever since. But there’s no need to worry: as in life, this charming, youthful, innocent young lady is totally harmless in the afterlife. She's said to like hanging out in her former room, playing silly pranks on guests, watching TV (it often turns on and off by itself), walking along the beach, and shopping in the gift shop.

Pancho Villa: The revolutionary still looking for his head
Gadsden Hotel, Arizona

Pancho Villa, the famous revolutionary, former governor of Chihuahua, Mexico, and commander in the Mexican Revolution, has a much less decorated existence these days. As the story goes, after he was assassinated, loyalists cut off Villa’s head and buried it at the site of the burned-down Gadsden Hotel in Arizona. He had visited on horseback years before, and his horse had chipped a stair on the staircase (the chip is still there).

When the hotel was rebuilt in the early 20th century, people started seeing apparitions of a tall headless man in an army suit. Believed to be Pancho Villa’s ghost, the apparition now haunts the basement and hallways looking for his lost head. How anyone knows the identity of a headless man in an army suit is beyond us, but, well, that’s the way the story goes.

Stray Cat: The hungry feline who won’t leave the kitchen staff alone
Oliver House, Bisbee, Arizona

What would a round-up of worst ghosts be without a ghost cat? According to crime reports, 27 people have died in this popular B&B in Bisbee, Arizona, since it was built in the early 20th century and it is supposedly haunted by seemingly everyone — but the ghost who sleeps outdoors and eats rodents is perhaps the most interesting.

The stray cat who lived outside the house for many years and was fed by the kitchen staff still roams the property, begging for food, sleeping in the sun, meowing, doing what felines do best, except while dead.

Illustration of a Japanese ghost cat (via Wikimedia)

All this month we're celebrating 31 Days of Halloween with real tales of the macabre and strange. For even more, check out our spooky stories from 2011 and 2013.

Our weekly roundup of fascinations around the world and the web. Happy Halloween!

Vintage Halloween postcard from the New York Public Library Picture Collection, via Public Domain Review

The science of fear
“Scare specialist” Dr. Margee Kerr discusses the history and brain science behind self-scaring, and why some people enjoy it more than others. The far-ranging interview touches on strong childhood "lightbulb memories," unethical social scientists, 17th-century Russian Ice Slides, and why a haunted house makes for an excellent date night. [via The Atlantic]

Al the days of the dead
Many cultures have festivals to celebrate and honor the dead, and Smithsonian rounds up six of them. From Korea's Chuseok to Nepal's Gai Jatra, many celebrations include a mixture of ancient traditions and colonial or religious influence, and some even involve costumed revelry. [via Smithsonian Magazine]

Slender Man graffiti (image via mdl70 / Wikimedia) 

The creepiest place on the internet
Brought into mainstream culture by the tragic Slender Man–influenced teen stabbings earlier this year, Creepypasta is gathering place for internet urban legends and short, terrifying stories. Here The Kernel offers a brief primer on the site and its brethren, as well as a rundown of seven essential internet urban legends the forums have birthed. [via The Kernel]

Denver International Airport's dark side
It's the largest airport in the country and the second largest in the world, but what's with all the weird stories surrounding it? From a terrifying statue that killed its sculptor to its construction costs that wound up $3.1 billion over budget, the airport is rife with the unexplained. [via Nowhere Magazine]

Day of the Dead in Mexico (all photographs by the author)

Last year, I made a pilgrimage to Mexico to experience how Day of the Dead is celebrated at its country of origin. The three places that were most tied strongly to this religious and spiritual holiday are the towns of Toluca, Patzcuaro, and Janitzio, more famously known as the Isle of the Dead.

Toluca is about two hours away from Mexico City, and is well-known for its sugar skull market. Sugar skulls can be offered to both the living and the dead as gifts. When they are placed on a Day of the Dead altar, they are often put beside the the favorite food or drink of the deceased. In Toluca, you can find hundreds of varieties of sugar skulls, along with miniature representations of food which also are used for Day of the Dead offerings.

About a six hour drive away from Mexico City in the state of Michoacan is Patzcuaro and Janitzio. Patzcuaro is a port town right besides a large inland lake that encompasses Janitzio and two other smaller islands. In Patzcuaro, you can observe how the locals celebrate Day of Dead. Just as the US has adopted the Day of the Dead, Mexicans in turn have adopted Halloween. So what happens is from Halloween all the way to November 2nd, children dress in simple costumes and ask for candy or coins. Many use hollowed out gourds and melons as their baskets to hold their treats.

To reach Janitzio, you have to take an hour boat ride from Patzcuaro. The oldest practice besides Day of the Dead altars is performed at the shore where fishermen in small boats do a type of fish net dance with candles. There used to be more of them who performed this ritual, but now there are only a dozen or less who carry on this practice. In Mexico, Day of Dead is more of a spiritual and religious festival, but in the US, it's become more like an extension of Halloween. There is more of an emphasis on elaborate costumes in the US, but in Mexico, the focus is on the altars and the millions, if not billions, of marigolds used to decorate them. The scent of the flowers is said to lure back the dead to visit Earth for this annual reunion with the living.

All photographs by Robert Hemedes.

Villa Torlonia Bunker (image via CRSA-Sotterranei di Roma)

During World War II, Italy's Fascist Prime Minister Benito Mussolini insisted that he would "wait for the bombs on his balcony," never fleeing or seeking refuge underground. Turns out that was all spin, as he is now known to have built several concrete-walled, gas-resistant air-raid shelters beneath Villa Torlonia, his former home. And for the first time ever, Rome's Department of Culture has opened up all three bunkers to the public for tours. 

The bunker's "Casino Nobile" (image via CRSA-Sotterranei di Roma)

The first bunker was constructed in the early 1940s in what had been the wine cellar of the Torlonia noble family who lived in the palatial home before Mussolini. There was no official record of the bunker, which was discovered in 2011 while work was being done on the palazzo's foundations. The bunker is 180 feet long and consists of nine rooms, with telephones, blast doors, and a ventilation system. Mussolini would go on to build another bunker and begin construction on a third before he was arrested in 1943. The latter two were briefly open to the public in 2006, but had to be closed due to a radon leak. 

Safety gear in the bunker (image via CRSA-Sotterranei di Roma)

Starting on Halloween 2014, all three are open to the public. If you're in Italy or heading there, you can book a tour through the Sotterranei di Roma here.

The bunker's cantina (image via CRSA-Sotterranei di Roma)

Today marks the anniversary of the first Earth-born creature circling our planet from Space. Laika — a pointy-eared petite mutt found as a stray on the streets of Moscow — boarded Sputnik 2 and was blasted into orbit on November 3, 1957. While it was revealed in 2002 she'd died from overheating just hours after launch, her journey symbolically stands as the beginning of guided space exploration. 

Laika was far from the last animal astronaut, and from cats to rats to spiders to unfortunate geckos, humans have employed a whole menagerie of other animals in experiments in survival. None of them chose to go on such voyages, and while there is something somber in that lack of consent, these brave creatures are also representative of the expansion of possibility in space exploration. Check out our graphic guide to some of these incredible astro-beasts below!

Graphic created by Michelle Enemark, text by Allison C. Meier.

And as a way of conclusion, here's a video of the quail chicks spinning in zero gravity:

The Mütter Museum in Philadelphia (all images courtesy the museum)

Araschtan Gottlieb, age 19, suicide by potassium cyanide, suspected unfaithfulness of his mistress... Veronica Huber, age 18, executed for the murder of her child... Adalbert Czaptieonesz, age 51, Catholic, suicide. Cut his throat, because of extreme poverty... Jon Bargaunu, age 31, gypsy

The 129 skulls in Philadelphia's Mütter Museum sit in neat rows, staring straight ahead and dimly illuminated. It’s not uncommon for a crowd to form in front of their case as people cluster around to get a good look. Each skull has a short accompanying text. As one visitor said, it seems disrespectful to exclude anyone in reading, even if you don't see them in order.

Maria Bertolina, age 18, maidservant, died of perpetual meningitis in Trento (Northern Italy)... Carl Spanner, age 16, died in the General Hospital of tuberculosis... Wenzeslaus Kral, age 15, shoemaker. died of small pox, General Hospital, Vienna.

Perched delicately at the intersection of educational and ghoulish, the famous medical history museum displays oddities including deformed skeletons, jarred conjoined fetuses, and primitive gynecological devices. Not surprisingly, visitors often gawk and gasp and converse as they peruse the collection, which was originally meant to educate physicians but is now open to the general public. The Hyrtl Skull Collection remains a centerpiece, as it has since it arrived in 1874, and it is displayed much as it always has been. Recently, the museum held a highly successful "Save Our Skulls" campaign to raise money for the preservation of the skulls and upgrade their display, in which benefactors could adopt and individual skull and are honored for saving it on the skull's label. 

Francica Seycora, Famous Viennese prostitute, died in the hospital of meningitis... Orazio Trani, age 39, idiot...  Joska Soltesz, age 28, reformist, soldier, dies of pneumonia... Kasimir Ostrowsczynski, age 30,  for crime of grave insubordination, died under the most cruel scourging.

Dr. Joseph Hyrtl, who was a Viennese physician and famous collector of medical specimens, used the skulls for the purpose of comparative anatomy, although most of his skulls came from people who were poor, indigent, or criminals. The doctor documented whatever he could about his specimens, inscribing tattoo-like notes on the skulls. Hyrtl even supposedly at one point had Mozart’s skull, but the Mütter didn’t acquire that one since it had changed hands several times after it had been exhumed.

Alfonso Vallese, Catholic, sharpshooter, died in Alexandria, 1860, of gunshot wounds... Tombs of the Kings, Sakkareth (Egypt)... Joseph Donat, age 30, brewer. died of edema of the lungs... Simon Juhren, age 19, suicide; hanged himself because of an unhappy love affair.

While many fellow 19th-century skull collectors used their specimens to promote phrenology, the doctors of the Mütter Museum used the Hyrtl skulls in a scientific campaign to disprove the theory, which asserted that a person’s or race’s character can be judged by the shape of the skull.

Constantin Aneskis, age 32, died of gunshot wound in Budapest... Julius Farkas, Protestant soldier, suicide by gunshot wound brought on by weariness of life... Rai-Tao-Si, famous criminal, guilty of many atrocities, captured with ten of his band in Batavia (now Jakarta). Hanged in castle of Semarang (Java)... Ladislaus Pal, reformist, guerilla and deserter.

1006.125         

Ismayl Koura Atzia

Wide interorbital distance (nasal root).

Dagestan, Kaukasus

1006.122       

Izzet Methem Fakhr

Robber. Deheaded in

Deir el Kamar, Lebanon.

Druse, from Lebanon

1006.090        

Constantin Jacic, age 24

Robber and murderer.

Executed by hanging.

Metopic suture; wide interorbital distance.

Serb

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 >

All images via O. Arandel and the Cloud Collective

On an overpass above a densely trafficked highway in Geneva, Switzerland, international design group Cloud Collective set up a fascinating urban experiment this summer: Culture Urbaine Genève. Using a series of pumps and transparent tubes, they built a photobioreactor to cultivate algae from a combination of sunlight and CO₂. The algae filters the air as it grows, and once it matures can be used as a raw material to make things like green energy, medication, cosmetics, or even food. 

According to the Cloud Collective, their goals for the project were "food production in an urban environment, the conservation of green space, and the reinterpretation of existing infrastructures." The project demonstrates the potential of even the most blighted city spaces to contribute to a greener world and shows a possible future for urban farming, even hinting at the possibility of turning exhaust into fuel for new cars. Watch a video of the system in action here.

In addition to solar panels, pipes, and other necessary equipment, the installation featured diagrams and panels to explain the system to passersby. Joris Lipsch of the Cloud Collective said in an email that the public reaction to the installation was very positive: "The day we took the installation down, we got quite a lot of remarks from people that it was a shame it had to go."

The algae farm was part of Geneva's Villes et Champs festival, an outdoor exhibition that "questions models of coexistence between the city and the countryside." Thirteen garden projects were built for the festival; others included Champ de bière, a "microbrewery in a meadow, and" Jardin digestif, a picnic area whose centerpiece is composting toilets that send nutrients back into the garden. The Culture Urbaine Genève was a "proof of concept," active from June to October 2014. Although several cities have expressed interest in a permanent urban algae farm, there are as yet no concrete plans to put one into practice.

The 19th century was an age of empires, and yet some of those empires are better remembered now than others. The British, Spanish, and French, for example, all left indelible marks across their strongholds in Asia and the Americas. The Ottoman Empire, meanwhile, is remembered only too well, not least in those Balkan nations which once lived in its shadow. There is a tendency, however, to forget about Germany’s imperial efforts outside of Europe.

Towards the end of the 19th century the German Empire established a colony in China that would leave its cultural imprint to this day. Modern-day Qingdao is a city on China’s eastern seaboard, in Shandong Province, some 550km south of Beijing. Until as late as WWII, the city still bore its German name of "Tsingtao," and even today, the local German influence runs deep.

Qingdao's "May Fourth" Monument (photograph by Darmon Richter)

Abandoned boats on a beach north of the city (photograph by Darmon Richter)

Most notable is the Bavarian Quarter, with its European architecture and German-styled St. Michael's Cathedral. Nearby there’s "Wine Street," and the notorious “Beer Street,” where breweries still mass produce Tsingtao beer using techniques first introduced by German brewmasters. The city of Qingdao is known for its annual beer festival — dubbed the “Asian Oktoberfest” — where tens of thousands of Chinese beer enthusiasts gather to celebrate the German colony’s liquid legacy.

Qingdao also features a uniquely fascinating misuse of the English language. Expats in China will no doubt already be familiar with the concept of “Chinglish” — an often-incomprehensible arrangement of English words and phrases, twisted into nonsensical patterns by incompatible Chinese approaches to grammar and sentence construction. In Qingdao this non-language takes on an all-new dimension by incorporating German words alongside the English. In the Bavarian district, visitors can spot signs such as “Bao Long New Das-Restaurant,” and even, “Slippery steps: machen Sie very careful.”

Qingdao's "Wine Street" (photograph by Darmon Richter)

The Bavarian-style St. Michael's Cathedral (photograph by Darmon Richter)

A restaurant sign confusing English and German words (photograph by Darmon Richter)

Some of the most poignant relics of Germany’s Chinese occupation are forgotten and largely undisturbed, deep beneath the parks and pavements of Qingdao. The German colonists were ever fearful of a sea-based attack by the notorious British fleets stationed down the coast at Shanghai and in Hong Kong harbor. Their paranoia inspired the excavation of extensive tunnels and bunkers under the city and its surrounding areas.

Now stripped bare and long abandoned, these deep, subterranean fortifications tell a parallel story to the churches and breweries up above, and perhaps paint a truer picture of the very real paranoia that afflicted this small German colony, staking out a corner of a foreign continent so very far from home.

A German canon points out to sea (photograph by Darmon Richter)

Fortified gun turrets on Mount Qingdao (photograph by Darmon Richter)

The command center of this outpost was located right in the heart of Tsingtao. Construction began in 1899, just a year after the colonists arrived, and involved the excavation of three sites located around Mount Qingdao — an area now developed into Qingdao’s scenic Zhongshan Park. This subterranean stronghold consisted of northern and southern battery emplacements in addition to a deep, multi-level command center.

Germany’s outpost in China was to be short-lived. In 1914, the Great War broke out, and Japan battled Germany for control of the Tsingtao colony. Conflict ended in a Japanese victory; the German troops were forced into surrender, and they destroyed the northern and southern placements at Tsingtao before retreating to join the war effort at home in Europe.

Inside the tunnels beneath Zhongshan Park (photograph by Darmon Richter)

A long disused firing position looks out over the park (photograph by Darmon Richter)

The remains of these destroyed bases can still be seen in Zhongshan Park. Scattered here and there between ponds and pagodas, crumbling brick archways open onto musty tunnels that disappear beneath the ground. Ultimately however, the passages go nowhere — they feed into collapsed chambers where the city’s homeless now shelter, or into flooded corridors infested with weird and wonderful bugs.

The centrally placed command center meanwhile, after a brief period at the service of the Chinese Navy, has now been memorialized as the Mount Qingdao Fort Museum.

Entrance to the Mount Qingdao Fort Museum (photograph by Darmon Richter)

A staircase connecting the museum's subterranean levels (photograph by Darmon Richter)

Spread across five subterranean levels and featuring a total area of 2,000 square meters, the museum experience invites visitors to tour passages, mess rooms, powder stores, and lookout towers. Today the former stronghold languishes in a notably poor state of repair; damp tunnels crumble beneath the earth, while the deeper levels have been completely overrun by a colony of oversized huntsman spiders. In some chambers, cast bronze mannequins of soldiers in 19th-century uniform are positioned in scenes that illustrate how this complex might have looked in times of use. Occasionally the walls are broken up by information panels, the majority of them written solely in Chinese. 

It is not these touristic touches that serve as the main attraction to the museum, but rather the depth and the complexity of the tunnels themselves. The German colonists created this vast warren of passages using a process of blasting and backfilling, and the complete network survives today as one of the largest and most elaborate military construction projects anywhere in Asia.

Dioramas inside the museum illustrate military occupation (photograph by Darmon Richter)

One of the many large spiders that now inhabit these tunnels (photograph by Darmon Richter)

But the Mount Qingdao Fort Museum and the collapsed tunnels beneath Zhongshan Park are not the only relics left behind by these pioneering German tunnel diggers.

Rising to the north of Qingdao stands Mount Fu (in Chinese, “FuShan”), a rocky formation that commands unrivalled views across the city and the bay beyond. It was here that the colonists dug the deepest, blasting tunnels and bunkers into the very heart of the mountain. These labyrinthine passages weave deep into the rock to form interlinked spaces which would once have served as living quarters, war rooms, kitchens, and stores; their upper reaches terminating in watchtowers and firing positions carved out from the very mountainside.

A gun turret on FuShan looks down across Qingdao (photograph by Darmon Richter)

Storerooms constructed inside the mountain (photograph by Darmon Richter)

At least three separate networks were constructed beneath the surface of FuShan. While some sources suggest that the FuShan tunnels were used as weapon stores during the time of Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution, these German tunnels nevertheless lie completely abandoned nowadays; their heavy bulkhead doors rusted open to reveal tantalizing glimpses of the darkness inside the mountain.

Down below, the modern city of Qingdao still celebrates its German heritage, but the city’s subterranean legacy is for the most part forgotten, or unknown altogether. The Mount Qingdao Fort Museum goes largely unadvertised, a modest historical attraction tucked away in a corner of Zhongshan Park. Fewer still would ever suspect that those same German colonists who built the Bavarian district, who founded what is now known as perhaps the finest brewery in China, had also labored long and hard to weaponize the very mountain that watched over them.

The blast door entrance to one of the FuShan tunnel networks (photograph by Darmon Richter)

A view of Qingdao from FuShan (photograph by Darmon Richter)

Con Colleano on a slack-wire, circa 1920 (image via Wikimedia)

This past Sunday, Nik Wallenda, a seventh-generation aerialist and member of the Flying Wallenda circus family, walked 94 feet on a tightrope between two Chicago skyscrapers. He was blindfolded, 600 feet in the air. The stunt was broadcast live — but with a 10 second delay, in case he fell. He didn't, of course, and the jaunt added two new Guinness World Records to the nine he already holds.

The Wallendas are among the most high-profile acrobats today, and they're part of a long tradition of highwire daredevils. Here's an abridged history of tightrope walkers, who have managed to put the "fun" in funambulist for thousands of years.

Funambulism dates back at least to Ancient Greece — that's where the name comes from: funis means "rope" and ambulare means "to walk." In both Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, tightrope walkers were revered, but their work was not considered "sporting" enough to be part of the Olympic Games. Instead it often became the providence of jesters and other entertainers. 

 Female acrobat on an Ancient Greek hydria (image from the Townley Collection via Wikimedia)

Rope-walkers lost some ground in 5th-century France; they were forbidden to come near churches, and since near churches was where most of the fairs were held, this was effectively a ban on tightrope-walking. But things seem to have got back on track by the 1300s; during the lavish coronation of Queen Isabeau in 1389 Paris, an acrobat carrying candles "walked along a rope suspended from the spires of the cathedral to the tallest house in the city." This trend continued; there were tightrope walkers at the coronation of Edward VI in Westminster in 1547, and at the occasion of Philip of Spain's arrival in London to meet Queen Mary in 1554. In Venice in the mid-16th century, the annual Carnival gained a new opening tradition — Svolo del Turco (Flight of the Angel) — when a Turkish acrobat walked on a rope strung between the bell tower of the St. Mark's Church and a boat docked on the Piazzetta. During the late 1600s in England, tightrope walkers began to be associated with a disreputable element, including pickpockets, streetwalkers, and conmen. In his early-1700s song collection "Pills to Purge Melancholy," Thomas D'Urfey wrote: "In houses of boards men walk upon cords / An easy as squirrels crack filbords / The cut-purses they do bite, and rob away." 

One of the most famous funambulists of the late 1700s was Madame Saqui. She performed many times for Napoleon Bonaparte, often walking a wire with fireworks exploding all around her, and also at the celebration of the birth of his heir by walking between the towers of the Notre-Dame cathedral. She also performed at Vauxhall Gardens and is mentioned in Thackeray's Vanity Fair; she ran her own circus theater for some time and continued to perform well into her 70s. 

Madame Saqui (image via Wikimedia)

The 1800s brought acrobats and other similar performers indoors as business- and showmen opened more permanent circus venues. Pablo Fanque was the first nonwhite circus proprietor in Victorian Britain, and he began his performance career doing equestrian stunts and rope walking. He started the Pablo Fanque's Circus Royal, in which he continued to perform; it quickly became the most popular circus in the area, and remained so for 30 years. Fanque toured all around the UK for years and also held many circus benefits — one of which, for circus performer William Kite, inspired the Beatles song "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite."

 "Trapeze Artists in Circus" by the Calvert Litho. Co., 1890 (image via Wikimedia)

In the 1800s everyone wanted to walk across Niagara Falls. The first to do so was Jean François Gravelet, known as the Great Blondin, who was the most famous wire-walker of the time. He crossed the Falls in 1859, pausing in the middle to sit down and drink a beer he pulled up on a rope from the Maid of the Mist. He would return to the Falls again and again, doing crazier highwire stunts each time: riding a bicycle across, cooking an omelet in the middle, going across blindfolded or on stilts, and even carrying his manager across on his back. Next up was the Great Farini (né William Leonard Hunt), one of the most celebrated acrobats in Europe at the time. He duplicated many of the Great Blondin's stunts, and his coup de grâce in 1860 was crossing the Falls with a washing machine strapped to his back; in the middle he stopped to wash several handkerchiefs, which he then gave to his waiting admirers. Maria Spelterini, a circus performer from the age of 3, was the first woman to wire-walk across the Falls, and she also did it many times — once with her wrists and ankles manacled, once with a paper bag over her head, and once with peach baskets on her feet. 

Maria Spelterini walking over Niagara Falls (image from George E. Curtis via Wikimedia)

Funambulists continue to devise more dangerous and incredible tricks. Ivy Baldwin, an experienced daredevil balloonist, spent years entertaining guests at the Eldorado Springs Resort near Boulder by walking across Eldorado Canyon numerous times, including his last, in 1948, on the occasion of his 88th birthday. The modern incarnation of the Flying Wallendas began around that time, debuting their most famous stunt, the seven-person chair pyramid, in 1947. In 1974, Philippe Petit walked a high-wire between New York's World Trade Towers, and in 1989 he walked an inclined wire strung up to the second level of the Eiffel Tower. In 2009 Eskil Rønningsbakken, an "extreme artist," rode a bicycle upside-down across a wire over a fjord in Norway; he has also walked on a tightrope strung between two hot-air balloons. Adili Wuxor, China's "prince of the tightrope," set a Guinness World Record in 2010 after he walked on a rope for just shy of 200 hours over a period of 60 days, and in 2013 he walked 500 meters across the Pearl River in Guangdong. 

The Flying Wallendas seven-person pyramid (image from Porterlu via Wikimedia)

From shunned jesters to revered World Record holders — the position of funambulists in society has evolved alongside the increasingly daring tricks of the trade. For a far more elaborate history of the art, check out "Funambulus / Funambule: Rope Walkers & Equilibrists" at the Blondin Memorial Society, which is itself adapted from The Tightrope Walker by funambulist Hermine Demoriane.

Inside the Green-Wood Cemetery catacombs this fall for a mysterious moonlit cocktail gathering (photograph by Mitch Waxman)

The New York Obscura Society recently celebrated the arrival of autumn with a late night venture into Green-Wood Cemetery, New York's original garden cemetery with over 450 acres of beautifully manicured grounds and an incredible array of statues, memorials and mausoleums sculpted and designed by some of the greatest artists and leading architects of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Our destination was the catacombs - a long, tunneled burial space built into a hillside at the center of the cemetery at a time when above-ground interment was all the rage due to the widespread fear of being buried alive. Within a chamber towards the very back rests Samuel Ward McAllister, our esteemed host for the night's revelries. McAllister was an advisor of etiquette and a notorious social climber during the Gilded Age of New York. He took the various dinner parties and elaborate galas of the era extremely seriously and became infamous for maintaining a strict list he referred to as "The Four Hundred" - those he considered to be the creme de la creme of New York's high society, and by no coincidence the exact capacity of Lady Astor's ballroom.

We created our own list of esteemed guests for the night's gathering, and as the clock struck 10:00pm and the cemetery bells tolled, 300 excited New Yorkers made their way through Green-Wood's gothic gates, following the winding, tree-lined paths with only votive lights to guide their way towards McAllister's final resting place. Once inside the catacombs, specialty cocktails inspired by Gilded Age decadence and seasonal ingredients were carefully prepared to order, while the immaculate Dandy Wellington and His Band filled the dimly-lit burial chambers with soulful serenades and the sound of pure, intoxicating jazz. 

Peruse the photographs of our memorable moonlit affair below, and sign up for our events email list to be amongst the first to know as new events are added to our upcoming calendar. 

All photographs by Steve Acres unless otherwise noted, visit http://stevenacr.es/ to view more of his work.

Green-Wood Cemetery's elaborate 19th century entrance, designed to signify a departure from the world of the living and entry to the land of the dead

A nervous crowd anxiously awaits the tolling of the bells

Ornate mausoleums line starlit paths as we make our way through the darkened grounds

A ghostly gathering outside of an Egyptian-inspired mausoleum

Inside, Saw Lady Natalia Paruz sets an eerie mood

Within a second mausoleum, accordionist Erica Mancini prepares to perform

 Inside the catacombs, the various burial chambers are aglow with candlelight

Well-coiffed guests find a cozy chamber to converse in

(Photograph by Mitch Waxman)

Contemplating the surroundings

The impeccable Dandy Wellington and HIs Band

Piece by Belgian-based artist ROA (all photos by Aline Deschamps via Djerbahood)

Erriyadh is the oldest village on the North African island of Djerba, known as the "Island of Dreams." This summer, hundreds of artists from around the world descended on the village and turned it into an enormous, vibrant street-art gallery called Djerbahood. The project was curated by French-Tunisian artist Mehdi Ben Cheikh, director of the Paris-based Galerie Itinerrance, a decade-old gallery devoted to street art.

Piece by Toulouse-based artist Zepha 

More than 150 artists from 30 different countries left their mark on the village walls, several in spontaneous collaboration upon arrival. Many, like Brazilian artist Herbert Baglione, worked with the village's existing architecture, incorporating piles of rocks and old vases into his pieces; others, like Phlegm, placed their own signature figures into scenes made on abandoned structures. 

Piece by UK-based Phlegm

Still others were inspired by the cultural heritage and history of Erriyadh, incorporating its people and aesthetic into their work, drawing attention to the traditional surroundings and the ancient beauty of the village with their very modern artistic creations. Cheikh's goal for the exhibition was to "give residents world-class art as well as bring tourists and greater prosperity to the village."

Piece by Lisbon-based Mário Belém

Getting permission for the project was not easy, as many Tunisians consider graffiti to be vandalism. Cheik secured approval from both the Tunisian Ministry of Tourism and the mayor of Djerba, as well as authorization from all the village's homeowners. In addition, artists were asked to engage with residents and even request their input on pieces, working to create art that everyone would be pleased with. 

Piece by Brooklyn-based Swoon

In September, once the full exhibition was unveiled, a local resident told the Times: “Some inhabitants weren’t too happy about the artwork at first because it’s something they had never seen before, but most are now overjoyed... People from all over the world are coming to our village. It’s something we can be proud of.”

Collaboration between Portuguese artist Pantonio and Brazilian artist Tinho

A local woman poses in front of a piece by Portuguese artist Add Fuel

Piece by French artist Katre

Piece by Brazilian artist Tinho

Oakland-based artist Monica Canilao poses in front of her work

For hundreds more stunning images, behind-the-scenes videos, and to keep up with the project, visit Djerbahood's website.

Tucked into the entrance of the War Museum in Kanchanaburi, Thailand is what appears to be an old fashioned Thai apothecary, caked in dust and packed to the brim with animal specimens. It sits open and empty.

Rows upon rows of teeth, horns, and powders appeared to be for sale. A modern blood pressure cuff made it seem that this place still had current clients. The lack of a proprietor and the vast array of labeled, ill-cared-for specimens suggested a small, historical museum. There was not a soul in sight, though a thermos sitting on the desk suggested that perhaps someone was just out to lunch. Without any English signage, it was impossible to tell whether this was a working pharmacy, a museum display, or a bit of both.

(If any readers can translate the signage, or know more, we would love to hear from you! Please tweet us at @atlasobscura or email at info@atlasobscura.com)

Russian moose geoglyph (image via sott.net / Google Earth)

In Russia's Zyuratkul National Park is the world's oldest geoglyph — a large work of art made by arranging stones, earth, or other objects within a landscape. The massive figure, about the size of two football fields, was constructed between 4,000 and 3,000 BCE but wasn't discovered until 2012. It was created by digging trenches and filling them with large and small rocks chipped from a nearby ridge made of white quartzite; viewed from the top of that ridge, the figure would have stood out starkly against the green grass. Surprising new evidence indicates that it was built by everyone in the Neolithic community — including children. Archaeologists at the site have uncovered 155 tools, mostly used for breaking up stones, in a variety of different sizes, including those that could only be held by tiny hands. 

Little is known about the ancient civilization that created the glyph, but a senior researcher on the project told the Siberian Times that this discovery is not an indication of anything untoward like child slavery; children "were involved [in the work] to share common values, to join something important to all the people." This is consistent with findings about geoglyphs around the world, which are all believed to have had ritual, cultural, or religious significance for ancient peoples. (Unless, of course, they were actually made by aliens, a theory that continues to crop up.)

Here are several other famous geoglyphs, all of which lead to more questions than answers. 

Nazca Lines, Peru

 Nazca monkey (image via Steve Taylor / Flickr)

By far the most famous geoglyphs, the Nazca Lines stretch across nearly 200 square miles of Peruvian plateaus, depicting hundreds of creatures: whales, hummingbirds, monkeys, spiders, and many more. The catch is that these figures are so huge that they can only be seen from a few hundred feet in the air — far higher than the ancient Nazca who made them would have been able to ascend in circa 400 to 650 BCE. The figures have been a source of extreme fascination for hundreds of years, but despite examination by an endless array of anthropologists, ethnologists, and archaeologists — not to mention new-agers, ancient astronaut theorists, and alien enthusiasts — no one knows how they were made or why. Theories include that the lines marked a procession route that the Nazca would walk during ceremonies, that the figures represent a giant astronomical calendar pointing to the locations where celestial bodies would align themselves, that the Nazca might have built hot-air balloons from which to view the glyphs, and that the lines are actually communication with or landing strips for ancient aliens or astronauts.

Blythe Intaglios, United States

One of the Blythe Intaglios (image via Rob's Log / Wikimedia)

Anthropomorphic geoglyphs are also known as "intaglios." There are around 300 of these in the American Southwest and Mexico, and the most well known are located near Blythe, California, in the Colorado Desert. Included in the Blythe Intaglios are six figures in three locations; each location has at least one humanoid figure and one animalistic one, and the largest of the figures is 171 feet long. As with most geoglyphs, these intaglios are much too large to be visible from the ground, and although they are believed to have been created in 1000 CE, they were not rediscovered until 1932. 

Cerne Abbas Giant, England

Cerne Abbas Giant (image via PeteHarlow / Wikimedia)

Yes, this ancient giant is sporting an giant ancient (36-foot-long) hard-on — it has been called Britain's most famous phallus and is believed by some to have fertility powers. Many couples hoping to get pregnant go there to have sex on the figure's penis. The Giant's origins are not clear; it is assumed to be very old, but the earliest mention of the figure is in the 17th century, so some speculate that it was created then and made to seem very old. In 1996 it was determined that some features of the Giant had been lost, and he in fact originally held a cape over one arm and was standing above a severed head. The figure was made by cutting out lines in the turf and filling them with chalk, and every 25 years is given a re-chalking to keep him fresh.

Marree Man, Australia

 Marree Man (image via Peter Campbell / Wikimedia)

The Marree Man is not ancient, though he's certain huge: 2.6 miles tall, cut into the harsh Australian desert with foot-deep lines. This figure also remains shrouded in mystery, despite its novelty: it was discovered by plane in a plateau in central Southern Australia in 1998. No one came forward to take credit for the enormous work, although a series of anonymous press releases were sent that made it seem to have been done by Americans. A year later, a plaque was found buried near the figure's nose, which included an American flag and a quote about hunting wallabies with a stick. The plaque did not solve the mystery of the figure's maker.

The War Museum in Kanchanaburi, Thailand, is a strange beast. First of all, it is not to be confused with Kanchanaburi’s other, and more popular war museum, the JEATH Museum, which can be difficult, as this museum has a sign at its entrance proclaiming it the JEATH Museum. It’s not. It’s just trying to drag in confused tourists.

A Wood-carved starving POW

It is also not exactly a war museum. It is a war museum, plus loads of other museums and collections, tucked into one, sprawling, barely maintained complex. The War Museum begins with an ancient Thai apothecary, filled to the brim with dusty animal specimens, and may or may not still be operating as an actual pharmacy (our photo tour of this amazing place is here). Next, a basement-like room displays prehistoric artifacts and some confusingly provocative murals of cavemen.

Unclear what nipple tweaking has to do with prehistoric people

Proceeding onward, the war portion of the museum begins to unfold in a ramshackle, un-curated jumble of artifacts and eerie wood-carved mannequins depicting war scenes. Dusty cars sit next to a tableaux of the building of the bridge over the river Kwai, next to a row of blue-skinned fascists, next to a man who had apparently set up shop in the middle of the museum, selling nang talung, or shadow puppets: beautiful hammered leather works of art.

Continuing out into a courtyard, it turns out this massive complex is in a strange and beautiful building, complete with poisonous bees.

The second floor contains various collections, each having very little to do with the last. A collection of currencies, a collection of Thai stamps, a collection of old radios and clocks, a collection of POW human remains, a hall of Thai beauty queens, a collection of ore, a collection of musical instruments, a collection of jewelry — it goes on and on, each room dustier and less congruous than the last.

Collection of... old stuff?

Gold toothed skull of a POW

Text reads: "In this glass monument, the remains of 104 of the prisoners who worked as laborers during WWII, are kept on the second level and the remains of another 2 of them are kept on the 3rd level, making a total of 106"

After the sobering display of POW human remains, how about a an ore/jewerly/Miss Thailand museum palette cleanser?

The Miss Thailand directory turned out to be a fantastic mural that wrapped around the room.

This museum wouldn't be complete without a Thai stamp collection

"Please conserve the buffalos by not killing them"

Though the museum is undoubtedly filled with many fascinating objects, the lack of signage leaves much up to the imagination. The real fascination is the museum itself — it has the feeling of one eccentric collector’s hoard, hastily tossed into old display cases, and slapped with the label MUSEUM. 

There is a popularly held myth concerning Chernobyl, and, more pertinently, concerning the abandoned city of Pripyat which stands at the heart of Ukraine’s radioactive “Zone of Alienation.” Namely, that this site serves as some kind of untouched time capsule, a rare glimpse into a Soviet past. Here’s an example of the usual rhetoric, taken from a 2011 report in The Telegraph:

Hundreds of discarded gas masks litter the floor of the school canteen, Soviet propaganda continues to hang on classroom walls, and children’s dolls are scattered about, left where their young owners dropped them in a hurry a quarter of a century ago.

This is the commonly held perception of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, an idea which has been romanticized by the press and illustrated through wave after wave of photographs that flood the Internet, usually depicting empty corridors, decaying classrooms and, always, the mountains and mountains of sinister gas masks beneath a sea of gathering dust. 

A classroom at an abandoned school in Pripyat (photograph by Darmon Richter)

A selection of props, ripe for rearrangement (photograph by Darmon Richter)

All those quick to accept such assertions as fact, who would ignore the possibility that these images might be largely staged, would do well to remember Heisenberg.

In 1927, Werner Heisenberg, a German theoretical physicist, proposed the “Uncertainty Principle.” To paraphrase the concept, Heisenberg suggested that it is impossible to observe something without changing it. The theory was developed largely through (and as a reflection on) the process of measuring the position and momentum of particles. Nevertheless, this premise also has a valuable lesson when assessing the objectivity of macrocosmic observations.

In the case of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, this “Soviet time capsule” is observed and interacted with by a growing number of tourists every year. Up until 2011, numerous tour companies were running illicit trips into the wasteland — a study cited by that same Telegraph article suggested that as many as 10,000 tourists were visiting the site each year. Since then, Chernobyl tourism has been met with official government approval. Even previously restricted areas of the Zone are now open to paying guests, including the unfinished Reactors Five and Six. More tourists than ever are visiting the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, either as a day trip from Kiev, or for longer, overnight stays. This many visitors cannot help but have an impact on their surroundings.

Hazmat suits are not required to visit — these tourists came in fancy dress (photograph by Darmon Richter)

Tourists pose for photos with the city's artifacts (photograph by Darmon Richter)

I took a tour of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone myself, in September 2013, staying overnight, with a group of roughly 30 people. Try to imagine for a moment: 30 camera-pointing tourists all desperate to take home virtual souvenirs from one of the most photogenic sites of mass ruination to be found anywhere in the world. The Zone, and in particular the abandoned city of Pripyat, is littered with the belongings of the thousands of former inhabitants evicted from their homes in the wake of the disaster back in 1986, and as these visitors observe the Zone, so too are they interacting with and changing it.

During my own 32 hours inside the Zone, I watched tourists dropping their litter in bushes, picking up souvenirs to take home, and even, occasionally, causing willful damage to the already-decomposing buildings. Perhaps more insidious than those vandals is the effect of visiting photographers, who seem to form the largest demographic, drawn as they are to Pripyat and its empty, rotten buildings in veritable hordes.

Photographers prowl the streets of Pripyat (photograph by Darmon Richter)

An abandoned hotel in the city center (photograph by Darmon Richter)

When photographing such ruins, it may not seem like much to rearrange the details, to reposition the debris of scattered dolls and gas masks to give a better sense of the immersive aura of decay that surrounds Pripyat, that reaches inky tendrils far and wide across the Zone. I saw it for myself — at each new location we visited, photographers were picking up dolls and books and clothes, draping them across steel-strung beds or sitting them upright on mantelpieces. However in trying to show the truth, these visitors are slowly destroying it.

Each such interaction may be minuscule, given the size of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone — which spreads out in an 18-mile diameter from the epicenter at Reactor Four. Yet they add up. My own tour group made subtle, yet significant alterations to the terrain and its attendant artifacts as we passed through the Zone, and still this group represented less than 0.3% of the Zone’s annual tourist traffic. Imagine then, how much the place must have changed since 1986. This gas mask repositioned for a better shot one day; the dolls sat up straight along a wooden shelf the next; this and more, every day, for decades.

A decayed building in Pripyat (photograph by Darmon Richter)

One of the many toys repositioned long since evacuation in 1986 (photograph by Darmon Richter)

As Heisenberg might have predicted, the more it is observed, the more the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone changes. The proliferation of published photos then, the famously macabre scenes of discarded playthings and of gas masks never worn, must all be taken with a liberal pinch of salt. The buildings at least are real. The reactors, too. And the tragedy itself is real enough to affect us today – in 2006, the International Journal of Cancer posited that by 2065 the radioactive disaster at Chernobyl would have been responsible for as many as 41,000 individual cases of cancer.

What happened at Chernobyl should be remembered, memorialized even, as a poignant reminder of one of the 20th century’s greatest human catastrophes. Remember it through cold statistics, or through the moving accounts of its survivors. Remember it by visiting for yourself, and by walking these streets which were once home to 50,000 unsuspecting citizens. Do not, however, fall into the trap of mistaking this place for a “time capsule.” Pripyat is not the Mary Celeste. It is a ghost town, in which the footprints of the dead have been trampled past recognition into the radioactive dust; their cries drowned out by thousands upon thousands upon thousands of shutter clicks.

The ill-fated Reactor Four (photograph by Darmon Richter) 

A tourist exits the unfinished Reactor Five (photograph by Darmon Richter)

Visitors look out over Pripyat's "Luna Park" (photograph by Darmon Richter)

From majestic medieval towers and chandelier-lined 17th-century reading rooms, to medical collections that will make your skin crawl, Paris boasts some of the world's most impressive bibliothèques. Some are more hidden than others, so here are secret libraries to seek out for some city solitude.

'Chut! Je lis…' (Shhh, I’m reading.) 

Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève
10, place du Panthéon
 75005

Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève reading room (photograph by Marie-Lan Nguyen/Wikimedia)

Born from the ashes of the medieval Abbey of Sainte-Geneviève, the 1850 façade of the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève seems to gleam in the sunlight. It bears 810 names of great thinkers and scholars, inscribed in the stone. Inside, with vast windows overlooking the Panthéon, the iron columns and finely wrought details of the vaulted ceiling in the Labrouste Reading Room (named after its pioneering architect) make this one of the most beautiful places to tarry lost in thought in the Latin Quarter.

It was a cherished retreat of Simon de Beauvoir (who, as a student at the Sorbonne in the 1920s, would have been confined to the ladies’ section). The library houses around two million documents covering the fields of philosophy, social sciences, art, history and religion, among others. The rare book and manuscript collection, part of which is preserved from the St Geneviève Abbey, dates back to the 9th century. 

Bibliothèque médicale Henri Ey
1 rue Cabanis 
75014

Entrance to the Hôpital Sainte-Anne (photograph by Mbzt/Wikimedia)

The majestic façade of the Hôpital de Sainte-Anne stands out in the quiet, slightly grimy surrounds of the 14th arrondissement. But even as you enter through the archway and under the stone tympanum, you would never expect to find the statue-studded secret garden and flourishing grounds hidden within. All that greenery and tranquillity must have done the inhabitants some good over the years. It was Napoleon III who transformed the former site of a 13th-century maison de santé (literally "health house") into the asile clinique (cinical institution or mental home) that continues to function today as a psychiatric hospital and research centre.

Here you’ll find one of the most fascinating public libraries dedicated to psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and neuroscience, dating from the establishment of the hospital in 1867. Its collection of 30,000 books and journals includes an archive of around 815 rare items focusing on 19th-century French innovations in the field. (They also have a fantastic collection of portraits d’aliénistes— "portraits of psychiatrists" — which can be browsed online: more muttonchops and monocles you could hope for.) Call in at the Musée d’Histoire de la Psychiatrie et des Neurosciences also housed in the building for access (by appointment only).

Bibliothèque Henri Feulard
Hôpital Saint-Louis

Musée des moulages – Porte 14

Musée des moulages (via Atlas Obscura) 

This is definitely one for the strong-stomached and thick-skinned. On the outskirts of Paris, is another medical library named after an Henri — this one a leading 19th-century French dermatologist, which prepares you for what to expect within. Founded in 1886, the Bibliothèque Henri Feulard is a centre of documentation for dermatology, syphilography, venereology, and skin conditions. Of its collection of 14,000 medical books, the oldest date from the 1600s. The 19th-century encyclopedias, according to the library, are “magnificently illustrated.” Maybe don’t go eat a croque monsieur straight after viewing. In any case, the library isn’t open to lookie-lous: to gain access you must be a doctor, medical student, pharmacist, historian, or researcher.

Even harder to gain access to is the adjoining Musée des Moulages Dermatologiques (Museum of Dermatological Casts). Behind these (usually firmly) closed doors are some 5,000 plaster and wax casts of human limbs, disfigured faces, tongues, and genital regions — all helpfully organized by affliction accurately depicting the gruesome horror of diseases including leprosy.

Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal
1 Rue de Sully 75004

Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal (photograph by Vincent Desjardins/Wikimedia)

A 16th-century military facility, the Arsenal of Paris was seized during the French Revolution and given a peaceful new life as a library in 1797. Nearly one million volumes and a collection of 14,000 rare manuscripts live here, with special attention given to French literature (16th-19th centuries), bibliophilia, and bookbinding. It lacks the vast, awe-inspiring openness of the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, but if it feels a little cagey, perhaps it’s because its archive of the Bastille contains the prison writings of the Marquis de Sade.

The collection also offers much to intrigue occultists, including the original manuscript of The Sacred Magic of Abra-Melin. When you visit, stop in at the Arsenal’s recently restored Salon de Musique to glory in its ornately decorated walls and chandelier-crowded ceiling.

Bibliothèque Forney
Hôtel de Sens, 1 Rue du Figuier 75004

Hotel de Sens (photograph by Ernest McGray, Jr./Flickr)

The charming, turreted Hôtel de Sens with its stained-glass lattice windows is one of three medieval private residences remaining in Paris, its exterior dating from 1475. The library within was founded in 1886. Take shelter here from the alarming prices in the boutiques of the Marais, and discover one of the city’s most comprehensive and eclectic book collections for decorative arts, design, graphic art, fashion and printing — with one peculiarity: more than one million postcards.

If you had to be imprisoned in the dungeon-like area at the top of the stone spiral staircase, there would be plenty of pretty pictures to gaze at. There are also regular exhibitions in the wing across the courtyard; a recent one was on the curious history of spoons. 

Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris
24 rue Pavée 75004

Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris (photograph by BHVP/Wikimedia)

Situated in one of the most noble and charming courtyard-blessed hôtels particuliers (grand private house) tucked away in the winding streets of the Marais — the 16th-century Hôtel d'Angoulême Lamoignon — this very Parisian establishment is dedicated to Parisian life and culture, right down to the métro tickets. The focus of the Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris is on French literature and theatre, with the prolific manuscript collections of Jean Cocteau, George Sand, and Apollinaire held here.

No borrowing is possible; items may only be consulted in the reading room. But it’s a welcoming reading room indeed, with warm light from the desk lamps, comfy leather chairs in green and gold, and original exposed wooden beams. 

Bibliothèque Václav Havel
26 Esplanade Nathalie Sarraute 75018

Halle Pajol (photograph by ManagEnergy Initiative/Flickr)

Barely open a year in the Halle Pajol — an abandoned railway station built in 1926 — this new-fangled municipal library/médiathèque stands out for its lively collection of albums, comics, manga, films and audio-books. It’s also the first library in Paris to offer a public service allowing visitors to choose from 200 video games and play them in situ. Game on.

For more offbeat bibliowonders, check out our guides to Secret Libraries of New York and Secret Libraries of London.