35 haunting photos taken inside abandoned buildings that will give you the chills
Talia Lakritz  Â
- Buildings all over the world have been abandoned for different reasons.
- Factories, airports, hospitals, and homes that no longer serve any purpose fall into disrepair.
- Here are haunting photos of abandoned churches, factories, airports, and hotels around the world.
A former Iraqi embassy in Berlin, Germany, is covered in graffiti.
The embassy moved into the building in 1974 and was abandoned when the Gulf War broke out in 1991. The building is now boarded up, according to Atlas Obscura, but some bold urban explorers have been known to hop the fence.
No passengers or planes have ever passed through Jaisalmer Airport in Rajasthan, India.
The airport cost $17 million to build and was supposed to open in 2013, but never did.
The former headquarters of the Soviet army in Wuensdorf, Germany, includes the remains of a swimming pool.
The military headquarters once held 75,000 Soviet people and was nicknamed "Little Moscow" before it was abandoned in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The abandoned Martyrs of Uganda Catholic Church in Detroit, Michigan, was closed by the Archdiocese in 2006.
Built in 1924, the Gothic church hosted a visit from Mother Teresa in 1974.
Mannequins lie on shelves in an abandoned shop in western Mosul, Iraq.
ISIS took over western Mosul in 2014, rendering it a ghost town.
A dilapidated building stands in the abandoned city of Pripyat near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine.
In 1986, Chernobyl's nuclear power plant exploded, creating a blast 10 times the size of the Hiroshima nuclear bomb.
The nearby town of Pripyat, Ukraine, was abandoned and remains empty until this day.
Time stands still in a former Soviet military hospital in Budapest that was abandoned when the last Russian troops left Hungary in 1991.
The complex, spanning 17 acres, first opened in 1904 as a psychiatric facility.
This New World department store in Bangkok, Thailand, closed down in 1997.
The department store has become a secret aquarium of sorts.
The German-influenced African village of Kolmanskop in Namibia was a bustling mining town in the early 1900s.
The former diamond mining town, located in the Namib desert in the south of Namibia, was home to over 1,000 people.
They had a ballroom, a hospital, and a bowling alley among other amenities, but by 1954, it was completely abandoned.
Disused furniture sits in an abandoned apartment in the Oktyabrsky district in Donetsk, Ukraine.
Clashes between Ukrainian government troops and pro-Russian separatists in 2014 damaged 8,000 homes and more than 2,000 apartments, many of them beyond repair, according to Reuters.
This brick factory on the outskirts of Beijing, China, was shut down to reduce pollution in the area.
It's one of many ghost towns in China left abandoned as the government works to move citizens in rural areas into newly built urban developments.
A suit hangs inside a house in the Ninth Ward area of New Orleans, Louisiana, in an area damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
More than 10 years after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, Louisiana, abandoned houses show the storm's lingering impact.
Plates still sit on the table of an abandoned house in the village of Kleitos, Greece.
Kleitos and other surrounding villages were emptied when the Greek Public Power Corporation bought them and built two power plants.
A group of skaters is turning the abandoned Santa Barbara church in Llanera, Spain, into a skate park.
The church was built in 1912, but closed after the Spanish civil war in 1939.
Grossinger's Catskill Resort, in Liberty, New York, was a popular vacation destination in the Catskills, but it was abandoned in the 1980s, after the owner died.
Grossinger's was part of the famed "Borscht Belt" of resorts popular with New York City Jews in the 1950s and '60s. Elizabeth Taylor married Eddie Fisher there, and according to the New York Times, it served as the inspiration for the setting of "Dirty Dancing."
Today, its once-glamorous swimming pools and gazebos are being overtaken by the surrounding woods.
Empty beer cans and bottles sit on shelves inside an abandoned shop in the village of Papratna, Serbia.
Several Serbian villages were left abandoned due to depopulation, economic slumps, and the Balkan wars, Reuters reported.
The Hotel Belvedere, in Dubrovnik, Croatia, was once a five-star resort, but it was mostly destroyed during the Siege of Dubrovnik during the War of Independence in 1991.
One of the hotel's decks was used as a set for "Game of Thrones," more specifically, as the site of the battle between Prince Oberyn and The Mountain in the fourth season.
In 2019, local media reported the hotel was to be replaced by a newer one.
The Old Austrian Prison in Kotor, Montenegro, is now used to display art installations.
The old building now hosts workshops and art displays put on by APSS (Architecture Prison Summer School).
A bed and other furniture are left inside a small apartment at the abandoned fishing village of Houtouwan, China, on the island of Shengshan.
Now a tourist site, the village once housed 2,000 fishermen until most of its residents left in the 1990s, according to The Atlantic.
A military sign that reads "Homeland first" is pictured at an abandoned building on the deserted Yassiada island in the Marmara Sea off Istanbul, Turkey.
The island was the site of a violent coup in 1960, and it opened as a memorial nicknamed "Democracy and Freedom Island" in 2019.
Sathorn Unique in Bangkok, Thailand, was supposed to be a luxurious 49-story residential building, but the abandoned project became a tourist destination instead.
The luxury high-rise was built in the 1990s, although construction was abruptly halted upon the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. As a result, the building has fallen into decay and has become a haven for urban explorers. The inside of the tower is covered in graffiti.
The town of Namie was evacuated after a tsunami crippled Japan's Daiichi power plant in 2011.
Bloomberg reports it could take another 30 to 40 years before parts of the city are inhabitable again.
Packard Motor Car Manufacturing Plant in Detroit, Michigan, was built in 1907 but is no longer in use.
Packard went out of business in 1956, and smaller businesses used the space until the 1990s, when the manufacturing plant closed for good. A 2017 development plan to revamp the space failed to get off the ground.
Many homes were abandoned during the Bosnian War from 1992 to 1995.
Bosnian Serbs engaged in ethnic cleansing against Muslim Bosniaks, forcing them from their homes.
French company Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) in La Seyne-sur-Mer was accused of using sub-standard industrial silicone in some of its breast implants and shut down its factory in 2010.
The US Food and Drug Administration sent the founder of PIP a warning letter after visiting the factory in 2000.
A man looks out of the window of Eisfabrik, a former ice factory, in Berlin, Germany.
The ice factory, dating back to 1896, survived two world wars before being abandoned in 1995. Demolition began on the building in 2010.
An announcement board still hangs inside a deserted hall at the west terminal of the former Athens International airport in Greece.
For six decades, the airport served as the Greek capital's main hub for commercial air travel. But it's been defunct since 2001, when it was replaced by Athens International Airport, Insider's Benjamin Zhang reported.
Rain falls onto block 14 of Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which held 75,000 inmates during its 142 years of operation.
The Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is said to be one of the most haunted places in America.
Construction work at what was supposed to be "Wonderland," marketed as "the largest amusement park in Asia," stopped around 1998 due to disagreements over property prices.
The site features several half-finished structures inside its medieval-themed walls — most notably a skeletal version of Cinderella's castle, Insider's Ben Nigh reported. Construction resumed on the 120-acre property in 2008, only to fail again.
An abandoned convent known as Gesu in Brussels, Belgium, serves as a makeshift home for immigrants from the Czech Republic, Spain, Brazil, and Morocco.
The convent is being turned into a luxury hotel and residential complex.
Even artificial flowers wilt in the abandoned Alps Ski Resort near the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas in Goseong, South Korea.
The resort dates back to the early 20th century, when the Korean Peninsula was still under Japanese colonial rule. It closed in 2006.
Built in 1927, the 15-story Lee Plaza Hotel in Detroit, Michigan, was abandoned in 1993, after a stint serving low-income seniors.
The art-deco hotel faced major financial and legal woes, especially during the Great Depression, and saw many different owners.
Tempelhof Airport in Berlin, Germany, was built by the Nazis between 1936 and 1941, and it was used to build combat aircraft and weapons.
The abandoned airport is occasionally used as a movie set, appearing in films such as "The Hunger Games," "The Bourne Supremacy," and "Bridge of Spies."
The now-closed campus of Caerleon was once part of the University of South Wales, and it now serves as the set of the Netflix show "Sex Education."
Construction began in 1912, and the first students arrived in 1914. In 2016, the University of South Wales decided to close down Caerleon as part of a merger.
The Ohio State Reformatory opened in 1896 and held 5,235 prisoners at its peak in 1955.
It closed in 1990 and is now a museum and an occasional film set. The old reformatory was the prison setting in "The Shawshank Redemption." Other projects filmed at the reformatory include "Air Force One," "The Wind is Watching," and "Fallen Angels."
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