Category: Bizarre

North Brother Island is 2o acres of overgrown woods floating in New York’s East River, between The Bronx and Riker’s Island. Completely uninhabited and designated as a bird sanctuary, the island nonetheless attracts plenty of curious folks because of its lurid history. Not only home to a juvenile detention facility in the 50’s, and the site of a steamship which sank in 1904 killing 1,000 people, but famously the site of Riverside Hospital. which housed victims of extremely contagious diseases, notably Typhoid Mary herself. The creepy mouldering buildings still stand, begging daring visitors to peek inside.

But this isn’t why I’ve called your attention to the site.

A kayaker steered his boat close to shore for some pictures, and he came across this: a flickering TV.

“As I paddled around the southern edge something caught my eye… maybe nothing special but to me it stood out as a unique art installation at the edge of the water. It is simply an old television and a chair set up. Were these objects found on the island? Who will get to see this in such a remote location? Who is the artist and what is their message?”

Apparently a grand piano washed ashore recently as well and is now resting under the Brooklyn Bridge and the ever-guerrila-art-concious New Yorkers are wondering if both oddities are the work of a anonymous artist. Or is it the old dude from Poltergeist setting up shop?

For God’s sake, keep Carol Anne away from the island!

Welcome to Amity, Indiana (why is weird stuff always happening in places called Amity?), a small community, seemingly normal enough. But then there’s this:

“Honey, did you see that? There was a grave right in the middle of the road!”, said no few amount of out-of-the-way travelers, one would expect, heading down Amity’s County Road 400. Why in the world would they leave a grave there like that? The answer: the road crews were terrified of disturbing it.

Back in 1808, a happy family settled here, Nancy and William Barnette, who had 11 children together before Nancy died in 1931 and William buried her on her favorite hill. The spot ended up becoming an official graveyard for a number of locals who wanted to be buried there as well. Flash to years later when the county was building its roads (as they do) and the process of moving the graves began. But Nancy’s ancestors weren’t having it.

Daniel, her grandson, grabbed his shotgun and camped out right on her grave. Nobody would come near it or the clearly irate and trigger-happy Daniel. Finally, the county gave up and just split the lanes down the middle around the site and to boot, gave it a protective concrete slab and a historical marker.

Now you can’t just put a grave right smack dab in the middle of the road and not start some ghost stories. Sure enough, the neighborhood kids tell tales and visit the grave late at night to scare themselves silly, as neighborhood kids have been wont to do in any given neighborhood near the creepiest monument accessible, probably since the birth of civilization. But the grave doesn’t represent the eternal spirit of Nancy, I suspect, so much as the eternal stubbornness of Hoosiers.

Ready for a creepy vacation? And this time you don’t have to go to Romania or somewhere crazy far away to visit. Welcome to Isla De Las Munecas, or “The Island of the Dolls”. Located south of Mexico City, this abandoned island is accessible by nothing more than a rowboat, but you might want to plan for a quick escape as well.

Thousands of creepy dolls and doll parts hang from the trees over every part of the small island. Nearby mainlanders claim the dolls move on their own at night. How did these horrible things get here? What kind of crazy person does this? And why?

The answer is, a strange loner in  nearby Xochimilco named Santana Barrera. Locals would see him in the town digging through trash cans and dirty canals. It turns out he was looking for these abandoned dolls. Santana believed that the spirit of a young girl was willing him to collect these dolls and hang them up all over his island to repel evil spirits. He also believed that the dolls were truly ‘alive’ and would at night roam around the island killing animals. Sadly, Santana was found dead from drowning on the island in 2001. You can only imagine the stories that circulate about that. But the dolls still remain, waiting for whoever is brave enough to visit the strange island.

Not me, mind you. but, you know, whoever. Brrrr.

Welcome to Japan’s Aokigahara Forest, a charming 14 square mile stretch at the northwest base of scenic Mt. Fuji. The quiet forest is filled with gorgeous trees and several icy caverns which are quite a tourist attraction. There’s also a better-than-average chance you’ll find a corpse or two.

No one really knows for sure why this beautiful tract of land attracts so many wishing to end their existence. Some connect it to a 1960 novel “Kuroi Jukai” (Black Sea of Trees) but the suicides pre-date the novel. In fact, the area has long had deathly connotations. It is believed that Ubasute was performed there in the 19th century, the act of bringing the infirm and elderly to a remote location to die, but this may be apocryphal. Regardless, many still believe it is haunted by the angry spirits of those who were allegedly left there.

Despite the uncertain reasoning, there’s no doubt that the woods have become over the decades (centuries?) THE place to go in Japan to end it all. An average of 100 bodies a year are found in the woods, along with all sorts of odd things left behind by those who have ventured there with harikari intentions, although most of the deaths discovered are caused by hanging or drug overdose. In a documentary about the forest that follows a local geologist, Azusa Hayano, who works regularly in the forest, he finds a doll nailed to a tree, suicide notes written on wooden boards, and a number of dead bodies in various states of decay.

The Suicide Prevention Association has filled the area with signs that say things like, “Your life is a precious gift from your parents. Please think about your parents, siblings and children. Don’t keep it to yourself. Talk about your troubles.” but unfortunately the suicide rate there only seems to increase.