Ready to be scared out of your wits? Or take your travels to the next thrilling level? We dare you to visit one of these haunted, abandoned or weather-beaten islands! If you make it back, please tell us about it…
1. Poveglia Island
Widely regarded as the world’s most haunted island, this creepy place is located in Italy’s Venice Lagoons. Once used as a dumping ground for those infected with the plague, it was later the site of a mental institution where thousands were tortured and killed. Ghosts ahoy!
2. Balls Pyramid
Lying 20km southeast of Lord Howe Island, Balls Pyramid is a Pacific Ocean sea stack that formed 7 million years ago. Even if it’s sheer cliffs and the threat of eruption doesn’t scare you, creepy 6-inch stick insects known as ‘walking sausages’ will have you looking for a way off the island… fast.
3. Bouvet Island
Located 1,750 kilometres from the nearest landmass, Bouvet Island lies in the Southern Ocean and is the most remote island on earth. It’s also a volcano and is basically owned by Norway. If anything goes wrong on your visit here, you can expect help to arrive, well – never!
4. Hashima Island
Hashima Island is 15km off the coast of Japan and was once home to 5000 coal workers, however, when the coal ran out the entire population took off in a hurry leaving empty buildings and personal belongings behind. You 05/recognize this eerie island as an evil villain’s lair from the Bond movie Sky Fall.
5. Devon Island
Devon Island is the world’s largest uninhabited island and is located in Canada’s far north. Best known for being home to an enormous crater, its cold, dry climate is among the harshest on earth with temperatures plummeting as low as minus 50°C. Fun? We don’t think so!
6. Howland Island
Sitting roughly halfway between Australia and Hawaii, this tiny island is famous as the place Amelia Earhart disappeared on her way during her ill-fated round the world trip in 1937. This inhospitable place has no source of fresh water, is constantly battered by ocean winds and is extremely hot all year round. Probably not the beach holiday you were imagining!
7. La Isla de las Muñecas
This spooky manmade island just outside Mexico City is covered with over 1,500 dolls. After a local farmer saw a young girl drown here in 1950, he frantically placed dolls all over the island in an effort to prevent her spirit from haunting him. The now dilapidated dolls are a truly terrifying sight and locals claim that they come alive at night. About as scary as the Chucky movies… times a hundred!
8. Deadman’s Island
Located in Canada’s Vancouver Harbor, Deadman’s Island was once an indigenous burial ground before being used to quarantine smallpox victims in the late 19th Century. The island is supposedly riddled with ghosts, though luckily you can’t actually visit this one; the closest you’ll get for a squiz is Stanley Park.
9. Tetepare Island
The South Pacific’s largest uninhabited island, this gorgeous place looks very much like a true island paradise. It is surrounded by beautiful coral reefs and features pristine rainforests, but the entire island’s population fled from here over 200 years ago… and still, no one knows why. Some theories suspect disease or headhunting, while others believe it 05/have something to do with magic from the sea-devil.
10. Nishinoshima
Part of the Bonin island chain, Nishinoshima is located roughly 1,000 kilometres off the coast of Japan in a seismically active area known as the “Ring of Fire.” Eruptions in the area are extremely common and only crazy daredevils looking for a serious thrill should even consider setting foot in this place!