Incredible Secrets of Abandoned Places Forgotten by The World

There's something about abandoned buildings and structures in disrepair that's disturbingly fascinating. We want to get inside and explore them, take a look around, and see what prior occupants have left behind. However, there are some places out there that have been left abandoned for very, very good reasons. From the sinister secrets of neglected sanatoriums to churches hiding long-forgotten truths beneath their very floorboards, here are the true stories and incredible secrets of abandoned places that were completely forgotten by the world, ready to be remembered once more, spirits of the stave.

Hell Island:

You might know the name Nagasaki, the Japanese site of the horrendous atomic bomb explosion in World War II, but are you familiar with the tiny island off its coast? Known by many names, such as Gunkanjima, Battleship Island, or simply Hashima Island, from afar it looks like 16 acres of rocky outcroppings. But the closer you get, the more you notice the old crumbling buildings blanketed by thick foliage. It's a concrete jungle that, at its peak, supported up to 5,000 people who lived there back in 1959. The island sat on a rich coal mine, bringing in a staggering 15.7 million tons of the stuff between 1891 and 1974. But when the coal ran out, the island was abandoned in a matter of weeks, with residents hurriedly leaving their lives behind in a desperate bid to get back to the mainland as fast as possible. But the desertion aside, this island has a past that's much blacker than coal. During the World Wars, Chinese and Korean prisoners of war were forced to work on the island, laboring almost a mile underground for over 12 hours a day. They lived in torturous conditions, having to go without proper food or water rations. It's no surprise the inmates there nicknamed it Hell Island. And to this day, it's unknown exactly how many prisoners perished here. Today, Hashima's creepy ruins are all but closed off, with only 5% of the island still accessible to visitors. It's far too dangerous to go wandering around the site, with buildings on the constant brink of collapse from age and typhoon damage. Like I needed more excuses not to visit.

Radioactive ruins:

Of all the abandoned places in the world, Chornobyl is arguably one of the most famous. On April 26th, 1986, Chornobyl's nuclear power plant suffered a catastrophic meltdown. it's miles envisioned the disaster launched approximately four hundred times more radioactive fabric than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki prepared. As a result, an area with a radius of 19 miles centered around the plant was immediately evacuated, now known as the Exclusion Zone. With some 116,000 citizens in the zone forced to abandon their homes permanently over the days and weeks following, cities caught in the zone, such as Pripyat, became ghost towns overnight. Today, almost 40 years later, crumbling classrooms, overgrown ruins, and even a fairground are the only things left proving people once lived here. Some educated guesses state that it could be 20,000 years before the area can be considered habitable again, specifically zones around the power plant itself. But that hasn't deterred some determined tourists. In 2011, 25 years on from the disaster, tours were permitted of some of the less irradiated areas of Chornobyl. Although seas of abandoned gas masks and creepy dolls appear to have been staged for tourist amusement and social media hype, one fixture hasn't been.

The Claw of Death:

Now, in the weeks following the meltdown, this enormous piece of crane machinery was used to help dismantle the reactor and clean up the radioactive graphite that had exploded out of it. Once the task was completed, the claw itself was dumped by the side of a road a few miles from Pripyat, and, forgotten about. But 30 years later, in 2011, Sydney archeologist Robert Maxwell was conducting a field visit to the area and stumbled across it. Not only did it stick out of the scenery like a sore thumb, but it was sending his Geiger counter, a radiation detection device, wild. (Geiger counter crackles) The amount of radiation being emitted by the Claw was some 39.80 microsieverts per hour. Now, it takes exposure to roughly 1,000 microsieverts over a short period to noticeably affect the human body, so staying in the vicinity of this thing for more than 24 hours would be a bad, possibly fatal, decision. Well, I guess, now, at least, we know why it's called the Claw of Death. Between the radioactive nightmare that is Chernobyl, and the dilapidated hell of Hell Island.