Great Pyramids, Egypt

It’s one thing to sleep in a haunted house but another matter entirely to voluntarily stay locked up in the confines of the King’s Chamber inside the world’s most famous ancient landmark.

Napoleon Bonaparte was the first European to do so in 1798. When he emerged the following day he was apparently ‘visibly shaken’ and refused to discuss the experience, even on his deathbed 23 years later. In 1904 Aleister Crowley, the infamous British occultist, repeated the feat, opting to read an incantation while sealed inside. To protect the innocent, visiting hours no longer permit nighttime vigils.

Crop circles, England

For at least 1200 years, weird patterns have been cropping up in agricultural fields and freaking out the locals. But over the past 15 years the area around Stonehenge in southwest England has been literally bombarded with geometric patterns, mind-bending for their size (some almost 1km long), mathematical precision (patterns based on fractal geometry) and consistency, season after season.

Every year, 150 formations appear across the UK. Believers claim that electromagnetic anomalies surrounding the circles make you feel strange and can interfere with watch mechanisms.

Jokhang Temple, Tibet

For more than 1300 years, this imposing grand temple has dominated Lhasa, one of the world’s highest cities (3650m) and the spiritual capital of Tibet. From around AD 639 to 647, King Songtsen Gampo began construction over the site of a dark pool, after one of his wives contended the pool symbolised a witch’s heart, and that by constructing a temple over it they could ward off its evil spirits.

Pilgrims still trek here across the high mountain passes, prostrating themselves frequently as they approach. Although it can get crowded, there’s always a supernatural aura of holiness surrounding the ancient complex.

Stonehenge, England

It’s easy to see why Stonehenge is on the must see list of anyone interested in paranormal shenanigans. It’s old (built between 3000 and 1600 BC), it’s mysterious (no-one is really sure what it was used for, although an astrological clock is currently the most widely accepted explanation), and it was probably constructed by druids, those tripped-out, unkempt, hippy-forerunners epitomised by Merlin the Magician and Gandalf in Lord of the Rings.

Since 1985, after police forcibly removed revellers occupying the ‘Henge’, access to the stones has been restricted, but you can still feel the energy surrounding the place. Far out, man.

Area 51, USA

The UFO conspiracy surrounding the US military facility known as Groom Lake, or ‘Area 51’, exploded onto the public arena in 1989 following revelations by physicist Bob Lazar, broadcast on a Las Vegas TV network, that he’d worked with alien spacecraft while employed nearby.

Since the 1950s Area 51, which lies 145km north of Las Vegas, has been the testing ground for ‘black budget’ aircraft, including the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber, but the military has strenuously denied it’s covering up any first contact with aliens. Truth-seekers be warned that the military has set up sophisticated surveillance and regular patrols to deter would-be intruders.

Hanging Rock, Australia

It’s quite hard to be spooked by an oversized volcanic rock just outside of Melbourne, particularly when the summit promises close-ups of koalas and panoramas of the wine and spa region. Unless, of course, a plot about a picnic, schoolgirl disappearances and insoluble tragedy starts to thicken.

The cult phenomena surrounding Hanging Rock began with Joan Lindsay’s 1967 novel and Peter Weir’s subsequent film, and an eerie sentiment has shrouded the rock ever since. Although touted as fiction, readers and viewers assume that the story is true. Were the girls kidnapped and tortured in the dark hollows of the rock? Did they vanish into a time warp? Or were they, as one Hanging Rock enthusiast suggested, flattened by an avalanche of oversized meteorites? Take your cucumber sandwiches, hiking shoes and a video camera perhaps, but do leave grandma at home.

Xalapa, Mexico

On 24 June 2005 the city of Xalapa sent out a beacon to ufologists everywhere following an extraordinary mass UFO sighting in broad daylight. Hundreds, including Xalapa’s governor, Fidel Herrera Beltran, dozens of police officers and newspaper and TV reporters, witnessed the event, which caused considerable commotion.

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Lonely Planet Bluelist

City Cemetery, Haiti

Wildly embellished ‘histories’ of Haiti written by 18th-century European explorers immodestly played up the indigenous peoples’ occult practices. That said, this is one place you wouldn’t want to visit on the night of a full moon.

Haitian voodoo contains legends about child-eating loup-garous (werewolves) and innumerable ghosts, ghouls, zombies and bakas (people who are poisoned and agree to return from the dead).

Nowadays the cemetery is frequented by hundreds of homeless street kids who allegedly break into the tombs to find goods they can sell. Come evening, they fear the police who come to round them up even more than they fear the loup-garous.

Bermuda Triangle

It’s the stuff of a boy’s own adventure, with disappearing warships and aircraft quietly fading from radar screens. It may be a freak natural phenomenon, it may be a rip in the fabric of spacetime.

Maybe it’s alien intervention. Accounts of missing ships attributed to the triangle date back to the 18th century, and still they flood in. Myth or not, there’s something disconcerting about this pocket of the ocean. The triangle’s three points are found in Bermuda, Miami and Puerto Rico, forming a polygon of more than one million km² in area.

Possessed by an X-files-like desire for investigation? Begin your own encounter in Miami, hire a boat and head out into the great unknown. What could possibly happen?

Old Changi Hospital, Singapore

Enter the most haunted place in Asia’s ghostliest city. At full moon locals come here seeking cheap thrills provided by its legion of poltergeists, screaming apparitions and generally macabre setting.

Built in the 1930s the hospital is like a dilapidated version of the hotel in 'The Shining'. During the Japanese occupation it housed POWs, some of whom were brutally tortured. Ghostbusters worth their salt should plan a trip here immediately, as the council may rejuvenate the building. But go with a friend, as individuals have been known to disappear.

Reproduced with permission from Lonely Planet Bluelist.
© 2006 Lonely Planet Publications.