Spooky Architecture From Around The World (VIDEOS)

On HuffPost Arts we frequently feature amazing architecture and design. These articles tend to focus on newly constructed edifices, but buildings, like life, are affected by entropy. As a result, architecture is frequently left to decay. Whether due to economic changes, natural or manmade disaster, or simple neglect, architectural ruins are all around us. The places in these videos are real and have stories far more haunting any fictional ghost story.

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philipbloom salton sea beach: rebel 550d/ t2i The land surrounding the the Salton Sea, a saline lake located directly on the San Andreas fault in Southern California, was developed in the 1950s as idyllic resort communities. Shortly thereafter construction was halted due to rising sea elevation, the increasing pollution and salinity levels of the lake and the lack of employment opportunities. Overzealous planning led to abandoned construction projects, sounds eerily familiar, no?

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philipbloom
salton sea beach: rebel 550d/ t2i


The land surrounding the the Salton Sea, a saline lake located directly on the San Andreas fault in Southern California, was developed in the 1950s as idyllic resort communities. Shortly thereafter construction was halted due to rising sea elevation, the increasing pollution and salinity levels of the lake and the lack of employment opportunities. Overzealous planning led to abandoned construction projects, sounds eerily familiar, no?

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Doesn't scare me! Gives me the creeps!

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Comments

[Steve Specht]

11:48 AM on 10/25/2010

This tune is from the soundtrack to "Paris, Texas".

[modemjunkie]

10:22 PM on 10/21/2010

Most of these videos are evocative and haunting. Some more than others. The labels "spooky" and "creepy" are Huffington Hype and detract from the videos themselves. The music in several of the videos is quite effective in enhancing the mood, especially in the first video which I found the most intriguing. The least effective was in the on in which the commentary stated that the use of Beethoven's 5th hightened the stangeness of the architecture. Worse, however, was the narration and photography in the video of an old neighborhood in Clinton, Iowa, which was, ya know, awkward.

[mrman]

08:40 PM on 10/21/2010

It's really too bad some of the money, families and resources from Haiti can't be relocated to that island. Just imagine if they could refurbish the buildings, set up Internet service centers employment, use old buildings for manufacturing, schools hospitals etc. At the pace it's going right now Haitians have no hope for at least another generation. We waste so much.
There are so many who would love to have a roof over their head and hope for a beginning...at something.

[Arch Alternativ]

07:13 PM on 10/21/2010

If things keep going as they are going today - most of our "beautiful suburbia: will come to this state of rotten death and chaos. Listen to Kunstler: http://bit.ly/dA1iNM

[SamSeven]

03:31 PM on 10/21/2010

Coming to a City and town near you compliments of the Intenational Bankers/Federal Reseve!

Hashima shows the genius of squeezing so many people in such a small place.

[RockinOut]

02:33 PM on 10/21/2010

Oh, I forgot to say, it's really too bad that someone hasn't put any of JG Ballard's dystopian novels up on the big screen. "The Drowned World" would be darkly beautiful if done right.

[WasteNJ]

08:32 PM on 10/22/2010

Thanks for the tip, what's your favorite one?

[RockinOut]

12:04 AM on 10/23/2010

"The Drowned World" first then maybe "High Rise", "Concrete Island" ...read them all, as well as "Empire Of The Sun" based on his real boyhood misadventure spent in a Japanese Prison Camp. Some like "Crash", Cronenberg did a film of it.

[lightist]

01:36 PM on 10/21/2010

"Hashima" - The film about Ghost Island is exquisite. Everything about it resonates with sad beauty. But in the end it's beauty and respect for the fragility of human experience that wins. The music, the flow of images. The man who recounts his boyhood there is a beautiful soul. This is what filmmaking is all about in the end, if you ask me. Give the viewer a sense of being there with great sensitivity.

[RockinOut]

02:18 PM on 10/21/2010

Thanks for the tip, sounds right up my alley.

[lightist]

02:57 PM on 10/21/2010

Good luck. I'll fan you to give a breeze to set sail with.

[Barbara Belcore]

01:32 PM on 10/21/2010

Wow

[tbone99]

12:57 PM on 10/21/2010

What !
No Detroit ? No Flint, Michigan?

[kamakiri001]

02:19 PM on 10/21/2010

Gary, Indiana too!

[MIMom]

04:06 PM on 10/21/2010

I'd suggest Benton Harbor, MI as well.

[WestcoastSteve]

12:56 PM on 10/21/2010

Coming soon to this list, Phoenix, Arizona.

A huge city in the middle of a desert, already short of water supplies and getting worse by the year. Within 50 years, it will be abandoned.

It should never have been built there anyway, unless the developers had used architecture suited for an arid climate. But they didn't. It's all thin-walled buildings that need air-conditioning to be livable, and green grass and swimming pools everywhere, until water started to get scarce some years back.

All these huge desert cities, like Phoenix and Las Vegas, are eventually doomed unless they start making some concessions to being sustainable for the environment they're in. I'm not holding my breathe waiting for that to happen. They're like the whole Western style of living in a microcosm.

[BulwerLytton]

01:20 PM on 10/21/2010

Absolutely true. While weak-willed Democrats and weak-minded Republicans waste their time (and ours) on arguing whether or not humanity has contributed to global warming, its ultimately cataclysmic results inch ever closer. Let's move on to something a bit more constructive like, "What are we going to do with all the refugees that are going to be fleeing the Southwest when the water runs out?"

As with most things, if you don't believe in this inevitability, simply follow the money. All the big financial players (Pickens, Trump, Buffett, Redstone, etc.) are already investing in water futures. The great fortunes of coming generations will be made in water, and those fortunes will make the technology fortunes, and the oil fortunes, and the railroad fortunes look like, well ... like a drop in the bucket.

[Cutiepieblue]

01:22 PM on 10/21/2010

Phoenix will just but water from another water source it happens all the time.

[Lunch Lady]

12:17 PM on 10/21/2010

You don't have to go very far in the North East to see Ruins. Check out the Hudson Valley just North of NYC. A lot of Mansions of the "Golden Age" were built and abandoned by the subsiquent generations who never made it as big and couldn't afford them.

http://www.hudsonvalleyruins.org/yasinsac/links1.html

some really interesting buildings when I lived there I would go and check them out as a weekend walk.

[WasteNJ]

12:10 PM on 10/21/2010

Hashima island takes the cake. I love wastelands, it would be amazing to explore that place.

[btdenver]

11:59 AM on 10/21/2010

I'm fascinated by these urban ruins. Here are a whole bunch more...
http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2008/02/abandoned-places.html

[WasteNJ]

12:15 PM on 10/21/2010

Me too. Thanks for the link. f/f

[KIVPossum]

01:02 PM on 10/21/2010

Thanks for that link. I will spend hours reading that site.

[BlueIndependent]

11:17 AM on 10/21/2010

I've seen that Prypiat video before, and several others. IMO that one is by far the eeriest. It's an abandoned city frozen in time. What adds to the creep factor is how people go to different parts of the town while their geiger counters swing wildly and emit incalculable numbers of clicks. The notion of the disaster (which is still occurring as we speak) emanating from that monolithic facility in the distance creates a very dead, dystopian feel to the surroundings.

[WasteNJ]

12:09 PM on 10/21/2010

Pryapiat was done as a map for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, complete with the abandoned project buildings and ferris wheel. Until I saw that video, I didn't know how accurately the map was done.

[JohnDewey]

06:29 PM on 10/22/2010

Have you played, "STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl?" The entire game world is a meticulously scaled map of Pripyat & Chernobyl. The game's kinda' buggy, but still well worth playing.

[JScott]

10:43 AM on 10/21/2010

The Yacht Club at the Salton Sea is now a local museum and it's been restored-
http://desertvalleystar.com/article.php?a=673

[JScott]

10:45 AM on 10/21/2010

and here
http://www.saltonseamuseum.org/home.html