Come on Barbie.. let’s not go party
FORGET SCARY BLACK HOLES, HERE ARE EARTH’S MOST HELLISH SPOTS
Six feet up: Hanging baskets usually contain flowers to brighten up a building but in the Sagada regions of the Philippines, they have cliff walls cluttered with hundreds of hanging coffins containing the remains of people who used to live there. As if that wasn’t spooky enough, the coffins were made by the dead folk inside them before they carked it! It’s a tradition from hundreds of years ago to get your own box ready to be hoisted up to your relatives instead of buried in the ground.
One is not amused: Grab a ticket to ride away from Har Par Villa. The Singapore theme park is no Disneyland and includes an underworld-themed 10 Courts Of Hell. Chilling statues such as a human head on a crab are accompanied by a display explaining which sins lead to gory comeuppances, such as misuse of books (getting cut in half by a giant saw) and cheating on exams (dismemberment). It was designed to teach young people about morality in contrast to Mickey Mouse, who promotes friendship.
Bony, mmm, maybe not: When holy soil was brought back from Jerusalem in the 1300s and scattered across Sedlec Ossuary – the Roman Catholic chapel beneath the Cemetery Church of All Saints in Czechia – it became a hot spot to head to when God came knocking. Eventually, there became too many dead and buried. After exhuming them, local woodcarver František Rint was asked to reshape the remains of more than 40,000 people in an artistic manner. This resulted in décor including a church chandelier made from almost every bone in the human body, plus some eerie cherubs for extra-disturbing vibes.
THE most “hellish place in the universe” has been found to be a hungry, sun-guzzling black hole. As we revealed earlier this week, the supermassive space discovery is gobbling mass like a giant Pac-Man. But here on Earth, there are plenty of hellish places to steer clear of. KIM CARR looks at areas so bad you’ll want to tuck away your passport and avoid the freakish spots like the plague…
No-go for Margot: There’s no need to doll yourself up in your finest attire for a trip to Nagoro in Japan. There are already more of them there than in the Barbie movie! Local Tsukimi Ayano had the weird idea of making replica dolls of people who used to live in the village after they died or moved away. Now it’s covered in the creepy dead-eyed models sitting on benches outside buildings, in classrooms and fishing on the riverbanks. There are said to be around 350 dolls compared to around 35 living residents walking around.
No laughing matter: It would be (Penny)wise to book somewhere else if you actually want a decent night’s kip rather than hanging out with the undead at the Clown Motel in Nevada, Las Vegas. With over 3,000 life-sized painted-face freaks, plus murals from horror movies adorning the place, it’s also opposite a cemetery. The ghosts of miners who died in a fire in 1911 and locals wiped out by a 1902 plague have been reported to possess the clown dolls, which won’t paint a smile on you if you care about your blood pressure.
Mama woo! After the cemetery at Sicily’s Catacombe dei Cappuccini (Capuchin Catacombs) ran out of space in the 16th Century, a bright spark with a macabre side suggested the mummified corpses of religious males should be hung from the walls in their Sunday best. Extending the offering over the years, there are now around 8,000 bodies separated into different areas – including one specifically for virgins – all twisted into lifelike poses for an extra shiversome effect.