Certified by CNN as terrifyingly eerie: The world’s seven most forbidden and mysterious places

By the MOOK Scenic Spots Editorial Team, compiled and reported

Traveling abroad is a joyful experience, offering the chance to immerse yourself in and learn about different cultures. However, visiting forbidden locations may not only result in an unlucky trip but could even have lasting repercussions. Here’s a list of seven forbidden places around the world, each with a chilling story.

1. Korea’s Beopjusa Psychiatric Hospital
Beopjusa Psychiatric Hospital is Korea’s most famous haunted forbidden site and one of the three most paranormal haunted houses. Located in Gyeonggi Province’s Gwangju City, Kwanjeok-ri, it has been abandoned for over 20 years. Since its closure, numerous ghost stories have emerged, with rumors stating that many criminals and patients died there. Many Korean TV programs have filmed here, and the 2018 horror movie "Nightmare: Ghost Patient – Live" was set in this very location.

2. Ukraine’s Chernobyl Amusement Park
Since the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, the town of Pripyat immediately turned into a ghost town, and the Pripyat Amusement Park within it became an abandoned place resembling a ghostly amusement park.

3. Japan’s Hashima Island
Hashima Island, also known as Battleship Island, began coal mining development in 1890 and became a key pillar in Japan’s modern coal mining industry. Although it’s a small island, it housed nearly 5,000 residents at its peak. After it was closed in 1974, Hashima became a deserted island, but structures such as hospitals, schools, shrines, and cinemas built for residents were left intact. In 2015, Hashima was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, bringing it back into the public eye.

4. Czech Bone Church
The exterior of the Bone Church appears as a typical Gothic structure, but inside, it is adorned with holy relics made from the skulls and ribs of 40,000 people. Originally just an obscure monastery, the church gained fame in the 13th century after Crusaders brought soil from Jerusalem and spread it over the cemetery outside the monastery, attracting many Central European nobles and wealthy individuals who wished to be buried there. By the 14th century, during a plague outbreak in Prague, the death toll soared and graves multiplied, with approximately 30,000 people buried in the area.