When the city’s more glamorous Royal Exchange, now Edinburgh City Chambers, was built in the 18th century, the street was closed off - its tragic past buried along with the plague victim’s bodies.īut in 1992, a visiting Japanese psychic touring the area is said to have encountered the ghost of a young girl named Annie - supposedly left behind to die by her family. This 17th century Scottish close was a plague-ridden cesspit in the 17th century. Other creepy spots include Edinburgh’s Mary King’s Close. “Abandoned buildings have a feeling of loss about them that a haunting only exaggerates and amplifies,” he reflects. Grenville thinks the appeal of paranormal places is linked to the idea of abandonment and ruin. A relic from another time, it’s no wonder there are rumors of haunting. The disused building evokes a bygone, forgotten era. Allegedly the empty chairs - no longer filled with enthusiastic patrons - are instead frequented by ghostly beings. This once-grand 1889 opera house is now disused.
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Take Sterling Opera House, in Derby, Connecticut. In many cases, it’s the striking buildings, with their mysterious aura, that are the true draw. The striking pictures were sourced by Amber’s picture manager, Terry Forshaw.įrom the inspiration for Charlotte Brontë’s “mad woman in the attic” in “Jane Eyre” to the Scottish castle that inspired Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” there’s no shortage of spooky spots to explore in Grenville’s pages. “The aim was to get a broad span of places from around the world to show that strange phenomena are common experiences for us all,” says Grenville, who is based in London. “Haunted Places” is a globe-spanning exploration of ghostly locales - with striking photos of these spooky spaces. “There’s a timelessness to telling spooky stories round a camp fire, and the book is in that tradition,” Grenville tells CNN Travel.
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Grenville’s book, published by Amber Books, delves into some of the world’s terrifying tales. “I think we all like to be a little bit scared, don’t we?” says author and historian Robert Grenville, whose book “ Haunted Places,” explores some of the world’s most spine-chilling spots.įrom Gothic mansions to creepy cemeteries to eerie islands, paranormal places attract our attention, even as we resist the urge to cower indoors.