Folklore — mystical places on the map
Points on the map a local tradition has grown around: a lake with a spirit in it, a mountain with a prohibition on it, a stone people still visit to ask for something. Not a scare story but something the people living there count as part of their own history.
79 places
Externsteine
A ridge of sandstone pillars in the Teutoburg Forest with a chapel and a 12th-century relief carved into the rock. It has attracted theories of an ancient sanctuary for centuries — from 19th-century romantics to Third Reich ideologues.
Newgrange
An Irish passage tomb built around 3200 BC — older than Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids. At the winter solstice a beam of rising sun passes through a narrow opening and lights the chamber deep inside.
Bran Castle
A fortress on a Carpathian mountain pass, known as "Dracula's Castle". Vlad the Impaler almost certainly never lived here — the link to Stoker's novel came later, though the silhouette on its crag fits it well.
Loch Ness
A deep loch in the Scottish Highlands holding more water than every lake in England and Wales combined. Monster reports date from 1933; sonar sweeps and DNA surveys have found no such animal.
Aokigahara Forest
A dense forest at the foot of Mount Fuji in Japan, known in folklore as a home to yūrei — the spirits of the dead. Its heavy silence and tree roots gripping hardened lava give it a singular atmosphere.
Stonehenge
A prehistoric monument of standing stones in England, erected roughly 5,000 years ago. Its exact purpose remains debated — from an astronomical observatory to a site of Druidic ritual.
Hill of Crosses
A hill in northern Lithuania covered with hundreds of thousands of crosses left by pilgrims since the 19th century. Soviet authorities bulldozed it three times — the crosses reappeared within nights each time.