In the days leading up to Halloween, no matter if you're walking around businesses or just browsing the internet, you will find it hard to avoid all the adverts in the theme of Halloween. Of course, for most Chinese without the same cultural roots, this is merely another commercial opportunity for shopping malls and restaurants to push sales and an excuse for average consumers to let their hair down and have some fun.
While some people get anxious about how western holidays are invading China, I couldn't help wondering why a festival centered on monsters, evil spirits, and things you see in nightmares fascinates people so much across different cultures.
Maybe it is deeply rooted in our minds: the fascination, obsession, fear, and endless curiosity for things that are beyond explanation and logic and realms beyond our reach. Although supernatural beings are often confined in story books, TV series, or movies, there are genuine places in this world that look like the background setting of true horror stories. Some of these places are forbidden for humans to enter, and the others would tempt only the most extreme adventures. So in today's episode, lulu is going to take you on a very special tour of the five creepiest places on this planet.
But first of all, a very quick explanation. In English when you want to express fear, apart from using words like scary, frightening, terrifying, there are also words like creepy 'c r e e p y' and eerie 'e e r i e'. Being slightly different from scary or frightening, these two words creepy and eerie, focus more on the feeling of uneasiness. You can't really describe the exact reason but it makes you feel uneasy and gives you goose bumps. Creepy 和 eerie更多的是让你毛骨悚然，汗毛直竖的诡异感。
So now buckle up, let's start the tour of the five creepiest places in the world.
The first stop is old London tower, and if you check up creepy places in London, you will undoubtedly see the tower of London among the search results.所以第一站，我们就来到伦敦塔。With its history of death and torture, is it any surprise that the tower of London is set to be one of the most haunted places in not just the capital itself but the whole of the UK? Hunted places, 闹鬼的地方。Located on the north bank of the river Thames, the tower of London was most famously used as a prison during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
There are many things creepy and peculiar about that tower, from the nickname 'bloody tower', its narrow corridors, its gloomy architecture to the ravens that guard the ground. In addition to these, it is also known for the ghosts that are believed to walk around there. Among them, the most famous one is the ghost of queen Anne Boleyn.伦敦塔最著名的鬼魂要数安妮博林，也就是我们之前提到过的亨利八世的妻子之一，她在这里被斩首。She is said to haunt the area close to Tower Green where she was beheaded in 1536, and has also been seen walking the corridors of the tower with her head under her arm!

Leaving the tower of London, let me take you to another great city- Paris.
第二站，我们来到巴黎。Generally when people think of Paris, they fantasize about cozy little cafes, grand museums, romantic riverside walks, yet underneath the metropolis lies a lesser-seen site. So the second stop tonight is: the Catacombs in Paris. 你看过巴黎的灯红酒绿，它的浪漫清新，它的雄伟壮丽，可是有没有想过，在巴黎这座城市的下面，有着庞大的地下墓穴。The Catacombs. Catacombs are underground burial sites, The Catacombs of Paris are underground quarries of Paris from late 18th Century. 本来是采石场，now holding the bones of an estimated six million people.现在是存放有大概六百万人的遗骨。In the history of Paris, like in quite a few other European cities during the time of the plague, 当年大瘟疫爆发，the city simply ran out of places to bury the dead, so they dug up the old bones from the graveyards and sent them to these tunnels underneath the city, and it gradually grew. The Catacombs extend a shocking three hundred kilometers in total length, now only a very small part of it, less than two kilometers, is a museum for visitors. Imagine the eerie feeling you will get when you go underneath the grand city of Paris through the dark narrow corridor with walls made of human skulls and bones. There are probably no other places in the world that will make you more aware of your own mortality.可能在这样庞大的地下墓穴面前，你会觉得跟死亡如此接近。
Mortality is an eternal topic and is something that we all need to face sooner or later. However, the next eerie stop will make you wonder how fragile human lives really are. The third stop is the infamous Aokigahara forest in Japan, also known as "Suicide Forest". 今天的第三站，我带大家到日本，青木原森林，也被叫做自杀森林。
Whether you have been to Japan or not, you have most likely heard of how important Mount Fuji is to Japanese. Yet just on a base of the famous Mount Fuji, 就在富士山的脚下，lies Aokigahara forest. Every year people come here to commit suicide for reasons unknown. More than five hundred people have taken their own lives in this forest since the 1950s. People have hanged themselves among the countless trees of the Aokigahara forest, which is so thick that even in high noon, it's not hard to find places completely surrounded by darkness, in Japanese they call it "the sea of trees" 树海。
Due to the special characteristics of this forest, it is very easy to get lost in the woods. There were cases where curious tourists walked into the forest to explore and just disappeared and were never found again.
Nowadays, in Aokigahara forest, you can find notes saying, "life is precious, maybe you should reconsider" and "think of your loved ones". Warning signs that are set to try to change people's minds, there are also police and volunteers trying to patrol the entrance and try to help people who went there to end it all. Nobody can be sure what truly lurks in the forest that claimed so many lives, so maybe, this is where you shouldn't let your curiosity lead your way.
Stepping away from the dark forest in Japan, let us visit a completely different type of place in the United States. If the first three places are rather frightening, this one is just eerie and strange.
Stop No.4 I'm taking you to tonight is the Winchester Mystery House. 今天的第四站是温彻斯特神秘屋。Located in San Jose, California, this massive mention is the work of Sarah Winchester, widow of William Winchester, who owned the fortune of the Winchester rifle company. 美国步枪之父——温彻斯特家族的遗孀 Sarah Winchester.
In the late 19th Century, deeply saddened over the death of her husband and daughter, Sarah Winchester visited a Boston medium--a medium is someone who can speak to spirits.当时，有个灵媒告诉她she was haunted by the spirits of all the victims of Winchester rifles. 灵媒告诉她说温彻斯特这些步枪下的冤魂在缠着她，what she needed to do was to make peace with these spirits by always be building a house, continue to build, never stop building, or else she will die. In 1884, Winchester started building the house which has gone on non-stop for 38 years right until her death. The end result is a gigantic, sprawling 160 room complex with 40 staircases, 2000 doors and 10,000 windows. 这样一个诡异的宅子设计的好像一个迷宫，like a maze. This house has mile-long hallways, secret passages, dead ends, doors opening to blank walls and staircases leading to the ceiling. 这座大迷宫一样的房子，里面充满了奇妙的设计，比如说暗道、死胡同、门的后面直接是墙或者直接通向天花板的楼梯。You can easily get lost in the house. Well, it was not built for humans anyway.
Now we come to the last stop of tonight's tour. The first four are all to some extent linked with supernatural happenings. However, the last place is more a monument to a man-made disaster. This is the ruins of Chernobyl, the name of a town that is still fresh in people's memory. 今天的最后一站，我们就来到切尔诺贝利的废墟。
On April 26, 1986, one of the most devastating tragedies took place in Chernobyl. An explosion occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, killing about 62 people, most of them died from radiation poisoning and 2 died from the blast effects. Most of Chernobyl was evacuated due to high radiation levels. 因此人口全部撤离。Since radiation levels went down, it is now open to the public. So some people would visit just out of curiosity. Some say the spirits of the residence still haunt Chernobyl. The sad thing is there was an amusement park that was actually scheduled to open a day before the disaster but instead of children laughing, there is forever a creepy silence.
And that ends tonight's tour. If you're interested in creepy and eerie places, locations around the world, or you have something to share, please don't hesitate to leave a comment. And I will say goodnight.

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