A deserted old shepherds' village that dates back to the 17th century, Humac can be found in the thickly wooded hills of Hvar island, near Jelsa. With its simple stone houses, tiny courtyards, narrow streets and far-reaching views of the coast and beyond to the isle of Brac, it is an atmospheric place for a wander and to get an insight into what rural life was like in this part of Dalmatia. 

Today, the lifeless village, with its overgrown grass and vacant homes, is still a military zone although it is open for tours. Tyneham has become an unlikely tourist destination for people wanting to walk around a poignant time capsule. Fascinating relics of the village's past include an old phone box and a school room complete with kids' work and name tags above the coat hooks. There's also a note that was written and nailed on the church door by a resident asking the army to look after their beloved home. 

The dam was constructed in this part of northeastern Crete in 2012 and the villagers forced to vacate their homes. Sometimes Sfentyli's hollow and decrepit buildings appear some distance from the reservoir while at others they teeter right on the water's edge. Then the red tiled roof and white cross of the chapel of Agios Theodoros can be seen emerging ominously from the lake's murky depths. Whatever the water levels, the stranded village of Sfentyli is an eerie sight. Now see the world's most perilous places.

A few hardy souls stayed on in the forsaken village but it lies mostly wrecked and neglected, explored by the occasional tourist. It's a bleak but compelling place to roam around: rubble lies strewn across winding alleyways; roofs have collapsed; and broken beams protrude from ramshackle buildings. Windows are shattered, wooden doors are broken and daubed in graffiti, and crumbling façades hint at once-happy homes. The village church of San Miguel still stands, just. 

It's quite a steep trek up to the old lost village of Sanguinho from Faial da Terra on São Miguel in the Azores. The tiny and remote settlement died a death in the 1970s when its population moved elsewhere on the island to be closer to public services such as schools. Others left the far-flung volcanic isles altogether and emigrated to America. Today the remains of around 20 houses and a farm can be seen along the rocky track that goes through the village and onto the waterfall of Salto do Prego. Some houses are being restored. 

With its stark mountainous backdrop, the form of this well-preserved Arctic outpost appears even more chilling. The abandoned coal mining town of Pyramiden was once the largest settlement on the Norwegian Arctic archipelago of Svalbard. A busy and productive place for over 50 years, it was home to 1,000 people at its peak in the 80s before it closed. First established in 1910 by Sweden, the mine was sold to the Soviet Union in 1927, who built most of the distinctive buildings that remain today. Mining continued until 1998, when the last resources were extracted and Pyramiden abandoned.

Thanks to the amount of everyday artefacts left behind, Pyramiden offers a remarkable insight into what life was like for its workers and families. Inside the Brutalist block-style housing complexes lie discarded coffee cups and folded clothes. There are paperwork-strewn offices, a commandeering bust of Lenin, and a music hall with a run-down grand piano. Still swings sit forlornly in the silent playground. While Pyramiden has fallen into a state of disrepair, home to roosting seabirds and the occasional polar bear, the Arctic climate has kept it remarkably intact. 

Bathed in sunlight and lapped by the azure waters of the Aegean, this uninhabited craggy islet off the shores of Crete might look idyllic but it hides an ugly past. From the early 1900s, the 16th-century fortress of Spinalonga was used as a leper colony. Hundreds of sufferers were banished here to live out their lives with reports that there was only a single doctor who visited only sporadically. Shrouded in tales of neglect, the colony remained in operation until 1957 and was Europe’s last leper colony.

After a cure was found for leprosy and Spinalonga's last shunned residents returned to health, the decaying fortress was left to crumble and its dark history remained all but forgotten until the 1980s when Victoria Hislop set her popular novel The Island here. Now tourists come from far and wide to wander around the atmospheric ruins and imagine the suffering of the people who were stripped of their rights and exiled on this barren isle. 

Nature put an abrupt end to everyday life in the ancient village of Poggioreale in southwest Sicily. The Belìce Valley was ravaged by a devastating earthquake in 1968 and Poggioreale was one of four towns that were violently shaken off the map. The inhabitants fled, leaving behind the shattered shell of beautiful old Poggioreale to crumble over the decades. In total, 231 people died in the valley, and 100,000 were left homeless. New towns were eventually built to rehouse the survivors of the disaster.

Today this relic of a bygone era has become a tourist attraction with curious visitors coming to stroll around its rubble-strewn alleys, peer in its cracked and collapsed houses and wander into crumbling courtyards as they contemplate the terror that the inhabitants must have felt as the earth shook. Poggioreale's wrecked theatre, cathedral, and bell tower are still visible, along with post office complete with telegraph wires and school with pupils’ scribbles on the chalkboard.

Over three-quarters of a century later and the ghostly remains of the village stand as a moving memorial to those who perished. Rusted cars, including the Peugeot 202 the mayor drove before his brutal death, still sit on the roads. Sewing machines, pitchers and pans still lie scattered around. The desolate church still stands with its bullet-ridden altar while the charred shells of homes and shops remain as they were left. The emotive site has a museum containing some relics recovered from the rubble and offers a glimpse into life in Oradour-sur-Glane before the atrocities.

Set below Corfu's highest peak Mount Pantokrator, the remote and now heritage-protected village was largely abandoned in the 1960s when most residents moved away from the mountains to be closer to the coast as tourism became a major industry. Surrounded by vines, olive trees and oaks, its houses and churches lay hidden and have fallen into disrepair. However, after a British-Dutch couple fell in love with the forgotten village and opened a charming B&B in three old renovated houses, the ghost town has a new lease of life.

Tumbling down the slopes of the Taurus mountains in southwestern Turkey, Kayaköy has been deserted since the 1920s. In happier times, it was a flourishing town known as Levissi and home to some 10,000 Christians and Muslims. But in 1923 they were removed from their homes as part of a population exchange that took place in the aftermath of the brutal Greco-Turkish war. The Christians were exiled to Greece, many to Crete. In 1957, a huge earthquake wreaked further hardship on the largely abandoned town but around 350 derelict homes still stand.

When Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938, Adolf Hitler ordered the compulsory evacuation of Döllersheim. A large Nazi military training area was established in this small town in the north of Austria and its houses bombed in 1941 as a part of a training exercise. Intriguingly, the Nazi leader had ties to the town: his father Alois was born in the area and Döllersheim parish was where he had his birth registry altered to legitimise his birth, naming his stepfather Johann Georg Hiedler as his birth father and changing his surname to Hitler. The grave of Hitler’s paternal grandmother, Maria, is also in the village.

One of Europe's most breathtakingly beautiful ghost towns, Craco is an abandoned village in southern Italy's Basilicata region with a far-reaching history. People first settled on this picturesque clifftop in the 8th century BC but most of the decaying buildings that remain date from the medieval period. Craco has had numerous run-ins with Mother Nature over the years: from pestilence to floods, landslides and earthquakes. Here are more places taken over by nature.

The hardy town survived the plague that swept through it in the 17th century and dramatically diminished its population. However, it was the landslides of the 1950s and 1970s that ultimately forced Craco's embattled citizens to leave once and for all. Now the eerie empty shell of a town is popular with guided tours. It has also been used as an atmospheric filming location – it most famously featured in the James Bond film Quantum of Solace. 

As the Second World War raged on in 1943, the Ministry of Defence decided to evacuate the small community of Imber on Salisbury Plain, which had become the UK’s largest military training area, to use it as a training ground for the US army. The devastated village residents were given just 47 days to pack up and find new homes. It’s said the local blacksmith died from a broken heart. Despite public appeals, the village was never released by the military. 

Imber’s old abandoned houses are still used to train soldiers in urban warfare, but the Ministry of Defence occasionally opens it to the public. Then it’s possible to visit the 13th-century St Giles church, where many of Imber’s displaced residents were returned to be buried, and to catch a glimpse of village pub The Bell, the desolate Imber Court manor house and empty homes from the road. However, many parts of the village remain strictly out of bounds because of the danger of unexploded bombs.

Arguably the world’s most infamous ghost town, Pripyat is packed with poignant sights. Mundane artefacts litter its homes, schools, offices and parks, telling of a carefree time just before the devastating Chernobyl disaster turned the community (and the wider world) upside down. Built to house the plant’s scientists and workers, Pripyat has been abandoned since its residents were evacuated 36 hours after the catastrophic meltdown took place in the Soviet power plant in 1986. Due to the radiation all their possessions had to be left behind.

The Ukrainian government designated Chernobyl an official tourist attraction in 2019 after the exclusion zone was deemed safe to visit for tourists. Access is still strictly regulated by the government and can only be explored on guided tours. Haunting sights include the deserted school, where books and paper lie scattered on the floor of the classrooms, and a decaying amusement park. The Ferris wheel is a moving symbol of joy extinguished – it was supposed to open four days after the explosion, but never welcomed any guests. See more eerie images of abandoned amusement parks around the world.

Varosha lies inside the “forbidden zone” of Famagusta in Cyprus and was sealed off by the Turkish military after the city's 39,000 inhabitants were forced to leave when Turkish forces invaded. After that the island was divided between Greece and Turkey and Varosha was left to its ruin. Set behind barbed wire, empty apartment blocks and hotels line the beachfront in varying states of disrepair. Sun loungers lie strewn on the sands, a sad reminder of the fun times once had.

Vegetation invades desolate houses, churches sit empty, piles of rubble and smashed glass lie in the silent streets and swimming pools sit cracked and empty among overgrown gardens. Varosha has remained uninhabited and off-limits to non-military personnel. But in October 2020, Turkish Northern Cyprus controversially reopened the beach, with the Greek government calling on the decision to be reversed and the UN security council asked to address if the move is admissible under international law.

The lonely isle of Hirta is the largest island in the remote St Kilda archipelago, a string of Scottish isles at the far edge of the Outer Hebrides. It’s thought it was settled for some 2,000 years before it was finally abandoned in the 1930s. The hardy community of Hirta, the only island of the four to ever be inhabited, had survived in this harsh place for many hundreds of years but by the late 1800s, increased tourism posed a threat to the islanders’ traditional way of life. 

Attempts to modernise the island were futile and flimsy houses built at the end of the 19th century could not withstand St Kilda’s merciless weather. Residents began to leave the island and by the 1930s, the last inhabitants left Hirta behind. Now this far-flung ghost town is a heritage site where tourists can wander among its weather-beaten stone houses, old school room and church (pictured) to imagine what life was like on the inhospitable isle. The only signs of life now are the gannets and puffins that line the cliffs, it has the largest seabird colony in this part of the Atlantic, and the hardy Soay breed of sheep that appear in its abandoned cleits (huts).

Like a dystopian Disney movie, images of Turkey’s ghost housing development Burj Al Babas are enough to give you the heebie-jeebies. Hundreds of abandoned princess-castle-like villas line the foot of the Mudurnu hills in a doomed housing development in northwest Turkey. The stricken developers filed for bankruptcy a few years ago after buyers and investors pulled out of purchases due to the economic downturn. Take a look at more eerie places where time stands still.

The mines were quickly privatised in the 1990s but proved to be incredibly expensive to run so started shuttering their doors one after the other. The residents slowly abandoned the city and while reports say there were still around 50,000 residents living in central Vorkuta, the surrounding suburbs, like the Sovetskiy district (pictured), are completely abandoned.