Places rsopitz Wants to Go

This museum devoted to the gothic author holds such interesting ephemera as his socks and walking stick.

Giant busts of 42 U.S. presidents sit, crumbling in a field in Virginia.

The center preserves and houses artifacts ranging from the colonial era to modern times from across Appalachia.

A memorial honoring those who perished in one of the worst construction disasters in U.S. history.

The actor best known for slapstick comedy is memorialized in his home town.

In 1952, a strange encounter in the woods of West Virginia led to the legend of a 10-foot-tall monster with glowing eyes and a distinctive style.

Winding country roads in eastern West Virginia lead to an extraordinary place populated by fiberglass giants.

Spectacular mineral formations fill these caves, which have been used for everything from smoking meat to stashing illicit liquor.

A monument marks the location of the first successful steamboat demonstration.

A cult archaeology conspiracy theory claims these West Virginia petroglyphs were written by Irish monks in Ogham.

This general store is more than a century old and home to various oddities and antiques.

The world's largest fully steerable radio telescope.

Two insane asylum bodies embalmed by an amateur.

Despite its lavish ornamentation, and wholesome lifestyle of its devotees, this mountain commune has faced its share of issues.

America's post-nuclear-attack chambers of Congress.

This abandoned dream castle and its cemetery look out over the city that once inspired their creation.

Beyond the usual stories that attend old prisons, this one has deep bloody undercurrents.

The "mysteries" of this quintessential roadside oddity were almost destroyed by neglect but were saved by fans of kitschy wonder.

The museum calls itself the "National Museum of the Paranormal" and is full of eerie oddities.

A particularly creepy abandoned hospital that sparks interest for lovers of the supernatural.

A once-booming Mississippi River town with a history of racial violence is now eerie and mostly abandoned.

An eclectic assortment of medieval architecture in a small Iowa town.

A hidden barn-sized rendition of Grant Wood's most famous, and most parodied, painting.

The world's only three-story rotary jail is now a museum to a bizarre trend in prison design.