Places Edited by Samir S. Patel

Popular tourist destination where witches in dark hats sell dried llama fetuses for good luck.

The site of the climactic scene from the classic horror film is now a historic landmark.

A gigantic sculpture garden is packed with innovative oddities.

Mounds, rune stones, and a 1,000-year-old church, left behind by Denmark's first two kings.

The ghostly remains of what was once the world's richest copper mine.

Commemorating a unique medieval profession: men who collected feces.

Settled by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1859, this abandoned frontier town has appeared in several films.

Tirelessly maintained by a Wisconsin man named JFK.

The final resting place of New England's last "vampire."

This historic collection of Native Alaskan artifacts was resurrected through a partnership between the WPA and tribal artisans.

As lake waters recede, a German village reemerges after more than a hundred years.

The birthplace of an eccentric alchemist and possible inspiration for the fictional reanimator of monsters.

A clone-tree in Washington Square Park sprung from seeds that went to the Moon and back.

This scalding hot river was thought to be a myth until one geoscientist made it his quest to study the mystical waters.

An eerie smiling woman looms above the granite tombstones.

An imperial fortress city that incorporated cultural elements from the entire Mughal empire, only to be abandoned the year it was finished.

The world’s narrowest house makes for an awkward, four-foot-wide living space.

An abandoned asylum where patients have been forgotten but their possessions remain.

A symbol of friendship between the mountainous regions of Switzerland and Bhutan.

A French chateau, failed utopian community, odd museum, and Stonehenge replica in rural Washington State.

Planned as the world’s first zero-carbon city, it had lofty ideals—but is only 5 percent completed and aiming for 50 percent carbon-neutral.

This whimsical group of statues is a favorite of children who love to climb all over Lewis Carroll's beloved characters.

The only known Futuro house in North Carolina sits along a stretch of desolate highway on the Outer Banks.  .

This one-woman cemetery was a small civil rights victory.