Decaying ruins atop the mountains lay on the edge of steep cliffs that plunge into the wilderness below. Old, abandoned structures in the middle of nowhere beckon to a time that has long since been lost. Spectacular views of the sweeping plains of Tarragona. And throughout it all, an overwhelming silence.

That’s La Mussara.

Now little more than a ghost town, La Mussara contains the ruins of a small village perched in the mountains, inhabited until some point between 1950 and 1960. The official reason for its decay has been associated with phylloxera, an endemic insect invasion that decimated local vineyards, which locals depended upon to make a living.

Of course, a completely different history of the town states that the place was actually doomed, and suggests that this knowledge of its impending doom, and this knowledge alone, caused its inhabitants to abandon it.

Undoubtedly related to this late-blooming theory, strange phenomena have been reported in La Mussara and its surroundings for the last 50 years or so. Strange stories and legends of unexplained disappearances, UFO sightings, encounters with spectral presences and space/time disturbances pervade all local accounts of this already intriguing location.

Whether there’s any truth to the legend of being predestined for doom or not, La Mussara is more than fine a place either for a relaxed daytime visit or picnic, or a mysterious and haunting after-dark excursion, chasing the thrill and the fear of its paranormal legends.