The names Lúthien and Beren can be found inscribed on the shared grave of the famous writer and his beloved wife and muse.

The sunlight passing through the opening of this huge cave system creates a magical effect.

Southern Italy's spinning top village.

A dead saint, a deadly poison, and a mysterious holy ooze.

An abandoned quarry hides an open-air gallery of huge sculptures, some made from the rubble of 9/11.

A cave in southern Italy adorned with thousand-year-old Biblical frescoes existed in obscurity until fairly recently.

An Italian hillside ghost town.

Its look is severe, but its location, isolated on a hill in the middle of the countryside, is particularly scenic.

A fascist-era rural village abandoned since the early 1980s.

Geometry and mystery come together in an epic show of octagonal masonry.

Skulls and skeletons are omnipresent in this church dedicated to souls trapped in purgatory.

Macabre symbols of death and mummies on display set the tone of this Italian purgatory church.

These are probably the most beautifully-crafted toilets you've ever seen.

An abandoned Jazz Age dream home and con man's hideout in Death Valley.

This Central New York ghost town was once a prosperous railroad community.

An abandoned castle owned and ignored by Masons carries a cursed history.

The only residents of this abandoned housing development full of identical castles are stray cats and dogs.

A castle-inspired apartment building that has stood in Birmingham since 1927.

On the Oregon coast there is a natural hole that seems to be draining the sea.

An architectural experiment in the Lower Ninth Ward, this row house is capable of floating as high as the Katrina floodwaters.

A trail of footprints discovered after a landslide was left not by the Devil, as originally believed, but by an early human ancestor.

Accessible only by boat, this centuries-old island fort never saw troops or combat.

An unassuming secret door once led to a legendary watering hole.

An early 20th-century fruit warehouse home of an artistic and cultural renaissance in northeastern Washington.