Ralph Waldo Emerson spent two years living here decades before it became a Frederick Law Olmsted-designed park.

The often-overlooked ruins of one of the first buildings designed by famous landscape architect Frederick Olmsted.

European castle ruins in an American state park are actually the product of death and grief.

Once an ambitious nature spa, these forest ruins now provide a serene monument to failure.

The crumbling remains of a 19th century fortess.

A once grand hotel is being retaken by the wilderness it once capitalized on.

One of the few remaining casualties of the London Blitz, this destroyed church has become an enchanting public garden.

The remains of an idyllic small town built for the film 'Big Fish' still stand around a rundown main street.

Ruins of a Carnegie family mansion on Cumberland Island.

The seawater playground of gilded-era San Francisco burned to the ground in 1966.

A crumbling hospital from the 1850s on Roosevelt Island.

The eerie ruins of a remote abandoned hamlet said to be founded by the survivors of a shipwreck.

A narrow ghost town built onto a peninsula behind a Colombian Slum.

An abandoned colonial French prison notorious for its hellish conditions.

A Barbados crypt where it's said that the coffins refuse to stay put.

Hundreds of hopeful gold miners came here to get rich, but only two years later the small town was deserted.

Accessible only at low tide, the deserted island is dotted with World War II ruins.

Abandoned medieval hill town.

A short hike into the mountainside forest reveals a decaying 1890s town.

This fairy-tale, neo-Gothic church in the Azores is a world of magical realism.

This abandoned five-star hotel is now a five-star urban exploration destination.

An abandoned amusement park hints at the twisted history of the Newfoundland Railway.

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

Secret Manor, a house full of legends, the least of which is the haunting of long-deceased ladies of pleasure.