Want to see a ghost? Not scared of the dark? We’ve got a list of 5 of the most haunted destinations in the world for you to visit¹. Bring a flashlight and let’s get started…

Many places can claim to be haunted, but on every list you find a certain few that keep popping up. The Myrtles Plantation in St. Francisville, LA USA is one of these places, and is considered one of the most haunted locations in the United States. Built in 1794, the property is said to be the site of up to 10 different murders, and home of 12 resident ghosts. Visitors claim to hear footsteps going up and down the halls, see ghostly children running around the property, and even talk with the ghosts of slaves who ask about chores. Want to visit? Go ahead and book a room because it’s currently a thriving bed and breakfast.

Our second stop isn’t actually a specific location, but an entire country. With the rise of paranormal television shows and magazines, Singapore is quickly becoming known as a hotbed of activity for wannabe ghost hunters. Throughout the city there are numerous ghostly stories to be told. One location is said to be haunted by an entire family that committed suicide together. Another home in Changi Beach apparently is haunted by a ghost that likes to slap house guests across the face! It gets worse though… at the Bedok Tenant House, supposedly a ghost actually killed a woman. The victim went on to become a screaming ghost herself! Maybe that’s all just a bit to scary and you should just stay in the city. Well be careful when travelling on the subway, apparently there are headless ghosts that run through stations terrorising passengers!

Stop number three takes us to England and the infamous Tower of London. GSS visited the tower back in 2005, and the street view update has now given us the ground level perspective. The tower was built way back in the year 1078, so you know there are some creepy stories to be told. Guests claim to see numerous shadows replaying the violent murder of the Countess of Salisbury. She tried to run from her scheduled execution back in 1541, but was chased and then axed to death by her executioner. Others claim to see more legendary ghosts like the beheaded Ann Boleyn. She’s often seen by guests carrying her head in her hands around the property.

Back in the United States, the retired Queen Mary is often called the most haunted ship in the world. Now permanently docked in Long Beach as a hotel, this once luxury ocean liner has been the set for numerous movies and ghost hunting television programs from both the US and the UK. Visitors report being touched by invisible fingers in their room, hear banging and movements from throughout the ship, and even claim to hear a soldier calling for help from the engine room. Strangely enough, it just so happens that a soldier was crushed to death in there back in 1966.

Our last stop takes us to Scotland and to perhaps, the most haunted structure in the world. The site of the Edinburgh Castle has been occupied by man since the late Bronze Age, and the current castle has been dated back to 12th century. The structure sits atop a volcanic rock 80 meters high, with the steep cliff faces surrounding it visible from the street view car. Visitor’s stories range from tales of wandering war prisoners, headless drummers, and ghostly dogs. Some even claim to hear the tunes of a long-dead piper player coming from the castle’s ancient tunnels. Story goes that the piper discovered the tunnels a few hundred years ago, and was playing his tune so that people on the surface could hear him and map his progress. Well at one point the tunes stopped, and the piper was never found. Over two thousand years of history certainly mean the next time you visit the castle and its dungeons, you’re surely not to be alone.

Be sure to check Google for some more great ghost stories at each of these locations. Wikipedia offers great historical information on the Tower of London and Edinburgh Castle. If you’re brave enough, spend the night by booking a room at either the Queen Mary or Myrtle’s Plantation.

Special thanks goes out to Greg, Sergio, Will, Mike, Gareth, Jeff, Kate, Dave, Michele, Ron, Max, James, Ned, Robert, Terry, Boris, Benjamin, Matt, Paul, 7up7, Steve, and Larry for the suggestions and links!

Motorists taking State Route 16 through Licking County, Ohio, could be forgiven for thinking they’ve been at the wheel too long when they spot a giant shopping basket looming over the horizon.

This is no highway-induced hallucination however: it’s the headquarters of the Longaberger Company, famous for its handmade wooden baskets. Its founder, Dave Longaberger, was a man with a dream — and that dream included going to work in a seven-storey basket. When lesser men than Dave told him it couldn’t be done, he said: “If they can send a man to the moon and bring him back home, they can build a building shaped like a basket.” And he was right.

The building cost $300 million $30 million and took more than two years to build; it was completed in December 1997¹. The statistics are impressive: it takes the form of a 160:1 scale model of Longaberger’s top-selling Medium Market Basket, more than 60 m long and 30 m tall. The frame is made of steel, with a stucco finish cunningly designed to create a basket-weave effect (which also seems to confuse Street View’s face-blurring technology!) The handles are 100 metres long and weigh 75 tons each, and are even heated to prevent ice building up in winter and falling through the glass roof. (They also create a neat shadow.) On the side of the building, replicating the brass logos on the normal-sized baskets, are giant name plates weighing 340kg each and covered in gold leaf.

That’s not the only big basket in these parts, however. Over in nearby Dresden², where the Longaberger company was founded, there’s a 14-metre long picnic basket, made of real maple wood. Sadly, the imagery here is not high-enough resolution to see it in all its glory (I think this is it), but you can see pictures here. And at the Longaberger Homestead, a kitsch olde-worlde village/outlet store in Frazeysburg, there’s a giant apple basket. Again, the imagery isn’t very good here, so be sure to check out these ground-level photos (complete with giant apples!)

Read more about the creation of the Longaberger HQ at Elevator World, or visit the company website.

The city of Ashgabat – capital of Turkmenistan – is dominated by monuments to one man’s megalomania – former President-for-Life Saparmurat Niyazov. Take, for example, the 75m tall Arch of Neutrality, which he subtly topped with a 12m gold-plated statue of himself. Not content with just a normal statue, he had it created such that it would rotate through the course of each day so it was always facing the sun. ¹

The Arch is an indication that this former Soviet republic declared itself permanently neutral after the Soviet Union fell apart. While this foreign policy initiative had the potential to be positive, internally the country was facing immense hardships, human rights abuses and intense poverty, all while one of the world’s worst dictators spent lavishly on monuments to his madness. Niyazov claimed the title of President-for-Life after an election in which he hand-picked a single candidate for each electoral district.

To the south of the Arch of Neutrality lie the President’s Palace, another large palace for his family, and the Ten Years of Independence Park, one of several lush expanses of green in an otherwise arid city – use of water being just one way in which Niyazov showed his power and spent his money². The park features a large fountain statue of 10 horses, and another gold statue of Niyazov.

One of Niyazov’s more outlandish “achievements” was his authorship of Ruhnama, or Book of the Soul, commemorated in the south of the city with a monument and more fountains. The large replica of the book opens and closes on special occasions (when the motor isn’t burnt out) to reveal video screens showing scenes from his life. The monument is the small circle to the left of the huge white stage / performance / fountain area.

Amongst other marvellous powers, Niyazov claimed the Ruhnama could guarantee entrance to paradise for anyone who read it three times, and heal those suffering from illness after he closed all the hospitals outside the capital. Knowledge of it was essential for any job with the state, and even for taking a driving test. The text is available online in 22 languages if you are in need of enlightenment or struggling with your driving skills.

In the same park as the Ruhnama Monument are the Independence Monument (inspired by tents and headwear; topped by a giant gold spire and fronted by yet another gold statue), a Museum of Turkmen Values, a significant network of ponds and fountains, tributes to past Turkmen heroes, and (seeming rather out of place) a shopping mall inside a huge 5-legged monument which features cascading sheets of water and five-headed eagles, though not many shops apparently.

To the south-west of the city is the modestly-named Turkmenbashi³ Eternally Great Park, starting point of Niyazov’s ‘health walk’ – a strenuous 8km trek which ministers were forced to walk regularly, while the President himself would take the rather less strenuous helicopter option – landing at the top in time to welcome the front-runners and berate the stragglers.

The monument at the base is made entirely of white marble⁴, the glare from which caused serious problems for the satellite camera. Near the end of the walk there are large writings on the hillside, presumably inspirational texts to help you on the final push to the summit. There is also a longer route for those in need of additional health.

Finally, to the west of the city, where Niyazov built the largest mosque in Central Asia, partly as a memorial to the village where his mother died in the 1948 earthquake which devastated the region. The spectacular building is somewhat confusing, with quotations from both the Koran and the Ruhnama.

Niyazov died suddenly in 2006. Since then the people of Turkmenistan are seeing more freedoms, but residents of Ashgabat doubtless spend their days wondering at the folly of what was left behind.

Thanks to Birdseed, Catherine and Hamish.

There aren’t many sights that puzzle us here at Google Sightseeing, but this one has us stumped. In a remote desert area of Gansu province in northern China is this mysterious maze-like pattern.

The “streets” are about 20 metres wide, and the pattern occupies a rectangle measuring about 1km x 1.8km, aligned north to south and so sharply defined that it almost appears superimposed on the image. If you zoom in, though, you can see that the lines really are there on the ground.

Exploring the surrounding area, things get weirder. A short distance to the west are what appear to be a series of runways in various states of repair. But where are the support buildings and access roads?

At the northern end of one runway, there seem to be bomb craters. Could these be fake runways built as aerial bombardment targets? These mysterious blue-roofed buildings also seem to have been blown up.

Further west again, what’s this? Another big maze rectangle, this one looking old and faded. And just beyond… a circular arrangement of vehicles, planes and… other stuff, laid out over a 12-pointed star pattern. Another target? The plot thickens!

Frankly, we could fill a week’s worth of postings with the odd stuff on display around here. What are all these suspiciously regular shapes filling dry river beds, with signs of excavation and vehicle tracks? Could they be giant sandbags being filled and then carted off for construction work? If so there are thousands of them!

If any readers have any theories (or if anyone in the Chinese military happens to be reading!) then we’d love to know. One thing we do know, thanks to Google Earth’s historic imagery feature, is when the “maze” in our first photo was built. A photo dated April 14 2005 shows it partially completed, but by May 30 it was all finished.

Thanks to Garret.

Around 25 times a minute, 24 hours a day, this Russian shortwave radio station emits a short, monotonous buzz tone¹ on the AM frequency at 4625 kHz.

The station’s callsign is “UVB-76″, but is known amongst enthusiasts as “The Buzzer”, and the sound it transmits has been on an almost continuous loop since it was first observed in 1982.

No one knows for sure what the purpose of the signal is, and in 27 years the buzzing has only been interrupted on 3 occasions.

At 21:58 GMT on Christmas Eve 1997, 15 years after it was first observed, the buzzing abruptly stopped; to be replaced by a short series of beeps, followed by a male voice speaking Russian who repeated the following message several times:

“Ya — UVB-76. 18008. BROMAL: Boris, Roman, Olga, Mikhail, Anna, Larisa. 742, 799, 14″.

On September 12th 2002 another voice was heard, this time so distorted that only part of the message could be recognised:

“UVB-76, UVB-76. 62691 Izafet 3693 8270″.

Finally, on February 21st 2006, a third message² was transmitted which said:

“75-59-75-59. 39-52-53-58. 5-5-2-5. Konstantin-1-9-0-9-0-8-9-8-Tatiana-Oksana-Anna-Elena-Pavel-Schuka. Konstantin 8-4. 9-7-5-5-9-Tatiana. Anna Larisa Uliyana-9-4-1-4-3-4-8.”

The names used in the message are used in some Russian spelling alphabets, and although some people speculate that UVB-76 is a specialised Numbers Station, used to transmit encoded messages to spies, the messages have never been decoded, and the actual purpose of this station remains unknown.

There’s more information about the mysterious UVB-76 at WIkipedia. Thanks to Best of Wikipedia.