Haunted Destinations You Can't Miss

PARIS

The City of Light has a dark past, beginning with the eerily beautiful Catacombs, created in the 1700s when cemeteries had become so overcrowded that the unsanitary conditions were unbearable for the city's living residents. Bones of those who could not afford to be buried in churches were intricately laid in underground quarries. The Catacombs are now said to be visited not only by ghosts of its inhabitants, but also by the specters of tourists lost in the ominous tunnels.

Outside the city, visitors to the Palace of Versailles, former home to Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, report feeling an inexplicable sadness and seeing ghosts in period clothing. The Place de l'Opera, which inspired the musical Phantom of the Opera, is said to host its own phantoms. And the Théâtre de la Ville is visited by the ghost of colorful Gérard de Nerval, a romantic poet who hanged himself there in 1855. A wife who froze to death while waiting for her husband to meet her on the Pont Marie is said to roam the bridge searching for him. The Louvre and Notre Dame cathedral are both rumored to be haunted — but ghosts or not, the latter's Gothic architecture and snarling gargoyles are bound to stir up the spooky in anyone.

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