SERPENT D'OCÉAN

Stuck in a perpetual state of decay on the French shore at Saint-Brevin-les-Pins, the massive metal sculpture entitled, Serpent D'Océan is a terrifying vision with an environmental message. The skeletal serpent was unveiled in 2012 as part of the Estuaire art exhibition which invites international artists to create large-scale works using the environment surrounding the Loire River between Nantes to Saint-Nazaire. The work was created by Chinese-French artist Huang Yong Ping, who used the rough iconography of China's mythological dragons to design the over 400 foot long art monster. The beast is posed in slithering movement despite being nothing more than bones, giving the dull metal frame an unsettlingly life-like quality.

The message behind the piece seems to be one of environmental nostalgia, as though man's mistreatment of the oceans is killing not only its life, but its very wonder and fantasy. The serpent's curves roughly mirror the twists and turns of the nearby Saint-Nazaire bridge linking the piece to the very modern progress it seems to be speaking on. However, the work is read, the aspect that is without debate is the menace projected by the fearfully undead snake. Given its location on the shore, the Serpent D'Océan can be seen as a strangely living creature rising from the ocean waters or a purposefully preserved skeleton held above the shallow waves depending on the level of the tide upon a given visit. But despite the changing tides, fantasy, art, and horror have rarely been so steadfastly intertwined.

http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/serpent-d-ocean

SATANIC INSANITY: THE NEW YORK CITY FARM COLONY

The paranormal is tangible at the New York Farm Colony, where ghosts of past patients mingle with victims of the weekend’s satanic rituals. Layers of suffering coat the walls, the dust of abandonment covering the immeasurable graffiti which nearly distracts from the jagged metal bars obscuring an interior once full of impoverished souls.

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/satanic-insanity-the-new-york-city-farm-colony

ARGENTINE VINTAGE FUNERAL CADILLACS

Humankind has long speculated about the mystery that follows death. Regardless of conclusions, we have always devised ways to leave this world in style. Ancient Egyptians traveled to the afterlife in elaborate funerary boats. Major companies now offer the option of space burials. Fernando Aguerre came face-to-face with an elegant form of post-mortem transportation when he discovered a pair of magnificent wood-carved funeral Cadillacs while exploring an antique barn in Argentina.

http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/argentine-wood-carved-vintage-funeral-cadillacs

Museo de la Medicina Mexicana

A scientific repository of goiters, boils and other gross ailments throughout Mexican history. Museo de la Medicina Mexicana isn’t the kind of museum that you visit to see tame paintings of water lilies. Instead, the museum—housed in the gentile 18th-century Palacio de la Escuela de Medicina—displays some of the most gruesome and graphic wax replicas imaginable: a face full of boils, a screaming man in the middle of a torturous, medieval curing and plenty of bacteria-eaten genitals.

http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/museo-de-la-medicina-mexicana

The Fiji Cannibal Fork

BBQ season is peaking, with parks and gardens mushroomed with grilled meat festivities. But because it's Morbid Monday, we won’t explore the new wave in burger gastronomy, although we will discuss the art of cooking...

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/morbid-monday-the-fiji-fork

St. Valentine's Day Massacre Wall

St. Valentine's Day Massacre Wall | Atlas Obscura

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Congdon Anatomical Museum

The Siriraj Medical Museum in Bangkok is fairly well-known amongst world-travelers seeking out the unusual. A unique complex of six different medically themed museums, the Siriraj requires a fairly strong stomach and few hours of your time. Dylan and I visited the complex about a year ago, one of the last stops on a five week trip through South East Asia.

After spending a good hour and a half hopelessly lost in the rabbit-warren of hospital buildings that the museums are nestled in, we finally found the Siriraj. After touring museums of parasites, pathology, thai medicine, and feeling a bit nauseous over the extensive collection of photographs of murder victims in the forensics museum, we were ready to seek out the most historic museum, the Congdon Anatomical Museum.

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/notes-from-the-field-congdon-anatomical-museum

Elijah Bond's Ouija Board Grave

The man who first patented the Ouija Board rests in peace beneath a headstone that playfully reflects that achievement

http://atlasobscura.com/place/elijah-bonds-gravesite-first-patentee-ouija-board

Bologna Zoological Museum

Monkeys with bared teeth and wild eyes, lumpy looking cheetahs, and a toothy looking polar bear are all residents of the delightfully unkempt Bologna Zoological Museum. Ferrets lay in taxonomic chaos next to mottled gray dolphins. The sleek design of the lobby gives way to rows and rows of cabinets filled with strangely shaped animals. But the enjoyably shabby museum disguises a noble past. It traces its roots all the way back to the very first curiosity cabinet.

http://atlasobscura.com/place/bologna-zoological-museum

Capuchin Monastery

Catacombs with thousands of well dressed mummies

http://atlasobscura.com/place/capuchin-monastery

The Wang Saen Suk Hell Garden

Wang Saen Suk, 90 minutes outside of Bangkok on the way to Pattaya, is a garden full of statues depicting what is supposed to be Buddhist hell.

While the garden attracts plenty of families, there are gruesome scenes depicted there. After passing a "Welcome to Hell!" sign, visitors encounter sinners boiled in copper cauldrons, sinners being torn apart by hell's dogs, and emaciated sinners with protruding ribs. "If you meet the Devil in this life, don't postpone merit-making which will help you to defeat him in the next life," a sign in the garden reads. "Donate a little each day and you'll have a happy life."

According to the "Traibhumi Phra Ruang," when a Buddhist dies, he or she goes before four celestial beings who check the dead's record of good and bad deeds. If your good deeds outweigh the bad, you will go to heaven; if your bad deeds outweigh the good, you will be punished.

Punishment in Buddhist hell varies depending on the sins committed, but every form of punishment is a torture, and many of those are depicted in the garden. Hell has 136 pits, but individuals are able to be reborn from each. Loganta, a special pit reserved for those who have hurt their parents or monks physically, is the only cold pit and those sent there are said to remain until a new Buddha is born.

http://atlasobscura.com/place/the-wang-saen-suk-hell-garden

Site of "The Absinthe Murders"

Absinthe has always been a drink of mystery and intrigue. This is due in no small part to its longstanding history as a seductive drink of choice for artists and bohemians, the complexity of the process involved in drinking it properly, and the much-rumored hallucinogenic properties of its original ingredients.

By far the biggest contribution to the green drink’s legacy however, is the fact that it was effectively banned in most western countries for nearly 100 years. The ban left such a lasting mark on the liquor, granting it a permanent air of being a forbidden fruit in the public psyche, that the Absinthe Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana is divided into two sections: pre-ban and post-ban histories.

Lesser known is that the primary catalyst for the ban was a gruesome murder scene in the tiny rural community of Commugny, Switzerland. In 1905, an alcoholic by the name of Jean Lanfray drank himself to the point of delirium, which was not unusual for him.

The unusual part was that when he returned home, he immediately got into an argument with his pregnant wife which culminated in his murdering her and their two children before turning the gun on himself and shooting himself in the head.

Lanfray had no less than five different types of alcohol in his bloodstream that day, including more than five liters of wine, his drink of choice. But it was the liquor he reportedly drank the least of that ended up getting the most attention.

His consumption of absinthe immediately allowed prosecutors and journalists to dub the event “The Absinthe Murders,” and suggest that Lanfray was overcome by vicious, inescapable tendencies brought on by this dangerous substance.

http://atlasobscura.com/place/site-absinthe-murders

The Gates of Hell

In the hot, expansive Karakum desert in Turkmenistan, near the 350 person village of Derweze, is a hole 328 feet wide that has been on fire. For 38 years it has constantly been active. This hole is known as the Darvaza Gas Crater or the "Gates of Hells" by locals, the crater can be seen glowing for miles around.

http://atlasobscura.com/place/the-gates-of-hell

Salem Village Witchcraft Victims Memorial

Often lost in all the broomstick bluster that goes on in Salem, MA, is the fact that the witch hysteria actually started in the neighboring town of Danvers, where most of the participants lived. Back then, it was called Salem Village, and it was in the town meeting house there that the examinations first took place. Later, the more official trials and executions occurred in Salem.

http://atlasobscura.com/place/salem-village-witchcraft-victims-memorial

The Great Serpent Mound

The Great Serpent Mound in southern Ohio is one of the few surviving relics of the mound builders. It is a 1,330-foot-long, three-foot-high prehistoric effigy mound. The earliest records say it was a depiction of a serpent that was swallowing an egg. One of the more interesting theories as to the origin of the shape is that it represents an explanation of the phases of the moon, by the representation of a snake swallowing it.

http://atlasobscura.com/place/the-great-serpent-mound

Darra Adam Khel

A city entirely devoted to illegal gun production.

The city of Darra Adam Khel is situated in Khyber Regency, south of the city of Peshawar and close to both the infamous Khyber Pass and the Afghan border. It's generally regarded as the largest illegal gun market in the world – some even consider the city to be the largest gun market in the world period, and the city truly stands up to this title. Seventy-five percent of the population are involved in the gun business, and gun shops seem to be the sole market keeping the city alive.

http://atlasobscura.com/place/darra-adam-khel

The Bell Witch Cave

As the tale goes, late in the summer of 1817, a vicious, evil witch began to terrorize the Bell family on their Tennessee farm. She kept them up late at night with strange, eerie noises, violently beat family members and eventually poisoned and killed the head of the family, John Bell. But during her four years on the Bell farm, she also made time to save a child inside the Bell Witch Cave and give a quick lesson on safety.

http://atlasobscura.com/place/the-bell-witch-cave

Leopard Society Garb

Recovered suit of a cannibalistic West African gang

http://atlasobscura.com/place/leopard-society-garb

Entropa

Massive Czech installation of Europe's negative stereotypes

http://atlasobscura.com/place/entropa

Children are the Victims of Adult Vices

Thirteen sculptures in central Moscow graphically depicting vices of the modern world

http://atlasobscura.com/place/children-are-the-victims-of-adult-vices