This Empty Sicilian Town is Giving away Free Houses

There are records at Ellis Island in New York showing that between 1892 and 1924, the small Sicilian town of Gangi lost about 1,700 of its residents to the American dream. They abandoned their homes to board trans-Atlantic ocean liners, sold to the prospect of a better life by shipping agents pushing emigration in the region. Those…

The Original Hilton Sisters

Before Paris and Niki graced the tabloid headlines, it was the siamese sisters of Vaudeville – Daisy and Violet Hilton – who were the talk of the town. Are you in for some glamour? Deception? Love scandals? Intrigue? The original Hilton sisters had it all… Daisy and Violet were born in Brighton, England, in 1908. Their…

The Cursed Italian Dreamtown

Here at MessyNessyChic, we can’t get enough of abandoned places, can we? It’s what brings us all together, a mysterious passion we share that none of us can really quite explain… Today’s story takes us to the incredible setting of an abandoned medieval village located in the region of Basilicata, about 25 miles inland…

Documenting Africa’s Old Cinemas

Sneaking around old art deco cinemas is something we like to do quite often on this site as you know, but today I came across something a little further afield. Starting in Angloa, Germany’s cultural Goethe-Institut is putting together a fascinating website dedicated entirely to documenting the architecture of Africa’s old cinemas; photographing them, mapping them and…

Buy the “Walking Dead” Ghost Town, Just a Click away on eBay

I click on the eBay listing for the historic Downtown area of Grantville, Georgia. “Add to cart” for $680,000, a “unique opportunity” but “may not ship to France”. Crumbs. Anyone else interested? It’s not everyday you find 9 buildings on 40,000 square feet of a downtown historic district up for sale on eBay, but then again, the…

No Fun Intended: The Space Age Playground Motel that Time Forgot

Earlier today on MessyNessyChic, we pulled over on the internet highway at one of the kitschiest roadside attractions on America’s East Coast, “South of the Border“. But just a little further down, on the other side of the interstate, there’s something equally surreal to make a stop for. While scouting for roadside oddities, I also stumbled across…

Sunset Snooping in an Abandoned Roadside Chateau

So I’ll pick up where I left off yesterday. We were taking the scenic route back to Paris via bumpy country roads and soaking up the last of the Sunday sun, when we rolled through a tiny village called Bréau… Without a soul in sight, the village seemed forgotten by the rest of the world. Even McDonalds hasn’t…

Are Mongolian Nomads moving into China’s Ghost Cities?

“I stumbled across some traditional Mongolian yurts plonked in the middle of this empty ghost city,” said Shane Thoms in an email to me this morning. It’s always exciting to receive news from my favourite urbex photographer who is usually based in Japan but took a break to spend some time in a Northern Chinese ghost city in the…

For Sale! The Ghost Town that Nobody Wanted

Johnsonville, Connecticut may be completely void of (human) inhabitants at present and characterised by those particular houses where one might occasionally see the faint shadows of children in nightgowns watching you from the attic window, but hey– a few licks of paint and a good spring clean to wash those ghosts right out of your lair and you could…

China’s First Stock Exchange is a now a Forgotten Dusty Apartment Building

Tucked away in an inconspicuous alley of one of the last functioning old-town neighborhoods in Beijing, hiding in the shadows of the historic city gate that once guarded the direct entry into the imperial city, lies the dusty forgotten shell of the first Beijing Stock Exchange. For a country that has one of the world’s largest stock markets, I couldn’t…