10 Terrifyingly Creepy Abandoned Hotels

Listverse.com

MIKE DEVLIN 

By their very nature, hotels are designed to teem with life, such as men on business trips, honeymooning couples, and tourist families with gaggles of sticky-faced children. Hotels should appear warm and welcoming, their employees indulgent to your every need. But when business dips and owners can no longer afford to keep the doors open, the building’s inviting atmosphere dissipates. Lobbies once choked with people become yawning and shadowy. Wandering down hallways with darkened rooms flanking either side becomes an exercise in courage. In these places, the mind plays tricks, inventing footfalls, laughter, and snippets of music from a bygone age—or perhaps some guests really do never leave.

10Bokor Palace Hotel And Casino

Bokor Hill Station was a Cambodian resort town built in the early 1920s by colonial French settlers, the crown jewel of which was the beautiful Bokor Palace Hotel and Casino. Construction in the remote mountains was difficult and around 1,000 lives were lost in the process.

The area flourished for two decades as an oasis in the squalid heat and clutter of Phnom Penh, but Europeans fled the area in the late 1940s when the Vietnam conflict ramped up. Bokor Palace was used intermittently over the years, but constant military and political instability—including invasions by Vietnam and mass killings by the Khmer Rouge—ensured the area was all but abandoned by the early ’90s.

Bokor Hill Station is now a popular tourist attraction, sitting on national park land. Although not even 100 years old, the hotel looks like a moss-cloaked ancient ruin. According to locals, the Palace teems with the spirits of those who gave their lives to build it. A park ranger named Vichat explained that he wouldn’t enter the building at night, saying “Every time we walk past, we can hear the dead walk in there. It’s full of ghosts.” Several movies have capitalized on the hotel’s creepy atmosphere, including Korean horror film R-Point and Matt Dillon’s forgettable crime drama City of Ghosts.

9Igloo City

Easily the most bizarre-looking building on the list, Alaska’s Igloo City could just as easily be some kind of Cold War military installation as a hotel. The four-story concrete structure is built to resemble an igloo. Construction began in the 1970s, but the structure never came close to meeting building codes.

It is difficult to imagine why anyone would build such a structure in one of the most remote areas of Alaska, which would rely solely on the traffic of summer tourists. Over the years, the building changed ownership various times to be used as a souvenir stand or a roadside attraction, but it never did draw much revenue. In 2005, the last attempt to resurrect the property went by the wayside due to expense.

Today, it has been reported that the doors are no longer padlocked, but exploring this ruin might be an ill-advised venture. Vandals have largely destroyed the interior and, of course, you run the risk of encountering some of the fearsome Alaskan wildlife taking shelter within.

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