Cursed: Take A Journey to the Scary Side of Geography
By Simon Worrall, National Geographic
PUBLISHED SUN OCT 18 08:27:23 EDT 2015
Most of us avoid frightening or unpleasant places when we travel. But when Olivier Le Carrier found himself caught in a storm on board a sailing ship in the Bermuda Triangle, his interest in the dark side of geography was aroused. In Atlas of Cursed Places: A Travel Guide To Dangerous And Frightful Destinations, he takes us on a tour of some of the world’s most benighted places, from the Gaza Strip to a giant garbage dump in the Maldive Islands and Amityville’s House of Horrors.
Writing by email from his home in Paris, he describes what constitutes a cursed place; how buried under a suburb in Tunis is a place where thousands of children were slaughtered; and why he calls a Russian naval base in the Arctic “ the antechamber of hell.”
Most writers explore enticing and beautiful places. Why did you decide to write a book about horrible ones? Perversity? Masochism?
Neither! The idea of writing a book on cursed places came to me when sailing in the Bermuda Triangle. The first time I crossed it, was during a sailing race from Florida to the Bahamas. I was 19. Horrendous storms plagued me all night—the sky was constantly lit up by lightning, there was deafening thunder with gusts of winds assaulting me on all sides. Having heard so much about the mystery of this area I had to agree. It really was strange here.
Since then, I have sailed on a regular basis in the area. I’ve come to realize that storms in the Bermuda Triangle are basically no worse than elsewhere. However, I wanted to understand the facts behind the stories of disappearing planes and ships. After researching and reading as many records as I could find, I was struck by the mismatch between the reputation of the area and the reality. This led to my desire to investigate other places to see how these legends arose and what truth there is in them.
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= new reply since forum marked as read
The biggest danger there is asking the paper boy where the house is, and getting sent on a wild goose chase.
