Oct 31

Top 10 Most Haunted Cities in the U.S.

Posted on October 31, 2010 by

Visit even the smallest of towns in the U.S. and you’re likely to hear some local ghost stories and discover a few haunted houses. But some American cities have gained the reputation for being particularly ghost-ridden thanks to their rich and often bizarre historical backgrounds. The following are ten of the most haunted cities to steer away from—or toward, if you dare—this Halloween.

1. New Orleans, Louisiana

All southern port towns have their share of ghost stories, but none more so than New Orleans, which has truly embraced its reputation as a center of all things paranormal. All of the criteria that tend to produce ghost legends—a coastal location, a checkered past, a rich cultural history, and a potent mix of old and new world religion— can be found here. The city is full of haunted mansions, taverns, and graveyards, and you can’t go far without hearing stories of cursed pirate ships, Civil War-era spirits, and voodoo hexes. In this realm, one of the most famous figures is undoubtedly Marie Laveau, a Creole woman who gained a massive following during the 1800s as one of the first practitioners of voodoo. She died in 1881, but for years after many people claimed to see her walking throughout the French Quarter, and more than 120 years later many ghostly legends about the “Voodoo Queen of New Orleans” still persist.

Most Haunted Place: LaLaurie House

In the heart of the French Quarter lies an ornate mansion that in the 1800s belonged to physician Louis LaLaurie and his socialite wife Delphine. As the story goes, it was rumored at the time that the couple treated their slaves viciously, and there was evidence Lady LaLaurie was responsible for the murder of a 12-year-old girl. The rumors were validated when one night a fire broke out in the mansion’s kitchen. Firemen raced to the scene, and when they kicked down a door to the slave quarters they were astonished to find several slaves chained to the wall in a kind of makeshift dungeon. Many have since claimed that the LaLaurie’s were performing grotesque surgical experiments on the slaves, but modern evidence suggests that this is probably an exaggeration. Either way, the sadistic couple is said to have soon fled the city, and Lady LaLaurie eventually disappeared. The mansion where the horrors took place still stands today, and several ghosts have been sighted, among them the spirits of both Delphine LaLaurie and the young slave girl she is said to have murdered.

2. Savannah, Georgia

With its many cemeteries, gothic mansions, and trees covered in hanging Spanish moss, Savannah, GA fits the bill of a haunted city about as well as any town in America. It was one of only a few places that escaped being burned during Sherman’s famous “March to the Sea” during the Civil War, and so it still contains a good deal of antebellum architecture that serves as a perfect breeding ground for ghost stories. One example is the Pirates’ House, a restaurant that in the late 1700s served as a pub for a notoriously rough clientele of sailors and buccaneers. As in Portland, shanghaiing was a common practice, and unsuspecting or drunk patrons were often waylaid and then dragged to the harbor via a series of underground tunnels connected to the bar’s rum cellar. To this day, many consider the cellar to be haunted, and it is said that at night the sounds of drunken sailors singing can still be heard.

Most Haunted Place: The Hampton Lillibridge House

The Hampton Lillibridge house is an assuming three-story building that was built in 1796 and originally served as a boarding house. It was purchased in the 1960s by a builder who hoped to restore it, and it was then that strange phenomena began to occur. At one point during construction, a portion of the roof collapsed, killing one of the workers. Other builders claimed they would hear voices and footsteps whenever they were alone, and that pieces of construction equipment would often be thrown across the room. Even creepier, they said they often spotted a man in a black suit staring at them from inside the house. Countless exorcisms and investigations have taken place at the house since, and it has gone through several owners, but the presence that haunts it is said to still remain there today.

3. Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

In July of 1863, the small college town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania was the site of the biggest military clash of the Civil War, which to this day remains the bloodiest event to ever occur on American soil. Over 150,000 total soldiers converged on the scene, and when the battle was over as many as 50,000 were killed, wounded, or missing. The shadow of the battle still stands over the town today, and many claim the ghosts of dead soldiers haunt the battlefields. What’s unique about Gettysburg is the sheer amount and frequency of its ghost sightings. Some places in the town, like the home of Jenny Wade, a woman who was killed by a stray bullet from the battle, supposedly experience paranormal activity on a daily basis. Elsewhere, there have even been reports of lone visitors to the battlefield park stumbling across what they assume to be a battle reenactment, only to later learn that none took place that day.

Most Haunted Place: The Devil’s Den

The Devil’s Den is a rocky outcropping of boulders and shrubs that was the site of one of the clashes of the second day of the battle. The spot is famous for being the location of a small skirmish that took place when a Union artillery unit returned fire on a Confederate sharpshooter who was taking shots at them from behind the rocks. They later found a body, and photographer Alexander Gardner took a photo of it that has since become one of the most iconic images of the battle. But recent evidence suggests that the body in the photo was not the man responsible, and some even claim that Gardner dragged the corpse of another man to the spot in order to stage the picture. Supposedly, this man’s ghost now haunts the Devil’s Den, and to this day visitors to the park often have a great deal of trouble trying to take photos anywhere near the site. Pictures often come out blurry and unusable, and cameras have a strange way of suddenly dying whenever they are turned on in the area.

4. Chicago, Illinois

Thanks to its famous great fire and history of gangsters and underworld criminals like Al Capone, Chicago has developed quite a reputation for being haunted. The city has a number of well known ghost stories that are whispered among the locals each Halloween, and perhaps none is more famous that the story of Resurrection Mary. As the story goes, Mary was a young girl who was hit and killed by a car while leaving a dance hall with her boyfriend. She was buried in nearby Resurrection Cemetery, and ever since she can be periodically seen wandering the streets in her white burial dress, still trying to find her way back home. Another famous story concerns what has come to be known as the “Devil Baby of Hull House,” a child born with scaly skin and a pointed tail who supposedly haunts the house once owned by famed activist Jane Addams.

Most Haunted Place: Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery

Rumored to be one of the prohibition-era gangsters’ favorite places to dump bodies, Bachelor’s Grove is an old and decaying burial ground that has been the site of countless stories about ghosts, spirits, and devil worship. Several headstones in the cemetery seem to move at will, and many claim that the spirits of the dead often materialize and walk the grounds at night. The most famous of these is the “White Lady,” the ghost of a young woman who is always seen in a white dress, often cradling a baby in her arms. Photo: http://www.bachelors-grove.com/

5. Salem, Massachusetts

In 1692, Salem, Mass. became the sight of a series of infamous trials after three local women were accused of using witchcraft to terrorize a trio of young girls. The trials soon escalated into mass hysteria, with townspeople vehemently accusing neighbors and acquaintances, almost all of them unmarried women, of being witches. Over 150 people were arrested and charged, and as may as 19 were eventually executed by hanging. Today, the town of Salem encourages its reputation as “Witch City, USA” and has one of the biggest Halloween celebrations in the country. Alongside the tourist shops and museums, though, stand several infamous ghost stories related to the witch trials. One in particular concerns Gallows Hill, the site of several hangings, which is said to be haunted by the spirits of the 19 people lynched for being witches.

Most Haunted Place: Joshua Ward House

Known as one of the most haunted houses in America, Joshua Ward House is built on the foundation of the home of George Corwin, the man who served as Sheriff during the Salem witch trials. Corwin is infamous for his role in the death of Giles Corey, a local man who was charged with witchcraft. When Corey refused to enter a plea in court, Corwin used an old English legal precedent and placed him under a board piled with rocks in order to coerce him into talking. Corey never relented, and was eventually crushed to death under the massive weight. To this day, many claim that Corey and Corwin, who is rumored to be buried beneath the foundation of his old home, haunt the Joshua Ward House.

6. Charleston, South Carolina

Known as the “Holy City” for the church spires that dot its skyline, Charleston is one of the oldest cities in the U.S., and also one of the most haunted. Victorian mansions line the downtown area known as the Battery, which was a protective artillery installation during the Civil War, and it is here that many of the city’s most haunted houses can be found. Perhaps the most famous is the Battery Carriage House Inn, a hotel where people have reported seeing everything from strange lights, to the gentlemanly ghost of a student who died after leaping off the roof, to a headless torso that appears at guests’ bedsides in the middle of the night. Charleston is also known for a number of ghost stories that originated with the Gullah, a West African culture that populates parts of South Carolina and Georgia. The most famous Gullah horror stories usually center on Boo Hags, a type of blood-red vampire that wears human skin as a mask and feeds on its victim’s energy while they sleep.

Most Haunted Place: the Dock Street Theater

Charleston is full of buildings with a checkered past, and one of the most well known is surely the Dock Street Theater. Built in 1809, the theater is said to be the home of two spirits. The first is Nettie, a poor prostitute who was killed near the theater after being struck by lightning. The other is the ghost of Junius Brutus Booth, an actor who is more famous today for being the father of John Wilkes Boothe, the man who killed Abraham Lincoln. Both spirits are said to wander the backstage area of the theater, and many workers and performers claim to have spotted them.

7. Portland, Oregon

Portland, Oregon has developed a reputation as the most haunted city of the Pacific Northwest thanks to its bizarre history and high number of ghost sightings. One of the city’s most famous haunted houses is Pittock Mansion, an ornate house that was built in 1914 by a wealthy businessman and his wife, both of whom died shortly thereafter. Visitors have claimed to have seen apparitions and heard footsteps coming from empty rooms, and doors and windows will sometimes open by themselves. Weirdest of all, a portrait of Mr. Pittock, the man who built the house, will inexplicably be found in different parts of the house, as though it can move itself from room to room. In addition to the Pittock house, other Portland haunted places include the Bagdad theater, a movie theater built during the roaring 20s that supposedly houses a number of spirits, and the Willamette river, where in recent years a phantom rowboat has been spotted by several people.

Most Haunted Place: Shanghai Tunnels

Portland’s coastal location established it as a shipping hub and port of call for sailors during the 1800s. This eventually led to the rise of a practice known as shanghaiing, wherein unsuspecting men and women were kidnapped from bars or hotels, shipped to the Orient, and impressed into slave labor or prostitution. Portland was notorious for this practice thanks to a series of labyrinthine underground tunnels that run beneath the city streets, which were used by the Shanghaiiers as a safe way to capture and transfer victims to the harbor without being seen. Today, the tunnels are said to be haunted by the ghosts of the people who were kidnapped, many of whom were never seen or heard from again.

8. Athens, Ohio

Athens, Ohio is a small town that is home to the Ohio University as well as some downright strange ghost stories. This small, otherwise peaceful community has inspired stories of hauntings that include everything from a headless train conductor to pagan cults and the violent murders of livestock. Many claim that when plotted on a map, the city’s five major graveyards form the symbol of a pentagram, and strange rituals are at the center of many of Athens’ most famous ghost tales. A lot of these stories date back over a hundred years, when the town became associated with the Spiritualist movement of the 1800s. The most famous tells of Jonathan Koons, a poor farmer who was instructed by ghosts to build a “spirit room” in which apparitions would then manifest and communicate with him from beyond the grave.

Most Haunted Place: Athens Lunatic Asylum

Night Shift Staff

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There’s nothing creepier than a good old-fashioned insane asylum, and Athens has one of the most famous in the form of the Athens Lunatic Asylum, which operated from 1874 until 1993. The hospital held many violent patients, and is notorious for being the site of hundreds of lobotomies. Since closing, the hospital has been the at the center of numerous ghost stories, most of which are kept alive by the students at the university, which now owns the asylum grounds. The most famous of these concerns Margaret, a deaf-mute patient who supposedly escaped from her room, accidentally became trapped in an abandoned ward, and eventually died of exposure. Her decomposing body was found weeks later, and supposedly the stain that was left on the floor of the ward can still be seen today.

9. Key West, Florida

Sunny Key West might not seem like the most probable setting for haunted houses, but this small beach community is home to some of the oldest—and downright creepiest—of all ghost stories. The city’s rich history of buccaneers and rumrunners provides the backdrop for a lot of these ghosts, like those that are said haunt Captain Tony’s Saloon. Before it was a bar, Captain Tony’s was supposedly the location of the island’s morgue, and the tree that grows through the building’s center is said to have been a major site for lynching pirates and other criminals, and many are said to still haunt the premises today. Other local ghost stories concern the writer Ernest Hemingway, who kept a home on Key West for some thirty years. Hemingway’s house, now a museum dedicated to his life and work, is said to house the novelist’s ghost. Some visitors and workers claim to see him walking the grounds, while others have heard the clicking of his typewriter coming from inside the main house.

Most Haunted: Robert the Doll

The island’s art and historical museum isn’t haunted, but it does contain one of the creepiest artifacts of Key West’s history in the form of Robert, a large doll that many claim is possessed. The doll was given to painter Gene Otto in the early 1900s, and the young boy soon became deathly afraid of it, as he said it would often threaten him and wake him in the night by throwing furniture around the room. The boy’s parents would often swear they saw the doll moving, and neighbors claimed they often spotted Robert pacing in front of the windows of the house when the family was away.

10. San Francisco, California

San Francisco’s rich cultural makeup, large immigrant population, and a history of natural disasters like earthquakes have helped it develop a reputation as a Mecca of all things haunted. Chinatown alone is home to countless ghost tours and creepy folklore, but the city also boasts a wealth of haunted hotels, mansions, and army bases. Of these, one of the most famous is the Queen Anne Hotel, which served as a school for girls in the 1890s and is said to be haunted by the ghost of its former headmistress, Mary Lake. There are also a number of stories concerning Mary Anne Pleasant, the so-called “Voodoo Queen of San Francisco,” who was a former slave and abolitionist who used a knowledge of the black arts to gain wealth and influence among the city’s elite. Even the trendy San Francisco Art Institute, which is rumored to have been built on top of a graveyard that housed victims of the 1906 earthquake, is said to be the home of several ghosts who have frequently been seen climbing the stairs to a tower that overlooks the ancient cemetery.

Most Haunted Place: Alcatraz

Alcatraz Island is one of San Francisco’s most famous landmarks, but the former maximum-security prison is also home to some of the city’s weirdest ghost stories. Visitors to the island often claim to see apparitions walking the cellblocks, and sometimes hear voices emanating from what was once the cafeteria.

Oct 31

Garden of Eden Top 10 Possible Locations

Posted on October 31, 2010 by

One of the most speculated mysteries by Christians is the location of the Garden of Eden. The Book of Genesis is the primary source of information with regards to geography, but it contains very little on the garden’s location. Considering it was the birthplace of humanity and home to the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, it is no wonder we want to know where it was. The Biblical scripture below gives some clues.

“10Now a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden; and from there it divided and became four rivers.
11The name of the first is Pishon; it flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold.
12The gold of that land is good; the bdellium and the onyx stone are there.
13The name of the second river is Gihon; it flows around the whole land of Cush.
14The name of the third river is Tigris; it flows east of Assyria And the fourth river is the Euphrates.”

There have been a number of claims as to the actual geographic location of the Garden of Eden, though some of these have little or no connection to the text of Genesis. Most put the Garden somewhere in the Middle East, but this list shows a few more locations you might not have considered. Let there be a list…

1. Jackson County, Missouri, USA

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believe the Garden of Eden to have been located in Jackson County Missouri. Founder of the Mormon church, Joseph Smith, discovered a stone slab that he claimed was an alter built by Adam after being expelled from the Garden. The garden itself was located 40 miles south, near present-day city, Independence. As for its location in the western hemisphere, some Latter-day Saints have presumed the continents were not yet separate before the Great Flood and that this approach would be consistent with the configuration of the super-continent Pangaea.

2. Mars

The Sky People, by Brinsley LePoer Trench stated the biblical description of the river watering the garden and then parting into four heads is not consistent with rivers in nature. He wrote that only canals can be made to flow this way. He then points to Mars as a location for the garden since canals have been theorized to have existed on the red planet. Brinsley goes on to say The Garden of Eden was on Mars and created by Space People. Along with Adam and Eve, Noah was also on Mars. Our descendants were eventually forced to come to Earth.

3. Lemuria

In the nineteenth century, a theory was developed that a continent, Lumeria, occupied what is now the Indian Ocean The wide range of the animals inspired the name Lemuria, which was coined in 1864 by the zoologist Philip Sclater in an article “The Mammals of Madagascar” in The Quarterly Journal of Science. Puzzled by the presence of fossil lemurs in both Madagascar and India, but not in Africa nor the Middle East, Sclater proposed that Madagascar and India had once been part of a larger continent. Other scientists have suggested Lumeria was the cradle of the human race and therefore must have been the site of the garden.

4. Praslin Island, Seychelles

General Charles Gordon supported the theory that Africa and India were part of the same continent. During an expedition he found the Praslin Island in the Seychelles group. He became convinced this was the location of the Garden of Eden, particularly the Valle de Mai. His reasoning was based on the coco-de-mer, a rare tree, which is only found on one other island of the Seychelles. Gordon concluded this was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

5. Sundaland

Another location that has been mentioned is Sundaland in the South China Sea. In this theory, the current Tigris and Euphrates rivers would not be the ones referred to in the scriptures, but rather later rivers named after two earlier ones, just as colonists often name features of their new land after similar features in their homeland. This idea also resolves the apparent problem in the theory that the rivers had a common source, which the current rivers lack.

6. Africa

Some people believe that Garden of Eden was somewhere in Northeast Africa. Evidence given in support of this includes the fact that the oldest human remains have been found in Africa, and that the Gihon is usually thought to be a name for the Nile.

7. Israel

Many believe that the Garden must have been in the Holy Land and the original river that flowed into the garden before it split into four separate rivers must have been the Jordan. The Gihon would be the Nile and the Havilah would be the Arabian Peninsulas. Eden is also tied with Jerusalem by the prophet Ezekiel. In Ezekiel 28:13-14, he recorded, “You were in Eden, the garden of God;” … “You were on the holy mount of God.” In most Jewish and Christian traditions, “the holy mount of God” is Mt. Moriah, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem (see Isaiah 2:2-2:3, Psalm 48:1-2 e.g.).

8. Northern Iran

Another possibility was proposed by archaeologist David Rohl, based on archaeological evidence, putting the Garden of Eden in northern Iran. According to him, the Garden was located in a vast plain referred to in ancient Sumerian texts as Edin east of the Sahand Mountain, near Tabriz. He cites several geological similarities with Biblical descriptions, and multiple linguistic parallels as evidence. The region today is bound by a large mountain range to the North, East and South, and marshlands to the west. The eastern mountain region has a pass leading in and out of the Edin region. This fits with the Biblical geography of Eden containing marshlands to the west, and the Land of Nod to the east, outside the Garden.

9. Eastern Turkey, Anatolia

Other scholars surmised the Garden of Eden was located in the eastern part of the region known as Eden, and that in Eden, the river divided into four branches: Hiddekel (also known as Tigris), Euphrates, Pishon and Gihon. While the identity of the first two rivers is commonly accepted, the latter two rivers have been the subject of much debate. If the Garden of Eden had been near the sources of the Tigris and the Euphrates, then it might be located in eastern Anatolia, specifically the Armenian Highland in eastern Turkey.

10. Southern Iraq

Some biblical scholars believe the Garden of Eden was located in Sumer where the Euphrates and Tigris rivers merge. This is now located in present-day Iraq. They presume that the geographical references in Genesis refer to the time of ninth century BC and the Pishon and Gihon were tributaries of the Euphrates and Tigris that have since vanished.

Oct 31

Top 10 Lost Cities

Posted on October 31, 2010 by

A city becomes “lost” when it is abandoned by its inhabitants and left to decay. This can be the result of war, migration, or natural disaster, but in each case these cities can act as a sort of time capsule, leaving a civilization frozen in history and waiting to be discovered. While many of these cities have indeed been rediscovered, others have never been found and have taken on the status of legend. Whether real or mythical, the following are the ten lost cities that have most captured the imaginations of historians, archeologists, and adventurers.

1. Machu Picchu

Of all the lost cities that have been found and studied, perhaps none is more mysterious than Machu Picchu. Isolated near the Urubamba Valley in Peru, the city was never found and plundered by conquistadors, and it was not until historian Hiram Bingham visited it in 1911 that it became known outside of the region. The city is divided into districts, and features over 140 different structures bordered by polished stone walls. It is said to have been built in the 1400s by the Incas and abandoned less than 100 years later, most likely when its population was wiped out by smallpox brought over from Europe. There has been much speculation as to what Machu Picchu was used for, as well as why the Incas chose such to build it in such a strange location. Some have said it was a holy temple of sorts, while others have maintained that it was used as a prison, but recent research suggests that it was probably a personal estate of the Inca emperor Pachacuti, and its location was chosen because nearby mountains figured prominently in Inca astrological mythology.

2. Atlantis

At this point it is fairly easy to write Atlantis off as nothing more than a myth, but this legendary city has been a source of speculation ever since the philosopher Plato first wrote about it in 360 B.C. Described by Plato as an advanced civilization and formidable naval power, Atlantis is said to have conquered much of Europe before sinking into the sea as the result of some kind of environmental disaster. While Plato’s story is seen by most as a work of fiction, his description of a massive civilization years ahead of its time technologically has captured the imaginations of countless writers and would-be adventurers, and there have been numerous expeditions launched in search of the city. Perhaps the most infamous occurred at the beginning of WWII, when the Nazis supposedly organized a journey to Tibet with the hope of finding remnants of Atlantaen culture.

3. Pompeii

The Roman city of Pompeii was destroyed in AD 79 after the nearby volcano Vesuvius erupted and buried the entire community under 60 feet of ash and rock. The city was estimated to have had around 20,000 inhabitants at the time, and it was considered one of the premier vacation spots for the upper class of Roman society. After the eruption, the ruins stood for 1,700 years before being accidentally rediscovered in 1748 by workmen building a palace for the King of Naples, and since then Pompeii has been the source of constant excavations by archeologists. Ironically, the devastation caused by Vesuvius also helped preserve the city’s architecture, which along with countless frescoes and sculptures, have helped make Pompeii a key part of modern historians’ understanding of life in ancient Rome.

4. Angkor

The Angkor region of Cambodia served as the center of power for the Khmer Empire from 800 AD well into the 1400s. The region was abandoned after a slow decline that ended with an invasion by a Thai army in 1431, leaving the massive city and its thousands of Buddhist temples to be reclaimed by the jungle. The city lay relatively untouched until the 1800s, when a group of French archeologists began to study and restore it. Angkor and its surroundings– which rival Los Angeles in size– have since been recognized as the biggest pre-industrial city in the world, and its famed temple of Angkor Wat is commonly considered to be the largest religious monument in existence.

5. Memphis

Founded in 3,100 B.C., Memphis was the capital of ancient Egypt, and served as the civilization’s administrative center for hundreds of years before being abandoned with the rise of Thebes and Alexandria. At its height, Memphis is estimated to have had a population of more than 30,000, which would have made it the biggest city of antiquity. Over the years, the location of Memphis became lost, and it was a subject of much debate among archeologists before it was rediscovered by a Napoleonic expedition in the late 1700s, and it was then that the city’s sphinx, statues and temples were first seriously studied. Unfortunately, stones from the ruins had been appropriated to build nearby settlements, and many important parts of the site remain lost to historians.

6. El Dorado

The Zipa used to cover his body in gold dust and, from his raft, he offered treasures to the Guatavita goddess in the middle of the sacred lake. This old Muisca tradition became the origin of El Dorado legend.

Muisca raft Legend of El Dorado Offerings of gold

One of the most famous of all the legendary cities, El Dorado was a mythical empire supposedly found in the jungles of South America. Literally meaning “The Golden One” in Spanish, the city was said to be led by a powerful king and hold untold riches of gold and jewels. In the time of the conquistadors, the city was a subject of constant fascination, and several disastrous expeditions were launched in search of it. The most famous of these was headed by Gonzalo Pizarro, who in 1541 led a group of 300 soldiers and several thousand Indians into the jungle in search of El Dorado. They uncovered no evidence of the city or its treasures, and after the group was decimated by disease, famine, and attacks by natives, the expedition was abandoned. This model is on display in the Gold Museum, Bogotá, Colombia.

7. Petra

Arguably the most beautiful of all the cities on this list, Petra is located in Jordan near the Dead Sea and is believed to have once been the center of the Nabataean caravan trade. Its most striking feature is its exquisite stone architecture, which is carved out of the rocks of the surrounding mountains. This helped make Petra a naturally fortified city when it was established as a capital in 100 B.C., and evidence suggests that it featured many other technological advancements like dams and cisterns, which helped the inhabitants channel the region’s flash floods and store water for use in times of drought. After hundreds of years of prosperity, the city went into decline after the Romans conquered the region, and in A.D. 363 an earthquake destroyed several of its buildings and crippled its infrastructure. Petra was eventually abandoned, and it stood for years in the desert as something of a curiosity before being revealed to the world at large in 1812 by a Swiss explorer.

8. The Lost City Of Z

Supposedly located deep in the jungles of Brazil, the lost city of Z was said to be an advanced civilization with a sophisticated network of bridges, roads, and temples. Speculation about Z began after a document was found in which a Portuguese explorer insisted he had visited the city in 1753, but otherwise no evidence of its existence has ever been uncovered. The city of Z is most famous for attracting the interest of explorer Percy Fawcett, who in 1925 vanished without a trace while in search of it, and over the years a number of other adventurers have died or disappeared while on its trail. In recent years, a city known as Kuhikugu was discovered in the Amazon Rainforest that showed evidence of sophisticated fortifications and engineering, leading many to speculate that it may be the source of the Z legend.

9. Troy

Made famous in the epic poems of Homer, Troy was a once-legendary city located in modern day Turkey. Best known for being the site of the Trojan War, ancient Troy was a strongly fortified city that stood on a hill near the river Scamander. Its coastal location allowed it to be a naval power, and nearby plains provided excellent land for farming. Troy was long considered by many to be the stuff of myth until it was first excavated in the 1870s by Heinrich Schliemann, who discovered that there were actually numerous cities on the site, which over the years had been built on top of one another. Although it was once a towering seat of power, the modern-day Troy excavation site is said to be relatively unimpressive, the result of years of digging and frequent looting by tourists.

10. The City Of The Caesars

Also known as the Wandering City and the City of Patagonia, The City of the Caesars is a mythical city that is believed to have been located on the southernmost tip of South America in the region known as Patagonia. The city has never been found, and at this point it is considered more legend than anything, but in its time it was quite sought after by colonial explorers. It was said to have been founded by survivors of a Spanish shipwreck, and was believed to possess huge amounts of gold and jewels. Over time, a number of legends have formed around the City of the Caesars, with some saying that it was populated by 10-foot tall giants, and others claiming that it was a city of ghosts that could appear and disappear at will.

Oct 31

Top 10 Theories about the Lost City of Atlantis

Posted on October 31, 2010 by

Ever since the famed Greek philosopher Plato first wrote of a fabled continent called Atlantis more than two thousand years ago, scholars have been locked in fierce debate as to whether such a place truly existed. While a few rare individuals have taken Plato’s words seriously, most scoff at the idea that an advanced civilization could vanish as completely as if it had never existed. Such is a bit like imagining an elephant could walk through a snowdrift without leaving footprints, making it easy to ignore the entire subject and write it off as yet another example of New Age pseudo-science or, at best, an fantastic and historically indefensible fable. And this is not an unreasonable position either. After all, Plato described the place as being as large as Libya (an ancient term for North Africa) and Asia combined, making one reasonably confident it should be hard to miss. And yet no one has managed to produce as much as a coral reef that might have marked its ancient shoreline, much less an entire submerged continent. But the search continues and, if anything, appears to be growing in both scale and sophistication until today it has become something of a technological/historical holy grail for the twenty-first century.

Did Atlantis exist, and if it did, where could it have been? While no one can answer that question with any degree of certainty—though some attempt to—there are quite a few competing theories out there to consider. Some of them are more plausible than others—and a few even have some support from the scientific community—but all of them are just guesses. So now, without further ado, here is my list, in no particular order, of the top ten theories regarding the lost continent of Atlantis.

1. Atlantis was in the Bahamas, Bermuda, the Azores, Canary Islands, etc.

The idea that Plato was referring to a place in the Atlantic does not die easily, and so nearly any island or land mass lying anywhere between east coast of the Americas and Europe/Africa has been suggested as the locale for Plato’s fantastic continent. Unfortunately, none of these islands are particularly impressive in scope or size, nor do any of them suggest they once maintained anything approaching an advanced civilization in the distant past (or even today, for that matter). The Bahamas, because of the discovery off the coast of Bimini Island in 1968 of what appears to be a man-made harbor wall (generally dismissed by scientists as a formation of beach rock containing artificial looking but purely natural fracture lines suggestive of a paved “road”) and due to interest in the unproven but popular “Bermuda Triangle” legend, remains the odds-on favorite among many Atlantis buffs, though it is far from enjoying unanimous support.

2. Atlantis was in Southeast Asia

If one looks at the geography of the planet at the height of the last Ice Age, they will notice the ocean levels were over two hundred feet lower then as a result of so much water being taken up in the massive ice sheets that covered most of North America and Europe. As such, you can see that the island archipelago we know today as Indonesia was then a complete continent nearly as large as western Europe that stretches from Australia to the Indian subcontinent (which also extends hundreds of miles further out to sea). Temperate, sub tropical, and massive, it would have made a perfect place for an emerging civilization—perhaps even one as technologically advanced as our own today—to take root. Could such a global civilization have emerged then, only to perhaps find itself destroyed by its own technology and all evidence submerged by the expanding ocean as the ice caps melted? Certainly, this would account for many of flood and advanced civilization mythologies maintained by many diverse cultures around the globe and explain many of the similarities between parallel structures (pyramids, obelisks, stone carvings) seen around the world today.

3. . Atlantis was actually the mythological land of Mu

Mu is the name of a hypothetical continent that allegedly existed in either the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean, depending on who you listen to. In either case, it was thought to have disappeared at the dawn of human history, its survivors emigrating to other continents to serve as the foundation for a number of later civilizations throughout the world. Today, scientists generally dismiss the concept of Mu and of other lost continents like Atlantis or Lemuria (see above) as physically impossible, since a continent can neither sink nor be destroyed by any conceivable catastrophe, especially not in a short time. Additionally, the weight of archaeological, linguistic, and genetic evidence is contrary to the claim that the ancient civilizations of the New and Old Worlds stemmed from a common ancestral civilization.

4. Atlantis was a reference to an ancient continent called Lemuria

Interestingly, the Greeks were not the only ones to maintain a belief in an ancient, island-bound civilization. India and the Asian continent have their own tradition, which they call Lemuria—an island civilization that supposedly existed in the Indian Ocean. The idea that such a place existed was first postulated by 19th century zoologist Philip Sclater as a means of accounting for the discontinuities he found in the biogeography of the Indian Ocean region at the time. His premise that Madagascar and India may have once been part of a larger continent, which he named Lemuria, has been rendered obsolete by modern understanding of plate tectonics, which consistently demonstrate that while sunken continents do exist—such as the Kerguelen Plateau in the Indian Ocean — there is no known geological formation under the Indian Ocean that corresponds to Sclater’s hypothetical Lemuria. The name did at least lend its name to the tiny primates native to Madagascar known as a Lemur (or was it the other way around?) so it wasn’t a complete loss.

5. Atlantis was referring to a more temperate Antarctica

The controversial suggestion by the late Charles Hapgood that the Earth’s crust may have suddenly shifted some twelve thousand years ago (he maintained that the Earth’s crust floats upon a magma of molten rock like the skin of an orange and periodically shifts over the millennia due to subterranean and gravitational pressures) has caught the imagination of many an Atlantis buff over the years. According to Hapgood, because of this shift, at one time the continent of Antarctica was much further north than it is now—and temperate and populated by an advanced civilization to boot—and that this was what Plato was referring to as Atlantis. Its sudden and catastrophic shift to its current icy position, then, destroyed the Atlanteans and made Antarctica the uninhabitable ice box it is today. Though the idea has its supporters, the premise that the Earth’s crust could shift so dramatically and suddenly has no support within the scientific community. Further, Hapgood presented his theory before science came to fully understand the nature of plate tectonics, which did much to exile his “sliding crust” hypothesis to the realm of “fringe beliefs” where Plato’s continent is concerned.

6. Atlantis was a mythical retelling of the Black Sea flood

Another theory that has been recently postulated—and again has some support among scientists—is that Atlantis and the “great Deluge” told of by Plato was a mythologized account of another historical event that took place thousands of years before Plato was born: the breaching of the Bosporus by the Mediterranean Sea and the flooding of the Black Sea around 5,600 BCE. It has been demonstrated that a number of civilizations may have flourished on the shore of the Black Sea (then a fresh water lake half its present size) at the time, only to find it all immersed under hundreds of feet of sea water in a fairly short time (some estimates placing it at less than a year). Such an event would have likely had a traumatic effect on the people of the region, who would have been scattered by the event. As they escaped the rising waters and emigrated to other regions, each would have carried with them their own highly mythologized account of the flood that came upon them practically overnight, creating the inspiration for Plato’s story.

7. Plato was referring to the ancient Minoans and the explosion of the volcanic island of Thera

An increasingly popular theory concerning the true nature of Atlantis—and one that has some acceptance within the scientific community—is that Plato was referring to a people native to the modern Greek island of Crete known as the Minoans, who were largely wiped out when the nearby volcanic island of Thera (known today as Santorini) erupted in 1600 BCE, producing tsunamis large enough to obliterate a number of Minoan coastal cities and do considerable damage around the entire Mediterranean basin. Such a spectacular and massive catastrophe, obviously at the hands of displeased Gods, would have been remembered in the annals of Egyptian history to ultimately find its way into the mythology of Plato’s day over a thousand years later. The hypothesis, then, is that Plato was referring to that very catastrophe in a somewhat idealized form, the descriptions of Atlantis’ vast resources and power unavoidably exaggerated or embellished with the retelling over the years and innocently passed on by the Greek philosopher.

8. Atlantis was a continent that existed in the mid-Atlantic as was destroyed by natural catastrophes

For the purest, this remains the traditional understanding and the one originally postulated by nineteenth century writer and Atlantisphile Ignatius Donnelly in his 1882 book, Atlantis, the Antediluvian World, who imagined the Atlantic Ocean to be no more than a few hundred feet deep and prone to occasional vertical shifting. Since so little was known about the ocean in his day, his theory was considered plausible by many at the time—at least until the advent of modern oceanography, when it was determined that the Atlantic was up to five miles deep in spots and not prone towards creating massive continents. While this essentially torpedoed poor Ignatius’ hypothesis as far as science was concerned, some continue to hold to it with great tenacity largely because of Plato’s insistence that the place existed just outside the “Pillars of Hercules” (an ancient term for the modern Straits of Gibraltar), implying that it had to lie somewhere in the mid Atlantic.

9. Atlantis was fictional but the accounts of a world-wide Deluge were true

Plato makes numerous references to a great deluge occurring thousands of years before his time that destroyed almost the whole world, leaving only a tiny fragment of humanity left to repopulate the globe and start civilization anew. The story of Atlantis, then, while itself a manifestation of Plato’s fertile imagination, may have been inspired by a real historical event—in this case, a massive global flood—that may have taken place ten thousand years before he was born. Could this be some distant memory of the end of the last Ice Age, when global ocean levels rose by hundreds of feet in just a few centuries, submerging entire landmasses in the process, embellished through each retelling, or could it have been something else (such as a meteor strike in the ocean that produced enormous devastation throughout the world?)

10. Accounts of Atlantis are fictional

The traditional position maintained by most scientists and historians over the years is that Plato’s account of a fabulously wealthy city as told in the Critias and Timaeus was merely a fictional story designed to both entertain and enlighten his readers as to the dangers of hubris and turning one’s back on the gods, and was never intended to be interpreted as an account of a real place or real events. Evidence for this is suggested by the fact that Plato tells us the island was given to the Greek god Poseidon, who fell in love with the beautiful daughter of Atlantis’ first king—named, not coincidentally I suspect, Atlas—and begat numerous children by her, to whom he promptly parceled out parts of the island to. He also tells us the Atlanteans were defeated by an alliance of Greek and Eastern Mediterranean peoples around 12,000 years ago—thousands of years before the earliest civilizations even emerged in the region—making the entire story unlikely to say the least. The question, then, is that if we are compelled to take any of the story as true, aren’t we logically obligated to accept everything—including a procreating god and a skewed timeline—as true as well? Does give one pause to wonder.