For years the hidden underground closes of Mary King’s Close, in the Old Town area of Edinburgh, Scotland, have been shrouded in myths and mysteries. Tales of ghosts and murders, and myths of plague victims being walled up and left to die abounded.

The Real Mary King’s Close consists of a number of closes which were originally narrow streets with houses on either side, stretching up to seven storeys high. In 1753, the Burgh Council decided to develop a new building on this site, the Royal Exchange (now the City Chambers). The houses at the top of the closes were knocked down and part of the lower sections were kept and used as the foundations for the Royal Exchange. The remnants of the closes were left beneath the building, dark and ancient dwellings steeped in mystery.

Following research into new documentary and archaeological evidence uncovered by Continuum, for the first time the real lives of some of the people who lived here have been traced and their stories can now be told. At The Real Mary King’s Close you will see an historically accurate interpretation of life in Edinburgh from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries.

Chernobyl, Pripyat, Ukraine

Prypiat (Ukrainian: ?????’???, Pryp”jat’; Russian: ????????, Pripjat’), or Pripyat, is an abandoned city in the zone of alienation in northern Ukraine, Kiev Oblast, near the border with Belarus. The city was founded in 1970 to house the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant workers, and was abandoned in 1986 following the Chernobyl disaster. Its population had been around 50,000 prior to the accident.

It is difficult to accurately quantify the number of deaths caused by the events at Chernobyl

The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear reactor accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union. It is considered to be the worst nuclear power plant disaster in history and the only level 7 instance on the International Nuclear Event Scale. It resulted in a severe release of radioactivity into the environment following a massive power excursion which destroyed the reactor.

Paris Catacombs, Paris, France

Underground stone quarries that hold the 200-year-old skeletons of several million people.

The Catacombs of Paris or Catacombes de Paris are a famous underground ossuary in Paris, France. Its entrance is located near the Denfert-Rochereau station of the Paris Métro. Organized in a renovated section of the city’s vast network of subterranean tunnels and caverns towards the end of the 18th century, it became a tourist attraction on a small scale from the early 19th century and has been open to the public on a regular basis from 1867. The official name for the catacombs is l’Ossuaire Municipal.

Bones and skulls are stacked on either side of a narrow corridor like merchandise at a warehouse—a lot of merchandise. The air is close and cool, with just a hint of decomposition, and there’s rude graffiti dating from the French Revolution, mainly about the king and the feeble nobility.