Dizarranged is back with day 3, 4, and 5, 6, and 7 of 31, exploring haunted places across the globe you can travel to. In case you missed one, check out the full section here.
Locations: Australia, Argentina, Greece, South Africa, & Japan
Places: Monte Cristo Homestead, Recoleta Cemetery, Davelis Cave, Castle of Good Hope, and Aokigahara Forest.
Monte Cristo Homestead History
The Monte Cristo Homestead, a fine home, with at least ten ghosts eternally remain, built back in 1885 by your human pioneer Christopher William Crawley. It stands tall in Junee, New South Wales, all Victorian elegance perched on a hill like it owns the horizon. Crawley used his railway fortune to establish this grand double-storey manor at the heart of the town’s identity, and his family retained ownership until the late 1940s. After a long stretch of silence, Reg and Olive Ryan swooped in during the 1960s, patching it up and breathing life back into its fading walls. Over the decades, it has shifted roles, evolving from a museum, including a doll museum, to an antiques showcase and even a curio shop. It has been featured on Earthling Entertainment via television shows such as 1977’s A Big Country, the 1992 travel show Getaway, the paranormal game/reality show Scream Test (2000), Ghost Hunters International (2010), the 2012 mockumentary horror film Muirhouse, and more. You mortal beings seem to love escaping immortality by sitting for hours behind screens. After the death of Olive Ryan, her family decided to close the location to the public, ending the years-long journey of paranormal sightings and ghost hunting, as if that would put an end to ghosts haunting the site. Whatever the reason was, it’s no longer open to the public since January 2025. The humans of Junee remain hopeful that the place will reopen.
Recoleta Cemetery History
Rich in Argentine history, the Recoleta Cemetery is a renowned site honoring legends such as the infamous Eva “Evita” Perón. Over 6,400 tombs, crypts, and coffins dominate this land of the departed. Located in the heart of Buenos Aires, the Recoleta Cemetery was once an orchard for the adjoining Basílica Nuestra Señora del Pilar before it transformed into the city’s first public cemetery in 1822. Designed by French engineer Próspero Catelin, the site resembles a miniature city, featuring blocks of marble mausoleums in a variety of styles, including Art Deco, Art Nouveau, Baroque, and neo-Gothic. Over 90 tombs are recognized as national historical monuments. Visiting the location feels less like a graveyard and more like an almost dreamlike marble metropolis filled with expired humans. Dive into Recoleta Cemetery, documenting its history since 2007.
Davelis Cave History
Located on the southwestern slope of Mount Penteli northeast of Athens, this cave takes its name from Christos Davelis. A nineteenth-century bandit who used the cave as his hideout. He became known for robbing the wealthy and for also allegedly having a romantic encounter with a French duchess living near Penteli. The cave provided him with a secret stronghold in the marble quarries, which is why his name became known.
However, he didn’t die there. After years of being on the run and going on raids, he was eventually caught by Greek soldiers and killed in 1856 near Mount Parnitha. He didn’t die in the cave, which is why the hauntings is more about the strange energy surrounding the location. Long before Davelis, the cave already had history by supplying marble for the Parthenon. It later became a retreat for Byzantine monks, who even built a small double church inside the rock.
Castle of Good Hope History
The Castle of Good Hope sits in Cape Town, South Africa, at the foot of Table Mountain, where land meets the sea. Once the very edge of the settlement, it now stands surrounded by the modern city, its bastions still pointing outward like an ancient star shape in a galaxy of glass towers and highways. From here, it guarded the Cape for centuries. Built between 1666 and 1679 by Dutch hands, enslaved labor, and commandeered sailors, this stronghold became the oldest surviving building in South Africa. It was built like a small city inside a fortress, complete with a church, bakery, workshops, cells, and even its own laws. Today, this relic in Cape Town lives on as a museum.
Aokigahara Forest History
We’ve landed in Japan, earthlings, not on your neon-lit streets of Tokyo, but at the edge of Mount Fuji, where an ocean of trees stretches across hardened lava. Welcome to Aokigahara, also called the Sea of Trees, or in darker terms, The Suicide Forest, born from the fiery eruption of 864 CE. When Fuji roared and spilled its guts, the lava cooled and left behind the strange, porous ground that this forest feeds on today.
Thirty square kilometers of twisted roots and mossy silence now cover that ancient rock. Sound itself seems to vanish here, swallowed whole by the volcanic floor. Schools come for field trips, tourists explore the nearby ice caves and wind caves. From the outside, it looks like another green forest. Step inside, you may never step out.
Reported Activity
Monte Cristo Homestead
While closed, there’s the internet, which became publicly available to you humans in 1993. Such babies! There’s a lot of information on the hauntings that have been reported inside the Monte Cristo Homestead. Guests report disembodied whispers, flickering lights, sudden nausea, and even fainting. Orbs drift through rooms, shadows move against the walls, and cold, unseen hands slip into yours on the staircase where Crawley’s infant granddaughter once fell. Some swear they’ve been pushed on those same steps, as if the house itself wants them gone. You think the Conjuring house holds demonic horror? Well, think again, perhaps there’s more than one reason why the Monte Cristo Homestead has closed its doors to the public.
Many spirits linger within these haunted walls, at least ten, which also witnessed events from its dark history. For one, Elizabeth Crawley, who lived the rest of her life in grief, unable to cope with her husband, Christopher’s, death, who died in December 1910 from heart failure and blood poisoning. It is said that Elizabeth left the house only twice within the twenty-three years after her husband’s passing and frequently utilized the attic after building a small chapel.
Unable to keep his pants on, Christopher, while amongst the living, knocked up two maids, resulting in one of them, the baby in the human womb and all, ending her own life by jumping off the balcony. Tales of her haunting remain around the veranda, along with bloodstain marks where her body splattered. The second maid gave birth to a son named Harold. A different disturbing tale of the boy getting into a horrific accident, surviving getting hit by a coach, yet sustained lifelong trauma, and was permanently disabled. To make things more horrifying, the family kept the boy locked in chains. The Monte Cristo Homestead, where horror in the waking world blends with the paranormal: what is more horrifying? The tragedy continues, as the boy was later put away in an asylum after he was discovered chained to his mother’s bed. Just like all mortal beings, both of them eventually died, and while the son died at the asylum, his spirit is locked away in the homestead, where the sound of chains has been reported.
If that’s not brutal enough, previous owners may have tolerated humans, but they sure loathed other creatures, animals. That hatred transpired after their passing, where one night, when the Ryans came home, they found their chickens strangled to death, a parrot was also choked to death, and a batch of kittens were killed. Is that a strange coincidence, or is there some wild, sinister activity happening at this site? There are more horrifying tales, which you can read more about at this well-documented listing on The Little House of Horrors.
Recoleta Cemetery
While the Monte Cristo Homestead had a list of eerie tales between the living and the dead, no aliens or unexplained extraterrestrial creatures, though, or so one human may think. La Recoleta Cemetery has its own batch of twisted tales, one involving being buried alive.
Rufina Cambaceres — The Buried-Alive Debutante
At age 19 in 1902, Rufina was declared dead and entombed, which should have been the end of her story. But it wasn’t. Workers later found her coffin shifted, lid ajar, and scratch marks inside. She was mistakenly buried alive. Her tragic death led to some post-living, as visitors say they feel her anguish in piercing sobs or see her silhouette drifting across her mausoleum, making it difficult ever to forget her.
David Alleno — The Grave Digger
Alleno spent 30 years digging graves until he saved enough to afford his permanent resting place. Once his eternal sleeping arrangement was complete, it is said he took his own life inside it. It’s uncertain how much rest he ended up giving himself, as it’s been said his spirit hasn’t left. At dawn, you might hear keys jangling in empty corridors, footsteps leading to nowhere, or visitors having a sense of being followed, yet no one is near.
La Dama de Blanco (Lady in White)
Legend claims that The Lady In White is Luz María García Velloso, the daughter of playwright Enrique García Velloso, who passed away from leukemia at the age of 15 in 1925. The lore behind the girl’s story extends beyond resting in eternal peace; stories suggest that a man finds a girl crying in white near the Cemetery. He takes her to a nearby coffee shop, and while helping her out of distress, she vanishes. The man later discovers her name and resting location.
Long live(?) Evita
Though her remains lie five meters underground in a fortified crypt, many insist Evita’s essence remains. Visitors report sudden warmth near her vault, shadowy figures running near, or a sense of an unknown presence watching over her site.
Davelis Cave (Mount Penteli)
Davelis Cave started in the 5th century BC when marble miners, digging stone for the Acropolis, stumbled onto its entrance. Over the centuries it’s been everything: a hideout, a holy site, and even a treasure stash for the infamous 19th-century brigand Christos Davelis, who gave the cave its modern name. Inside, the tunnels twist deep into the mountain, leading to pools of water and chambers once devoted to Pan and later saints. History remains all over this area of a long past with pottery, shrines, and even a tiny church at the entrance.
For centuries people have sworn the cave carries an unnatural energy: water running uphill, voices echoing without a source, explorers vanishing in the labyrinth. Paranormal investigators report ghostly chants, strange electromagnetic surges, and even tiny figures caught in the infrared. Add in the mysterious government digging of the 1980s; machinery abandoned, tunnels sealed, no explanation, and it’s no wonder locals warn this isn’t just a hike. Walk in alone, and you may not walk back out the same.
Castle of Good Hope
The Castle of Good Hope may appear to be a preserved landmark giving the Dutch a piece of history in Cape Town, but inside, the past remains unchanged. Beneath its walls lies the Donker Gat, the “Dark Hole,” a dungeon where prisoners were tortured and sometimes drowned when winter floods filled the chamber. Today, footsteps and voices remain heard in the same corridors. The bell tower, sealed for centuries, where a soldier who once hanged himself by the bell-rope refuses to be forgotten.
The list of haunted activity and its dark history continues with a black dog prowling the grounds, lunging at the living before dissolving into air. A glowing man has been seen leaping from the walls, vanishing before impact. Governor Pieter Gijsbert van Noodt, cursed by deserters he sentenced to death in 1728, is said to still pace the halls while in rage. Lady Anne Barnard, once the social heart of the Castle, continues to appear when VIPs arrive, as if her duties never ended.
Aokigahara Forest
The forest is infamous for its oppressive silence, where the wind doesn’t pass through, and even animals stay away. That should be your glowing warning sign: ghosts ahead. If you need more proof, Compasses and GPS often fail, allegedly caused by magnetic soil or demons lurking beneath the trees. Visitors mark trails with tape to avoid getting lost.
For centuries, Aokigahara has been tied to death. In the 19th century, the ubasute ritual left the elderly abandoned here, and legends claim their restless spirits linger. Most notable are the haunted evil spirits, yūrei, ghostly figures in white burial robes with long black hair caught wandering deep in the forest. In modern times, the forest has become a site of suicides. Warning signs are now displayed throughout the forest urging visitors to think of their families.
How to Visit
Monte Cristo Homestead
Unfortunately, the homestead is now off-limits and is private property. It may reopen at some point in the future.
Recoleta Cemetery
La Recoleta Cemetery is open for you humans to explore. Tours can also be arranged visiting this cool website.
Davelis Cave (Mount Penteli)
Take a trip to Athens and there are hiking trails you can still take, if you dare.
Castle of Good Hope
For visiting and more information on the Castle of Good Hope, check out this website.
Aokigahara Forest
Beyond the scares or to check out the paranormal activity, there’s more to see when visiting the Aokigahara forest.
Nearby Haunted Sightseeings
Monte Cristo Homestead
While the Homestead is currently closed to the public, you can still soak up Junee’s eerie atmosphere and take a few short road trips to stitch together a full-on ghostly getaway. Buckle up; Dizzy’s driving.
Old Gundagai Gaol (Gundagai) — 45 – 50 min
Stone walls, iron doors, whispers in the exercise yard. Book a night tour, pack a torch, and don’t trust the shadows that move when the wind doesn’t.
Cooma Cottage by Torchlight (Yass) — 2 hours
A genteel homestead that gets decidedly less genteel after dark. History talk first, haunted chills second. Tours start here.
Goulburn Ghost Tours (Goulburn) — 2.5 hrs
A roaming hunt through colonial streets and creaking landmarks. Streetlamps, EMF meters, and the occasional “did-you-hear-that?.” More details found here.
Beechworth Asylum (Beechworth, VIC) — 2.5 hrs
Long corridors, longer echoes. Night investigations here are like opening tabs in your brain you didn’t know existed. Dare to book a tour here.
Dizzy’s pro tips: check current hours and tour availability, book ahead (the spirits hate walk-ins), wear comfy shoes, and keep snacks in the car; haunting is hungry work.
Recoleta Cemetery
So, you’ve already walked through La Recoleta Cemetery, the city of the dead, with too many expired humans packed into marble palaces. If you want more ghostly stomping grounds for a full on Buenos Aires adventure, here are a few recommendations, if you dare:
Torre Fantasma (La Boca, Buenos Aires) – 35 min
The infamous ghost tower, known to be haunted. No organized ghost tours are available yet, but you should be able to see it for yourself, conduct your own paranormal investigation.
Pasco Sur / Alberti Norte (Abandoned Subte Stations, Buenos Aires) – 20min
Closed and abandoned since 1953, but the old Subway A-line in Buenos Aires’s metro has quite the legendary tale of claiming the lives of several workers. Most notable were two Italian immigrants, Salvador Vaca and Antonio Salas, whose deaths turned out to be from negligence covered up as accidental. The lore behind the station remains; these workers’ spirits never left. While it’s closed to the public, it’s a quick drive to visit the area of your choosing.
Hotel Edén (La Falda, Córdoba Province) – 9 hours
Once a luxury retreat, now a ruin where wartime spirits still roam the halls. Paranormal investigators claim it’s one of Argentina’s most haunted hotels. While there are no ghost tours surrounding this location, people have been known to stay at places near the Hotel, which seems to be haunted by spirits and has a dark history connected to World War II.
Davelis Cave (Mount Penteli)
If you’re plotting a ghost-hunting route around Athens beyond Davelis Cave, here are three locations worth checking out.
Parnitha Sanatorium (Mount Parnitha) – 50min
This old tuberculosis sanatorium, abandoned since the 1960s, is often cited as “the most haunted building in Athens.” People report whispers, footsteps in empty halls, shadowy shapes, and cold spots, especially in its basement morgue. It may be challenging to enter safely; many tours reference its dark past without full access. Here is a tourism guide for Mount Parnitha, you may find the Sanitorium while on this adventure.
Villa Kazouli (Kifisia, northern Athens) – 25min
This grand mansion is tied to stories of torture and death during WWII, when Nazis allegedly used it as an interrogation site. Locals speak of oppressive vibes, unseen watchers, and corridors that feel “cold and expectant.” It’s mostly private property now, but you might see the structure from outside.
Frangokastello Fortress & the Drosoulites (Crete) – (flight preferred – 1hr), or Ferry and Drive (9 hours from Athens to Crete)
Built in the 14th century by Venetians, Frangokastello is legendary for the Drosoulites, or “dew shadows,” referred to as the “Dew Men” here. At dawn in late May/early June, ghostly armies of fallen Cretan warriors are said to march across the plain toward the fortress.
Castle of Good Hope
Leeuwenhof Estate (Cape Town) – 10min
It’s the earliest days of European settlement in Cape Town, the official residence of the Premier. Instances of lights flickering and a woman known to haunt the area. Some believe she died of heartbreak long ago.
Ghost House of Rondebosch (Jac Loopuyt House, Rondebosch) – 20 Min
Also known as “The Spook House,” claims include doors opening and closing on their own, as well as apparitions of an elderly, transparent figure wandering the rooms.
Rust-en-Vreugd (Cape Town, later converted to a museum) – 15min
Now an art museum, Rust-en-Vreugd is known for ghostly sightings, footsteps when rooms are empty, a woman drifting between floors, and figures peering from upstairs windows.
Aokigahara Forest
Okiku’s Well, Himeji Castle (Hyōgo Prefecture) – 6 Hours
The ghost of Okiku, a servant falsely accused of breaking dishes, is said to emerge each night from a well, counting plates and wailing when she can’t find the tenth. It’s one of Japan’s most famous haunted tales.
Nearby Accomodations
Monte Cristo Homestead
Quality Inn Carriage House
Australian Homestead
The Crossing Motel
Recoleta Cemetery
Art Suites & Gallery
Urban Suites Recoleta Boutique Hotel
Loi Suites Recoleta Hotel
Davelis Cave (Mount Penteli)
Semiramis Hotel
The Twentyone
SAY Hotel
Castle of Good Hope
Fijnbos Private Manor
Queen Victoria Hotel
Grand Daddy Boutique Hotel
Aokigahara Forest
Dots by Dot Glamping Suite 001
Shoji Lake Hotel
enico.Mt.Fuji RESORT & GLAMPING