15 Photos Of The Creepiest Abandoned Churches

By Samantha in History On 30th October 2016
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#1. Cold Christmas Church

Looking at the picture it looks like a jail, cell or ruins of an old castle.It is not. Rather, this is a photo of the interior of the only remaining tower of Little St. Mary's Church in Hertfordshire, England. Having earned the nickname of "Cold Christmas Church" because of a nearby lane also dubbed "Cold Christmas," the church has been a hotbed of paranormal activity since the majority of it was demolished way back in 1853. Perhaps due, at least in part, to the graveyard on the property, which has also been abandoned, numerous people have cited strange events around Cold Christmas Church. One woman even claimed to have witnessed an entire army of ghosts marching towards her while visiting the abandoned tower in 1978.

#2. Lincoln County Church

This picture looks like it came straight out some sort of creepy horror movie. But hold your seat tight because this picture is a smack dab in the middle of a circular clearing in the woods, with nothing else that would indicate human activity visible, makeing it incredibly creepy.

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#3. New Orleans Church

The actual story behind the destruction of this church is much sadder than an ancient behemoth lizard ravaging its exterior. This is one of several churches in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward that was badly damaged during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Many of these buildings, including this one, were never repaired. While some have since been completely destroyed by fires or other storms, others remain standing as a sobering reminder to New Orleans residents of the hurricane that devastated their community barely a decade ago.

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#4. Louisiana Church

This decaying church from near Chackbay in Louisiana has all the markings of an appropriately creepy abandoned building: rotting wooden beams, spindly tree branches growing through the walls, a precariously angled tower, window frames without any glass left in them, walls that look like they will collapse at the slightest hint of a breeze. Of course, the tinted black and white photography and overcast skies only makes it that much creepier. The only thing that is missing is a ghostly face peeking through one of those broken window frames at the camera.

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#5. Church of the Transfiguration

Though this particular church has no freaky unnerving story related to it. When you go to this church you don't have to worry about you probably wouldn't be worried about a demon-possessed serial killer lurking in its darkened corners or be constantly looking over your shoulder, waiting for a ghostly figure to spawn behind you and drag you into hell.

#6. Loxley Chapel

Okay, so this isn't exactly a photo of the church itself. Rather, it's a photo from inside the church, peering through a window out at the abandoned graveyard which houses some of the bodies of the victims of one of England's deadliest man-made disasters. In 1864, the Dale Dyke Dam cracked and then burst open, flooding the community of Sheffield and killing 240 people. Many of the victims were small children peacefully sleeping in their beds who were suddenly washed away by 650 million gallons of water cascading through their homes in the middle of the night. One horrifying story of that awful event tells of a newborn that was torn from its mother's arms by the renegade dam's rushing waters. Another recounts how three children drowned in a cellar. Now, the church and the cemetery where many of these children are buried are both ignored and nearly forgotten.

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#7. Young’s Chapel

Nestled along a quiet, lonely dirt road in Georgia (the state, not the country), definitely looks like it might secretly be the clubhouse for a collective of misanthropic hillbillies who spend their weekends dabbling in cannibalism and the occult. Or maybe like it could be a set piece discovered by Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey in the first season of True Detective, which inevitably turns out to the be the home base for a group of greedy politicians and businessmen who attempt to maintain their powerful places in society through child sacrifice and the occasional bout of witchcraft.

#8. St. George’s Church

For the record, the haunting statues are, according to Hadrava, made of plaster and not the tormented souls of a long line of dead witches who have the capability of stopping your heart with a single whisper.Jakub Hadrava was actually commissioned to create an array of ghostly, shrouded statues to hang around the sanctuary of St. George's Church in the town of Lukova, in hopes that it would increase tourism and generate enough money to make the necessary repairs to reopen to the church.

#11. City Methodist Church

Originally constructed in 1927, this church in Gary, Indiana was designed with a Gothic aesthetic, including huge pillars, a massive auditorium, and elaborate stonework. However, the cost of upkeep on such an ornate structure was a bit overwhelming. After the congregation size dwindled from around 3,000 down to less than a tenth of that in the 1970s, the church was eventually forced to close its doors, leaving it to be disfigured by the effects of time and neglect.Now, on the plus side, it can be used as a location for action and horror movies, including Transformers and Friday the 13th. Maybe keeping it closed off to the public is a good idea.

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#10. Church in the Snow

No, it is not photoshopped. No, it is not a painting. Yes, it is very, very real. Well, actually, according to the photographer, it is a carefully timed photo of an abandoned church on a chilly winter night in Canada as a the headlights of a passing train burst through the building's cracks.. However, we are much more inclined to believe that this particular photo has less to do with fancy lighting tricks and more to do with aliens made out of electricity or extra-dimensional monsters that feast in the Canadian arctic or malicious fallen angels. Or something like that.

#11. Bokor Hill Station Catholic Church

High up on a remote mountain location, Bokor Hill Station consists of the church, a casino, a royal residence, and a few other buildings, all of which have now been abandoned. Shockingly, during the nine months of construction that it took to erect these structures, over 900 Cambodian laborers died. It's hard to imagine that the souls of almost a thousand Cambodians, worked to death by their French colonisers for the sake of their opulent vacation community, don't haunt the area to this day.

#12. Warleggan Church

To be fair, this 15th century stone church doesn't even reside in Scotland, but in the civil parish of Warleggan, Cornwall, England, so the Braveheart references are a little inaccurate. Still, there is something about the harsh, grey architecture that evokes a sense of political violence and feudal cruelty. Maybe it's just the low angle of the photograph, forcing us as the viewers to gaze up at the church's impenetrable walls like dirty, little peasants.

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#13. Iglesia de Santa Ana Church

Built at some point in the 18th century, this abandoned church in Trinidad, Cuba has since become a fairly popular tourist destination. The architecture is a perfect reminder of a long-gone era and its bell tower, stretching into the blue Cuban sky, is an impressive sight to behold. On the same square as the Iglesia de Santa Ana are numerous stores, including art galleries, various markets, restaurants, and even an old Spanish jail that has been turned into the local tourism and culture centre.

#14. Woodward Avenue Presbyterian Church

Michigan's largest city is the capital of abandoned buildings. And it should not be all that surprising that this church is the only one in which spray-painted graffiti is a prominent feature. It might not be immediately obvious in this particular photo, but others of the same building show it nicely, and if you look close enough you can see some lovely slogans scrawled across the church's rotting pews. The oddest and, arguably, creepiest aspect of this church isn't its Gothic architecture, dusty stained glass windows, or moulding walls, but the reason the building was abandoned. Although the church had struggled with a diminishing congregation, it wasn't completely abandoned until 2005 when the pastor died. It seems that once he passed away, no one really knew what to do with it and it has sat in a state of disintegrating limbo ever since.

#15. Craco, Basilicata

we are cheating a little bit with this one. This is a photo of the ghost city of Craco, Basilicata in Italy, but somewhere amongst all of those nearly identical stone buildings is the town's church. Craco was a medieval village in Italy, constructed on a rocky hilltop as a strategic defensive position, allowing for easy visibility of any potential attackers. Some estimates date the original settlement back to the year 540 AD, making Craco almost 1500 years old. It wasn't until the 1960s that the last of its residents were finally evacuated due to dangerous conditions the site has a long history of earthquakes and landslides which have taken a toll on the city's structural integrity as well as the stability of the ground itself. Now that the incredibly ancient site is completely abandoned, it makes one wonder what has been left behind in those strange stone buildings.