Editorials
5 Creepy Real Places Horror Games Should Visit
It’s been a while since I last did one of these. If you’re new to Bloody Disgusting — in that case, welcome! — way back in 2010, we took a treacherous journey into the darkest recesses of the world with a look at some ridiculously creepy real world places that would make great settings for horror games. From the safety of our computers we visited a slew of terrifying locales, from an ossuary in the Czech Republic that’s made from the remains of tens of thousands of people to an eerily silent forest in Japan where hundreds of people have committed suicide, and even a Pennsylvania ghost town that’s alarmingly reminiscent of the town of Silent Hill.
You guys seemed to enjoy these little trips, so it became a series, an annual celebration of how freakishly scary this world can sometimes get. After taking a year off, it’s back with five more places horror games should visit!
Dyatlov Pass — Ural Mountains, Russia
Unless you’re like me and any real amount of physical exertion sounds absolutely terrifying, the scariest thing about the Dyatlov Pass isn’t the area itself, but the manner in which nine hikers died there in 1959. The pass sits at the eastern base of Russia’s Kholat Syakhl, or “Death Mountain” — okay, sure, that sounds moderately terrifying — a mountain the group was working on passing before they mysteriously perished.
At first, it sounds like a mishap, another tragedy to add to the ever-growing list of reasons why it’s best to remain indoors where you can soak in the electromagnetic radiation that’s being emitted from practically every electrical appliance in your house so it can get all up in your biomagnetic field. It is tragic, but it’s when you go into the details and circumstances in which they were found where things start to get bizarre.
For one, they were all experienced hikers and skiers who were led by a guide that was familiar with the area, so they weren’t exactly tourists. When rescuers were dispatched to locate them, they found a tent that had been torn apart, and within it was a majority of the group’s belongings, including all their shoes and coats.
When the hikers were finally located, their bodies were found in two groups. The first group was lying in the snow in a line next to a river, with about 200 yards separating each of them. Two months passed before the rest of them were found, and when they were it was under 15 feet of snow in a den they had hallowed out in a seemingly desperate attempt to stay warm.
Some of the bodies had broken bones and various internal injuries, but no external wounds to help identify what could have caused them. Lyudmilla Dubinina’s body was also missing her tongue and eyes.
No one knows what happened there, but I’m sure anyone with a decent imagination can come up with something a bit more detailed than the explanation the Soviet government decided upon, which described the cause of their deaths as “an unknown elemental force which they were unable to overcome.”
After going unsolved for nearly sixty years, the Dyatlov Pass incident has only recently begun to see a new surge of interest. It was used in the 2013 film Devil’s Pass, which is actually a decent horror film until it completely unravels in the final act. There’s also an indie game on the way, titled Kholat, which also plans to take advantage of the mystery surrounding the incident.
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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