One of the coolest roadside wonders of the United States is no more. Built nail by reclaimed nail over several decades by Minister Horace Burgess in Crossville, Tennesseee, “The Minister’s Treehouse” caught fire this week and burned to the ground within just 15 minutes. Anyone who was ever able to tour this 80-room wonder before its demise (like this writer) probably won’t be surprised by this news, since the whole thing felt like a tinder box all along.

Burgess broke ground on the treehouse in 1993, after he says God came to him and said “If you build me a treehouse, I will get you all the supplies.” As the supplies kept coming, often dropped off by community members, Burgess kept building. He had no prior building experience and never did plan anything out, just adding elements as inspiration and materials came.

Over the years, the treehouse hosted church services and was sometimes reportedly care-taken by homeless people who lived on the property. For decades, it was a word-of-mouth tourist attraction, drawing in 400-500 visitors a week, who would climb as high as they dared. The inside was full of pews, stained glass, rope swings art installations and a basketball court.

In 2012, the treehouse was closed to the public after the fire department deemed it unsafe. It’s easy to understand why, especially given its ultimate fate, but it feels like a loss nonetheless.

Nobody could ever accuse the Soviets of being too modest in the scale of their monuments and colossal sculptures, and they left no shortage of absolutely bonkers concrete and stone creations all over their former territories. In addition to their strange yet beautiful sculptural rural bus stops and all of abstract alien-like monuments they constructed in what was once Yugoslavia, the Soviets took pride in erecting colossal figurative statues that range from awe-inspiring to downright scary.

The Motherland Calls, Volgograd, Russia

The tallest statue of a woman in the world when pedestals aren’t counted in total height, The Motherland Calls stands 279 feet from the top of its plinth to the tip of its sword, positioned on a hill near Mamayev Kurgan, Volgograd. In 1967, when it was dedicated, it was the tallest statue in the world, period. Built to commemorate the Battle of Stalingrad, one of the bloodiest clashes in human history, the statue is quite beautiful, but that elegant pose and the jaunty angle of the sword have proven to be a structural concern thanks to shifts in groundwater beneath it. Conservation work began in 2010 to ensure that the 7,900-ton creation remains upright despite not being fixed to its plinth.

Monument of the Bulgarian-Soviet Friendship, Turna Hill, Bulgaria

The blocky, cubist style of the figures on The Monument of the Bulgarian-Soviet Friendship is certainly distinctive, shared by a number of other Bulgarian monuments built in the same era (including the strikingly beautiful and bizarrely Transformer-like Shumen Monument). Unsurprisingly, the Russian soldiers on the right half of the monument stand taller than those of Bulgaria. Erected on Turna Hill, a historic battleground and the mass grave of soldiers lost to the Russian-Ottoman War, the monument was once covered in bronze elements that were quickly stripped and scrapped when the Soviet Union disbanded, and it’s been abandoned ever since. It’s made of over 10,000 tons of concrete and 1,000 tons of armature wire and was intended to be the end of a grand Communist boulevard that was never built.

Colossal Courage, Belarus

A stern stone soldier seemingly pops his colossal head out of a mound of stone to frown down at passersby visiting the ruins of Brest Fortress in Belarus, where the Red Army stubbornly held for days against a surprise Nazi attack in 1941 despite being dramatically outnumbered. A writer at CNN called the statue ugly and said it looked constipated back in 2010, and the nation of Belarus responded with outrage, noting that ‘Courage’ is a memorial to those who died. While most monuments in former Soviet territories are disused and sometimes disowned at this point, ‘Courage’ and Brest Fortress are a major point of pride for Belarus and remain a significant tourist attraction.

Superhero-Style Astronaut Sculpture, Moscow, Russia

Yuri Gagarin, Soviet cosmonaut and the first man in space, gets a superhero-style commemoration in the form of a 40-foot-tall titanium statue seemingly ready to shoot off into the sky. Erected on Moscow’s Leninsky Avenue in 1980, not far from Lenin’s own mausoleum, the statue features a 90-foot granite pedestal. Gagarin’s first-ever trip to outer space lasted only 108 minutes, and though he escaped death as a backup cosmonaut for the ill-fated Soyuz-1 in 1967, he ultimately died during a routine training flight in 1968. His ashes are embedded into the wall of the Kremlin of Red Square in Moscow.

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Staggering Statues 7 Monumental Wonders Of The Former Soviet Union

Murder, deadly biological weapons, the torture of prisoners never formally charged with crimes and one of history’s largest mass suicides are just a few of the violent events that took place on these 7 notorious islands, leading to legends of hauntings in the ensuing years.

Poveglia: Venetian Island of the Dead

A mysterious-looking, tree-covered island visible from both Venice and Lido in the Venetian Lagoon houses the mass graves of thousands of plague victims who were quarantined there between 1793 and 1814. Locally known as The Island of Venetian Dead, Poveglia hosted over 160,000 infected people whose remains were eventually dumped into ‘plague pits,’ resulting in an unusually high amount of human remains on such a tiny island. The existing buildings were converted into an asylum for the mentally ill in 1922, with many patients reportedly claiming to be haunted by the spirits of the dead; rumors flew around Venice that the island was the setting for all manner of psychiatric experiments and that particularly troublesome patients were taken to the bell tower for lobotomies. If this sounds familiar, it’s because the legends about Poveglia partially inspired the Dennis Lehane novel Shutter Island, which was adapted for film by Martin Scorcese. After the hospital closed in 1968, the island was abandoned altogether. Today, it’s strictly off-limits to tourists, though some people manage to sneak in to take photographs.

Gruinard Island: Biological Warfare and Animal Testing

Warning: if you’re sensitive to cruel animal treatment, you may not want to watch the video above. Sheep tied to a line are exposed to deadly weapons as part of the X-Base Anthrax Trials of 1942 and 1943, held on Scotland’s Gruinard Island. The tests proved that airborne anthrax is highly infectious – a little too well. While the island is uninhabited, spores eventually made their way to the Scottish mainland, causing an outbreak. The island had to be completely sealed off to visitors, and locals report that the animals that remained on the island after the tests displayed genetic abnormalities for generations. The soil remained contaminated for decades until a group calling itself ‘Operation Dark Harvest’ began sending samples of it to government facilities across the UK, demanding that it be cleaned up. The entire island was sprayed with a solution of formaldehyde and seawater to inactivate the remaining anthrax, and by 1990, it was declared safe.

Clipperton Island: Idyllic Atoll with a Murderous Past

Imagine being shipped off to a beautiful island in the Pacific Ocean to mine guano, relying on shipments from mainland Mexico for survival, only to be abandoned and left for dead when the people sending the supplies you need are distracted by war. That happened to the one hundred men and women who began working on Clipperton Island in 1906 up until the Mexican Civil War, with all but one dying of malnutrition or failed escape attempts in the ensuing years. The lone male survivor, Victoriano Alvarez, proclaimed himself ‘king’ over the 15 remaining women and children, and began a reign of terror, raping and murdering them one by one until the widow of the former ship captain finally killed him. Three women and seven children were rescued by a passing ship in 1917. Since then, the island has been largely abandoned, though it has occasionally served as a wildlife research station.

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Horror Islands 7 Legendary Haunted Contaminated Wonders

From a mile-long strip of land packed with over one million corpses just off the shores of New York City to a floating fortress in England used by a developer to escape his creditors, these 7 islands are among the world’s strangest. While the exact histories of some can only be speculated upon, like Japan’s formerly top-secret chemical weapons facility and Mexico’s wildly creepy Island of the Dolls,  each of these mysterious islands has a fascinating story to share.

Poison Gas Island Now Overrun with Rabbits

Suspecting that the United States and Europe were producing chemical weapons despite signing the Geneva Protocol banning chemical warfare in 1925, Japan decided to move forward with developing some of its own, claiming a tiny isolated island that they subsequently removed from maps. Workers at the chemical weapon facility producing mustard gas and tear gas weren’t even clued in to what they were creating, and many of them suffered from toxic-exposure related illnesses. When the Russo-Japanese war ended in 1929, documents relating to the plant were destroyed, and the gas was dumped or buried.

Today, the island is home to the Okunoshima Poison Gas Museum – but that’s not what draws most of the tourists who visit the island, which is now part of the Inland Sea National Park system of Japan. It’s the thousands of rabbits that have multiplied there, leading to the nickname ‘Rabbit Island.’ Some people speculate that these rabbits are the descendants of animal testing subjects that were let loose after World War II, but as the rabbits have few natural predators to fear on the island and hunting them is forbidden, it may just be a case of stereotypical rabbit reproduction rates.

North Brother Island, New York

Visible to anyone who cares to notice from the windows of airplanes landing at LaGuardia Airport, the creepy abandoned North Brother Island is nonetheless unknown to most New Yorkers. The dilapidated remains of brick structures can be spotted through a tangle of vines in the overgrown forest that has sprouted around them since they were left to decay a half-century ago. The island was established as a New York City quarantine hospital in 1885, and was home to the infamous Typhoid Mary, the first American identified as a carrier of typhoid fever. Later, the island became a rehab center for teenage drug addicts before it was decommissioned in 1963. Invasive kudzu vines soon took over. Due to its proximity to Rikers and the fragility of its structures, the island is permanently closed to the public, but occasional visitors still get in. These incredible images were taken by photographer Christopher Payne for his book, North Brother Island: The Last Unknown Place in New York City.

New York Island is a Cemetery for Unknown Individuals

As beautiful and creepy as North Brother Island may be, it’s hardly the only isolated island with a sad story that can be found within a stone’s throw of America’s most populated city. Located in the Long Island Sound, Hart Island was used as a Civil War prison camp, with 235 prisoners dying there. Later, the island became the setting of a hospital, a women’s insane asylum, a tubercularium and a corrections facility for boys. But unlike many islands with such a past, this one has not been converted into a memorial, nor has it been entirely left to ruin: it is the final resting place of the city’s unknown or unclaimed dead. Used as New York’s Potter’s Field, the mile-long island holds the remains of more than one million individuals, with about 1,500 bodies (and many more amputated body parts) buried there each year. The historic buildings on the island are being torn down to make room for additional burials, which are conducted by Rikers Island inmates.

Isla de las Munecas: Mexico’s Creepy Doll Island

The eyes of decapitated dolls blink lazily from their perches in the trees on Mexico’s Isla de las Munecas – ‘Island of the Dolls.’ There’s something undeniably terrifying about seeing what look like naked infants – sometimes remarkably realistic – clinging to the branches or dangling from their necks. Legend has it that after a little girl drowned in Teshuilo Lake, island resident Don Julian Santana began collecting dolls and installing them in the trees. Eventually, their numbers grew into the hundreds. Santana often sourced the dolls from the trash or traded produce for them, taking them in any condition, no matter how dirty or worn. While many people viewed the doll-infested island as something out of a nightmare, to him it was a shrine. Tragically, in 2001, Santana was discovered drowned in the same area of the lake where he believed the little girl had perished.

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Forbidden Islands Part I 7 Isolated And Abandoned Wonders

A retirement community for circus freaks, a village of Chinese dwarves and a gated community for people who claim to speak to the dead are among the world’s weirdest settlements. Going beyond mere unlikely locations for human habitation, these towns are intentional communities devoted to the strange and unusual.

Dwarf City: Mountain Home for Little People Only

Is an amusement park full of little people dressed up to amuse paying visitors exploitative? Maybe. But the nearly 100 people who reside at Dwarf Empire have come from all over China for guaranteed housing and, reportedly, fair wages. They live and work in tiny castles, dress up as fairies and medieval soldiers and put on shows for hundreds of guests each day, and receive dance training and English lessons. The park owners hope that many more little people – who often have difficulty finding work in China, and end up living on the streets – will help the village expand to 800-1,000 residents in the near future.

Lily Dale: Gated Community for Spiritualists

A group of spiritual mediums came together at the height of the spiritualist movement in the late 19th century to found their very own village, where only people who can read minds and communicate with spirits (and their families) could reside. Established in 1879 on the shady banks of a New York lake, the town of Lily Dale has been the setting for seances, ‘automatic messages’ that appeared on chalkboards and other such phenomena ever since. Visitors still flock to Lily Dale to talk to dead relatives or marvel at the gated-off ‘Inspiration Stump’ where mediums once called upon spirits to show themselves. Mediums who want to work in the town must pass three 30-minute test readings evaluated by officials of the Lily Dale Assembly.

Retirement Community for Carnies

Where do carnival workers go when they’re not on the road? Many live in ordinary houses in ordinary towns just like anyone else, but in the mid-20th century, some sought a refuge where they could get away from the civilians who gawk at the unusual physical features that drew them to become a part of the carnival life. Gibsonton, Florida was a small town of fishermen and lumber workers before carnival legends like Al “The Giant” Tomiani (who was 7’11” tall) and his wife Jeanie “The Half-Woman” (2’6″ tall) bought property there. The town ultimately drew many more so-called ‘circus freaks,’ including Grady Stiles Jr., known as Lobster Boy for his claw-like hands, whose infamy was enhanced by the fact that he murdered his daughter’s fiance on the night before their wedding and was subsequently murdered in a hit taken out by his ex-wife and stepson. The town has a museum-like meeting hall with old photos of the carnivals and their stars, and features its own retirement village.

No Laws, No Utilities: Slab City, CA

An unforgiving stretch of the Colorado Desert near an active bombing range in southeastern California is the unlikely location for a lawless ‘alternative living community’. Slab City started as Camp Dunlop, a World War II training ground preparing United States Marines for combat duty. The camp was abandoned after the war, but a handful of chemical company workers set up trailers there in the early 1960s, and when Riverside County ordered people to leave a camping area at nearby Painted Canyon, the community grew. Today, it’s half squatter haven, half off-grid experiment, taking up some 600 acres. Home to RVs, trailers, vans, campers and shacks, the “Last Free Place in America” is home to anywhere from several hundred to a few thousand people depending on the time of year (only the hardiest can withstand the summers.) The state of California generally turns a blind eye to the community despite issues with trash and human waste. Slab City’s entrance is marked by ‘Salvation Mountain,’ a colorful hill covered in bible quotes.

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Bizarre Cities 7 More Strange Urban Wonders Of The World