Why do so many houses in Vermont have these strange crooked windows tucked under their eaves? The fact that they’re called ‘witch windows’ should tell you a little something about their origins. The site of only one witch trial in its day, Vermont wasn’t an epicenter of witchcraft hysteria like Massachusetts, but fears of supernatural trickery were strong enough to influence an architectural trend that carries on into the 21st century.

if you just see one of them and don’t know about the phenomenon, you may think you’ve spotted a bizarre renovation fail, but they’re set this way on purpose. Made with conventional portrait-style windows, they’re simply set into the wall at a diagonal. The reasoning? According to legend, witches can’t fly in on their broomsticks when the window isn’t straight. Hoping not to scare off potential buyers, realtors in the state have taken to calling them ‘Vermont Windows.’

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As URBO notes, an employee of Vermont’s Division of Historic Preservation made a salient point: why not angle all of the windows? If the builders who first included ‘witch windows’ in Vermont houses really believed the superstition, why would they think witches bent on entering the homes of strangers wouldn’t just pick a different window? The answer may be that nobody ever truly bought that witches were a real problem in the first place, and the anomaly caught on simply because it’s a fun local tradition.

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You can get an idea of just how prevalent this trend is in Vermont by checking out the #witchwindow tag on Instagram.

Deep in the most remote reaches of the former Soviet Union, strange skyscrapers glitter against the sky, made all the more out of place by their sleepy rural settings and lack of similarly scaled surroundings. Photographer Frank Herfort calls them ‘Imperial Pomp,’ monstrous and overly ostentatious structures that sprung up throughout the nation and the former Soviet Union in the decades since the collapse of the USSR. Traveling to places that might not otherwise draw many foreign visitors, Herfort captured the skyscrapers in all their strangely proportioned glamour for his photo book ‘Imperial Pomp – Post Soviet High-Rise.’

“After exploring Moscow’s structures I realized, that in all cities and former Soviet countries you can find such buildings,” says Herfort. “So I traveled to Vladivostok, to Blagoveshchensk on the Chinese border on River Amur, to Astana in Kazakhstan, to Baku in Azerbaijan, to Sochi and to St. Petersburg. And everywhere in between. I was always impressed by these huge constructions while driving through Moscow. Moscow doesn’t have a big skyline or big houses in the cityscape, and then I was even more impressed when suddenly there appeared one of these big new colored buildings. They are standing like single flowers cropped in the landscape.”

The German photographer notes that he feels like the buildings are “used to manipulate the humans and try to make them feel small.” He says the buildings rarely have infrastructure or real access built around them to invite the public to experience and interact with them, because they weren’t built with a care for anything other than showing off. That would certainly fit with the American perspective on Russia and its strongman fascination.

The buildings do feel like modern iterations of the strange Soviet-era monuments that still litter much of the former Soviet Union, though they’re nowhere near as creative and sculptural as the wondrous and bizarre relics of what used to be Yugoslavia.

Herfort’s book is out of stock at the publisher’s website, but a few copies are still available on Amazon, and you can see more of his work at his website.

These fictional structures seem to be ripped right out of the concept art for a sci-fi film, envisioning a world of architecture that’s totally out of scale with humans but fittingly grand for the environments in which they’re placed. ’Last Day’ by Ukrainian architect Mykhallo Ponomarkenko is the first prize-winning entry at this year’s Fairy Tales concept architecture competition, using classical painting techniques to tell stories of a huge artificial platform that uses anti-gravity engines to escape the laws of physics.

“Landscapes have always inspired me to put something weird, unreal and out of human scale into them,” says Ponomarkenko. “Something not feasible and not practical that contrasts with the natural surroundings, but also exists at the same scale. These satirical interventions lead to new ideas and feelings about nature – they make the viewer more aware about the environment and our harmful impact on it.”

“We are flat surface creatures. Sometimes I feel that we crave it so much that the planet is going to be turned into pavement so cars can go anywhere, and our industries could continue expanding. The ‘Saturn Rings’ in my proposal represent these flat surface desires but in a more poetic, optimistic, and friendly manner.”

Organized by Blank Space, an online architecture platform, the fourth annual Fairy Tales competition announced three winners selected from over 60 project submissions. Winners are awarded prizes of $2,500, $1,500 and $1,000, respectively, and select projects will be featured in the fourth print edition of Fairy Tales: When Architecture Tells a Story. Read the story that goes along with ‘Last Day’ and see the rest of the entries over at Blank Space.

“The proposals put forth in the Fairy Tales competition create entire worlds of the imagination – they build their immersive stories as much by what they don’t say, as by what they do,” says Blank Space. “The winning entries in this year’s competition include oblique references to current events, mundane daily activities and human emotions that we all easily relate to – they make visible how we shape space, and in turn, how space shapes us.”

“The images and narratives are so wildly outlandish, and yet, so grounded that it seems like we could mistakenly stumble into any of them. They are personal and powerful – a testament to the power of architecture as a world-builder.”

With ominous red lighting, creepy statue adornments, ventilation pipes resembling cannons and spaceship-like silhouettes, these buildings put off some seriously evil vibes. It’s hard to imagine how the architects failed to realize they were designing oversized haunted mansions, battleships, missile launchers, murder hotels and the Eye of Sauron, but as the subreddit r/evilbuildings illustrates, there are a whole lot of villainous-looking buildings in the world. Check out Reddit for dozens more.

Battleship Building: Research Institute for Experimental Medicine, Berlin, Germany

Completed in 1972 to house animal research facilities, Berlin’s Research Institute for Experimental Medicine is a bizarre Brutalist wonder. Its shape coupled with a multitude of ventilation pipes sticking out of the exterior walls makes it look more than a little bit like a battleship – even the globes of the lamps outside could be mistaken for cannonballs in mid-flight.

The Kingdom Centre’s Eye of Sauron, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

One ring to rule them all! By day, the Kingdom Centre tower looks pretty benign. But at night, the skybridge at its pinnacle lights up in various colors, and when this photo was captured, its red glow made it a dead ringer for the Eye of Sauron.

Niagara Mohawk Building, Syracuse, New York

This beautiful Art Deco building in Syracuse, New York cuts a dramatic silhouette when illuminated after dark, and the winged statue on the front – which is meant to symbolize lightning – has a bit of a foreboding feel to it.

Polygone Riviera Shopping Center, France

Does this building make anyone else think of the muggle-squashing ‘Magic is Might’ monument that appeared in the movie Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1? It doesn’t help that the expression on this colossal man’s face looks anguished as he peers out from between two sections of the building.

Tomorrow Square Building, Shanghai

Many people have rightly pointed out that the tip of the Tomorrow Square Building in Shanghai looks like it’s about to launch a nuclear weapon into the sky any time now.

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Evil Architecture 15 Ominous Looking Buildings Fit For Scheming Villains

Had Buffalo Bill escaped Clarice Starling and moved into a quaint suburban Connecticut home, his interior decor might have looked a little something like this. At 24 Brentwood Drive, an absolutely amazing color palette in shades of dried blood, glistening internal organs and Exorcist vomit green adorns every available surface in the form of hand-painted designs. And the best part is – all of this could be yours for just $339,900.

Believe it or not, this is an actual real estate listing on Zillow.com, described by listing agent Ernie Rossi as a “unique one of a kind finishing completed by a professional!” The agents provide a full 51-photo tour on the site, showing off room after room filled with decoupaged stair rails, musty-looking floral curtains, decorative stamped paint in rust red and squiggly designs in shiny copper.

Naturally, the listing went viral on social media upon discovery, with people describing the interiors as “serial killer chic,” “deranged” and “a portal to hell.” The real estate agents told The National Post that the sellers are artists, and remain optimistic that someone out there will fall in love with their designs. The home has only had one interested party in thirty days online, however.

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Who knows – maybe it’s actually some kind of viral horror marketing for a horror movie or a Halloween attraction, given that it’s mid-October and the house is located near the ominously named Mount Horr and Secret Lake – but there are elements of the home that feel earnest. Check out the full listing to decide for yourself.