5 Weirdest Places to Visit

Here is a list of five of the weirdest places to visit:

1. Salem, Massachusetts: There can't be any better place to spend Halloween than a city that has an official witch. Salem had a tryst with a horrific pre-colonial past in 1962, when the village was besieged by a witch feeding frenzy. A few girls became ill and blamed various townspeople for the illness. The trials that followed resulted in 19 hangings and one man being pressed to death. However, most of the accused witches were found to be innocent after the girls recounted their stories. So the question was whether the town was actually haunted. On Halloween, take a haunted harbor ride on a cutter ship in this scary place.

2. Bats under the Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin, Texas: The Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin, Texas, is home to the largest urban bat colony in North America. It is estimated that the colony consists of 1.5 million Mexican free-tail bats. The best time to visit Austin to catch the evening flight of the bats is from mid-March to November. At dusk, the bats fill the sky as they come out in search of food. The absolute best period to catch a glimpse of the odd sight is during the hottest days in August. There are lots of places to get to see them for free. You can also take guided riverboat tours.

3. Phallological Museum: The Icelandic Phallological Museum in Husavík, Iceland, is devoted to phallology and currently has 154 specimens displayed like hunting trophies, embalmed in formaldehyde or dried in display cases. The museum attempts to collect specimens from every extinct mammal in Iceland, including several endangered species or those currently extinct in Icelandic waters.

4. Mansudae Monument in Pyongyang, North Korea: Tourists are told to keep a respectable distance and bow in front of the 20-meter-high bronze statue of the late dictator Kim II Sung at the Mansudae Monument in Pyongyang. Only after doing so are visitors allowed to take pictures. The pictures are checked to make sure that the leader is portrayed in a positive light.

5. The Dragon's Blood Trees of Socotra: The famous Dragon's Blood Trees and the other 700 rare species draw hundreds of people to Socotra, an island in the Indian Ocean, off the horn of the African continent.