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The Island of Misfit Dolls

Located in the canals of Xochimilco, Isla de las Muñecas is a tiny island that, much like Silent Hill, is better off existing exclusively in your nightmares than in the realm of reality. The legend goes that a young girl drowned off its coast nearly 50 years ago, but shortly after her death the island’s sole inhabitant, hermit Don Julián Santana Barrera, began finding distressed and broken dolls washed up in the nearby canals. Believing them to be evil spirits, he hung the dolls from trees to protect himself from any malevolent forces and calm the ghost of the dead girl, and as is the case with most scary stories of this kind: the island and myth surrounding it became a popular tourist attraction for people to photograph. Barerra guided tourists around the island for money until his eventual death, wait for it: drowned in the same canal he had found the girl. The dolls, lifeless and mutilated, still cling to the island trees as a monument to the deceased and a warning to the living. Check out a guided tour video below:

(via: Amusing Planet / io9)