1001 questions: island

Ghostly Doll’s Island. So cute :)))))))))

Welcome to Doll's Island by © Juan C. Hamparzumian
Entrance to Doll's Island, Xochimilco, Mexico City. © Juan C.

The Island of the Dolls, "La Isla de la Munecas" in Mexico is a renowned tourist destination with thousands of mutilated ugly dolls hanging from every tree.

Don Julian Santana, renouncing the world and his family to inhabit this island, dedicated his life to create the island of the Dolls which is believed to please the spirit of his drowned little girl. He is thought to scare off inquisitive onlookers by scary dolls. He was discovered drowned in 2001. His death did not take his eerie disturbed vision away.

Tourists will be attracted by a ghostly sight of dead childish faces of dolls which always graze at them as if they had to be in charged of dolls' death.

Travel, Ghostly Doll, island, Ghostly Doll’s Island

Don Julian Santana, a hermit renounced the world to inhabit this island

Strange world of mutilated dolls

Thousands of mutilated ugly dolls hanging from every tree

A mutilated doll

Lifeless dolls were mutilated and hung in the worst forms of human torture and punishment

Old dolls were scavenged from the garbage dump or bought in exchange for Don Julian's homegrown fruits and vegetables

Don Julian made the "La Isla de la Munecas" to please his drowned little girl's spirit.

Eerie eyes of mutilated dolls haunt your every move

Source: ezine9.com

About this place:

Located in the heart of the Xochimico's canals, Doll's Island has a history totally unique. Sometime in the 1950’s Julián Santana Barrera begun collecting dolls found in the trash. He lived in this tiny island in Xochimilco and according to his family, these dolls kept the bad spirits away. The family also says that a young girl drowned at the island and he brought the dolls to keep her spirit happy. The island was for many years forgotten, but then in the 1990’s a program to clean up the canals gave again way for the Mexican style gondolas (trajineras) to pass by the island. Julian drowned at the island on April 17th, 2001. His family keeps the place by visitor’s donations; the place has no electricity, no running water or any other kind of utilities. Cellular phones do get a signal, as Xochimilco is inside the limits of Mexico City’s Federal District.
To get there, you take a “trajinera” from the Cuemanco Pier and ask to be taken there. It’s a 2 hour trip each way, and during the trip you can enjoy beautiful views of Xochimico’s scenery.
© Juan C. Hamparzumian 2008

This island is one of 505 uninhabited islands in Nagasaki Japanese administration area, about 15 kilometers from Nagasaki. The island is known as “Gunkan Jima” or the island of warships. In the year 1890 a company (Mitsubishi) bought the island and began a project to retrieve coal from the seabed around the island. In 1916 they built the first large concrete on the island, a block of apartments built for the workers and also serves to protect them from hurricanes.
In 1959, population had swelled, the population density reached 835 people per hectare for the whole island (1391 per hectare for residential central region), a dense population that has ever happened in the world.
As petroleum replaced coal in 1960, coal mines began shutting down, not least in Gunkan Jima, in 1974 Mitsubishi officially announced the closing of the mine, and finally emptied the island. In 2003 this island taken as a setting movie “Battle Royal II” and inspired a popular game “Killer7″.
Here’s the pictures of Gunkanjima, the deserted and forgotten island: