Valley of Dolls from Fritz Schumann on Vimeo.

There’s something unsettling about a small village in Nagaro, Japan. The village, located about 90 minutes from anything resembling civilization is like something out of a Twilight Zone episode.

Over 350 motionless dolls resembling people no longer living populate the small village.

Created by Ayano Tsukimi, the dolls were something that she just started doing one day.

Now the entire town is populated by dolls in various places and enacting the daily activities of the once bustling little village.

While Tsukimi’s intentions are innocently endearing, there’s something quietly frightening about walking into the now deserted school (where it looks like everyone just got up and walked out mid-day leaving EVERYTHING behind and where it was when they walked) and finding students with button eyes and stitched mouths blankly staring ahead at their just-as-creepy teacher waiting for a lesson that is never going to happen…

Unless they all freeze when the sun comes out and wait for the night to continue their ‘lesson’…

[AwesomeRobo]

That bizarre-looking tree in the photo above isn’t part of the latest concept art for the Avatar sequel. Nope. Called the Dragon’s Blood Tree it’s one of hundreds of strange, almost alien-like, plants that thrive on the remote Socotra Island hiding in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

Socotra Island is not only home to some of the strangest-looking plant life on the planet. It’s also home to an amazing bit of architecture and some of the rarest birds in the world and has been labeled a heritage site meaning that it will remain in its mostly untouched condition despite almost 40,000 residents.

[Bin’s Corner]

Google has a new program where they’re asking hikers who’re willing to strap a on 40lb Google Street View backpack version of the device that’s usually strapped to the roof of a car. They’re asking that, should you be heading off to explore some interesting part of the world, if you wouldn’t mind ‘street-mapping’ it for the rest of us to lazy to get up and do it for ourselves.

Recently a team of willing urban explorers went to Hashima Island (also known as ‘Battleship Island’) with the blessings of the Nagasaki government. While tourists have been visiting the island since 2009 their exploration area is very limited because of dangerous conditions. Google’s team, fortunately for the rest of us, was allowed to explore much more of the island so that all of us can now visit this hauntingly unique place.

[PSFK]

Like some kind of massive, uber-budgeted, city-wide set of a Ridley Scott film that takes place after the fall of mankind, several cities built by China are almost completely devoid of life.

What’s even stranger is that these massive cities continue to be built even though hardly a single living thing is taking up residence in them.

Recently an entire Chinese-built city in Africa popped up on everyone’s radar because of its sheer size. Named Nova Cidade de Kilamba, this massive city covers 12,335 acres, contains 750 eight-story apartment buildings, 12 schools, more than 100 retail units, is designed to hold an estimated 500,000 people and was built in less than three years for a hefty 3.5 billion dollars.

At the current build rate as many as 20 of these ‘ghost cities’ are being constructed every year with currently as many as 64 million vacant homes left empty.

These cities aren’t being built in people-friendly locations either…one of them is actually built in the middle of a Mongolian desert.

[WND]

Everyday this week…Brett Rounsaville brings us the Weirdest Place to Visit in America.

Look, gang. I worked for Disney theme parks for a long time. I get the idea of creating brand value by preserving the magic of a given situation, I even get that one person’s magic is another person’s “please-god-don’t-make-me-do-that-again.”

However, I can’t think of a single time I remember wandering through Disneyland and seeing a field of severed heads all grinning eerily out from under a “magic tree.” I also have a hard time thinking of that as “cute.”

BUT, if that’s what you’re after then look no further than BabyLand General Hospital in Cleveland, Georgia, home of the Cabbage Patch kids, where every hour on the hour, when the magic crystals begin to grow, a Cabbage Patch Nurse delivers a kid from Mother Cabbage. Of course, none of that would be possible without the use of Science’s new favorite drug, Imagicilin.

BabyLand General Hospital even has its own Intensive Care Unit for premature births. (Correct me if I’m wrong, but if you don’t want a premature cabbage patch kid…wouldn’t it be easier to just not make one?)

Forget for a moment the inherent creepiness of Cabbage Patch Kids and instead focus on the inherent creepiness of a 70,000 square foot fake hospital complete with superfans pushing around 25 year old dolls in strollers. I couldn’t help but get the shivers from watching a few BabyLand related videos on YouTube.

Chalk this one up the first Weird Place this week that doesn’t make my must see list.

What do you think? Creepy or cute? Did you ever have a Cabbage Patch Kid? (I remember making my transformers shoot the neighbor girl’s CPK…so I might be biased.) Scale of one to ten…how badly do you want to see this place?

Everyday this week…Brett Rounsaville brings us the Weirdest Places to Visit in America.

What’s the weirdest movie you can think of from your childhood?

That’s right, Peewee’s Big Adventure.

Now what’s the weirdest scene you can recall from that movie?

Yep, Peewee talking about Simone’s “big but” while sitting inside a giant dinosaur. (Shut up about Large Marge already.)

That giant dinosaur is one of two built by, Claude Bell, a caricature artist at Knott’s Berry Farm who also owned the Inn across from them on I-10 near Cabazon, CA. It took him eleven years to finish the giant Apatosaurus and he died before he finished the Tyrannosaurus. (Their names are Dinny and Rex BTW.)

Now, here’s the weird part. (Because it’s not weird that a caricature artist spent a quarter of his life building a 150-foot long concrete dinosaur on a lark. Or that it has found its way into popular culture via a faux children’s entertainment film directed by a crazy haired genius. No. The weird part is…)

After the guy that sunk his entire life into two dinosaurs (complete with frescos explaining evolution in their bellies) died, the two guys that bought the property, Benjamin S. Carson, M.D. and Dr. Michael Egnor, turned it into…wait for it…a creationist museum!

(Because nothing says intelligent design like two giant lizards that were apparently so poorly designed that they couldn’t survive the 6000 years since the world has been created.)

You can now pay five dollars to visit the creationist museum in Dinny’s belly and purchase toy dinosaurs with labels that say, “Don’t swallow it! The fossil record does not support evolution.”

Awesome.

Want to discuss creationism versus evolution? Roadside attractions vs theme parks?  How about Peewee’s Big Adventure versus Big Top Peewee? Well then, that’s why god invented the comments section!

Everyday this week…Brett Rounsaville brings us the Weirdest Places to Visit in America.

I’ve been getting ready for a big trip to Bryce Canyon later this week, which subsequently led me to thinking about my former life as America’s favorite vagrant, which in turn practically forced me to choose this week’s topic…Weirdest Places in America!

Today, we’re starting things off the only way Weird Things knows how…with crazy people and aliens.

If you’re wandering down Homestead Road in  Bowman, South Carolina you may just find yourself walking past a corrugated metal fence with a message scrawled in black spray paint. The message?

“UFO WELCOME CENTER” (I can only assume the message is intended to be seen from space.)

The UFO Welcome Center is a labor of love for Jody Pendarvis who built the (*ahem*) Center in his back yard. Behind his trailer. Next to his rusted old pickup truck. (Yeah, he’s that guy.)

The welcome center mostly consists of two plywood and metal saucers stacked on top of each other. The bottom one, and bigger of the two, is built “to be a place where aliens could be comfortable meeting people from Earth.” (Apparently aliens prefer environments that have racked up double-digit building code violations.)

The second saucer balances on the first for easy removal when the alien visitors decide to take Jody aboard with them. It has also become Jody’s de facto “summer home.” It’s mostly filled with extension cords and an airbed…

All that said, the dude clearly loves his pet project and there’s no denying that, talented craftsman or not, he put a TON of work into this place.

What do you guys think? I REALLY want to see this place in person! Has anyone out there visited? What’s your impression?

Most importantly, what’s the Weirdest Place in America YOU’VE seen?!