A man dressed in a traditional Perchten costume and mask performs during a Perchten festival in the western Austrian village of Huben November 22, 2014. Each year in November and January people in the western Austria regions dress up in Perchten (also known in some regions as Krampus or Tuifl) costumes and parade through the streets to perform a 1,500 year-old pagan ritual to disperse the ghosts of winter. (Photo by Dominic Ebenbichler/Reuters)

Only the most intrepid urban explorers cross the tattered ruins of the old Iron Curtain to endure the excessive bureaucracy, military paranoia and freezing winds of the East to hunt for the ghosts of an empire. Rebecca Litchfield is one who couldn’t resist the haunting allure of the ruins of the Soviet Union.

Buns are stamped the Chinese characters “Ping An”, meaning peaceful and safe, inside a bakery, at Hong Kong's Cheung Chau island, China May 17, 2015, ahead of the upcoming Bun Festival on May 25. The festival celebrates the islanders' deliverance from famine many centuries ago and is meant to placate ghosts and restless spirits. (Photo by Tyrone Siu/Reuters)

A man wearing a hazmat suit and a mask holds a sign reading “The end is near – call grandma” at Times Square on March 14, 2020 in New York City. The World Health Organization said March 13, 2020 it was not yet possible to say when the COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed more than 5,000 people worldwide, will peak. “It's impossible for us to say when this will peak globally”, Maria Van Kerkhove, who heads the WHO's emerging diseases unit, told a virtual press conference, adding that “we hope that it is sooner rather than later”. (Photo by Johannes Eisele/AFP Photo)

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket breaks the sound barrier as it launches the next batch of Starlink satellites (mission; Starlink 6-7), at 12:01 AM from Launch Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida on Friday, July 28, 2023. (Photo by Joe Marino/UPI/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

NASA astronauts Stan Love and Loral O’Hara test Axiom Space’s lunar spacesuits underwater on October 1, 2025. The AxEMU suit is designed for the Artemis III mission to the moon’s south pole, due to lift off no earlier than mid-2027. (Photo by NBL/NASA via South West News Service)

A U.S. Army B-24 Liberator Bomber is hailed by a ground crewman as it takes off over a line of shark- nosed fighter planes at an advanced base in China on a mission on October 10, 1943, to bomb Japanese installations. (Photo by AP Photo)