A woman jumps into water from the roof of Murru prison, an abandoned Soviet prison, in Rummu quarry, Estonia, during hot weather July 4, 2015. During the Soviet time, Rummu quarry was used as a mining site for Vasalemma marble and most of the workforce came from among the detainees of Murru prison. When the prison closed after 1991, pumps that once kept the quarry and the prison dry were shut down, causing water to fill the quarry. It has become an unofficial and unguarded swimming and diving spot, attracting locals and tourists. (Photo by Ints Kalnins/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.

San Zhi, Taiwan is an abandoned vacation resort on the northern coast of Taiwan. It was built in the early 1980s, but construction of the futuristic resort ceased after a series of fatal accidents.
Even though it never opened as a vacation resort, San Zhi can still be toured. The strange pod-like buildings act as a tourist attraction. The colors of the pod-like buildings depend on their location. The buildings in the west are green, in the east pink, in the south blue, and in the north white

Palestinians hit injured Israeli settlers, center, detained by Palestinian villagers in a building under construction near the West Bank village of Qusra, southeast of the city of Nablus, Tuesday, January 7, 2014. Palestinians held more than a dozen Israeli settlers for about two hours Tuesday in retaliation for the latest in a string of settler attacks on villages in the area, witnesses said. The military said the chain of events apparently began after Israeli authorities removed an illegally built structure in Esh Kodesh, a rogue Israeli settlement in the area. In recent years, militant settlers have often responded to any attempts by the Israeli military to remove parts of dozens of rogue settlements, or outposts, by attacking Palestinians and their property. The tactic, begun in 2008, is known as “price tag”. (Photo by Nasser Ishtayeh/AP Photo)

A Tibetan woman displays her Qing Dynasty family dress in Zhailong Village on April 24, 2005 in Danba County of Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, China. (Photo by China Photos/Getty Images)

Polar bears prepare to feast on the remains of a bowhead whale, harvested legally by whalers during their annual subsistence hunt, just outside the Inupiat village of Kaktovik, Alaska, USA, 10 September 2017. As climate change shrinks their natural habitat, polar bears are turning Kaktovik into their very own sanctuary city. (Photo by Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA/EFE)

Abandoned Armoured Repair Plant in Kharkiv (Kharkiv or Kharkov is the second-largest city in Ukraine) June 1, 2012. (Photo by Pasha Itkin; Source: LiveJournal).

A sign marks a railway crossing next to the troubled Kruemmel nuclear power plant on June 2, 2011 in Geesthacht, Germany. The German government recently announced it will phase out the country's 17 remaining nuclear reactors by 2022 in a policy initiative that represents a radical reversal from its previous policy and was sparked by the disaster at Fukushima. Kruemmel went into operation in 1983 but was taken offline following a fire in 2007. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)