The world is dotted with spectacular destinations shaped by nature and then there are places that are overtaken by nature, left crumbling and decaying in the elements. Here, we take a surreal but fascinating tour of the world's abandoned places: structures, towns and cities deserted by people because of natural disasters, economic crises and conflict.

In an interview with Living on Earth, Alan Weisman, the author of the bestselling nonfiction book The World Without Us, described what would happen if humans no longer existed. In a house without people, "suddenly no one is there in fighting off mold, keeping the insects out, keeping the mice out, keeping the woodpeckers out, keeping the water out," Weisman said.

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In the ghost town like Kolmanskop in Namibia, no one is keeping the sand out either. A former diamond mining town in the Namib Desert, more than 1,000 people were living at Kolmanskop at one time, but when diamond prices declined after World War I, they moved away, leaving buildings and shops, according to Namibian.org.Today, sands have reclaimed the town, pouring into houses and filling them almost to the ceiling, a reminder of how quickly nature can consume cities.

While many tourists now visit Kolmanskop to see its abandoned houses, the decaying prison workhouse of Hart Island in New York is almost impossible to visit.

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As seen in the Hart Island photo above (slide #8), white plastic pipes near the building mark an infant mass gravesite, one plastic pipe per 1,000 babies. The pile of dirt by the building indicates an active gravesite, according to Melinda Hunt of Hart Island Project. The island, which occupies 101 acres in the Long Island Sound on the eastern edge of the Bronx, contains the largest cemetery in the US. One million bodies of stillborn babies, the poor, the unidentified and the unclaimed are buried by prison labor in common graves. The island is run by the department of corrections.

View the slideshow above to see some of the eeriest locations in the world, from prisons and airports to military bases and vacation chalets.

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