"A beautiful patch of land by day,

a haunting island of whispering dolls by night."

Just south of Mexico City, you'll find la Isla de las Muñecas, a haunted island where countless decaying dolls hang in the trees. While the exact number of decaying dolls hasn't been recorded, the story of how the island came to be overrun with dolls is far more intriguing. As legend has it, the first doll was hung when the island's sole inhabitant found the corpse of a drowned girl and her doll. Fearing vengeance from the girl's spirit, he hung up her doll as a kind of offering. Then, worried one doll wouldn't satisfy the spirit, he continued to collect and hang dolls for decades, until the day of his eerie death — the same exact location where the girl drowned. Since then, ghost hunters and locals have claimed that the dolls were possessed, often coming alive during night time to speak amongst themselves, or lure unassumming tourists to play with them. Today the Island of the Dolls is a popular, albeit macabre, sightseeing attraction. Tucked away some 11 miles from the heart of Mexico City, a visit to the island is just a winding riverboat ride away.