35 Mysterious Abandoned Places Around the World You Can Still Visit

28. North Brother Island, New York, USA: Quarantine and Isolation

Hidden in the East River between the Bronx and Rikers Island, North Brother Island is one of New York City’s most secretive and haunting relics. Once home to Riverside Hospital, it served as a quarantine facility for infectious diseases in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Its most infamous resident was “Typhoid Mary,” who spent decades in forced isolation here. After the hospital closed, the island was briefly repurposed for housing war veterans before being abandoned altogether in the 1960s. Today, the decaying ruins are overtaken by dense forest, and the entire island is off-limits to the public—except for researchers. Its eerie silence and crumbling medical infrastructure echo a history of public health, stigma, and the cost of containment in the face of fear.