When you’re looking at a new destination for your summer holiday destination, somewhere quiet and peaceful may be your plan. As far as relaxing destinations go, a reportedly ‘haunted’ abandoned village may not be that high up on your agenda – but this historic neighbourhood should be.
Kayaköy, in south Turkey, has remained wholly untouched for over 100 years. However, it is now being explored by keen tourists with a passion for the creepier things in life.
Kayaköy is a neighbourhood of the Fethiye municipality, in the Turkish Muğla Province, and was once a bustling place that hundreds called home.
Now, the area is largely abandoned, with houses churches and other buildings, after it was evacuated following the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-22.
People are now able to visit the site and see what life was once like for former residents, as it is all trapped in time.
The neighbourhood was once home to a predominantly Greek Orthodox community, with locals forced out of their homes after the war and the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. The treaty included a population exchange between Athens and Ankara, and the Kayaköy residents were forced to relocate to Greece.
Barred from their homes in Turkey, the Greek Orthodox refugees never returned. The treaty also made the Muslim population who were living in Greece move to Turkey.
After the evacuation, many settlements in Turkey including Kayaköy were left vacant. Over the years, many of these areas were repopulated by new communities. But rumours of ghosts living in the village may have contributed to Kayaköy remaining mostly uninhabited.
As they have been largely untouched with the exception of visits from tourists, the structures remain in near-perfect condition. Influencer @locationunlocked posted a video of the area on their travel TikTok page, providing an insight into the state of Kayaköy.
In the exciting video, they showed what exploring the neighbourhood was like. They said: “Today we visited a ghost town in Turkey. It’s been abandoned for 100 years.
“You can see photos of some of the people that lived here. Some of the houses are still more or less intact.
“It was abandoned due to a population swap between Turkey and Greece. According to the locals, the Turks didn’t want to move into this town because of the alleged ghosts.
“It feels eerie to walk through the old streets of the town, but it’s definitely an interesting place to visit.”
Getting to Kayaköy is easy enough from the UK, the closest airport is Dalaman and on average intrepid travellers only need to fork out less than £100pp for flights.
