Inside the haunting abandoned real life ‘Hansel & Gretel’ cottage built by outcast siblings in the depths of the forest
HARROWING pictures have revealed the inside of an abandoned cottage that looks like something out of a twisted fairy tale.
Hidden in the deep forest of Italy‘s Veneto region sits a “real-life Hansel and Gretel” house built by two outcast siblings.
Alice and Nellino lived in the eerie cottage reportedly without electricity, gas, or running water.
They survived solely off the produce they grew and the livestock they kept.
Both teachers and artists, the pair made their reclusive home their blank canvas to let their creativity loose.
The two-storey building is entirely adorned with murals, statues and illustrations.
Carved princess statues adorn the outside of the house and murals cover every wall depicting scenes from classic fairy tales – with images of Sleeping Beauty, Pinocchio and other mythical creatures such as goblins, elves and dwarfs.
Alice and Nellino even decorated their unused TV with images of famous Italian singers Luciano Pavarotti and Katia Ricciarelli.
But what once looked like a colourful wonderland, now resembles a scene straight out of a spooky Halloween film.
Trees and bushes engulf the once-picturesque cottage, and a life-sized woman statue greets the daring visitors upon arrival.
Similarly to the witch from Hansel and Gretel, rumour has it that the siblings would enchant their garden to capture and eat children.
It is believed that the remains of the siblings were buried in a communal grave in their back garden.
Technical writer and urban explorer Federico Limongelli had the guts to venture himself into the cottage, located in the countryside near Padua.
“They transformed their home into a fairy tale world where fantasy reigned over everything,” he said.
“Their art was transferred to everything around them: they painted the walls with imaginative subjects and decorated every nook and cranny with strange beings.
“Alice had a quite eccentric style, in fact, she always sewed the clothes that she wore and she loved to wear them with heels even if she was always relegated to the house.
“Nellino, on the other hand, occasionally went to the village to make small purchases, such as the material needed to make their creations.
“Due to their extravagance and their different lifestyle from the rest of the inhabitants of the town they were labelled as weird and various legends and rumours circulate about them, such as for example that the [so-called] enchanted garden served to attract children to their home, children who, once captured, were killed and eaten.
“It was also believed that the remains were buried in a mass grave in the back of the house.”
Meanwhile, an abandoned ghost town that was supposed to cost $1.6billion hasn’t been touched since 2008 when its developers landed themselves in big trouble.
When the idea was launched in 2006, several investors promised to spend a whopping amount on the town advertised as a rich man’s dream.
The 900-acre development sits near Table Rock Lake in Missouri, and has been nicknamed the McMansion’s estate.
It would’ve been fully kitted out with a huge shopping mall, a 390-room hotel and America’s second-largest indoor water park, alongside dozens of enormous townhouses built like mansions.
In Namibia, another ditched ghost town sits in the middle of the desert.
It was once full of diamonds but is now full of run down homes, buried knee-deep in the sand.
The bustling village was producing a million carats of diamonds a year- totalling 11.7 per cent of the world’s total diamond production.
But when they ran out in 1956, the village was completely abandoned and in the coming years sand dunes had smashed through the houses, flinging open doors and filling up the empty buildings with heaps of smooth sand.