Most of us avoid frightening or unpleasant places when we travel. But when Olivier Le Carrer found himself caught in a storm on board a sailing ship in the Bermuda Triangle, his interest in the dark side of geography was aroused. In Atlas of Cursed Places: A Travel Guide To Dangerous And Frightful Destinations, he takes us on a tour of some of the world’s most benighted places, from the Gaza Strip to a giant garbage dump in the Maldive Islands and Amityville’s House of Horrors.   

Writing by email from his home in Paris, he describes what constitutes a cursed place; how buried under a suburb in Tunis is a place where thousands of children were