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That's true even if it's an objectively bad place   Gotham City looks like a shithole, but who wouldn't trade their current life with a chance to go there and fight supercriminals with Batman? Of course, that's part of the frustration, too   we'll never actually see the Shire or Mordor firsthand. But you can come pretty close, because it turns out a lot of these fantasy settings were based on real places. For instance .

Well, just northwest of Birmingham was an area called the Black Country, so called because it had been marred with pollution from all the coal mines, iron foundries and steel mills dotting its landscape thanks to the Industrial Revolution.iphone 5c refurbished The air was so dense with smog and dust and ore that the whole place looked like Godzilla's shithouse, all the time:

There's definitely a troll under that big wheel on the left.

So, when it came time for Tolkien to create a homeland for the most evil being in his fantasy world, he just channeled the Black Country into his writing, renaming it "Mordor" because that sounded less like a racist old debutante's description of Africa.

For a while, Tolkien lived with his aunt in a section of Birmingham called Edgbaston   an area that was known for having two very distinct towers in it:

Of course, nearly all the orcs have moved off to London by now.

Those are the Edgbaston Waterworks Tower and Perrott's Folly. The former would even periodically billow smoke out into the air, as if fantasy siege engines were being constructed deep in the earth beneath it (or as if steam were coming out of a waterworks tower).

At another point in his childhood, Tolkien lived in Sarehole (a hamlet right outside of Birmingham). iphone 5c refurbished It provided much of the inspiration for what eventually became the Shire. It even was said to have large tunnels running beneath it that could've easily been the basis for Bag End, Bilbo's home (and incidentally also the name of Tolkien's aunt's farm in the area). Sarehole and nearby Moseley Bog look . well . look like something out of The Lord of the Rings:

There's one Ringwraith stalking about, but he's pretty old and overweight.

Danvers State Hospital in Massachusetts.

Arkham is of course well known for both its creepy atmosphere and its atrocious security, which make it kind of a shitty asylum. Even without the costumed villainy lurking inside, Arkham Asylum is pretty over the top. Its looming structures and labyrinthine hallways lean heavily toward the macabre, almost to the point of absurdity.

On the plus side, real estate nearby is super cheap.

It's like a caricature of a haunted house, pulled straight from a turn of the century horror story. Lovecraft's stories set in Arkham, Massachusetts, which included (along with cosmic insanity beasts) Arkham Sanitarium. But the sanitarium in Lovecraft's writing was based on a real place: Danvers State Hospital in Massachusetts.

So yes, to the horror of comic book fans everywhere, Gotham City appears to be located in New England.iphone 5c refurbished Comics, Danvers comes off as a stereotypical haunted house, with such standard fixtures as ominous tunnels that, by the way, make a great video game setting.

Don't just stand there, man   press "X"!

We would not go down there without a batarang.

It's a vast complex of shadows, arched doorways and exposed brick. It would be a cliche, if it weren't real:

It's like someone designed the perfect hallway for monster ambushes.

And how about the over the top, spooky patient rooms tucked away in the Arkham Asylum video game:

No way a real building is going to top that, right?

Yeah, Danvers' decaying patient quarters are now, without question, home to the shrieking spirits of the damned:

Dear Lord, it's nearly as terrible as a nice college dormitory.

Those are pictures of the unassuming town of Centralia, Pennsylvania, which at one point was a nice enough place to live, with a population of over 1,000 residents.

If you count all the unburied skulls, it's three times larger today.

Then the strip mine beneath Centralia caught fire, and the residents were evacuated by the order of Governor Dick Thornburgh (it is unclear whether this took place before or after he was punched in the face by Holly McClane in front of Nakatomi Plaza). The fire is still burning . five decades later.

The massive, smoldering hellblaze has opened up sinkholes, steam pits and carbon monoxide vents all over the town. Just like Silent Hill, Centralia is burning from the inside out, as if it were sitting directly over the gates of hell. This place is literally opening up like the streets of New York at the end of Ghostbusters.