With a name like Death Valley, you might think that strange places abound, and you would be right. Salt flats, stark mountains, ancient lakes, and rugged rock formations make it a landscape that is often described as haunting and otherworldly. It’s also vast—large enough for visionaries, seekers of solitude, fringe miners, offbeat artists, or rescuers of haunted hotels to claim a piece of it and build the unconventional life of a desert-dweller, ignoring city and society.

Amidst the barbed desert expanses, lonesome stretches of highway, twisting dirt roads, and eternal quiet, life (and possibly even death) seems to take on a different shape. From creepy to beautiful, mysterious to moving, ridiculous to sublime, I compiled a list of five of the strangest places I have come across near Death Valley.

They’re all here in this article on the Moon Travel Guides website:

http://moon.com/2015/10/death-valleys-five-strangest-places/