In the remote, rugged Gizel valley of Northern Ossetia, Caucasus, Russia, there is a set of stone buildings that from a distance look like a regular, innocent, not-scary village. A closer look inside the buildings with slanted slate roof reveal something gruesome: mummified bodies dressed in their best clothes and shoes with hair tidily combed.
Local legends have it that in the 18th century, a plague swept through Ossetia. The clans built quarantine houses for sick family members, who were provided with food, but not freedom to move about, until death claimed their lives.
