These gorgeous mansions – often steeped in history and filled with incredible treasures – have been abandoned to the elements. It's hard to believe that these beautiful buildings aren't cherished family houses or even luxury hotels, but they often have a dark secret that ended their time as a residence. Step inside and explore the stories behind these grand old monuments to times past...

Mobutu Sese Seko, the former president of Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, lavished $100 million (£80m) on his 'Versailles in the Jungle', a luxe palace complex that was built in his hometown of Gbadolite during the 1970s. The complex boasted three sumptuous residences, including the glitzy Bamboo Palace. Mobutu packed the interiors with paintings by Monet and Renoir, ornate Louis XVI furnishings, Carrara marble and copious gilding. Ridiculously expensive Murano chandeliers hung in almost every room.

The palace in Gbadolite had a staff of 700 to cater to the president and his family's every whim, which were legendary. Mobutu even had an international airport built nearby just so he could charter Concorde and fly to Paris together with his aptly named first wife Marie-Antionette for full-on designer shopping sprees. Clearing out the state's coffers, the president even splashed out on a mini replica of Beijing's Forbidden Palace. The so-called Peking Palace was completed in the early 1970s. It was used by Mobutu and his family as a retreat and doubled up as a pavilion for welcoming foreign dignities and other VIPs.

There was a swanky red-walled nightclub in the complex, which had a bar stocked with the best vintage Champagnes, fine wines and spirits. The Gbadolite complex also had several huge swimming pools, a five-star hotel for visiting dignitaries and a number of plush guesthouses to boot.

Mobutu was deposed in May 1997, having embezzled up to $15 billion (£12bn). The ex-president fled to Morocco, where he died later that year. Gbadolite was looted and all its valuables were removed or destroyed. The jungle has since reclaimed the complex, which lies ruined and abandoned.

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The incredibly scary-looking neo-Gothic Château Miranda in Celles, Belgium was built in 1866 by English architect Edward Milner for the aristocratic Liedekerke-Beaufort family. These doomed aristocrats lost their original seat, the Château de Vêves, during the French Revolution.

The family were forced to give up their home for good in the Second World War when it was taken over by the Nazis. After the war, the property was renamed Château de Noisy and repurposed as an orphanage and holiday camp. The château was last used as a school before it was abandoned in 1991.

Plagued by neglect and vandalism, the building was severely damaged by a fire in 1995, and in 2006 a freak storm destroyed much of what was left of the roof. A decade later local developer Luc Lavroff had ambitious plans to dismantle the structure and rebuild it in Spain. Work began in earnest on taking the château apart.

Tragically, Lavroff was diagnosed with cancer in February 2017 and pulled out of the deal, leaving the half-dismantled building in the hands of demolition firm Castignetti. Unable to find a buyer, the company made the difficult decision to demolish the château and it was completely bulldozed by October of that year.

Staying with sinister castles, Dundas Castle, aka Craig-E-Clair, lies forlorn deep in the Catskill Mountains. The so-called 'Castle of Sorrow' has a particularly sad back story. The building was commissioned by wealthy New Yorker Ralph Wurts-Dundas in the late 1910s but he died in 1921 before its scheduled completion.

A year later, Wurts-Dundas' bereft widow Josephine was committed to an asylum and the half-finished property passed to the couple's daughter Murial, who was duped out of her inheritance and eventually moved to England, where her mental health went downhill. The castle remained unfinished, despite the work that had already been lavished on it, as these photos prove.

The estate of Murial Wurts-Dundas eventually sold the property in 1949. It was snapped up by the Prince Hall Grand Lodge of the Masonic Order and used as a masonic retreat and holiday camp until the 1970s when it was largely abandoned. The castle has sat empty ever since. 

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Today, the property, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is out of bounds to the public and guarded by a caretaker. It is said to be haunted by the ghost of Josephine Wurts-Dundas and, according to local legend, the water in the ponds on the estate turns into blood when the moon is full.

This splendid and sinister neo-Baroque château in Alsace was built in 1900 for tobacco magnate and philanthropist Jules Burrus. The property was inherited in 1911 by his son Marcel who held on to it until the First World War.

After Burrus refused to supply the German army with free cigarettes, the château was requisitioned as punishment and the tobacco heir fled to neutral Switzerland. Burrus reclaimed his home after the war, but it was confiscated yet again by the Germans in the Second World War and used as a training center for SS officers.

Burrus, who had spent the war hiding out in the Pyrenees, recovered the château in 1945 and it remained under the tobacco scion's ownership until his death in 1959. The property was purchased by a religious order then sold on but was left vacant in the early 1990s.

Also known as Château Lumièrem, due to its wonderful light-filled rooms, the property has been more or less unmaintained since the 1990s. Sadly, it has succumbed to vandalism and is positively crying out for extensive restoration.

This unsettling mansion, which is situated in a mystery location in New York State just a few miles away from the Big Apple, was accessed in 2016 by renowned abandoned buildings photographer Bryan Sansivero.

The 57-room mansion, which dates from the 1930s, was abandoned in 1976 by its owner, who was known to acquire grand houses and bizarrely leave them to crumble. Looking like a horror movie set, the house remains eerily frozen in time.

The bulk of the mansion's fixtures and furnishing were inexplicably left to rot, including the grand pianos, antique sofas, marble fire surround and crystal chandelier that adorns the cavernous drawing room.

Vandals have scrawled graffiti on some of the walls, the paintwork is peeling off and some of the windows are broken, letting the elements in. Aside from these small issues, the mansion is actually in pretty good shape.

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Constructed in the 18th century, Kościelniki Górne Palace, which was known as Schloss Ober Steinkirch before the Second World War, is located in Poland's Lower Silesian Voivodeship, a province that is famed for its multitude of abandoned mansions.

The urban explorer group Broken Window Theory scouted the dilapidated building earlier this year and found it in a frightful state. The province in which the palace is located was part of Germany before the Second World War and the last family to live there, the von Carnaps, were evicted in 1945.

The palace was taken over by the Polish government and converted into offices and apartments for the collective State Agricultural Farms organization. The property was abandoned in the early 1990s following the collapse of Communism and acquired in 2004 by a developer who sought to transform it into either an artist's retreat or rehab center.

The renovation works were halted by the Polish authorities in 2008 as the owner failed to obtain the appropriate permits. Since then, the palace has been left to wrack and ruin, and vandals and squatters have pretty much destroyed what were once beautiful rooms adorned with exquisite original features.

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This imposing 17-room mansion in Bergen County, New Jersey was built in 1864 for wealthy seafarer Captain William Tyson and his family and is one of the last surviving grand 19th-century Italianate-style houses in the area.

Steeped in faded grandeur and with a haunted house ambiance, the property retains many of its fine period features, and while the exterior was covered in artificial shingle in the 1950s, a conservation no-no, the mansion is as alluring as ever.

Captain William Tyson House is included on Preservation New Jersey's latest 10 Most Endangered Historic Properties list for good reason. It was snapped up in 2015 by the Township of Rochelle Park, which at the time intended to bring it back to life by restoring its interiors. Since then, the make-up of the Rochelle Park Township committee has changed and the house was put up for auction in August.

Much to the chagrin of the local historical society, the Township has removed restrictions that would require the new owner to preserve the building but is considering putting an easement on the property to prevent it from being demolished. The house failed to find a buyer, however, and will go up for auction again in November.

The romantically-named Château des Trois-Poètes ('Château of the Three Poets') was built in 1600 in the village of Castétis, southeastern France, and owes its moniker to three esteemed poets who lived in the area: Alfred de Vigney, Alphonse de Lamartine and Francis Jammes. 

The seat of the noble Nays-Candau family, the château was passed down from generation to generation. The last owner, Mademoiselle de Sailly, a descendant of the clan, vacated the property in the mid-20th century. 

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The château served as a hotel before it was converted into a retirement home in 1988. The 'maison de retraite' closed down in 2000 and since then the property has been left to decay. It is currently in an extremely poor state of disrepair.

The local authority has plans to restore the château but currently the building remains empty and decrepit. Like a scene from a terrifying horror film, discarded wheelchairs litter its corridors, old furniture sits rotting away in its rooms and paint is peeling off the walls.

This foreboding French Eclectic-style mansion, which is located on Lighthouse Beach in Evanston, Illinois was constructed in 1927 for mega-wealthy utility magnate Harley Clarke, who went on to become the president of the Fox Film movie studio.

No expense was spared on the 16-room limestone mansion, which commands an enviable position backing on to Lake Michigan. Clarke resided at the property with his family until 1949. A victim of the Great Depression, he was forced to sell his beloved mansion to the Sigma Chi fraternity.

The house was sold by the frat organization to Evanston’s City Council in 1964 and repurposed as the Evanston Art Center. After the Art Center moved to new premises in 2015, the mansion was left vacant and in desperate need of a revamp.

The mansion narrowly escaped demolition last year when the Evanston Preservation Committee voted unanimously to deny the council permission to raze it to the ground. Thankfully, the council is allowing nonprofit organizations such as Evanston Community Lakehouse & Gardens (ECLG) to tender proposals for the property. They have until the end of February 2020 to submit their plans.

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Like Africa's Versailles in the Jungle, Kinmel Hall, which is nicknamed the 'Welsh Versailles', has been left to decay, though it isn't in quite as bad shape as Mobutu's former palace. The splendid chateau-style mansion dates from the 1870s. A 'calendar house', it had 365 rooms at its height, one for every day of the year. A room was even dedicated to ironing newspapers at one time.

The sprawling country house was built for copper tycoon Hugh Robert Hughes, who became known as HRH due to his suitably regal lifestyle. The mansion passed through several families and was last used as a private home in 1929, when it was sold to the highest bidder and converted into a boys' school. Kinmel Hall was then a military convalescent home during the Second World War and then became the Clarendon School for Girls. A fire in 1975 forced the school to relocate and Kinmel Hall was acquired and restored by businessman Eddie Vince, who used it as a Christian conference center.

There were plans to transform Kinmel Hall into a luxury hotel, but the project never came to fruition. In 2011, a mystery buyer bought the mansion for a bargain $1.9 million (£1.5m) with the intention of developing the elusive hotel. Ambitious plans were unveiled in 2012, but work on the new hotel failed to commence and Kinmel Hall went even more downhill.

Kinmel Hall was added to the Victorian Society's Top 10 Most Endangered Buildings list in 2015 due to its worsening state. The current owner, who resides in the Cayman Islands, has pretty much left the grand mansion to wrack and ruin, and the restoration bill is now likely to cost in the region of $25 million (£20m).

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