Before science became humanity’s preferred method for understanding the natural world, myth and geology went hand in hand. Anyone who travels a bit is sure to run across local legends that strive to explain odd natural phenomena in fictional terms. Every single culture around the world tells these kinds of stories. There’s the Chimera of Turkey (methane gas vents in the side of a mountain rendered by Homer as a fire-breathing “lion-fronted, snake behind, goat in the middle” creature); the fire-belching goddess Pele living in Hawaii’s Kilauea crater; or the story of a pair of mountains that split due to irreconcilable differences (Mount Rainier took off in the heat of an argument packing up all the prettiest wildflowers).

Now that we have some grip on the basic laws of nature, even scientists are taking a closer look at legends as a serious source of information on real natural events: comets, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, earthquakes and weather patterns. Disciplinary mashups like archaeoastronomy and geomythology have emerged to try to retrieve buried, culturally encoded information from fictionalized oral traditions. As Einstein stated again and again, imagination is, after all, at the center of scientific exploration. The creative capacity of storytellers to use their topographical surroundings to explain and entertain is boundless — and although the stories produced are radically different, the urge to tell them is a cultural constant across civilizations. These 12 legendary places run the gamut from a spider lady’s desert platform for yarn-bombing the universe to a giant’s stepping stones across the cold Atlantic to an island formed from the scaly remains of squabbling dragons.

Have you come across any good legends about geological anomalies in your travels? Share them with us in the comments. Find more legendary places on Trazzler.

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Forty thousand volcanic basalt columns spew from the earth to form the Giants Causeway. This wild landscape in the farthest reaches of Northern Ireland is the stuff of legends. Heroic poetry tells how the giant Finn McCool used these bizarre outcroppings to march right into the sea to the nearby islands and beyond to Scotland (where Fingal’s cave awaited him — another basalt oddity). The effect is a helter-skelter honeycomb of perfectly formed, hexagonal stepping stones that lead into the crashing waves, some up to 40 feet high. While mere humans lack the mythological dimension necessary to hop, skip and jump across the north Atlantic, it’s still a fun time scrambling among the 60-million-year-old frozen lava jungle gym and hiking the many misty trails around the promontories and clifftops.

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Let’s start from the premise that the tourism industry is, quite frequently, a freak show. And not just on Halloween … plenty of places keep it surreal all year round. Why? Luring people into your temple, museum, medical school, church or crypt isn’t as easy as you might think. You need a hook.

While severed body parts and corpses may not have a tourist-brochure ring, gore sells. Catholic churches have been collecting bodies and relics for pilgrims to visit for centuries. Little bits of the Buddha are scattered in shrines around the globe. Medical curiosities and oddities fill glass cases and jars in museum sideshows.

From the outside, Sedlec Ossuary appears to be a relatively nondescript Gothic church. When the structure was being built, a huge cemetery filled with tens of thousands of skeletons was unearthed. The skeletal remains were stacked up dutifully in the chapel for centuries. That is, until the 19th century, when a woodcarver, František Rint, was tasked with straightening up the piles of bones. And what a job he did, festooning the church with garlands of skulls, a coat of arms made entirely of bones, a chandelier using every bone in the human body, a bony Jesus on the cross … It’s haunting, macabre and grotesque, but even the most creeped-out visitor can’t help but admire Rint’s creativity and artistic vision.

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A mystic, rebel, reformer, philosopher and writer of ecstatic poetry who has stood the test of time, it’s no wonder that Saint Teresa of Ávila inspires such a diverse set of day-tripping pilgrims to flock to the provincial Castilian town where she was born in 1515. As a young girl, she fantasized about becoming a martyr. Later in life, she dedicated herself to ridding Renaissance convent culture of luxury and creature comforts. Her poetry is analyzed by lit geeks and theologians alike. At the still-active convent that was built atop her childhood home, you can peer into the yard where she once played and ponder scenes from her fascinating life depicted in stained glass. The adjoining museum gift shop amasses a curious collection of relics from Santa Teresa and her fellow-poet buddy, San Juan de la Cruz. The strangest: her severed finger complete with emerald ring (her hands were reputed to have miraculous powers — Franco kept her left hand, now housed at La Merced church in Ronda, at his bedside until his death).

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The rich, the famous, the powerful, the fabulously talented … so hard for mere mortals to mingle with in life,  so easy to linger with in death. Making a pilgrimage to a famous grave can be an odd experience, particularly when it isn’t where you might expect. Who would think to look for James Joyce and Jorge Luis Borges in Switzerland — or F. Scott Fitzgerald among the strip-mall hell of suburban D.C.?  Death just happens. Those on the brink of death can get caught unawares, left to spend eternity in a place they scarcely knew or were just passing through, or be forcibly brought back home by family after a long escape (like poor Charlie Parker, who ended up back in Kansas against his wishes).