Al Jazirat Al Hamra

Al Jazirat Al Hamra is an abandoned pearling town in Ras Al Khaimah, UAE, left by its people in 1968. Locals widely say its empty houses and mosque are haunted, and some say jinn live there.

UNESCO's Tentative List entry puts the town's founding probably in the 17th century, since a 1580 list of coastal towns by Gasparo Balbi leaves it out. The first description came in 1756 from Baron von Kniphousen, a Dutch East India Company director. The British drew the first map of it in 1820, after their raids of 1809 and 1819 against Ras Al Khaimah. In 1908 John Lorimer counted about 500 houses in two quarters and called it the main home of the Za'ab, a tribe who lived chiefly by diving for pearls.

Wikipedia says the Zaab ruled the town and were rehoused in Abu Dhabi after a quarrel with Ras Al Khaimah's ruler. The National gives 1968 as the year the inhabitants left, and says the village has barely changed since. It calls the place the finest surviving village in the region from before the oil era. UNESCO has put it on its World Heritage tentative list, and Wikipedia says it has been conserved and partly restored for visitors since the 2000s.

Wikipedia says the abandoned buildings, a mosque among them, are "widely believed locally to be haunted". In a Khaleej Times WKND piece where Dubai residents recount their scariest moments, one of them, a horror filmmaker, called it one of the most discussed sites of paranormal activity in the UAE and said the old fishing village is rumoured to be full of djinn. The filmmaker went to see it while looking for ideas for films. Wikipedia ties the Zaab's departure to their dispute with the ruler, and no source links it to the jinn.