Creepiest, bleakest places you've ever been to

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The entire state of New Jersey

Even the “nice” parts of NJ look like they need a good coat of paint.

I don't love NJ, but I don't hate it either. Silly posts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_Jersey_locations_by_per_capita_income#:~:text=New%20Jersey%20is%20one%20of,second%20highest%20in%20the%20country.

But that’s the point. I was actually thinking about the counties this article talks about. Morris County is the 4th richest county in the nation according to this, and Morristown is a pretty gray, bleak-looking place, compared to most affluent towns. The downtown shops look like they haven’t been painted in 30 years. There are some pretty farms out there, but any of the towns are grim. Compare the “horse country” towns of NJ to Middleburg.

Yeah, but then you'd have to live in VA, and we see what it's done to you, so no thank you.

[Anonymous]

Haven't read the entire thread but West Virginia, near Charlestown. And the creepiest place is that abandoned mental institution in WV (we made a point of stopping there on the way out of WV) that now holds tours inside. It was closed on the day we drove through but I thinking of returning just to take the tour. It looked THAT creepy.

http://www.trans-alleghenylunaticasylum.com/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Chernobyl.

Also, Soviet era apartment blocks and apartments in Ukraine and Russia.

I know it will sound weird, but I grew up in one of these blocks and they are nostalgic to me. In fact there is a FB community where people post pictures of Soviet era landscapes, so I am not the only one.

Wow, that's interesting. We were posted in the region for work, and in the first year were talked into taking an apartment in a Soviet building that was minutes' walk from work. It was the entire top floor of a Khrushchyovka, and the apartment itself had been fully renovated and looked great. But outside the windows and in the rest of the building itself, it was bleak as hell. The crumbling walls and general run-down look, plus the filthy, dog waste-strewn land childrens' "playground" areas outside the blocks were super sad, especially because there were often empty alcohol bottles and cigarettes thrown into the childrens' sand pits or under the swings. I made friends with a local family who lived in a non-renovated little flat and you could hear EVERYTHING from the neighbours above and around them.

We moved into an expat type building after that one year.

Since you didn't grow up there, you won't understand the nostalgia. Many of us grew up in those buildings and associate them with happy childhood memories.

I know it's hard to imagine and of course my parents have their own tales of Soviet-era struggles, and post-Soviet too (there's a reason we left, after all). But overall, where you see bleakness and sadness and dirt, I see a place where I was a carefree happy child. Our apartment wasn't fancy, but it was home. People didn't move around much in the former USSR, so my mom had grown up in the building, and many of the neighbors were like family. That dirty playground was where I spent many fun days playing with friends, while my grandparents, now long gone, sat on a bench nearby to supervise and gossiped with the other pensioners. I've since gone back, and while we sold the apartment decades ago, one of my favorite things to do on those trips is visit our old neighbors who still live in the building and to walk around my old neighborhood.

All in the eye of the beholder.

[Anonymous]

Dayton, WA

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:the ny side of niagara falls.

Second this. Very depressing.

[Anonymous]

The only truly creepy bit of NJ that I've seen is the Pine Barrens. Super-cool, but creepy somehow.

[Anonymous]

Closer to home, Danville, VA and Petersburg, VA

[Anonymous]

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The entire state of New Jersey

Even the “nice” parts of NJ look like they need a good coat of paint.

I don't love NJ, but I don't hate it either. Silly posts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_Jersey_locations_by_per_capita_income#:~:text=New%20Jersey%20is%20one%20of,second%20highest%20in%20the%20country.

But that’s the point. I was actually thinking about the counties this article talks about. Morris County is the 4th richest county in the nation according to this, and Morristown is a pretty gray, bleak-looking place, compared to most affluent towns. The downtown shops look like they haven’t been painted in 30 years. There are some pretty farms out there, but any of the towns are grim. Compare the “horse country” towns of NJ to Middleburg.

Yeah, but then you'd have to live in VA, and we see what it's done to you, so no thank you.

I've never been to New Jersey- why all the hate?

[Anonymous]

Burkittsville, MD. So this was the setting of the Blair Witch Project. We were camping in Harpers Ferry around the time the movie came out and just driving around and decided to take a drive through Burkittsville. It was super creepy. The highway turned to cobble stone and people were dressed like Amish and they just eyeballed you and people started peeking out of their windows at us driving down the street. It was surreal. It was like they knew a non-local entered the town and they all started staring. Nuts!

[Anonymous]

Princess Anne, Maryland where University of Maryland Eastern Shore is located.

Creepy little run down town with lots of addicts sitting around

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:the ny side of niagara falls.

Second this. Very depressing.

DH is from there--depressing, yes, but not nearly as creepy as some of the places mentioned.

[Anonymous]

Trenton, NJ

[Anonymous]

This is a great thread. Really good ones mentioned so far, I’ll add a couple:

The East Side, Buffalo, NY- once a prosperous immigrant community (Polish and German Catholics) it was hit hard by lost manufacturing jobs and white flight. Empty lots, dilapidated, condemned but still oddly beautiful big homes, old business signs in Polish, huge Catholic Churches surrounded by chain link fence..

Mostly abandoned towns along Rt. 66- somehow are more creepy than completely abandoned towns. Like where are those 25 townspeople generating income from??

I lived in Columbus GA for a while and had an infant. I used to take her for long, aimless drives for something to do. That part of GA has lots of little town centers where you could tell used to be general stores, post offices, town halls, etc, and sit derelict, mostly abandoned now. A big claim to fame for some of them was if a scene or two of The Walking Dead was filmed there.

What makes a good creepy town? It’s like the feeling that you’ve stumbled someplace you shouldn’t be, or stayed at the party too long. Like fairgrounds in the dead of winter.

[Anonymous]

Halifax Nova Scotia. Seemed like the whole downtown was boarded up building and empty store fronts. Bleak, grey, yucky.