Creepiest, bleakest places you've ever been to

[Anonymous]

I don't remember the name of the town, but on a rock-climbing trip to Utah, we went through a tiny desolate place where everyone had red hair, and looked the same.

They stopped and stared at us as we drove through town.

Now that was creepy.

[Anonymous]

Gallup, New Mexico

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m sure this has been mentioned but South of the Border on I95

We moved from South Carolina to DC and drove that stretch of I-95 several times in the process.

I insisted that we stop there just to check it out.

it was horrible.

The public bathrooms I've been to in Mexico were 100% cleaner

This is so disappointing to me. I’ve always wanted to stop at South of the Border! It’s huge! It looks like it has everything.

Many years ago I stopped at the Tiger Truck Stop in Louisiana. I think it was in Tiger King. Very depressing. And hot as hell out there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't remember the name of the town, but on a rock-climbing trip to Utah, we went through a tiny desolate place where everyone had red hair, and looked the same.

They stopped and stared at us as we drove through town.

Now that was creepy.

Yes! Parts of the midwest are like this video! Everyone looks alike, and look like they are on the brink of madness/suicide:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcrbM1l_BoI

[Anonymous]

The ghost towns of North Dakota. My husband grew up in one of them, and we go back and visit. The creepy part is that the entire town will be abandoned...except for one house. So you'll be surrounded by wind and sky and abandoned buildings, but then see someone pull a curtain back in a house. Its beautiful and bleak and sad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The ghost towns of North Dakota. My husband grew up in one of them, and we go back and visit. The creepy part is that the entire town will be abandoned...except for one house. So you'll be surrounded by wind and sky and abandoned buildings, but then see someone pull a curtain back in a house. Its beautiful and bleak and sad.

I was going to say, an acquaintance on FB posted about the teeny town in North Dakota where she grew up long ago. I Googled it and man, is it bleak and isolated looking. Willow City, I think. Just looking at it's location on the map, so far from anything, give me the willies. But I'm a city girl.

[Anonymous]

Downtown Washington, DC during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The ghost towns of North Dakota. My husband grew up in one of them, and we go back and visit. The creepy part is that the entire town will be abandoned...except for one house. So you'll be surrounded by wind and sky and abandoned buildings, but then see someone pull a curtain back in a house. Its beautiful and bleak and sad.

I was going to say, an acquaintance on FB posted about the teeny town in North Dakota where she grew up long ago. I Googled it and man, is it bleak and isolated looking. Willow City, I think. Just looking at it's location on the map, so far from anything, give me the willies. But I'm a city girl.

Reminds me of

https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/welcome-to-leith/

[Anonymous]

Minsk, Belarus. Gloomy winter weekend in 1995.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m sure this has been mentioned but South of the Border on I95

Yes, this is now super creepy, was the place to stop 30+ years ago.

For some reason, Colorado Springs completely creeped me out when we visited there. Just a weird vibe, I couldn't wait to leave. It creeped me out more than abandoned places because it seemed so vibrant yet the vibe was all wrong.

[Anonymous]

I don't remember where in rural Alabama (or maybe it was Mississippi) it was, but we stopped for gas at this old rickety gas station on the way to New Orleans and, boy of boy, did we stick out like a sore thumb. Cue the banjo music from Deliverance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Cumberland, MD. Something just feels off and creepy. And this is coming from someone who has spent years driving through western Pennsylvania on the way to my hometown near Youngstown.

I'm so glad that other people feel this way about Cumberland. And I've been to a bunch of other places listed here but none of them have the same Stephen King creepy vibe as Cumberland.

I'll add a place that's pretty obscure but also has the same vibe - Queenstown, Tasmania. Every other place I've been in Tasmania is lovely, but Queenstown was just upsetting and unsettling.

Ok, I had this experience too. DH saw Cumberland from the highway and thought it looked like a cool little place to explore, so we decided to stay there three nights in the Fall. Stephen King vibe is right on. People could tell we weren't from there, even though we look like big ole rednecks. Had dinner at a delicious restaurant in the city center, that was almost empty and had the best, happiest feeling of anywhere we went there. After we left the restaurant, back into the Steven King novel again.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m sure this has been mentioned but South of the Border on I95

Yes, this is now super creepy, was the place to stop 30+ years ago.

For some reason, Colorado Springs completely creeped me out when we visited there. Just a weird vibe, I couldn't wait to leave. It creeped me out more than abandoned places because it seemed so vibrant yet the vibe was all wrong.

Yes, I totally agree about Colorado Springs. It's not desolate like Gary, IN and parts are lovely but it felt oppressive. Like if you aren't a high-ranking, conservative military family, you're nothing. It's very strange.

Mine would be Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Really sketchy and such extreme poverty. Like a different world.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

I mean every person who grew up in a grey, overcast area of upstate NY and central PA (as it seems there are many listed on this thread) could say essentially the same thing. Towns that became depressed when manufacturing moved or actually, like my home town, smaller defense contractors in mid sized and smaller cities dried up after the cold war era. Its certainly in the eye of the beholder. My hometown is bleak, but it holds a lot of great memories for me too

[Anonymous]

Alabama, Ohio, Mississippi, North Dakoka, Colorado Springs, Cumberland MD, Many parts of Florida.