Creepiest, bleakest places you've ever been to

[Anonymous]

Not so much creepy, but the bleakest, most depressing places I’ve been are the suburbs with 6-8 lane roads and strip malls with huge ugly signs and sprawling parking lots that are found all over America. And they all have the same stores. It makes me so sad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A hotel in Inari Finland in January. I was a 20yo woman and everyone else at the hotel was a burly older man. I don't speak Finnish. All TV was in Finnish or Russian. I just stayed in my room. I went to the Sami museum though and that was great--it was just the hotel at night that was bleak.

I also got a weird vibe in Molokai. It was beautiful, and the tour of Kalaupappa was fascinating, and I didn't get a sense of hostility from the people I met, but I felt like I would not understand anything even if I lived there for 30 years. It was like half of what was said was a lie/inside joke/myth/historical reference and 50% was not and I couldn't tell which was which. It also felt like a place where it would be so easy to die in the sea or some remote area and never be found, or to be killed and have nobody fess up.

And a Microtel in Syracuse NY. I wish we'd gone with our initial plan of camping even though it was chilly.

I lived in Helsinki, so I just have to ask. How in the world did you wind up in Inari?!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Superior, Wisconsin. Cold, gray, bleak, dirty

Is Duluth nice? I've heard it is.

Yes! Duluth rocks. Cold and gray -- yes. But it has a lot of cool restaurants, shops, good services, high quality of life, interesting topography, friendly people. Also it is great for outdoorsy stuff. My brother is a professor at U of Wisconsin-Superior but lives in Duluth...I've been in that area a few times and it always fascinated me how those two cities -- so close together -- just totally diverged.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I grew up in Schenectady. Want to hear why you all are creeped out by it.

I grew up in the Albany/Schenectady/Troy area and I completely understand. It’s just grey and bleak. I always wanted to get out of there. When I brought my husband up to visit my family for the first time he asked if it was always so dark.

[Anonymous]

Central City Colorado. Stumbled on them driving around while staying in Estes Park. Incredible, interesting architecture, felt like it was right out of a western, but every storefront was a microcasino. Like, all industry left, presumably mining, gambling industry was the only thing left. There wasn’t even a place to eat, just mini casino after mini casino, sad looking people, in what looked like the middle of a run-down Hollywood western set. And lots of dispensaries and places selling cbd oil. That was it. Couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:West Baltimore. I drove my son through there a few years ago and he said "What IS this place?" So many abandoned homes and crumbling buildings.

Ahhh, gotta love white privilege!

Actually, we are black. Have you ever seen Sandtown-Winchester? It's pretty bleak.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I'm not talking about poverty, crime, or abandonment so much as a sense of gloom and despair.

Weird sentence. These 5 things are very interconnecting.

Anyway, the Delta in AR is the saddest feeling place, outside of urban areas, that I've ever seen in the US.

Its a subtle difference.

Please elaborate. If you're OP, why is Utica creepy, bleak, and featuring a sense of gloom and despair, but not poverty, crime, and abandonment?

Of course some places will be all the things....while other places might just be bleak, but not poor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:West Baltimore. I drove my son through there a few years ago and he said "What IS this place?" So many abandoned homes and crumbling buildings.

Ahhh, gotta love white privilege!

Dude nobody thinks West Baltimore is not creepy

[Anonymous]

The Badlands gave me that bizarre feeling but I liked it. I wasn't expecting it to be so eerie but it's only because I knew nothing about it before going there.

[Anonymous]

Hemet, California. Just an armpit in the desert.

[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.

My parents still live in a Khrushevka (of a "better" type but still) and it's very odd to see my childhood home with the eyes of an adult who has traveled the world somewhat.
What you describe is very familiar. I am seeing it with the eyes of child so to speak...

You know what they say, you can take a girl out of a krushevka.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I grew up in Schenectady. Want to hear why you all are creeped out by it.

Went many winters ago for work, stayed at the stockade inn, it was very cold and drafty and decorated to the hilt in Victorian Haunted House style. the area around the inn was totally empty, nobody on the streets, nothing open but KFC. It was so blustery, bitterly cold.

Nice colonial architecture, I walked around the neighborhood a little bit, but I just could not shake the feeling that something terrible had happened there in the past. Like walking through a mass graveyard. Sorry. My trip was short, and the part of schenectady I stayed in, just felt downright spooky.

One good thing: My colleagues took me to an excellent Italian restaurant, Jonnys, good calamari and cocktails.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:18th St NE a bit further away from Union Station. It was 2008, I was on a work visit to DC, and went to a shoe store that I thought carried some wheelies that a friend asked me to bring. I didn't know what I was getting into, taking public transit and walking, with my orange Furla purse and a matching silk scarf! I must say everyone was nice to me and some nice older black ladies made sure I took the right bus which took me back to Union Station.

so black people are creepy?

DP. I was a summer intern in NYC in late 90s and my roommate was a girl from Kazakhstan interning at the UN. One night she got invited to a party and took a wrong bus that brought her to upper Harlem. So there she was, alone in upper Harlem, late at night, with questionable English skills, having no idea where she was. She sat down on a curb and started bawling her eyes out. A patrol police car noticed her, picked her up and drove her back to our apartment near Columbia. And she was still sobbing uncontrollably as she came through the door.

So my point is, maybe, PP with a Furla purse is also not from around here, and it can be quite a cultural shock visiting certain urban areas of the United States.

[Anonymous]

West Texas, I-10 from San Antonio to El Paso. It really gets frightening once you’re a few hours out of SA. Just miles and miles and miles of nothingness. Creeped me the hell out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m not sure whether you mean poverty and crime, or truly haunting and sad. The worst energy I’ve ever felt anywhere was on an empty road leading to an open field in Cassedega, Florida. It is supposed to be a super high-vibe town. And for the most part, it was. But that road really got to me. I’m sensitive to energy and truly had a hard time breathing. I didn’t stay in that space long enough to even try to feel into whatever it was.

Lots of mediums and psychic there for real.

Puleese tell us more about yourself. I've already got some ideas. Education really wasn't your thing, right?