Places you have visited with a strange vibe

Glad someone mentioned St Austell, my mum and I love holidaying in Mevagissey and have to get the train to St Austell then bus/cab to our hotel. Went there for a day trip once and we both hated it, couldn't wait to leave. Felt very "left behind" and deserted. Eerie.

@wantanotherdog I am just SO glad you got out safely!

Think you and I would both have had to channel our inner Villanelle in order to do the pencil stunt and successfully out psycho the person behind the picture.

I'm sure I did read a news story about someone (or a couple) who owned a hotel and regularly spied on their guests.

Yuck!

I thought a lot of Tasmania was a bit weird. It's like nowhere else.. very odd vibe in a lot of areas.

Vestastilly It's quite a while since I visited the Chalice Well Gardens, but I have a happy memory of sitting there in the sunshine with my family and watching a Merlin-like character washing some large quartz crystals in the flowing water. Then he played the didgeridoo. Not everyone's idea of an afternoon out but it made me happy.

It's interesting about your friend, as it usually seems to be people already frightened of witchy stuff who are the ones who get bad vibes at places with Pagan associations. I don't find stone circles scary - in fact, I go looking for them - though I don't like Stonehenge because it's so ring-fenced and commercialised.

Same goes for the unusual people who are drawn to Glastonbury. I tend to look at them and think, "My people!" I forget that I am a fairly respectable old lady. I walk around the shops in Glastonbury, pointing to the noticeboards and saying, "Look at all the Pagan events I could go to if we lived here!" And my atheist husband looks at cafe menus and says, "Look at the prices! I'm not paying that for a bloody beanburger'" So, maybe Glastonbury has become a bit too commercialised too.

If I had to name a place I found profoundly depressing and would never willingly go there, it would be Canary Wharf. Not spooky but just... ugh.

Not long ago we stayed in a holiday home in quite a remote area in Scotland. Across a river behind the house we could see a cottage which looked derelict. Full of curiosity, I waded across the river as there seemed to be no access from the road that I could see.
The house was clearly lived in to some extent as there was wood in the shed and signs of a recent fire. However, all the curtains were drawn apart from in one window where we could see very old dusty furniture. In the window was a calendar with the date 1977. It looked like no one had lived there since then. Yet the fire, logs etc in the log store was puzzling. Really creepy and weird. I know I sound very nosy but I was so intrigued.

A couple of years ago my sister and I drove to Grasse ,

KisstheTeapot14
I didn't sleep! I wish I'd thought about poking a pencil in the eyes but probably wouldn't have done it. I was really naive and not good at standing up for myself. After posting about it on Mumsnet I told my husband what had happened and I think you could say he was a bit surprised!

[quote Lincslady53]642 people killed at Oradour. Here is a link to the wiki page en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oradour-sur-Glane_massacre[/quote]
I read an article years ago in Paris Match -- the firsthand account of one of the six males to survive the massacre. He lay under the bodies in the barn pretending to be dead. The SS kept monitoring the heap and shooting anyone who moved. They then set fire to the barn, and he stayed put because obviously if you fled, you got shot. So he was burned. In the end he had to escape the flames and dodge another hail of bullets.

One of the most chilling things about it was how the SS kept such a close eye on the place to make sure everyone was dead. It wasn't at all possible to just wait for them to leave so that you could crawl away.

There's a castle in a village nearby in which Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned for a while. There are regular ghost tours there in normal times, but sadly, I've never felt any spooky vibes.

Forest of Dean

Devizes.

I agree. Its not even particular towns or villages, sometimes just certain spots within the landscape.

Bleaklow trip was on a lovely sunny autumn day - hills have their own weather. Also a crash site WW2 I think, up there. A lonely place.

But like you say, plenty of places up in these here hills that are quite friendly and welcoming. Many more than the weird places.

i have heard tales of bleak low, i am not keen on the 7 sisters... there are some patch of the peaks that just feel so very off and others that almost welcome you with open arms. it is very odd.

Thanks @HillsBesideTheSea.

It's quite nice to know there are more than a few witches around these hills! You're right I do remember someone tellling me there have always been pockets of 'old religion' as historically quite cut off by its geography - apart from the salt routes. Something Alan Garner picks up on (especially in Thursbitch).

The only place around here I don't like is Bleak Low - aptly named and I got lost up there years ago among the peat groughs. Obviously did find way down in the end but the mist was horrible, deadening. Plus the sinister cackle of grouse. Ugh.

Aberystwyth is totally fine.

The most I ever felt a bit woo there was exploring a old abandoned hotel on the front, which was said to house squatters. It was vast. One woman was reputed to have a room overlooking the sea purely for ironing. Just an ironing board in there, nothing else.

Have to say that during explorations, we could hear other movements within the building and we looked at each other and as one we cut our visit short! I have never seen The Shining but am guessing it was a bit like that...the Palace Hotel in Buxton also has this vibe. The Mighty Boosh came to play there one year and commented on it and it's true. Weird out of kilter corridors you could get lost down within a late Victorian building with badly aged and run down 70's decor. It often has letters missing from its red neon sign so it just says 'lace'. Town hall is nearly as bad. They knew how to make buildings loom darkly those Victorians.

Going back to Aber:

Like a lot of seaside places it can feel like people have run as far away (from their past?) as they can and 'reached the edge' physically and otherwise.

So, yes there were people sort of adrift if life there. Sort of in purgatory and maybe smoking too much dope.

But nothing sinister.

Inland Wales, like Powys, can be a bit spooky. Tiny run down farms or hamlets (never see anyone, though some must be tenanted) next to grand Victorian church and large graveyard. Makes you realise how de-populised these areas have become in the last maybe 120 years. Plus the brooding big hills so each human habitation feels a bit lost in the vastness. Beautiful but made me feel a bit..sad..wistful...melancholic...

Trebarwith Strand near Tintagel in winter felt incredibly isolated or 'separate'. It was a long time ago that I visited.
Another was at Davidstow on the old airfield, I was driving across in the afternoon and saw a huge strange shape in the sky. Daniken's stupid book on aliens had recently been published along with many items on UFOs. I stopped the car watching this thing change shape.

It came nearer and I realised it was starlings. A huge flock. Not seen much these days because of fewer birds.
If I had been further away and the other side towards Altarnun. I probably would not have known what it really was and still be thinking of it as a mystery.

@CounsellorTroi Ok, Vlad the Impaler, if you want to be pedantic.

So that was for @KisstheTeapot14

The peaks have a long tradition of witch craft there are various groups and moots that happen in the local area to buxton.
I have mentioned on the thread the illuinati thing was a random website i stumbled across in a random search a number of years ago.
I am sure if one were to specifically hunt information down there would probably be some to find. Historical and more modern. I am just a collector or random information gleened from 2am insomnia driven google search worm holes.

@wantanotherdog Oh my god, actually more sinister that a live person was behind the painting. Don't know how you slept! Its the thought that it was a hotel person and they would have key to the room.

I would have freaked out, or been tempted to sneak along the wall with a sharp pencil. Pencil in the eye would put any voyeur right off their stride I'd have thought.

Agree with a PP about Wast Water in the Lake District, I was 14 when I went there with my parents and have never felt such a chilling sense of dread and oppression. It still gives me the shivers talking about it now, nearly 40 years later.

Also Silent Pool near Hindhead, part of the Devil's Punchbowl I believe, dead creepy and unnerving.

I loved Ephesus and Portmeirion tho. And as an 18yo I used to regularly sleep overnight in my car at Burley with a group of friends. Brilliant times, I didn't know the history re witchcraft

@CakesOfVersailles I did the same thing with the Cannock girls - googled and a horrible image of a sort of demonic Victorian child came up so I shut it down! eek!

@HillsBesideTheSea How do you know about witchy goings on around Buxton..and illuminati?

Do tell! (PM me if you'd rather) have lived in the area most of my life and would love to know. I am a bit witchy myself but more of a solitary pagan than someone who's part of a scene.