Things/ places that inexplicably give you the creeps...

[nuitdesetoiles]

Ice cream Vans
Mime artists
Brighton
Glastonbury
(Apologies to residents of the above 2 places)

Bodmin. Whenever I drive through it I just get a bad vibe, like I lived there in a previous incarnation and life wasn't too great.
And downstairs at the Horniman Museum where all the stuffed things are. Creepy as having a boyfriend named Freddie.

I was staying in a hotel in Manchester a couple of years ago. I got upgraded to a two room suite. I had the strong sense as I was walking to the room that there was no one else staying on that particular floor. It was so creepy. The room was lovely but I couldn't enjoy it at all - there were basically two rooms made into one but with two doors to enter, if that makes sense. One I couldn't see at all from the bed. I didn't sleep a wink.

Some towns I've been to are depressing and I've been keen to leave but the only place I can say I've been properly creeped out by was Springfield, Illinois (home of Abe Lincoln) of all places. We visited one year when I was back seeing my parents. One of these US towns where no one seems to live downtown anymore...just hollowed out. The museum and small historic area was fine, it was just everything else around it. Parking garage was the stuff of horror movies.

@RhubarbTea I used to work at the Science Museum (over 20 years ago now, though!) and I know what you mean about the top floor. There were several of the older galleries that were very often almost deserted and all had quite odd atmospheres. I think the one you're talking about is the old history of medicine gallery - it was actually always my favourite but I totally agree some of the exhibits were extremely creepy.

Our stock room was down in the bowels of the museum and it was always my job to go and get stuff. The corridors were really winding and I hated not being able to see what was around the corner. The generators were so noisy and the lights flickered on and off constantly, the whole place had a weird smell of dust and hot metal, it was always really hot, completely disorienting and so easy to get lost. It was such an oppressive, horrible place.

However after a while I realised that no one else ever went down there, so I regularly used to lock myself in the stock room and sleep off my hangovers

Underground car parks.
Really ‘doggy’ dog walking places with lots of dog poo, dog poo bags and clumps of fur lying around.
Garden centre mechanised Christmas scenes.
My MIL’s house.

The Victorian prison at Lincoln Castle. I couldn't get out of there quick enough. Chilled me and an intense sense of fear. I went chalk white and just legged it for the exit.

A deserted monastery on the island of Kos. We went up there on a moped, stopped to look around and just looked at each other and got back on that bike and back to our hotel. Such a feeling of absolute terror!

I also am not comfortable underground, on escalators, in pitch blackness, or near open water at nighttime. Stairwells that are too big scare me as do buildings with a large atrium or a mezzanine floor (usually with glass railings)

@LionLily yes to Bodmin too. The moor itself is so desolate- it’s like American werewolf up there!

In my teenage years me and a bunch of friends went for a walking camping holiday in that area, started out at Bodmin train station, after dark, looking for somewhere to rough camp. We yomped up a steep sided valley and just as it started to level off, we all heard a deep growling sound like something we’d never heard before. We all turned around (trying not to crap it) and a few seconds later the thing was crashing through the undergrowth towards us. We legged it back down the hill as fast as our little legs could take us and ended up camping about 10ft from the busy A road at the bottom.

Still convinced it was the beast!😳

Just remembered, where my Granny and Grandad used to live. It was a bit odd as it was on the main street of a small town with a shoe shop on the ground floor but they rented the massive 2 storey flat above which had previously been a hotel. They were in their 80s so I've no idea how they ended up in this huge Victorian house. They didn't use the top floor at all but if ever I had to go up there it used to scare my silly with all the closed up rooms, I kept thinking of Bluebeard's wife. (My DGM loved to tell ghost stories).

The Colosseum in Rome has always freaked me out! I had nightmares about it as a very young kid and I couldn’t bear to walk near it even as an adult. Even pictures of it give me the heebie jeebies. Bad things happened there. I have also got bad vibes from other similar arenas but that place is another level of ‘hell no’!

The 4 levels of basements underneath the British Library are really huge and creepy. Below the tube lines, they dug up cemeteries and plague pits at St Pancras to build it. Each level is kept in darkness to preserve the books and is huge and echoing. Definitely vibes down there.

@Defenbaker

Melton Mowbray. Full of strange people, not somewhere I'd want to visit again.

I can be odd, but I'm not that bad.

So many places but definitely these:
The Queens Hotel in Leeds. Met relatives from out of town there once and It felt hostile, creepy and generally unpleasant and I was really pleased to when we left.

York. In theory it has everything there that I love - full of history and amazing architecture, interesting shops, good places to eat. In practice it feels oppressive and unwelcoming and although I live 45 mins away I haven’t visited it for years.

Saltaire near Bradford. Feels spooky and off and haven’t been for years.

The waterfront in Leeds. Feels like the set of a film. I never see anyone when I walk there and it has this deserted, eerie atmosphere.

San Francisco - again has everything I love - history, great architecture, a good mix of cultures, food, shops etc. Found it creepy and forbidding . The hotel we stayed in I honestly thought we would wake up to find we had been murdered.

Any town in the Fens that I’ve been to - Ely, Wells. Super creepy and horrible. Too flat, too much sky and the dykes - very disorienting and off.

Villa Marina - a beautiful Hotel we stayed in in Wales as Kids. Soooooo scary. We didn’t last the week as my Mum insisted we all leave. Horrible feeling.

Bolling Hall in Bradford. Rumoured to be one of the most haunted places in the country. Drove past one night just to check it out and agree that is one spooky place.

Stranger's Hall in Norwich, us indeed very strange. I can imagine why your ds felt it was creepy yafilthy - can't remember which room the Walnut Room, is though. Dd1 thought the Time and Tide Museum in Great Yarmouth was creepy, it's an old smokehouse set out like a museum, but every so often they have a room to show the smokehouse with mannequins on Ladders hanging up the herring. It also smells of kippers (I'm not selling it, am I).

On holiday in France as children, we went to visit the castle of Gilles de Rais (who inspired the Bluebeard story). I didn't know the story then and the guide was in french, but the most creepy bit was a very high wall outside with the path on top, no railings or anything to stop you falling down.

Backward, I agree about Saltaire, it is really pretty but has a very off atmosphere. I like the Mills, though. Bradford can have a weird vibe too (I used to live in Leeds), certainly the shopping area.

Quirkychick. Glad it’s not just me with Saltaire vibes. It has this stillness and doesn’t feel real somehow. I somehow expect if I walked round the back of some of the buildings there would be nothing there - like a film set. Yes Bradford also feels a bit weird but I can’t say why.

@Sallycinnamum

Apologies to anyone who lives there but Letchworth, Herts always gives me the utter shivers whenever we drive through it.

MiL leaves nearby and we often have to take her there as she doesn't drive. It just has the weirdest vibe about it and I always end up feeling nauseous. So odd.

I live close and you are not wrong

I wonder if it's something to do with these model villages that were built by philanthropists for the staff that worked there. I think there's another on the Wirral, Port Sunlight but never been there.
Portmerion and saltaire don't creep me out but they do have an empty soulless atmosphere...

nuit, I think you're right. They haven't grown organically so feel off. Everyone told me how much I'd like Saltaire and it just felt fake/weird.

People saying "keep your eyes peeled"

Man made bodies of water ie reservoirs or old quarries turned into nature reserves. Natural lakes are fine, but I have such a bleak feeling and sense of loss around reservoirs and quarries.

Victoriana collections

Leeds

Parts of Manchester

City centres with a lot industrial revolution era architecture in the dark (probably explains my aversion to Leeds and Manchester).

@grassisjeweled, same grandparents also took us to visit A museum of medical oddities 😂. I remember it had a strange, murky atmosphere.

I wish I could ask them why they never took us to the park or out for cream tea!

Just remembered how much Monte Carlo/Monaco completely creeped me out... In fact much of the Riviera...I loved inland Grasse/vence etc but the coast. No. Again I think it's the vast wealth and the sinister undercurrent that comes with so much cash. I went in the stultifying heat of summer too so there was this really dead atmosphere. I saw a sheikh getting out of a helicopter with an armed guard and felt terrified.

I've been to Port Sunlight & quite enjoyed it, but there is a man-madeness to it that you don't get elsewhere. It feels a bit Stepford Wivesey with the perfect lawns & conservation area rules.

Man made bodies of water ie reservoirs or old quarries turned into nature reserves. Natural lakes are fine, but I have such a bleak feeling and sense of loss around reservoirs and quarries.
The remains of a village can be seen in Ladybower reservoir in Derbyshire at low water levels. Not seen it myself but have a morbid curiosity over it.
Flood water scares me. Photos of floods in familiar places are unsettling.

Freston tower. Me and DH hired it for a mid-week break years and years ago. Creepy as. Not the kitchen as it was modern not the living room at the top but the bedrooms - brrrr!

No tv either as it’s a landmark trust property. DH’s jokes about The Shining did not help! He hated it too.

@funtimefrank

As someone who lives between Bristol and bath I am bemused that we are so creepy!

My friend lives near Glastonbury and her dad used to refuse to go there because he felt so creeped out.

I've drive through Savenake forest a few times and just thought it was woody.

Littledean House near the Forest of Dean on the other hand was creepy as fuck. I'm not the most sensitive to these kind of things but god I felt dreadful. One room made me feel quite upset and teary and I had to leave much to the amusement of my mother. I was in my late teens/early 20s at the time and the guide said that a lot of girls my age didn't like that room.......

Littledean Hall was creepy but I loved it! Was it the blue bedroom that freaked you out? Had a slightly weird experience there with my sister.

Always felt I was being watched in the garden there though.

I drive on the Snake Pass regularly and in a weird way, I love it. You have to pretend you're a rally driver or a character from The Italian Job.

Saddleworth Moor is oppressive. I've never got out of my car there and it'd take a lot for me to do so. Partly it must be because I know what awful things have happened there, but partly it's the landscape. It's so open and wind-blasted and easy to get lost in, enough to make anyone understand what agoraphobia is. There are so many places there where no-one would ever hear you scream.

The pictures of the Ladybower Dam being built repulse me, and the ones of the church spire sticking out of the water, but I've been to the village sites and they aren't scary, just muddy and quite interesting. All of the buildings apart from the church were demolished so they're just floor plans, and the church was blown up by the RAF to stop divers from getting in it.

North Wales, the entire area.