What is the creepiest place you've ever been to?

[Hatchinganegg]

Was just talking about this with DH earlier. I remember going on a visit to Edgehill as a child and finding it really spooky. We'd been watching videos in school about the Civil War and there was talk of the phantom armies etc, so I think it was a combination of that and how strange it was that all these nice quiet green fields were once a battlefield

The second place was a ruined abbey in Ireland. Lovely sunny day when we visited, but my skin was crawling the whole time we were there and I kept feeling as though there was something peeping at me fron behind the walls

I've been to several of the places mentioned here and never experienced as much as a frisson. How very disappointing!

This thread has been facinating, I have a few to mention.
I also didn't like parts of Bodmin Goal and the Hellfire caves made me deeply uncomfortable and I felt like we were being watched.
Woodchester Mansion during a ghost walk at night had some areas that I felt uncomfortable in despite it never having being lived in.
I have always wanted to stay in a haunted hotel and for a big birthday hubby obliged (a very old hotel in Tewkesbury). We went for dinner and cocktails and when we went to bed he went straight to sleep. As I turned off the light a full 2 litre bottle of water that had been at the back of the dressing table crashed to the floor and I heard walking around the room. Hubby was in a drunken sleep and not very helpful, I spent the night bricking it under the covers. When we awoke the next morning he was muttering about by people in the room above walking around and being loud- we were in the attic. When we looked at pictures we had taken in the room on our PC we are surrounded by orbs.
I used to be a nurse and had some very odd experiences in homes and hospitals but one of the worst was when I was a student.
My flatmate and I had both been starting to feel very uncomfortable at home, especially at night. Long story short one night I knew I wasn't alone in the house and that if I turned around I would see evil. I legged it and was terrified.
Turns out that after a party some friends had used my tarot cards to have a seance and once I had burnt the cards the feelings went.

There’s a stretch of the A23 where it passes Handcross that I always used to find unnerving. The road went from being straight, open (and fast) to narrower, bendy and surrounded by tall trees where it dropped down Handcross Hill. I always used to slow down considerably on approach to that hill, as I always had a sense of impending peril. I always felt like I wouldn’t be surprised if a ghostly Highwayman galloped out from the trees.

I googled it once and discovered that as well as being a notorious accident black spot, it was infamous for sightings of figures stepping out into the road in front of cars, then vanishing on impact. Some motorists had stopped in horror and run back along the verge to look for the person they were convinced they’d hit, only to find nobody there.

There was also a horrific accident early in the twentieth century, in which an omnibus/charabanc carrying holidaying Londoners on their way to Brighton had lost control going down the hill, and hit a tree, killing everyone on board (and decapitating those on the top deck as it ran under a branch).

This stretch of road was recently upgraded; widened, straightened, the gradient smoothed, and the trees bordering it cut down. It is no longer creepy (and I’m sure much safer).

I also read that when the road widening works were being carried out, the workmen found a human jawbone.

OMG MadMary i know that spot!
I used.to drive down it every day and always felt weird as though I were about to spin off the road.
My mum hated driving it too. She said several times 'no matter how carefully I drive I always think I'm going to crash'.

My friend fainted on the NHS victory. She said she was too hot and it made her feel weird.

We were walking my friend's dog on the south downs near Lewes and were going through a tunnel of trees. I started feeling breathless and panicky and stopped. I realised my friend had stopped a few pages behind me. The dog had frozen on the path ahead and all the crowd and birds had stopped making noise too. It felt oppressive and was unbearable. We just looked at each other and ran full pelt the way we'd come the dog overtook us yelping. We got out of the trees and began to laugh at how silly we'd been but the dog flatly refused to go that way again.
My friends mum called the top of that track the witch site. Her gran said it was where they used to burn witches.
It did feel very very Blair witch. Although this happened way before any of the films were made.

People convicted of witchcraft in England were hanged, not burnt.

I've had some genuinely woo experiences, but I've talked about them a fair bit in RL and would have to namechange to share.

There's one place though that totally freaked me out that I've never talked about to anyone, and that was Port Appin, north of Oban on the west coast of Scotland. I was island hopping and stayed briefly with a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend, whom I didn't know but who had kindly offered me a bed for the night. After dinner, we went for a walk through a kind of nature reserve on the peninsula near the jetty for the ferry from Lismore. The whole time we were there I felt an intense sense of foreboding, as if we were being watched or that danger was near. The FOAFOAF was female, friendly, hospitable, but I couldn't shake off a sense that she meant me harm. I slept with the lights on, or rather, didn't sleep at all. She invited me to stay for an extra day but I had the screaming abdabs (internally) just thinking about it, so instead she gave me a lift back towards Oban in the morning and I was so completely convinced that she was intending to harm or abduct me that I almost bailed out of the moving vehicle. It was as much as I could do just to keep a lid on how I was feeling and be polite until the car stopped and I could get out.

I've never had such a screamingly upsetting sensation about either a place or a person before and have often wondered what it was that was going on. Appin and the surrounding area is really beautiful, but socially has a slightly odd atmosphere and there had been a lot of deaths around that time, particularly of young people, including some suicides iirc. A lot of people find the nearby Castle Stalker creepy, but I thought it was beautiful. I sometimes wonder if woo sensations can be caused by geophysical arrangements, and Appin is dominated by all the granite nearby, to the point where there is (or was then) no mobile signal to be had. So I don't know. I'd really be interested to hear from anyone to knows there area or has had similar feelings there.

Sorry liz70 but that isn't strictly true.

Witches were both burnt and hanged.

www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/Witches-in-Britain/

York Castle Museum made me feel unsettled. It had a heavy atmosphere and the old cells had this awful sad feeling.

Catacombs in Paris

Don't go

Convicted witches were burned in Scotland, but the penalty for witchcraft in England and Wales was the gallows. Burning at the stake in England was reserved for heretics (both men and women) and high and petty treason (women only, men were hanged, drawn and quartered). If you read closely the cases of the few women who burned in England it was because they e.g. killed their husbands (petty treason) or were convicted of heresy, so strictly speaking they were not burned as witches. Although one would have thought that witchcraft and heresy went hand in hand. But burning or hanging, not a pleasant way to go either way.

I found Portavadie very weird-feeling. We went there to do the first leg of The Cowal Way, to Tignabruich, and that was a fast 12 miles because for some reason, we felt compelled to leg it. It was only after that DH said, 'That place is weirdy.' Yep. Couldn't put my finger on it, though.

St Sophia's Chapel in Glendaruel, which as far as I know, was never a consecrated church but built by the former landowner (the place is now a caravan park) for his other woman whom he married. It feels very, very wrong. So does Dunan's Castle which is down the same road.

"an omnibus/charabanc carrying holidaying Londoners on their way to Brighton had lost control going down the hill, and hit a tree, killing everyone on board"

Ten of the thirtysix passengers were killed, mostly firemen and their families on an outing.

The idea of taking a cumbersome, open topped double decker bus, full of unrestrained passengers, down a steep, winding road would be insanity today, never mind in 1906. It's no wonder it ended in disaster.

I've been to Clifford's Tower and Berry Pomeroy castle and didn't feel a thing!
In fact, I thought Berry Pomeroy was one of the nicest places I've ever been. Absolutely beautiful valley, very calm.

The underground hospital in Guernsey. I found it awful. Towards the end I can remember some mannequin soldiers and they were terrifying. I've been a bit scared of them ever since.

I've just remembered another one! The Tower of London at night. I was lucky enough to be invited to a late night tour and meal in the Beefeater's private club. We then saw the 'ceremony of the keys'. It was absolutely amazing. However walking outside to the toilets in the dark was absolutely terrifying!

I had that feeling about Antwerp too - although this was evening, there was hardly anyone around and I had an odd feeling when I walked part particular houses.

not part .... past

Weirdest experience we had was in Shropshire at a supermarket with a weird name that I cannot remember many years ago.
There was a group of us in a van, we had been to collect car bits from a local scrap guy. We were already a little weirded out as the car he directed us to on his site was clearly in a very bad crash and there was dried blood all over the interior.
We were on our way home and really hungry. We spotted this place so pulled in as we noticed a cafe. We all pile out of the van and into the cafe and are stood around checking out the menu. Waitress arrives from the back take one look at us and says "we are not serving food" all the chairs were down and the open sign lit up. We looked at each other puzzled but shrugged and said fine we will just have a few cups of tea then to be told " we are not serving hot drinks". We leave rather bemused and go to the supermarket instead.
On the way into the supermarket is what looks like a big glass enclosure with a parrot inside. The parrot was alive not suffed. I go to lean closer to look to find there is no glass and the enclosure is just open. The bird just sat and blinked at me.
Into the supermarket we trundle to be met with silence. Nobody walking round seemed to be talking, there was no supermarket music and we were the speaking at normal volume and EVERYONE turned to stare at us. We quietly and quickly purchased our items most of which seemed out of date and hot footed it back to the van to eat and drink. We sat for a while on the car park with the van doors open in the sunshine and noted the comings and goings of the local residents. The ladies wore straw hats and big flowery dresses, the men suits, none of them locked their car doors and the whole place just felt off and like we had skipped back to another time zone.
The whole experience was very odd but being young we just laughed it off finished our food and left.

The other was passing RAF Fylingdales on the moors on our way to Whitby. I just felt shivery and cold and didnt want to look at the building at all but at the same time couldnt take my eyes off it till it was out of sight.

MrsLupo

We stayed at the Pierhouse hotel in Port Appin for a few days about 5 years ago , it's right on the loch side next to the ferry, we also went across on the ferry to Lismore we didn't feel anything weird.
We liked the fact that you don't get a mobile phone signal which happens a lot in the wilds of Scotland.
I don't think the granite would have any effect on most people otherwise the city of Aberdeen - the "Granite City" - would be a very strange place indeed.

@shamefuldodger I remember that thread, I think you were pregnant with DC2? So pleased everything worked out for you

This is non-woo, but one place which always struck me as somehow "wrong" is Larkhill in Wiltshire. It doesn't feel like a place at all, more like a huge model of a place or a random collection of buildings. I lived there for a few years and it was weirdly rare to see anyone on the street or kids playing outside. With it being mostly (at that time, almost entirely)a military garrison, there were no old people except for the odd visiting grandparent, just adults between 17 and 55 and children.

When I worked as cabin crew, we had nightstops in Athens and I used to go off on my own exploring. I once found this little restaurant that randomly did a delicious all day breakfast - it really was the best I’ve ever had. The restaurant had oak beams inside and was very old fashioned, like an old English pub. I was the only one in there apart from the man who I presumed was the owner. Not sure why they did English cooked breakfasts!

I tried to find it again and never did! I walked around the area it had been in for two hours but nope. This was before smartphones but I did Google it and found nothing. I asked around and in the hotel - nobody knew what I was talking about.

Finally read the whole thread . It's fascinating. Maybe I'm a weirdo, but I really want to go to some of these places now.

My contribution: DP and I looked at a flat to rent around Kings Cross in London about 15 years ago. Perfectly nice Victorian terrace place, big windows, little terrace outside etc. But the bedroom didn't look or feel like a proper room, more like a hallway that had been repurposed –it was quite long and narrow and seemed oddly placed, like it was the wrong way round. The living room and the kitchen were each at one of its short ends, IYSWIM.

Maybe it was just the oddness and long thinness of it, but that room gave me the screaming heebs; the hairs on the back of my neck are standing up now thinking about it. I couldn't stand in there for longer than a few seconds; I remember psyching myself up and haring through it to look at the other rooms. We didn't take the flat.

The other one is a neighbourhood in Copenhagen. Can't remember the name but there's a big area of market-style food stalls with outdoor seating. It seemed to be full of drunk rowdy people and the whole space felt tawdry and somehow bleak and windswept. We walked a bit away from the space and the rest of the neighbourhood seemed tawdry as well; grim tiny patches of green with sad-looking trees, and groups of people sitting about who all seemed to be staring at us. It was to bleak. So different from anywhere else I went in the city. I couldn't wait to get away from it.