Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Protection built in.

Meet the Other Phone.
Protection built in.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Mumsnet classics

Relive the funniest, most unforgettable threads. For a daily dose of Mumsnet’s best bits, sign up for Mumsnet's daily newsletter.

See all MNHQ comments on this thread

Original poster

Places you have visited with a strange vibe

963 replies

RevolvingPivot · 02/06/2021 21:59

Hi. I'm off to Saltburn (near Whitby) tomorrow and I feel sick. I visited last March. The weekend before the lockdown.

The place was so eerie. I was actually freaked out on the pier and had to run off it. I actually managed to sleep at night but I honestly didn't think I would.

The cottage was surrounded by cliffs and there was a Victorian lift and a small morgue by the beach. I'm not sure whether these have anything to do with it.

Has anyone else had this feeling from a place they have visited?

OP posts:
Thread gallery
29
eekbumbler · 03/06/2021 02:20

Weybourne beach.

DPotter · 03/06/2021 02:26

Sillysandy & Threekneerepeater & dottiedaisee* and others

I loved Townsville. Was there back in 2007 and I didn't pick up a weird vibe at all.
Now Alice Springs - that most certainly had a weird and very uncomfortable vibe.

eekbumbler · 03/06/2021 02:29

Dungeoness (if that's how you spell it) Like the power station zapped all life.

miltonj · 03/06/2021 03:11

New brighten beach on the Wirral (wallesley). We arrived and I said to my partner how spooky it felt. I can't really describe how, as it's a busy, typical sea front, but it just felt a bit weird... I liked it though!

QuestionableMouse · 03/06/2021 03:22

@Hellocatshome

with the red building thats the weird cliff side tram thing (it has a posh name)
Funicular railway. They're really cool.

Love Saltburn, though the last time I went was June 2019 and I've never seen weather like it in the summer - freezing and properly foggy!

QuestionableMouse · 03/06/2021 03:23

@PivotPivotPivottt

Oh I've been on that cliff tram thing but I thought it was in ScarboroughConfused. Is there one in Scarborough as well?
Scarborough has two 😁
Losttheequipment · 03/06/2021 03:24

Ashburton. Everything is very narrow and feels oppressive. Everyone looked as miserable as fuck. My car (a mini, not exactly ostentatious) got keyed twice in 3 weeks. Horrible place.

OhHarry · 03/06/2021 03:36

Didn't we have thus thread just the other day?

RainbowCrayons · 03/06/2021 03:44

I got a really weird feeling off that picture of the funicular railway too.

Glastonbury I got a horrible feeling from the town. It's seemed to life after I walked around the tor and I found the gardens really peaceful and calming but I did get that feeling of them being out of step with the the rest of the world.

I also found the big cathedral in Murcia, Spain to be really heavy and oppressive. I was only a teenagaer so I might have just been an arse but I really couldn't wait to get out of there. I would love to know if there was a history there.

Weirdest one was a boarding school in the uk. They used it in the summer for events, summer schools and courses etc. It was another very strange heavy atmosphere and I honestly felt someone tap me on the shoulder outside of the head masters office. Apparently one of the head masters had committed suicide in there. I couldn't wait to leave again.

FortunesFave · 03/06/2021 03:46

@RainbowCrayons

I got a really weird feeling off that picture of the funicular railway too.

Glastonbury I got a horrible feeling from the town. It's seemed to life after I walked around the tor and I found the gardens really peaceful and calming but I did get that feeling of them being out of step with the the rest of the world.

I also found the big cathedral in Murcia, Spain to be really heavy and oppressive. I was only a teenagaer so I might have just been an arse but I really couldn't wait to get out of there. I would love to know if there was a history there.

Weirdest one was a boarding school in the uk. They used it in the summer for events, summer schools and courses etc. It was another very strange heavy atmosphere and I honestly felt someone tap me on the shoulder outside of the head masters office. Apparently one of the head masters had committed suicide in there. I couldn't wait to leave again.

There are quite a few oddballs/weirdos living in and around Glastonbury unfortunately. Attracted by the magical tales coming out of the place...you're probably sensing them.

The boarding school one...probably felt the years of abuse that went on historically in many of the older ones. :(

HappyTimeTunnelDinosaur · 03/06/2021 03:53

Agree with Glastonbury and Aberystwyth, though I love the Forest of Dean.

Also, once went to Bergen-Belsen, which is awful for obvious reasons. Freezing cold even though the actual temperature was mild.

I found Amsterdam to have quite a strange vibe too, not at all in the way I was expecting, it actually felt a bit sad to me.

chickenyhead · 03/06/2021 04:34

I agree with Dungeness.

We once accidentally caught the last mini train there during a winter break. Just me and my best mate. It is completely desolate and all you can hear is the constant whap, what, whap of the nuclear power station and the sound of your footsteps on the gravel.

My friend and I were both smokers and usually talked non stop, but for the hour it took us to walk through this "nature reserve" neither of us spoke, or smoked. It was otherwise, entirely silent and pitch black.

There are single storey homes and shacks littered across the landscape and absolutely no street lights. As we were walking towards the nearest town (Lydd) we passed signs which read "no dumping toxic waste" as well as rusting containers with "Rd21" and other such names painted on them.

At one point as I was walking, in the dark, my friend slightly ahead, when this object next to me moved. I don't know what I had thought it was, but it was a person in a full length hooded cloak. No shame, I ran.

Once we got to the Pilot pub in Lydd, we were pretty much completely freaked but relieved too (and Lydd isn't exactly "normal".

Lots of people love Dungeness. Personally, I don't.

chickenyhead · 03/06/2021 04:36

Some pics

Places you have visited with a strange vibe
Places you have visited with a strange vibe
Places you have visited with a strange vibe
MangoSeason · 03/06/2021 05:01

@Sillysandy

Yes, Townsville in Australia years ago. It felt like vampires had come and ravaged the place.
I’m from Cairns and this has me crying with laughter. So true. It’s like a ghost town in the CBD on weekends.
Onesailwait · 03/06/2021 05:06

Forks, Washington state. It's were they filmed twilight. Very odd town. Feels like the kind if place you'd be murdered & the whole town was in on it including the sheriff. Then as we drove through the Olympic mountains we drove by a chain gang. It gave me chills.

Musication · 03/06/2021 05:06

Dungeness. Gives me the massive creeps I hate it.
Romney Marsh is also really bleak.

Moelwynbach · 03/06/2021 05:22

Holidayed here as a child it was so bad our family of six left after one night for a holiday in Rhyl which wasn't much better but for totally different reasons! Fell in love with and now live less than four miles away from there now.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cwm_Penmachno

OneMamaAndHerGirl · 03/06/2021 05:23

Hagley woods- “who put Bella in the witch elm”

That place gives me the heebie jeebies

Floppyflopflop · 03/06/2021 05:26

Ahh bloody love Saltburn! Fab place to visit and not too busy with everyone favouring Whitby!!

Ophanim · 03/06/2021 05:32

@IEat

Been going to Great Yarmouth for many years , child and as adult with my kids. Summer 2019 and I hated it. Stayed in a b&b instead of holiday park .. the streets were disgusting, knew homelessness was awful and drugs a major problem but bloody hell it was like a the bottom of a toilet bowl just grime. Never wanted to leave a holiday but this one couldn’t have ended quick enough. Doubt I’ll ever go back despite it being one of the places I wanted to live, definitely not now
I worked there for years. Dog shit and candy floss was how I always described it.
Vivana · 03/06/2021 05:51

Epping Forest in Essex. I was brought up there most of my life and always get a strange feeling there. Specially by hangman's Hill.

Gladimnotcampinginthisweather · 03/06/2021 05:52

I can't say Townsville gave me the creeps but it was a bit odd. I seem to remember a lovely little water park. We did go to a very odd church though, held in an I Max cinema. The preacher seemed to be saying God only loves beautiful people. We had our autistic son with us and the tone of the sermon suggested that God didn't like oddballs. Confused We got up and left.

Lanareyrey · 03/06/2021 05:55

Auschwitz. Never again.

BarbaraofSeville · 03/06/2021 05:58

I also like Saltburn, if you go when it's not the height of summer so packed, it seems like the perfect old fashioned seaside town. It's also the easiest bit of coast for me to get to (A64 to Scarborough always has a big traffic jam).

I keep meaning to rent a beach hut and just sit there and read all day, and get food from that cafe that Nadiya Hussein went to on Remarkable Places to Eat.

But I also like Heptonstall, to mention another place people think strange. Fascinating place.

My 'weird vibes' place was Sotogrande in southern Spain. The person who recommended it to us described it as a nice place to go for lunch and a wander round, but it just seemed really artificial, like something from the Truman Show. I just wish I'd read it's wikipedia page before we went and not bothered.

Jaichangecentfoisdenom · 03/06/2021 06:02

@Tyredofallthis1

Bradford town centre. There is something very off about it, imo. Apologies to those from Bradford, but the town centre is just depressing, in soul rather than anything else.

Once went to an amateur play in Bradford town centre. We got there around 6pm, long before it started, so had a drink before finding the theatre. It was winter, so dark, with a full moon, and the place was utterly empty and it felt soul sucking. I've seen a few things advertised at St Georges Hall which I fancy but I don't feel like going back.

Sounds like Crawley (nearest town to Gatwick Airport), but that's not spooky, just really depressing.