Creepy, odd places you have been

[JohnnyMcGrathSaysFuckOff]

I have been dying for a good creepy thread for ages so thought I'd start one

Two stand out for me -

Doing the Dales Way with DH, we stopped one night in a tiny Dales hamlet. 2-3 houses, pub, church. That was it. Not much to do and it was a summer evening so we followed a public footpath through a kissing gate and went for a dip in a deep stream.

When we came back the same way about 30 mins later, someone had nailed 3 freshly dead voles to the gate.

Also, on holiday in France, staying in a rural villa, I went for a run early one morning. Ran past a back road signposted to a quaint sounding village. Decided to take a look. Down a narrow wooded road for a hundred yards, quite a dark road, then out into bright August 8am sunshine in a naice little village.

It was the vacances and the place was deserted, but it was just.... off. The cars were on the drives in most cases, but the shutters were all shut. No dog or cat, not even birdsong, just dead. There was a local noticeboard where the most recent notice was from the previous October. It was a lovely day but the whole place just felt dead. I tried to be brave for about 5 minutes and then cracked and fled, back down the dark road, with the strongest feeling that something was right behind me, just like when you're a kid going downstairs in a dark house and you daren't turn round to look back at the landing.

Anyone else have a creepy place story to share?

Fab stories on this thread! I stayed in a really odd B and B in Wales years ago. Our room had a wall which liked as if someone had been removing the surface and underneath was a large depiction of the Grim Reaper! I did not get much sleep that night, it was absolutely horrible. More recently I worked in a religious care home where many of the staff reported odd experiences. I had several and was very glad to leave.

Please tell about the experiences you had! When my father was dying in a nursing home my sister and I were there 2/47 for a fortnight, and at night we'd ask the night staff about experiences they'd had. It was fascinating and pretty scary.

Ok, well I had a job as a sleep in care assistant so I was on call as it were if the night staff needed an extra pair of hands. I was woken at three am by three loud knocks on my door but no one there. My room sometimes filled with light randomly in the night both red and white. I saw a strange tall thin shadow type figure “walking” down the main corridor when I was in an adjacent room. Other staff reported when the residents were dying they often fixed their gaze on a corner of the ceiling and smiled as if they could see something there. One time an organ in a resident’s room started to spontaneously make a very loud noise through the speaker, it was so loud that I thought something major was happening like a ceiling falling in. When I got to the room there was nothing but this crazy noise coming from it, I switched it off at the wall and referred it to maintenance but there was apparently nothing to find and no one believed me!

The gazing at the ceiling and smiling is said to beloved people who already passed away, coming and for a dying person on their last way.
It's very comforting feeling imo.

Wow, thanks very much for posting that! I love hearing about that kind of thing

Can’t recall if I’ve posted these but various places which you’d guess were haunted due to age and history.

Other places I wouldn’t say necessarily creepy or odd but Montsegur where the Cathars were burned to death by I think a leader that has a strange vibe, but it was more just very sad. Oradour similar.

One I’ve posted before is Smithfield, I didn’t know or didn’t think I knew much about the area, had been there a handful of times with ex colleagues to a bar/restaurants in the area. Started a new job in Barbican and explored the area in lunchtime. Similar to Montsegur I got an almost other worldly heavenly type feeling there, not necessarily sad but not happy, maybe peaceful.

I then found the William Wallace plaque and read about the burnings there and it made sense, I get a similar feeling at the Hyde Park end of Oxford Street where Tyburn is.

Viaduct Tavern in Holborn I visited on a ghost walk and also went for drinks when I worked there. The area they say is haunted well it’s dark and creepy and I wouldn’t like to be alone there but is it haunted or not and did I feel creeped out? No.

I wonder about some other places I’ve visited in the past like Edinburgh, Bastille part of France, Chester, Rye, old town Hastings. A lot of them I don’t necessarily think of being odd or creepy but they could be. Even when I visited the Clink prison in London, it’s odd and creepy but it’s an old prison!

Like I said the ones which really get me are ones where you visit but then feel odd or scared and rationally you wouldn’t be. But you are.

I don’t have much experience of elderly people dying apart from grandparents and great uncle/aunts.

Nothing leaps out at me but my nana as she was dying said she was dancing to us and seemed really happy as she loved dancing when younger. She didn’t say who she was dancing with mind!

@GonnaGetGoingReturns There were no birds singing at Oradour when I went. Ive been 3 times to photograph it, each time silent. Was unnervingly noticeable.

@Verv yes no birds singing at Oradour.

it’s an unbelievably sad place when you know what’s happened there. Understandably the older locals still aren’t fond of Germans even now. And I’ve got direct German heritage.

I lived in a house for about 4/5 years between the ages of about 7 - 12 that was three storeys. From the front, you could only really see two (with basement light wells) and then the land dropped away towards the back so it was all three storeys. When we first moved in the basement was unloved and very dated, but over time two rooms towards the back were knocked into one to make a huge playroom/ kids den. I hated it and didn’t want to be there alone - when we moved out my parents admitted that someone had hung themselves there.

In my parents much newer and decidedly unwoo house when I was early 30s, I was back home following my boyfriend dying very suddenly (he’d been diagnosed with cancer but was so ill the first dose of chemotherapy killed him). I was in the utility room with 4 of the family dog’s feeding them, and in my head was ‘talking’ to whatever spirit I could in my misery. All 4 dogs started to growl - just a low rumbling noise. I’ve never forgotten it. I hope that I was able to say goodbye at that point.

This might not be relevant but I met someone I know recently who told me she’d been to Glastonbury (the town/village) recently and loved it for its quirkiness etc. She mentioned if she was going in the future maybe I’d like to come.

I found Haworth a little creepy and that it had an ofish atmosphere that did not make me comfortable at all. The cottage where we stayed in was never warm despite the fire and heating being on. The cupboard door opened by itself and I got the feeling of being watched all the time in there.

Interesting about Haworth, @Ruthlessaunt. Were you staying with a friend or is the cottage available to rent? 😬

Just remembered, a few years ago I temped at Nelson Hospital in Wimbledon in the office area. Usually it was fine, it was an old building and we sometimes had to go to the hospital to get documents or to the canteen for lunch. One day late in the afternoon when the office was quiet it was in December and just before Christmas so a few of the office staff were on holiday, I went down to the area where I was collecting records from, knocked on a door where the department I was supposed to collect from was, but no one answered. Door was unlocked so I got the files and walked out past an old room which seemed to have chairs and other furniture in there which I was surprised about as I assumed it would’ve been used in some way. As I walked past it I didn’t see anything but it was quite a cold sudden chill there and I felt really uncomfortable. Mentioned this to the office when I got back there and was told, “oh that’s an unused ward, people have seen things there (ghosts)”. I hadn’t seen ghosts. Getting the bus back to the tube in the snow and dark after didn’t help me feel better.

Absolutely adore Haworth. Stayed in a cottage for maybe 6/7 years, regularly visit and love the atmosphere.

For a number of years as a child and teenager, we stayed in a converted water mill in Wales. It was in a beautiful, rural location and the cottage was lovely but with the bathroom and toilet downstairs and I hated needing to go in the night. You had to come down the stairs, cross a huge dining room with a mirror, pass an inner room that had windows and go down a corridor that led to the toilet. I always felt that the old Miller was watching me and used to go as quickly as possible fixing my eyes straight ahead. I felt that if i looked in the mirror, he would be looking back at me

I think I’ve posted about this before but DM visited when younger a converted or just old school house presumably in Kent/surrey/sussex countryside which friends bought.

DM stayed there overnight and had to leave with dog in tow as heard noises.

Most old places I’ve been including castles, old country houses and so on, you expect a certain amount of what’s called morphic resonance. Eg what remains.

I have eg felt creepy in certain areas of London eg docks near Wapping, Deptford but nothing I could necessarily put my finger on. Similarly old winding streets in eg Temple or City near Bank. But you’d expect that.

Greyfriars, Edinburgh. Something was very off about that place.

One section of the graveyard had a thick oppressive atmosphere that made it hard to breathe. Something hissed at us by the mausoleum, a deep male sounding voice. A friend claimed he felt someone push him as we were leaving.

The Vyne had an odd feeling in one of the bedrooms, a sense of sickness and resentment. The person I was with felt it too.

By contrast, the Bloody Tower at the Tower of London had completely normal energy and there was no sensation of any presence. I left a little disappointed!

@songaboutjam I have heard Greyfriars described as 'Human Lasagne'.
There are a LOT of bodies there. There was a LOT of bodysnatching.
It is unsettled, to say the least.

@Gonnagetgoingreturnsagain can you say more about morphic resonance please? it sounds interesting!

I lived in a house where a murder/suicide had taken place. House was fine.
My current house is not fine. Very unsettled. (no reason I'm aware of as yet)

I watched a tv programme recently with my Ds who is a Tube nut).
Middle aged, very stoic, engineer type men who'd worked for the London Underground for many years. Some of the stories were pretty hair raising.

@tenpoletudor tell us some of the Tube stories!

Try "Ghosts Of The Underground" (I think that's its title) - a documentary narrated by Paul McGann. It's good.

I love that Ghosts on the London Underground documentary. I've watched it numerous times. One of the best ghosty things I've ever seen 👍

That documentary was fab I agree.

The worker in the tunnel with the old-fashioned lamp really spooked me. And correct me if I'm misremembering, but didn't they bring on a sceptic who kept talking about infrasound - and then looked visibly disturbed when he actually listened to the recordings and said it sounded like women and children screaming?

Underground Doc

I went to Culloden as a child, and felt exactly the same.