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?

@stormytherabbit. Ah - here it is. (Thanks Raspberry, but that thread just took me to my last bookmark!). However, here we go :

"PageStillNotFound404 Fri 16-Sep-16 13:05:22"

"Found it. Warning: it's very long (sorry) and very freaky, and if anyone can come up with a rational explanation I'd be extremely grateful because I'm generally a pretty rational non-woo where's-the-evidence person, but I've never been able to explain this and it still makes my heart beat faster and the hair stand up on my arms when I think about it, years later."

"I was pet sitting for my friend several years ago. She had moved into a sort of small holding right on the edge of a village in the SW, with a huge garden that backed onto trees. At the time she had a right menagerie - chickens, ducks, a couple of Shetlands, cats and four black retrievers, three fully grown and one a half grown puppy. Originally DH had been going to come with me as a little holiday but the dates she ended up having to go away for work clashed with a couple of his medical appointments so he stayed at home with our dog and I went to petsit alone."

"It was about halfway through my stay, a couple of nights to go. Late evening, already dark when I heard a massive commotion from the chicken shed, banging and thumping. I assumed a fox or something had got in so went out to check. As I was halfway across the garden the noise stopped instantly as if it had been shut off; by the time I got to the shed all was calm and the chickens were all settled, mostly asleep. No sign of any intruder or disturbance at all, nothing to explain the noise or any indication that the chickens had made a noise. Bit freaky but I didn't (and still don't) know much about The Way of Chicken so I locked up again and left them to it."

"As I went back in the house a small black shape ran past me out of the back door and I realised the puppy must have got out. It streaked across the garden and off towards the woods. Cue much cursing, then calling her name in vain. More cursing when she didn't come back. I grabbed a torch and put one of the other dogs on the lead, partly for protection, partly because I thought the pup was more likely to come back if I had one of her canine companions with me and partly because I didn't fancy my chances of finding my way back to the house on my own even though there were a couple of vague paths that I'd followed when walking the dogs throughout the week."

"Off we trudged into the wood along one of these paths, me calling pup's name at intervals and trying not to imagine murderers and rapists behind every tree trunk. We got to a point where it felt like the trees were starting to thin out and I remember thinking that I didn't remember a clearing on this path and we must have gone wrong somewhere when the dog with me slowed right down and started to resist going forward. I tried to jolly her along - while my stomach suddenly dropped like a stone - and she started growling, a really low serious rumbling growl. By this time I was practically shitting myself. I tried shining the torch ahead but the beam just sort of bounced back off the darkness if that makes sense? I got the sense of something - or somethings - moving but just sinuous deeper black shapes against the blackness and always on the periphery of vision. (The hairs on my arms are standing up again just remembering how completely and utterly terrified I was. I have honestly never known a feeling like it.)"

"At this point the dog sank right down, still growling, hackles up and refused to budge. I muttered something like "Jesus, you have got to be kidding me" and this ugly gurgling inhuman sort of voice hissed, right up close as if someone was right next to me "don't say that name". At the same time there was a horrible snickering sort of laugh. I cant express how utterly petrified I was. I can't remember having any coherent thoughts apart from the word "evil". That's the only clear thing I can remember. Me and the dog were frozen to the spot with pure fear. Then a different voice, really commanding, said "GO. BACK." That sounded more in my head but echoey, where the others had sounded out in the air IYSWIM?"

"Wherever it came from it did the trick. Me & the dog turned and belted back through the woods. She basically towed me, I just clung onto her lead stumbling to keep up and sobbing with fear. I lost the torch somewhere on that wild run but there was no way I was stopping to find it. How I didn't run blindly into a tree I'll never know, she guided me I guess. I can remember thinking desperately that I mustn't let go of her lead or "they" would get me."

"When we got back to the garden she suddenly stopped - I did fall over her this time, onto my hands and knees - turned around and started snarling, proper teeth bared, rabid-looking snarls, back at the trees and the darkness. I thought I heard the snickering again but the blood was pounding in my ears so hard I can't be sure. I scrambled up and ran to the back door and she followed me but backing and snarling all the way as if holding something at bay. Oh, and the chicken shed was banging and thumping again. I got the back door open, me and her belted in, I slammed home every bolt behind us. The other dogs left behind were staring at the door and growling too with their hackles up and when I saw all three of them, puppy included, acting like that I started to cry properly because I honestly thought I was trapped in some horror film nightmare and was going to die. I don't know - I still don't know - what the black shape was that ran past me out of the house and triggered all of this because the puppy was right there in the kitchen."

"Anyway I made sure every door and window was locked and bolted, I turned on every light in the house, I wandered round mumbling all sorts of weird half-religious half-spiritual shit to ward off evil spirits. Gradually the dogs settled down and stopped growling, and eventually stopped glancing at the door. Funnily enough I didn't sleep for one second that night and I rang my DH and begged him to come over the last couple of days. I know I didn't dream it because I was covered in scratches from running through the woods and had grazed hands from where I fell over the dog in the garden."

"Nothing like that has happened before or since and I hope it never, ever does. It was the single most horrible, terrifying experience of my entire life."

Does anyone remember a story about a poster staying in a B&B when she was overwhelmed by the feeling of evil? She froze and stayed like that all night.

samloves we went to the same castle just last month!! the torture museum was something else. Guillotine, racks, iron maidens etc....all real and not replicas. Fascinating but terrifying at the same time

Fru I never read that thread the first time around - that is terrifying!

Not my story, Grawp. I eventually managed to find it on the other thread. I remember reading it at the time that it was posted, last year, and it was terrifying to read.

I don't want to go outside and shut the guinea pigs up now...

Many years ago I stayed in a rented house on the French/Italian border. There were two families, both with young children, ( baby and eighteen month old). It was three stories with an additional windowless room down a separate staircase. Another friend stayed in that bit, absolutely oblivious to any feeling of unease. I couldn't even go into the room, the feeling of menace was palpable.

I hated leaving dc asleep in the evenings up on the third floor and returning downstairs. It just felt wrong. I couldn't relax at all and had to keep going and checking. On the last night my SIL and our two dc were there alone. We distinctly heard the curtain separating the first and second flight of stairs, which hung on a metal rail, swooshing across, but there was no one there but us. We grabbed the dc and walked up to look. Sure enough the curtain was drawn. We bolted back downstairs, tryingto find a rational explanation. Once our dh's arrived back, it was late by now, we were laughing at our silliness.

We went up to bed, needing to sleep as we had an early start. I did not sleep a wink and neither did DH. All night there were strange bangings and stamping as if people were walking across the roof. The stairs to the menacing room were attached to our room and I felt sure that someone was going to appear. I lay there all night, in a state of high alert, waiting for dawn, our dc squashed between us.

After leaving we all confessed to each other that we had felt really uncomfortable in there but had all been too embarrassed to say. It was a real hairs-on-the-back-of-your-neck place. Horrible. I feel quite sick just writing it down and it happened about eighteen years ago.

Edinburgh vaults. DH and I had a terrible oppressive, overwhelmingly sad feeling there. We later found out that his 4xgreat grandmother had lived in the vaults when they were at their most foul.

The hotel we spent our wedding night at was a massive, rambling Victorian building (Victoria stayed there herself, in the room we stayed in no less). On our way back from the bar at about 1am we got lost and ended up in this apparently attic corridor, under the eaves. The rest of the hotel has been modernised but this was like a cross between faded Victoriana and The Shining. There were no guest rooms but there was this really strange alcove with a small wrought iron table and chairs in, and a vase of dead flowers on the table. It was really dark, despite the lights being on - bonkers but hard to describe. Total hairs on back of neck time. We found our way back to our room eventually but when we tried to find the mysterious corridor the next day, we couldn't - and the members of staff we spoke to had no idea what we were talking about.

One more - when I was younger I managed a charity shop. It was in an old shop in West London and as well as the shop itself, there were two floors above which had previously been flats but were now used for stock or just left empty. The first floor still had the original kitchen which was a total 60s throwback, and the top floor had a bathroom and bedrooms - one of them still had Starsky and Hutch posters on the walls. The building itself was very old and I was never sure whether it's age made it creepy or the odd 60s/70s furnishings and decor.

Anyway, in the back bedroom (empty apart from a few bits of old shop fittings) there was a fireplace, and on the mantelpiece there was one of those plastic silver keys in the shape of a number 21 that people get for their 21st birthdays. It had always been there and I just assumed it was old donated stock or something. One day, I was up there having a snoop mooch and I went into the key room, as I thought of it. The key was there, as usual - but next to it was a photo of a blonde girl, smiling, in sort of late 70s/early 80s clothes - and she was holding the key.

As the manager, I was the only person who had a key to the top floor.

KnitFirst - I also felt Bath was oppressive - I had some lovely romantic times there but felt a sadness and at times a sense of negative atmosphere . Have also had this in Brighton perhaps it's places that have Georgian buildings or places that are meant to be happy but have melancholy and sadness attached to them .

It's too quiet, mouse. There be washed up bodies, I'm sure!

(also beautiful - we visit a few times a year, though mostly for the pokemon!)

Not woo, exactly, but haunting. The 'House of the Wannsee Conference' on the outskirts of Berlin.

It is a gem of a building, very attractive and smart, on a lake, and has very understated gates and signs for it which indicates it can be visited at certain times but no more. I did wander in to visit it and, before we went through the door, there's a holidayfied photo of me in the garden. It is the building in which the meeting to decide the Nazi 'Final Solution' - of the trains to the camps - was held.

There isn't too much there, though there is an exhibition and photo archives which explains the (already horrifying) circumstances of the Jewish ghettos etc just before the drastic step of rounding up and shipping off. What I do remember, though, was a copy of the agenda and minute papers in a glass case which are just full of euphemisms. There are notes made on them. Someone has underlined a particularly sickening one in red and added a discreet exclamation mark. The initial plans that were, presumably, refined, were all set out very clinically and correctly, with figures and estimates. That alone is so chilling.

Not me but my mum who's been gone for 27 years now used to tell me of this creapy thing that happened to her and a friend. Exmouth 1960 something. She's working in Boots on the Exeter road. It's summer and they're both desperate for a bit of sun on their lunch break. They go into the back yard for a spot of sunbathing when all of a sudden something makes them look up. They can see a man clear as day hanging in the middle of the attic window. His eyes are bulging and they can see the piss mark on his trousers. both scream grab each others bikes and get the Fuck out of their pretty quick ringing in sick from my mum's home phone. The next day when mum goes to work she casually mentioned it to her supervisor who shakes her head and tells her not to be so silly . Yet an older worker their takes mum up to the attic and shows her that the middle of the window now has a partition wall through it. So they would never have seen a recent suicide but more like an echo from the past.
Boots moved some time later to the magnolia centre and I've never heard of anyone else seeing this.
But it did give me my first taste of spooky woo and I've loved the genre ever since.
Sorry for the long post.

Enjoying this thread! It's reminded me of an odd experience I had years ago in a Liverpool hotel when a large group of us stayed there for a hen weekend. It was a rather rundown place which had clearly once been very grand and still retained a sort of shabby elegance. Friend and I settled in our twin room; nothing to make me uneasy. No atmosphere or anything of that sort. Our only grumble was that the room was stiflingly hot and the windows opened only a little way.

We all had a great night out in Liverpool, and friend and I returned to room merry and a little worse for wear but neither of us blind drunk or anything like that. I had very recently had surgery for a very painful condition and the aftercare involved taking a pretty nasty potion every morning. I was vigilant about this as I couldn't bear the thought of any recurrence of the awful daily pain I'd endured for months. I remember mentally noting, with some anxiety, that the small tea tray in the room had no teaspoon. It sounds nonsensical but it was on my mind because if the crap I had to take wasn't stirred vigorously, it went all gloopy and indigestible. So I went to bed a little anxious about that but otherwise on great terms with the world.

I had a very unsettled night, repeatedly drifting into a dream before waking with a start, heart racing. Each sleep snippet would feel like hours but my watch told me only minutes had passed. I wasn't particularly freaked out by any of this as it is typical of the sleep paralysis I sometimes suffer. It's a horrible thing but manageable once you know what it is.

The only thing different this night was that I began to feel a bit disconcerted about how many bloody mirrors there were in the room. They seemed to be on every fecking surface and I became afraid that I would, through the dim light from the city street lights, see a face or something in one of them! So I tossed and turned, trying never to look directly at any of the many mirrors.

I think it was nearing dawn when I awoke again from another fitful sleep to hear a voice very close by saying my name. My immediate thought was it must be my friend asking me to stop snoring! When I looked over at her bed, however, she was fast asleep and with her back to me. Again, I'd had similar experiences in the past during sleep paralysis episodes, so although I was unnerved, I soothed myself with that explanation and eventually fell into a more easy sleep.

When I woke in the morning, my friend was in the shower and I felt okay. I turned my head to test for lurking hangover and there on the pillow, right beside my noggin, was a teaspoon. Just sitting there. A teaspoon. I know it sounds nonsensical - which is why I never really tell the story - but I still haven't a rational explanation for it. I mean, I know there must be one, but what it is I do not know. Friend had no ideas. Her only observation was that she wondered how the spoon had stayed on the pillow given that I had been tossing and turning so much. I have no history of sleep walking. If I had somehow, without remembering doing it, asked a staff member to bring me a spoon, and said person had come into the room, without our noticing, surely he or she would have left it on the tea tray, not ON MY PILLOW!

Anyway, we had another great night in Liverpool and, to my surprise, I slept much better the second night. No more incidents. I still think about it sometimes though. I didn't feel any sense of being under malign influence or anything like that really, but I would not go back to that hotel. There's something in the memory of it that can still strike fear into me.

when I was younger, I was going to Ireland with my parents, on the way we stopped at Holyhead, and went into this really strange pub. It was owned by an old lady and her son. It just looked like a normal pub on the floor where the bar was but I asked if I could use the toilets and was directed down some stairs. At the bottom of the stairs you get to this room, it was nearly pitch black but light enough with the light coming from the toilets (which was a weird yellow colour and flickering) to see that there was a table, with dolls sat around it.

I actually live in North Wales now, and I have been meaning to go and have a look but I can't remember what the pub was called (it might have all changed since)

Soft, I'm just wondering what hotel that was ( I live there you see)..

Hiya, confused! Lucky you - I love Liverpool, despite creepy hotels! I think it was called the Delphi. It was really central and a very large hotel with a beautiful stone facade. I must look it up now....

An ex of mine lived in Baldock. For some reason, I found the town creepy.

I was about you ask if it was the Adelphi! I think there are stories of hauntings there

Hey, Millie! Yeah, looked it up and it was the Adelphi Britannia Hotel, not Delphi. I thought it might have been renovated in the interim - I stayed there in the early 2000s - but the photos on the website suggest it is much the same. The staff were lovely and the food good, but I would be uneasy about returning.

The story above about the person pet-sitting is terrifying!!

The minute I read your post, I thought of the Adelphi! We used to go to a night club there, as students, but I also remember it (and the ghost stories) from my childhood.

Lived in Liverpool whilst at uni.

Absolutely loved the Anglican cathedral there, used to go there all the time. Was parking up on the road outside it one time and there was a girl stood on the corner with long curly red hair. Old fashioned clothes. Staring right at us. We stared back. I turned back to look and she simply wasn't there. Really odd.

www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/adelphi-named-most-haunted-hotel-10417285

May sound ridiculous, but I feel so uncomfortable and almost frightened driving on the M50, which I have to do here and there as I live in south Wales and travel to the midlands and Scotland quite often.

It's so desolate, quiet, no services, seems badly built and just has a horrible abandoned feeling and I can't wait to get off and onto the boring M5!

Kielder Village in Northumberland. It is partly the huge black trees (even in summer) partly the flooded village under the reservoir and partly a story I know of what happened to two families there.

Culloden in Scotland. There is a cottage there where an atrocity happened. It is very oppressive.

The basement room corner in my Victorian house :(

• will return with story tonight...

She I felt the same in Portavadie. I walked the Cowal Way and the section from Portavadie to Tighnabruich I didn't like at all. It felt weird the whole way, even in beautiful weather.