There's an eternally-burning pit in the middle of Turkmenistan. And a church near Prague that's made out of human bones. But you don't always have to go to distant places to see what nightmares look like. Sometimes you can find that sort of stuff lurking in the mundane.

Like when you pull over at a random rest stop on your trip to the coast and immediately feel in your gut that you shouldn't be there.

A discussion on Reddit has people describing a town, village, truck stop, diner, and other similar places that just didn't feel right when they were there, places where everything and everyone seemed off, and if Hollywood isn't taking notes, they're missing out on quite a few horror movie ideas.

#1

This is my girlfriends story but is kinda up the alley of what you are asking for.

My partner went to Florida with her family when she was younger and they were driving around trying to find some food until they found a Chinese restaurant and they went in and had some food.

There were no other customers, lots of staff, everyone seemed very tense but the food was great.

They left and had a lovely rest of their day.

During breakfast the next morning they turned on their tele and the news showed the place they had eaten and they were like ‘wow look we went there’. Then the story started and it turns out no more than 10 minutes after they left there was a massive shoot up and they all killed one another.

Turns out that the ignorant british tourists just sat in-between some kind of asian turf war.

Image credits: anon

#2

My girlfriend and I went to an AirBnB in a town called Tiger, Georgia to see a bunch of her old college friends. There was one other couple who got there about the same time we did. By day the cabin looks pleasant enough- 3 stories of rustic comfort with a hot tub overlooking the forest and sunrise. We didn't get there by day. We got there as the sun was sinking low. Rooms seemed to shrink and tighten. The stairwells were only as wide as a single body. And at the bottom of the basement stairs, a rug hid a padlocked trapdoor. It felt like the start of a horror movie.

We're trying to ignore the weird vibes and decide to go to dinner. We spent nearly an hour driving around searching for a place to eat. Steakhouses closed by 7pm, an Italian joint which was now someone's house. A Mexican eatery now abandoned and overgrown with vines... Finally we find something. It's suitably called "The Last Dive Bar On Earth", and it's sitting on the edge of a retention pond. The parking lot is full of pick up trucks all festooned with old political bumper stickers from the late 90s and early 2000s. We head in. It's like we've entered another decade. But the beer is good, they have pizza, and the prices aren't bad. We eat in a hurry and get out of there.

As we get back to the cabin, the other couples are there and talking about how they had such a nice time in town. It was only by daylight at the end of the weekend that as we descended the mountain we found a ton of local shops and restaurants *that I swear to f*****g god were not there the first night*.

On the first night, the electrical outlets in the house fried my phone, leaving me with no way to contact the outside world.

The weekend ended up being nice, but the entire time we all felt like we had fallen through a crack into some*when* else.

Image credits: mxmnull

#3

Yep, stopped in a no name town in Texas for gas. Bunch of guys wearing nothing but denim hanging out in front of the gas station. Denim, cow boy hats, cow boy boots. It wasn't just a lot of people, EVERYONE was wearing that. Their drawls were so thick I could barely understand what they were saying to one another, a lot of hooting and hollering.

About 50 yards away, there was a guy sitting under a tree. He was wearing a black and white striped jump suit...and was chained to the tree by a shackle on his leg. Didn't see any law enforcement around, maybe they dropped him off? A girl with huge tits, one and a half arms, and an eye-patch complimented my car and smiled at me when I was pumping gas. I saw a cow trotting down the side of the road, no one seemed to be chasing it. The fact it was twilight seemed to make everything surreal.

I unassed myself from that place as quickly as I could.

Image credits: I_love_asparagus

#4

I was traveling through Arkansas with my friend in the army. He was a big ol black dude and I was a medium height white dude. Everyone in McDonalds literally stopped and just stared at us until we ordered food and left. It was super weird and we made sure to bypass the place on the way back to post.

Image credits: anon

#5

I was on a roadtrip to go to Tallahassee with two of my cousins and my mom.

Like halfway between A and B, the driver he has to go pee, so we decided to stop in the next no name rest stop settlement.
As soon as we drove in, I immediately felt something was wrong. The cars that were driving were all banged up and looked like they came straight from the 70s, confederate flags in a couple of places, ran down shanty looking houses, lots of Confederate flags, the American flags that were around were pretty banged up and/or torn, the people stared at us as we drove passed by, and everyone just looked "dead" inside. Honestly, if someone told me that there was a Klan rally right up the street, I would 100% believe them. That's the kind of vibe I got from this place.

So my cousin pulls into this decent looking rest stop/gas station and jogs into the bathroom. While my mom and my other cousin were knocked out, I decide to go in the stop with the intentions of going in, getting a snack, and getting out.

As soon as I walk in, it feels like time stopped and everyone (that I can see) is staring at me. It felt like something out of a horror movie ngl. Luckily for me, there were a pile of apples near the door, so I move my way there, and then I noticed the few people around me stopped dead in their tracks just to look at me. For example, their like hands were still on the items, and this man even stop reading his little cereal box to stare at me. Since I'm black, this place wasn't sitting well with me at *all*.

I put back the apple I was holding and I casually walked out (no need to cause a scene or anything) without getting anything. F**k. That. Place.

When my cousin came back, we booked it tf out of there.

Image credits: NoodleEmpress

#6

I used to live in Southern Africa and we did charity work in a lot of very remote, rural areas, and when I say remote, I mean several hours rough driving on roads that can barely be called roads. Many times we would come across settlements that were not on any map, just a collection of cinderblock and mud houses sometimes well off the road. Usually these were what we called "working villages" as in there is some worksite, maybe a small brickwork, or farm, or something like that nearby (though when I say "near" the workers could be walking an hour or so to where they need to be.) When we would stumble upon places like this, we would stop, find coordinates and landmarks, make some records and pass it along back to our office.

One day, we are working in the area near the borders of South Africa, Namibia, and Botswana, and we see some smoke well off the road. Thinking it may be a village, we decide to go off road to take a look. It was fairly well hidden, behind a small hill, and from the road you would have never known it was there if it were not for the column of smoke on the horizon. We get to it, and sure enough it looks like one of these unmarked working villages, maybe 10 or so huts, but something seemed very off. It took a second and we realized that there was no one around, and yet it seemed as if whoever lived there was there only moments before. We head to where the smoke came from, and it was a large bonfire, when we looked closer, we noticed bones in it, goat and cattle bones. Other than the sound of the fire, there was not a peep from anything else. Once I stepped out of our truck to get a closer look, I had this overwhelming sense that I was being watched from afar, and that I was not welcomed here. The other guys in the truck said they felt the same, and that we needed to go. So we did.

A couple of weeks later when we were driving back, curiosity got the better of me and I decided I wanted to check the site again. This time however, the village was stripped bare. Anything that could be taken was gone. All that was left was the shells of the huts and a black patch of ash where the fire was. There was one thing that was still there though, the sense of being watched. We didn't stay any longer and never went back.

Image credits: badcgi

#7

Gary Indiana. I got off the highway to get gas.

Driving through the city was like a post apocalyptic movie complete with burned out cars, crazy guy in underwear walking down the middle of the street with a baseball bat and all the windows were broken or boarded up.

I stopped at a gas station and then guy came out and said ‘Get back on the highway son. It’s not safe here.’ I had enough gas tp get to a safer rest stop to refuel.

This was around 1994-95.

Image credits: anon

#8

Wife and I were driving up the blue mountains (big mountain range in Australia) to visit friends who were staying in a holiday place up there. It's crazy foggy in the late afternoon/early evening, so we can't see much as we're going up. But it's pretty much a straight run up so we take it slow and pull over sometimes when the fog gets too thick to give it a minute to lighten a bit. Super creepy but nothing weird, that's just how it is.

We stayed the night at friends and drove back down the next afternoon - lovely and sunny. We drove through a cute little town that hugged the sides of the main road, so you could drive straight through it without turning or hitting any major intersections. My wife said "oh are we going home a different way". No, no we were not.

There was basically an entire small town we'd driven through the night before right near the house and we never saw a single indication of it. We hadn't seen any lights/street lights, other cars, "Welcome to Spookyville, popn 1" signs, anything. We had pulled over to check the map (pre-smartphones) to make sure we hadn't missed the turn off and we would have been practically in the middle of the town. It's amazing how something so big can disappear in the fog so easily. Early evening and not one house light? Mole people I reckon.

I know there's a logical explanation but it's 20 years later and I still think "nah not going back up there"

Image credits: crochetquilt

#9

Coatesville, Pennsylvania. I was with a friend who had come up from Mexico and we were staying a few nights at his grandmother's ranch nearby. Coatesville was the only town around where we could find Mexican ingredients. This is an old steel town that feels post-apocalyptic, everyone there didn't really seem to be doing anything or going anywhere, it was so creepy. The store we ended up going to had nearly empty shelves and I think the guys were a bit surprised to see us there. All in all just very strange and eerie.

Image credits: the_short_viking

#10

During a road trip with a friend, we decided to follow this road to a compound that had a gate, cameras and a sign that said unauthorized personnel will be shot on site. We turn around as fast as we could and drove and a few miles down the road there was a trunk stop and a Mexican restaurant. We were shaken by the sign and we're hungry so we go to the restaurant. I'm not kidding when I say it was silent and everyone looked at us as we walked through the door. What made it weirder is literally no one had food.

Anyways the food wasn't bad but we are quickly and got the heck out of their as soon as possible.

Image credits: Fox_m

#11

My friends had a story about visiting Dublin and wandering out of the touristy area looking for a drink. They walked into a little pub, but when they tried to order a round, they noticed the bartender was acting nervous. They looked across the room to see four of the meanest, toughest Irishmen they'd ever seen giving them the evil eye. After the bartender served them, he quietly suggested they leave once their drinks were finished, and as they sat and chatted, a couple of the men passed back and forth across their booth like sharks. When they left, they learned from a local that they had just wandered into a very serious IRA pub.

Image credits: kemosabi4

#12

I was driving between Midland and Alma Michigan late one night, and this area has some of the darkest, loneliest country roads I've ever driven on. There are also a bunch of windmills in this area and at the top of every windmill was a blinking red light so that planes could see them, but the lights blinked in sync, so it would be dark, and then all of a sudden, the red lights of the seemingly 100s of windmills would all blink on. Absolutely creepy.

Image credits: galacticdude7

#13

I am a skeptical person but this one experience I had in Berlin still confuses me to this day.

Me and my girlfriend were on holiday walking through central Berlin, a weekday morning. The streets were fairly busy, a typical day, when we turned down a long wide street with large buildings on either side. As we walked down we noticed it was very quiet and that there was no one else on the street at all, which was strange in itself considering it was 10-11am. As we carried on walking, I can’t really describe what happened but I noticed that the buildings we were walking past weren’t actually real, but like movie set buildings? The windows and doors looked normal from a distance but up close they were waaaay too big to be normal, I just felt really uneasy the whole time but we didn’t say anything until we turned off the street and back into the hustle and bustle of Berlin.

I have absolutely no idea what happened at all but my girlfriend said she felt/seen exactly the same thing. It was like we stepped into a different world for a few minutes. Totally bizarre

Image credits: MyDogHasBarkingsons

#14

My family was driving through a really rural part of the Philippines when my sister announced she had to go asap. It was very late.

My dad stopped at the first place he could ~ a little shop that sold weird antique stuff, with an old lady at the counter. My dad talked to the old lady while us kids headed for the bathroom (an outhouse separate from the shop/main house).

We didn't think much about it and stayed a few days in our province. On our way back to the city, my dad said he wanted to stop by that shop again to thank the old woman and when we got to the place where my dad swore the store was, there was nothing. Just the highway and thick forest on both sides. We still bring it up sometimes because thinking about it gives everyone in the family chills.

Image credits: malfreakingreynolds

#15

YES! Oh man, quite a few times and in quite a few different places. I’ve driven all over the US - both coasts, the Midwest, and along a lot of the northern Canadian border. I have driven through more than a few towns that Society has seemingly forgotten about, yet people just keep living there all the same. I have gotten a creepy vibe from a few of them, but I wouldn’t say it’s the right word to apply to all these towns. I would say it’s more just a general feeling of… Discomfort. Just being in the town, driving through it doesn’t give you a warm fuzzy for the town, and it’s often accompanied with a strange feeling relating to the passing of time. Like the town is stuck in some timeframe from the past and you may end up stuck there if you stick around too long.

Image credits: anon

#16

Back in the late 80s and early 90s when I was a teenager me and my friends were in a hard core punk band. We mostly played shows in our medium sized city, the surrounding area and occasionally the major city 2 hours away. A member of one the bands we would play with had set up a punk showcase in their home town about 3 or 4 hours away and asked my band if we could play. It paid and we were able to sell merch so we decided it was worth the trip. Most of the time we played just for fun since we rarely made any money on shows and we would be lucky if we sold 10 t-shirts and CDs. But playing small towns we could usually sell everything we brought with us.

So we loaded up our gear in 2 cars and convoyed to this town. None of had heard of it and we had to spend an afternoon with a map trying to figure out where it was and how to get there. We got there hours before the show and all I can say was that we constantly referenced "Footloose". People were looking at us like we were from Mars or something. According to movies we should've been flattered but the reality is that we were more than a little put off. It's like c'mon; you people have cable TV so it's not like you haven't ever seen a person with a mohawk or blue hair in the 15+ years that style has existed.

The show was cool though. And we did sell everything we brought. But everyone we met smoked really shitty weed so luckily we brought our own.

Image credits: PunchBeard

#17

My boyfriend and I had a stay in Melbourne for a few nights. First Airbnb was practically a small hotel room so, all good. The second on the other hand... It was advertised as "Flexible check-in " but the owner wouldn't stop pestering us for a time we were going to be there. We told them 8pm and they still kept asking before saying they had to go out and 'Frank' would let us in.

We had no mention of this guy before then but fine, whatever. We ended up missing a few small shows we were eager to go to so we'd get there earlier and despite being promised off the street parking we could only park on the street. It sucked but no big deal. We'd had a long day and were pretty tired.

Then we get to the house. Frank is this tall, thin, muscley older guy, really intense and absolutely no chill. Bulging eyes kind of intense. We were both really uncomfortable from the start but my bf makes small talk, jokes about Sydney vs Melbourne. This guy doesn't like it. To the point where he stopped walking, swung around and got in my bfs face. Bf de-esculated the situation real quick and we got to our room and immediately locked the door.

We both got some bad vibes off the place and the guy but we couldn't work out why. We thought we were just tired but kept debating the pros and cons of staying, and the room wasn't helping! It was freshly painted and the fumes were so strong I was getting a migraine, there was a door to the backyard that was blocked off with a dresser, so much dust under the bed it was ridiculous.

And then we noticed two things.

One was the wooden plank holding up the curtains. It was big, thick, heavy looking thing - and it was holding onto the wall by a nail on each side. Half of it had already leant right off the wall, leaving a huge gap. This was right above the head of the bed. That was it for my bf, he wanted out.

This second point was my big thing. The door to the rest of the house had a lock but there was also a gap between it and the floor.
I'm not talking a small space for air. I'm not talking fit a finger underneath. I'm talking big enough for tall, muscley, big guy Frank to fit his entire arm under.

We grabbed our things and snuck out. Went to the nearest grocery store for supplies, shopped around for a place to stay, let the Airbnb know we l left, and ended up driving through the night back to NSW and slept in the car for a few hours.

Nothing exciting happened but we just really didn't feel safe there. My bf hikes a lot overseas, stays in random and/or desolated places. He's not put off easily. We were both pretty glad for a solid reason to leave.

Image credits: Sil_7

#18

I had the reverse sort of experience at my local supermarket. I live in Australia and we have right hand drive cars. I'm just finishing my shop when a huge American looking SUV pulls awkwardly into the carpark and it's clearly left hand drive and maybe 10 years old. I like cars so I'm curious about it, and that's when I notice it's got US plates on it.

Now these aren't some novelty/limited edition Aussie plates that look American, these seem to be genuine US plates. They had a state on them, can't remember which one but it was like Michigan or something. Obviously American. Middle aged woman gets out, looking like it's a normal day at the shops.

So far the story is a bit weird, but nothing too unusual. But as I take my trolley back to the trolley bay she's there and having obvious problems working out how to unlock one. You have to put a coin in them, and she's clearly having troubles so I ask if I can help. She's trying to put what I later find out is a quarter in the trolley, saying she's never seen this sort of thing before. I show her the dollar coin I've just gotten back from my trolley (it's gold coloured) and she genuinely is weirded out by the colour and is incredulous when I tell her it's a dollar. I feel like I'm an alien showing her a new type of cat or something.

I put my dollar in the trolley lock and open it for her because she's clearly lost and I wanted to be helpful. She then sort of gets into a "oh I know this interaction" and says let me give you some money and opens her purse. It's all American notes, trust me there's no good old Aussie plastic multicoured monopoly money in this thing. I sort of blurt out "do you not have Australian money yet?" thinking that's gonna slow you down in the Aldi there love. Her reply "No, why would I?" and she gives me the quarter she was trying to put in the trolley. I tell her it's not necessary but she thanks me in her wonderful American accent and wanders off into the shop.

It was hilarious and weird, if you'd shown me a portal from my shops to Michigan that she'd blundered through it would have made complete sense. I got the impression she had almost no idea she was in another country. She was acting like I was the weird one, but she also spoke perfectly and was really nice so it's not like she was in any obvious mental health episode. The fact I have the quarter is the only reason I don't think I've hallucinated the whole thing after eating a dodgy pizza.

Friends think her husband had gotten a job in Australia and just got the car and everything etc shipped, and maybe she's never been overseas before? It was super weird and I love that woman so much I wish I could find her again to see what she's doing now.

I've also been into a country town where literally everyone we saw for the half hour we were there looked like they were from the same family, and everyone stared at us like they knew we were from out of town. But that has a very logical but no less creepy explanation ;)

Image credits: crochetquilt

#19

It was a little past midnight, and I offered to drive a friend who was visiting with me to her parents house where she was staying. They live in a smaller town outside of mine about a half hour drive away. I had been there enough times that I didn't need any type of directions, just a reminder of where to turn off into her neighborhood because it was hard to tell with it being dark outside.

Now allow me to clear up a little information. I was not under the influence of anything: alcohol, drugs, nothing. I wasn't even that tired. Her neighborhood was just off of a long road in the woods that came straight off a major highway, so it wasn't in the boonies or anything, but out of the city. To get out of the city I live in to where she lives, you pass under a newly constructed tollroad that is a loop around the city. It's large and can't be missed. You have to either go under it or over it to get back into the city, and it has those huge highway lights all around it, so it wouldn't be easy to pass without noticing.

So anyways, I've dropped her off and head back the way I came. It's only a couple turns from the long road I mentioned before, so I go back without even thinking about it. I've driven this way several times. I head back on the long road a little ways and I'm suddenly at a stop sign. Except the long road doesn't have stop signs if you're traveling on it. And at the stop sign I'm facing a boulevard with cookie-cutter, middle class homes I had never seen before. There are lots of homes like that in the area, but these had an eeriness to them. They were not lit by any kind of street lights or anything, but were perfectly visible in the night. And they all seemed empty. There might have been cars in driveways, but not a single light was on in the two rows of dozens of houses. It was as if all the life that may have lived in this neighborhood had vanished.

Obviously I did not go down this boulevard. I got a little teary eyed from the sheer feeling this place gave me. I turned to my left. Somehow I made it to a neighborhood that I did recognize. I could also see the lights from a highway nearby, so I headed towards them. Eventually I made it onto the same highway that I took from town, but something strange occurred to me. I never passed over the tollroad. The series of neighborhoods in that area typically had bridges over the tollroad that connected the residential area and kept the sounds of vehicles down and away from the quiet homes, but I never passed over it. The entire drive home felt off. Until I got to a certain part of the city, each sign looked a little different. I only saw another car on the road when I did get further into the city.

To this day I've yet to see the boulevard at the stop sign. I don't know how I got there, but I don't ever want to be there alone again.

Image credits: holc00mb

#20

I stopped at a gas station in Texas to fill out the lab paperwork for some samples I had just collected. This is a nice, new gas station right off a major interstate. Not the kind of place you expect issues.

We're filling our sample coolers with ice and some random dude starts trying to make conversation. I'm not interested in talking. Coworker isn't interested in talking. We thought he'd gotten the message to beat it.

A few minutes later I'm sitting in the front seat and start feeling the creeps. Turn around and the dude is lurking behind my coworker, who is finishing up the paperwork on the tailgate and hasn't noticed him yet. I don't know exactly what he was after. The coolers contained $30,000 of labor, but held no actual monetary value to anyone. Not that this rando knew that.

I'm not about to let my coworker get robbed or lose $30,000 in labor, and I have no idea what this dude is about to try, so I open my center console and grab my pistol as he creeps up. The guy looks up, sees me reaching in the console, and bails immediately. Good decision on his part.

Needless to say, we gtfo'd immediately. I try to live by the mantra that if I think I need to use my handgun, I shouldn't be there in the first place.

Tl;dr - Gas station, rando creepy dude doing creepy robby s**t, me grab freedom flinger, rando runs away

#21

Husband, sister, sister's husband and I were driving from WA to MT to go hunting. I am mixed race and my sister is white. Both of our husbands are white and neither of them are from the PNW, so they are ignorant of the history of the Idaho panhandle.

Sister and I both had a travel plan that involved not stopping in the panhandle. My husband, who was driving, decided he really needed to stretch his legs and we might as well get gas before it gets dark, so he pulls into a gas station in the Idaho panhandle. Sister and I both tell him this is a terrible idea and we are not comfortable. Husband and sister's husband (from CA and NY, so no appreciation of the ID situation) both tell us we're being silly.

Husband and sister's husband both go inside to use the bathroom and buy energy drinks or whatever. Sister gets out and pumps gas so we can get out of there quicker. I stay in the back seat out of sight and seriously debate whether it's worth it to try to dig under the stuff in the back to get to my shotgun.

Truck of locals pulls up. Confederate flag stickers. Couple of good ol' boys get out. They ask my sister if she's all right. Ask her if she's alone. Ask her why she's pumping gas if she has a husband. She's as charming and disarming to them as possible. One of them has an "88" tattoo on his neck. Sister wants to get back in the car, but doesn't want to open the car door in case they see me. I am hunkered down in my seat with a hat pulled low on my face, hoping they don't see me.

Husbands come out of the gas station at a quick clip. My husband is a giant ex-military dude with a beard and a bunch of tats (mostly of food because he is a chef but they're intimidating at first glance) and he has his angry face on. Sister sees them and throws a, "Hi guys! Ready to go?" Husband hands her the keys and gets in the back so he is in between the 88 dudes and me. Sister is now driving. We gtfo.

It is now dark enough to require headlights. Truck headlights come up behind us. Another truck pulls out of a driveway ahead of us. The trucks set our pace and won't let us pass. We have to drive in between them for several miles on an otherwise-deserted two-lane road with ditches on either side. I know what they are doing. They are making it clear that they are running us out of their territory. We are lucky that they didn't decide to run us off the road.

Husband tells me that inside the gas station, there were Confederate flags and Aryan flags all over the place and you could buy Nazi paraphernalia. I am not surprised. When husband went to pay for energy drinks, the cashier caught a glimpse of the lock screen of his phone -- on which he keeps a pic of our kid -- and asked him who the "c**n baby" on his phone was. That is probably why we got run out of town.

The Idaho panhandle, for anyone who doesn't know, is a stronghold of white supremacy. The headquarters of the Aryan Nation were there until the SLPC sued them into bankruptcy in the 2000's. There are a lot of white supremacists who still live there and are very mad about it. The Aryan Nation is deeply misogynistic and looks down on women who travel without male chaperones, which is probably why my sister was being interrogated about pumping gas. "88" is Aryan shorthand for "Heil Hitler".

Tldr: White people! When your non-white friends ask you not to stop for gas, *listen to them*.

#22

When I was 16 I got on a train and travelled across a few provinces for work (summer employment). This being Canada, the train ride took almost 3 days.

Sometimes, they would stop the train at a larger town and allow the passengers time to get off and stretch their legs or get a breath of fresh air. I was sleeping during this one stop, and I woke to find a sleepy little town that looked A LOT like Auschwitz...

I’ve seen a lot of photos of Auschwitz in history books and on TV but I’ve also been there in person, so to look out the window of this comfy passenger train and see what LOOKED like a carbon copy of the place, complete with barbed wire (shorter, probably for the animals) and a metal entry gate with words over it, was a little creepy.

I debated just staying on the train, but some ppl were getting back on the train with ICE CREAM and saying they got it from a little parlour in town. I also overheard some other people joking about the town looking like a concentration camp so I started to feel a little less crazy. It wasn’t just me. I checked the time on my phone and after making sure the train wouldn’t leave without me, I disembarked to get me some ice cream.

Now, I know some of the smaller/isolated towns in Canada can have some pretty traditional views and ways of life but I really wasn’t expecting to feel so out of place in my modern clothing. It was pretty clear which people were locals because they were wearing a much older style of European clothing (??? Idk how else to describe it). Most of the kids looked like little dolls straight out of horror films and they didn’t look unhappy they just looked bored out of their minds. It added to the creepiness of this whole situation, and at this point I just wanted to get my ice cream and board the train.

I wanted to hurry so I asked some locals where the ice cream shop was. This older man looked confused and said “we don’t have an ice cream shop anymore”. I told him I had just seen some other train passengers with ice cream, and that they said they’d gotten it in town. I asked him if there was anywhere that sold ice cream and he mumbled something about “there used to be an ice cream place two streets over”.

I thanked him and walked the two streets down. I assumed he was just really old and perhaps had trouble remembering things. As I rounded the corner however, I was standing in front of an ABANDONED ice cream parlour. A little sign in the shape of an ice cream cone that said “crème glacé” was hanging in front of the building, and while the windows weren’t boarded up you could see that no one had been in there for awhile, probably years. I stepped onto the porch and cupped my hands on the windows to look inside and yep, no ice cream equipment either. No freezers, no lights, just some diner-style ice cream paraphernalia and seating.

At this point I was super confused. Maybe the old guy was wrong and this was the OLD ice cream place but there was a new one in town he didn’t know about. Maybe it was closer to the train platform. I had ventured pretty deep into town so I checked my phone to make sure I wasn’t running late and it showed a time that was EARLIER than when I had first checked it on the train...

I noped the f**k outta there at that point, feeling like I was in an episode of the f*****g twilight zone. I REALLY needed to see the train, see a person I had been traveling with, Hell I just needed to see a modern-dressed person to prove I wasn’t “stuck in time” or some s**t.

Sure enough the train was still at the platform, the people I’d been traveling with were still on or around the train, and we weren’t dressed like we lived in old-Europe. I quickly concluded that we were standing on (or very close to) a timezone border and that’s why my phone had jumped to an earlier hour.

After realizing there was no crazy time-jumping s**t going on, I relaxed. I knew there had to be a logical explanation but in the moment it was just a lot for my 16 year old self travelling alone to deal with. It freaked me out. I still couldn’t figure out where these ppl had gotten the ice cream tho, and when I asked them, they all gave the exact same directions the old man gave me!

I was pretty frustrated so I kept asking, until one girl said she had TAKEN PHOTOS of the place! I was like “yes please show them to me!” because I was still hoping to get myself some ice cream and I figured if I knew what the place looked like I could find it easily.

She then showed me some photos of the “quaint little ice cream parlour” that she took for her instagram. It looked EXACTLY like the run down ice cream shop that I had found, right down to the little porch, overhang, windows, and signage, but this photo showed a colourful and bustling business on a summer day, not an empty street with faded signs. All the surrounding scenery was exactly the same, the dining chairs in the window were the same. The next photo was a selfie of her, with her ice cream, in front of the sign that said “crème glacé”.

To this day, I still don’t have a logical explanation for that one. Maybe they moved the parlour to a better spot, but then why leave the old one empty with all the signs? Maybe they moved it closer to the train platform, but then why did everyone else give me the same directions to the abandoned place I’d just been? Why was everything in the photo the same as what I’d seen, just less derelict? There’s no way that all those ppl got ice cream from a f*****g ghost parlour, and I wanted SO BADLY to run back into town to solve this mystery but the train was blowing its whistle and I wasn’t about to risk being left in this creepy Auschwitz lookalike just to get some ice cream, so I boarded the train and I’ve never stopped thinking about it.

My biggest regret is not taking photos. I had my iPhone with me, and a few simple photos might have been enough to see any glaring differences. If nothing else, having both sets of photos could have made for a really cool “apocalypse themed” side-by-side comparaison...

I guess I’ll never know, but it’s a good story to tell around the campfire.

#23

On a road trip with my parents in the mid 90's, we spent the night in a small city. My parents picked it simply because it was roughly halfway from our origin to our destination and the hotel was a reasonable rate.

Pulling off the interstate, it was clearly a post industrial city. Big factory buildings everywhere, all of them closed up and fenced off. The hotel attendant was very slow, and our room wasn't much to speak of, but it was just an overnight. We looked in the phone book for restaurants, copied down the address of three places, and set off for dinner.

We couldn't find the first place; we got on the right street and followed it from one end of town to the other with no sign of it. The second place we found, but was closed for good. The third place looked absolutely awful from the outside and we didn't even go in. The town felt completely abandoned. My parents decided to go to the hotel restaurant.

The hotel restaurant was almost empty except for two tables of ATF agents, identifiable because they were all wearing their navy blue t-shirts with yellow "ATF" on the back. Not surprisingly, the restaurant was out of nearly everything on the menu. A few minutes after sitting down, the fire alarm went off. Nobody moved; not the ATF guys, not the restaurant staff. A few minutes later it stopped, then a few minutes after that it started again. Again nobody moved. The fire department rolled up, but nobody seemed concerned. The waitress said that the fire alarm system always went off "a few times a day."

We managed to spend the night; the fire alarm went off a few more times but not while we were sleeping. We left as soon as we could.

#24

I've been to 43 states. I've seen odd things.

The creepiest thing was getting in gas off of I-95 in NC, and seeing a camo painted Bronco driving around a parking lot of a shopping center that was focused on a Wal-mart. It had two *gigantic* flags. One Confederate, the other full on Nazi flag - I was never more concerned in my life.

#25

Multiple times. Usually the contemptuous stare for looking "different". But there was a diner in the middle of nowhere Nevada that one time...It was mid afternoon and hella hot. Two early-30's hippie chicks and a 12 year old girl riding in a '65 Barracuda. Nothing too weird about that, right? We decided to stop for ice cream/snacks and let the car cool down for an hour or so. We lasted like 15 minutes. Changed our order "to go" and bailed. I have never felt such hostility. No idea what was going on-

Image credits: DanceApprehension

#26

Surprisingly enough, never got bad vibes from gas stations.

But once, when we were driving back home to our country, we were near the borders, and we realized that we forgot to buy sweets, and the country we were in are very well known for their sweets.

My dad didn't want to stop, but everyone begged for it. Fortunately, there *was* a sweetshop on the road ... on an empty desert road ... with one car that obviously belonged to the *laundry* next to the sweetshop. A laundry, might I remind you, that sits in the middle of a desert street, with no houses nearby.

It was the middle of the night, and they were both *open.*

Dad didn't let anyone out, he went into the sweetshop by himself, and the whole time we just felt weird, like something is wrong, as if we parked in the wrong space and that we should move.

When dad comes back, I finally admit to him that it felt wrong waiting there, dad agreed. Then he said that this road used to be a Witch's coven. Apparently, it got so bad, that the cops from both sides of the border (because the road stretches to our country as well) had basically swat the road in the 80s or 70s. People still hate that road. Which made it even weirder that there are two functional shops in a ***desolate*** desert road.

Image credits: wikikid

#27

So that red covered bridge, West Montrose AKA the Kissing Bridge, from the movie IT is about 2 hours away from me. A couple of years ago, me and some girlfriends went there to take some pictures because it was cool that it was so close and it was a perfect day for a road trip (I think the kids nowadays call it a VSCO Hangout). I drove and when we got there, there was no parking anywhere. I finally pulled over to the side of the road and asked a lady if I could park in her store lot (said no tourist parking) she said since I asked so nicely, *fine*.

We went for a walk and the locals would peek out their windows at us, some of them in plain view. There were signs on the grass that said that so and so were to be contacted for use of property and that use of which was prohibited without permission, no lingering, park closed, etc. They even had ropes and stakes on their property lines to really take it home. It was also strange because there is a lane way between the properties and the creek that runs under the bridge and other signs had prices for photo sessions. At one point a couple walked past us and the lady craned her neck to look back at me even as she had already walked past.

That was about all the Get Out vibes I could handle till we packed in and headed home. There was just something strange in the air there, it felt like I had eyes on me at all times. All I wanted was to see the last covered bridge in Ontario!

Image credits: sillybananna

#28

I was on a road trip on the south island of New Zealand and one night at around 9pm decided to stop in a small town to get some rest. Already while driving into the town I noticed that there were Christmas decorations everywhere, like decorated trees and plastic santa’s, reindeer etc. Excessive amounts of decorations on the streets and in every window. This wouldn’t have been too weird if it hadn’t been in the middle of August. But I thought the town was just really dedicated to a specific aesthetic or whatever.


I got to the motel and checked in and the old lady at the front desk was short and rude with me which I thought was weird bc I had experienced people in NZ as really nice and quite chatty (compared to where I come from lol). She also wouldn’t give me the wifi password even though they advertised free wifi. She quite literally told me to p**s off and let her get back to her newspaper.


After that I went out and the whole time I was there I never saw any people on the street. I went to a diner near the motel (both also stuffed with Christmas decorations) and had the same experience with the waitress while ordering. She told me they are out of almost everything and the only I was able to get was a cheese sandwich. There were other people in the restaurant who were all eating what I suppose were meals from the menu. They didn’t have to order a plain cheese sandwich. While waiting for my food I noticed that no one in the whole diner was talking even though there were families and other groups of people. Even the kids ate in silence. Or not really silence, as there was Christmas music blaring.


After I was done eating I just paid and left. I was also the only one leaving. No one in that diner, the whole time I was there, got up to leave or go to the bathroom or do anything really. They all just sat there. When I left I felt like they were all starting holes in my back. The whole time I was in that town I got a feeling that everyone wanted me to leave and like they were somehow angry with me.


This was 4 years ago and tbh I don’t remember anything after leaving the diner. I don’t remember going back to the motel or going to sleep and just barely remember being on the road early the next morning. I told some of my NZ friends this story, bc I thought it was some kind of weird theme town, but none of them ever heard of it and I can’t for the life of me remember the name of that town or how I found it.

Image credits: urneighbourhoodwitch

#29

I have a few but this one stands out in my mind.

This starts with me, my boyfriend, his brother and the girlfriend all deciding to split off from the rest of his family during vacation and head to the Winchester mystery house... now since this is like 6 or 7 years ago I can't remember if we were headed to or back from there. I was driving and my bf was the navigator, we started our trek a few hours before and expected to be at our destination before nightfall. Somewhere along the lines we took a wrong turn, although we had a map and both our set to gps. I didn't think about it at first and nobody else mentioned it until what felt like a few hours of me driving, now this wasn't in silence from what I remember it was a normal a*s roadtrip with taking laughing and music... but we get down this particular road and it all feels like we snapped outta a dream everything is dark there's shadows of trees bunched here and there along the road but past that is pitch black... I'm taking a void of darkness where you feel it goes on for miles on end but you can't see it. One of them said something along the lines of where are we, and joked that we entered the twilight zone. But I tell you, I got this really uneasy feeling like I shouldn't drive any further than I already have and I think everyone else felt that too cause we got real quiet and just kinda stared out the windows. We hadn't realized that there were literally no cars around us, what was supposed to be a highway was a narrow strip of road and nothing, just this stillness like we entered a place we shouldn't have. I flip a b***h and start speeding off in the opposite direction but lo and behold the scenery we saw "going back" wasn't the same as we saw coming in... it was still pitch black but none of it was familiar. You know how you can make out odd shapes from the shadows... but literally nothing looked like it was before. It took me about a good 15 or 20 min. To get out of the void... but to this day every one of us swears we were driving for hours in it. We can't find that turn although we've taken that route a few more times tbt throughout the year... and it really does seem like it was a dream except for the waking part it was scared me, it's like everyone was stuck on auto pilot and no one remembers what we said or even what sounds we heard during those hours. Gives me the creeps.

Image credits: BlemishedB

#30

I know it was a Sunday afternoon in January; it must have been either '96 or '97. I know it was on I-30 somewhere between Little Rock and Texarkana, but I can't find it on a a map any more. But there was a microscopic little "town" at one of the highway interchanges, that consisted almost entirely of a gas station and a Denny's; I think there might have been a couple of other buildings, but I don't remember anything about them. When I saw the Denny's sign on the highway, I decided to stop there for a fill-up and a bite of lunch.

And while I was filling my gas tank, something about the scene just seemed ... off. Uncanny valley territory. But I couldn't put my finger on it. The place was busy but not slammed, pretty much what you'd expect for right-after-church at the only businesses open within 50 miles. Everybody going about their business. Nothing obviously weird. Just ... off.

I moved my car, went into the Denny's, waited until the waitress seated me. Again, crowded, but not full, there was no wait for a table but most tables were full. So there was a delay before the waitress came back to take my order, and, just casually looking around the room, it finally sank in what was weirding me out. The room had me, three obvious truckers, and ... maybe 40 or so copies of the same person. Both genders, all ages, but exact same skin tone, same brown hair in the same two haircuts, same facial features. The same "person" I'd seen maybe a dozen or so copies of at the gas station.

Hours later, up on the highway and miles away, I figured out what I *think* that I was seeing. (And Reddit being Reddit, someone from there will see this and tell me whether I'm right or not, after all these years.) I think this was one of those towns whose best high school students have all left for college, married someone from somewhere else, and then moved to that other person's town because that other person's town had jobs. I think this was a town that nobody new had moved to in over 100 years. Which means no genetic diversity at all; at at most the second-cousin level, everybody's related.

Nothing dangerous, nothing harmful, just ... well, look, I'm from St. Louis, which I think of as a small town, under 3 million population. Also a town that hardly anybody new ever moves to (little or no reason to), so any two random similar-aged strangers who meet have a 50/50 chance of knowing someone in common. But if you took, say, a random Metrolink train's worth of us, we wouldn't be nearly as homogeneous as that tiny little whistle-stop town in Arkansas. I imagine if they came to my neighborhood, they'd see that all the people look different and they'd be just as creeped out as I was when I went to their neighborhood and everybody looked 100% identical.

Image credits: InfamousBrad

#31

Not a roadtrip but my family usually spends time in the one of the forest towns in northern California. It's been a family tradition for over fifty years at this point, usually it'd been lovely up there. The feeling of nature being all around, actually sleeping in an old-time cabin, being on country roads and seeing more of the actual night sky are all marvelous experiences that I'll always cherish. I used to think the same about the people up there. They seemed nice and down to Earth.

Then one year we came up with some new members of the family, my step-mom and step-brother. Both have dark skin. You can already see where this is going. We walked into a restaurant one day. It was filled but when we walked in it was dead quiet. No one said a word to us but plenty were looking our way. This lasted for about ten to fifteen minutes and then we just left. I'll always love the scenery of that area but the people there can go f**k themselves.

Image credits: anon

#32

Yes. It was a very tiny town in Kansas (updated, had originally said Nebraska). Felt like I was at the start of a zombie movie. Even the f*****g *air* was wrong.

What did I do? Shift nervously from one foot to another while I waited for the damn dog to do his business.

The only place that had any sign of life was the subway sandwich shop and my wife decided she wanted lunch. I was f*****g sure that was the start of my "so this is how I die" train of thought.

No zombies appeared but I made my wife eat in the car and we got the f**k out of there pronto.

EDIT: This got some attention, so I'll add just a bit.

When you drive on these highways through Kansas or Nebraska (Iowa, etc.) that aren't interstates, but still have 95 mph speed limits, and only have one lane each way (but passing's no problem b/c you can see forever), there are these weird little towns every hundred miles or so.

You'll first see these signs - the speed limit drops from (edited the numbers because this is reddit so I get nasty PM's about f*****g speed limits of all things) 75 to 65 to 45 and eventually down to 25. And then you're in a little town. It consists entirely of a single big industrial thingie that looks like three huge metal grain silos with a bunch of piping between them and a place for trucks to drive in and either deliver s**t or receive s**t via these pipes.

Then there's like the bare minimum infrastructure needed to support whatever the f**k they're doing at the massive grain silo-looking thing. So there's like one general store and maybe a dozen homes and two dozen mobile homes.

Then, every fifth one of those weird little nothing towns, there's "town." In the sense of - everyone within a two hundred mile radius says "I'm gonna go inta town" they mean this "town" that's still 1/5 the population of the suburban town I grew up in in NJ. That town has a post office, several gas stations, even a restaurant or two. There's like maybe 100 suburban homes and a few hundred mobile homes.

So we were passing through maybe the third such town on our trip through Nebraska when we needed to stop and pee and let the dogs pee. This place was just so... off. The sky looked weirdly yellowish. There were lots and LOTS of boarded up buildings. There were probably a hundred or more suburban style homes but not a single person around. No TV's playing through windows, just nothing.

Yet there was a Subway and it was fully staffed and it even had a drive-through. I'd never seen a drive-through at a Subway before, but this one had like two dozen trucks waiting in line. My wife decides she wants to get a sandwich, so she goes in while I"m walking the dogs around hoping they'll just hurry it up.

Inside, there were four or five girls working the sandwich counter, but no other walk-in customers except my wife. The drive-through line is moving at a glacial pace.

The whole time, I'm just getting more and more and more uncomfortable. Like I was being exposed to some sort of sub-sonics or a chemical in the air or I don't know what the f**k. The whole thing was just... off. Even the air was tense. All the people just waiting like pick-up-truck-zombies in the drive-through line just looked like something out of a redneck Wes Anderson movie.

EDIT 2: Okay so I lied. It wasn't Nebraska it was Kansas. Near as I can remember, we were on Highway 54 or 400 somewhere between Liberal, KS and Witchita, KS.

Image credits: sfinebyme

#33

Back in 2011, my ex and I took a trip to go visit my dad, who at the time lived in the tiny town of Middleton, Tennessee. I lived at the other end of the state, so it was about an eight hour trip. Decided to go it at night so I wouldn't have to deal with anyone on the interstate other than truckers and the occasional car.

The trip was fine until we got off the interstate and went through some small town maybe an hour or so before Middleton? My memory's hazy on exactly where it was, but at that point it was about four in the morning. We were rolling through the town, and it was foggy and dark, minimal streetlights, all the houses were completely dark and still... it was a little creepy looking but nothing really out of the ordinary.

Until we got a little further down the road and there were f*****g newspapers *everywhere*. Scattered all on the road, in the empty fields and the yards of the houses we passed, just loose pages of newspaper everywhere we looked. I'm sure there was a reasonable explanation, but both of us just suddenly felt like something was off, and it was creepy as hell. One of us cracked a joke about suddenly landing in a horror movie without realising, and I sped up the car a little bit, but for about ten minutes it was just us and the newspapers and the fog in the complete stillness in this dark town, and we both sighed audibly in relief once it fell behind us. We talked about it for years after that trip.

On a second trip to the same town years later, once again in the early am hours, we stopped at a gas station I always stopped at, and though I'd always felt safe at it before, that time I felt a little uneasy, but didn't know why. We went in the store and this group of guys and a girl came in yelling at this other guy, cashier made them leave and they tore out. Came back not five minutes later and beat the guy they'd been harrassing with some kind of bat. It was a mess, cops were called, ambulance... I'll never forget how dazed that poor guy looked with blood coming all down the side of his head. So I guess that time I had a legit reason for things feeling off.

tl;dr I should stop making the trip from east TN to west TN.

Image credits: zanarkandfayth

#34

On my first trip to Europe, we started in Rome, and drove down to Sicily, and on the way back north, we decided to stay the night in a small town instead of a major city. We ended up at a town called Lauria right on dark, and hadn't booked any accomodation yet (we didn't know where we were going to end up, wanted to get as far as we could). As we drive around the town looking for a hotel, every local is stopping in their tracks and watching us like we are very out of place. We find and pull up at the only hotel we could find, a multi level building with an empty car park, no guests or staff around. Went in and booked a room, and the guy who served us took our bags, put us in the elevator and sent us on the way to our room. we get up 3 floors and here he is waiting for us with our bags, not puffed out having out ran an elevator while carrying 3 bags. It's the classic horror movie hall ways, seemingly too long for the building and only half the lights are working. It's dead quiet inside so we put our stuff in the room and get out to see if the town is really that bad. We head out for dinner, again every stopping and staring at us as we walked down the streets. The next morning, we wake up early to GTFO and find all the doors are locked and cannot be opened from the inside without a key, no staff anywhere so we left the key on the desk and had to break out of the hotel window to get out. 10/10 was spooked. Rest of the trip was amazing, through Switzerland and France, quick trip around England and Scotland then home.

Image credits: Foxbat_Flyer

#35

I have two stories like this. The first one was an absolutely creepy experience, and the second one was weird but I didn’t feel threatened.

1st story: A friend and I were driving in a thunderstorm of epic proportions. We couldn’t see the road ahead of us so we pulled over to a diner in a tiny town, and decided we’d wait inside for the storm to pass and order some food. From the outside it looked really lively, people were talking, laughing and eating. As soon as we walked through the door the whole place went silent and every. single. person stopped what they were doing and just stared at us. Dozens of eyeballs fixated on us. We ordered our food and ate it, and left as soon as the weather had cleared up a bit. We were there for maybe an hour, and it stayed completely silent the entire time, and customers kept looking our way (not discretely).

2nd story: Another time I was on a road trip, it was the middle of the night and we were getting tired so we decided to stop in the next town. There had been no sign of civilisation for miles and we finally came across a small town with a B&B. The woman running the place was odd but very kind. The house felt different somehow but so did the whole town. It kind of felt like I had entered a different dimension, if that makes any sense. Anyway, I go to bed and the next morning I wake up and decide to walk around the town a bit before we hit the road. Again, the whole place felt like a different world, like it was not part of the earth we normally know. The people living there were tending to their gardens, walking their dogs, etc. And it felt like slow mo. There were 2 shops in town, and no other businesses. By going into the shops and looking around, and taking with one of the shop owners, I found out the whole town was a pagan town where every single citizen worshiped a goddess of fertility (as in human fertility, but also fertility of their crops). The stores were packed with items that can be used for rituals, and other various items like statuettes representing the goddess. They seemed to be hardcore worshipers. Their town wasn’t on the map and I never found it again. It was a really surreal experience.

Image credits: kinkyp3ach

#36

This will probably get buried but I was moving from my hometown in New Hampshire (US) to North Carolina. (A 18+ hour drive) On my way down, I come by some town called Emporia, Virginia. Confederate Flags everywhere, run down houses. I'm almost out of gas at this point, so I decide to stop to fill up. At this point its also 1am. The cashier at the gas station was about 6'7 and had a thick southern accent, asking me what I think of black people. I avoided the question, and filled up my tank. I was exhausted and decided to stay in the small hotel across the street. I pull up to the parking lot (I have a pretty decent car) next to total scraps of metal posing as cars. (Literally some were on concrete slabs). I go to reserve my room, and there's literally chicken cooking behind the desk, next to the cash register, on one of those george foreman grills. I paid $25 for my room, locked my car, and went to settle in. When I get there, the room is f*****g DISGUSTING. Roaches crawling up the wall, curtains burned with cigarettes, and cigarette butts all over the floor. There was also a large s**t just chillin in the toilet. I went to complain and the lady at the check in desk screamed "No refunds after 10 minutes", so I left in a hurry and went to go to my car, and as I turned from my door, a F*****G TV came crashing through the window, as I heard a fight break out. F**k Emporia.

#37

I once drove through a polish village. I got family there and my cousin wanted to pick up his girlfriend so we drove through another village to get there and it was like a new world.

I mean its no secret polish guys like to drink but this was something different. The place was packed with drunk people roaming the streets, sleeping on sidewalks, etc.it was crazy. Even at festivals ive never seen something like that.


But to be fair: its the only village where i experienced something like this. The rest of poland that i know of is very nice

#38

Girlfriend and me went to the Starnberger See (lake) with the bicycles back when I lived in Munich. Beautiful place and we decided to just sleep under the stars since it was a warm summer night. On our way around the lake we passed an old huge house that looked like some Nazi villain lived in it. Further we went out of the village and suddenly saw a small road leading down toward the lake and we started going down that road. Then there was a sign that exactly at the spot we were heading towards was where [Ludwig II of Bavaria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_II_of_Bavaria) drowned 120 years ago under suspicious circumstances. We got the creeps and I tried to play it cool but the vibe at dawn on the road in the woods to that weird place got the best of me. Took the train back to munich and haven't been back there since...

Here's a picture of what it looks like:

[https://www.br.de/neuschwanstein/ludwig-kreuz-votivkirche100~_v-img__3__4__m_-f5b946176ecf9749b4c4b7e228bd704e8144111b.jpg?version=9850b](https://www.br.de/neuschwanstein/ludwig-kreuz-votivkirche100~_v-img__3__4__m_-f5b946176ecf9749b4c4b7e228bd704e8144111b.jpg?version=9850b)

#39

A few years ago we stopped at a rest stop one night to sleep for a few hours. It creeped me out because it was like 1am when I went to the women's room and on the other side of the wall in the restroom you could hear a tv playing. I was the only one who couldn't sleep and alittle after 2am some truck parks a few spots over and some big dude gets out and makes a dead run into the women's room. We was in there only a second and ran back to the truck and drove off. It creeped me out and I was glad I wasn't in there when that guy went running in. Idk what he was doing but that whole rest stop was creepy. Another rest stop had a giant memorial with a big cross right outside the women's restroom doorway.

#40

In 2013 2 friends and I went on a baseball road trip. We saw 9 games in 8 cities in 8 days (one day was a double header). Other than what games themselves, we didn't plan anything at all, so we didn't have hotels arranged or anything. We would go to the game, and then afterward drive towards our next destination until we decided to get off the road for the night and find a hotel.

One night around 11:30, we pulled off to a Super 8 hotel in the middle of nowhere Ohio or Indiana. No cars in the parking lot. When we walked in, there was someone at the desk but most of the lights were out, even in the hallways. The front desk, maybe one light in the lobby, and one light each direction in the hallway. Second thing we notice after making arrangements for a room, as he's walking us back there, is that every door to every room is wide open. We're the only ones in the hotel. We get into our room and set our bags down, only one light works and it's on the far side of the room. Even as 3 guys in our 30s, something just felt weird. We talked between the 3 of us and decided to get the hell out of there. Took our room key back within 5 minutes of booking it and drove down the road to something that didn't feel like a murder shack.

Nothing exciting happened that we're aware of. They still charged us for the room.

#41

My sister and her friend did a road trip and stopped at a gas station to refuel. As soon as they opened the car doors, all the people stopped talking and stared at them in silence the entire time they went in to pay for the gas and fuel up. There was a creepy old guy with a rifle sitting on the porch rocking back and forth that made them extra uncomfortable. They both said they got the feeling it was the type of town where people constantly go missing and everyone in town knows what's going on but no one says anything. Years later they found a documentary on Netflix about the town and all the people that mysterious disappear.

#42

I used to hitchhike across country in the 70s and going through the panhandle of Texas coming from Ohio to Arizona I was dropped off at a ghost town with a tiny store that seemed to be too ancient to be real. I had long hair and a good buzz going. I needed to use their facilties and get some stuff to eat. I still think of the bad vibes I got from the rickety floors and the lumpy sad people trying not to acknowledge my existence. They refused to answer me. Being on foot no cell phone was truly living moment to moment and walking out of that town was like escaping some limbo waiting room to hell. I feared for my safety and had to hike for many miles to get to another busy intersection to hitch on. Starved ,no water,no bathroom, spent the night in farmers covered tractor. You don't know alone until there is no phone.

#43

I told this on a few other threads and it always seems to interest folks. Its long, but folks have said its worth the read. I didn’t share this story for years for fear that people would think I was a kook. I assure you everything is indeed true to the best of my recollection.

Many years ago myself and 2 of my best friends decided to go for a day of mountain biking at Snowshoe in southern W.Va. Now this was way before the days of GPS, so we were kinda doing this by some half assed directions and an old map, but the point is we got very lost. Sometime along the way we ended up in this very tiny little town and we figured we would ask for directions it was absolutely deserted. I'm talking not a single sole to be seen anywhere.

We parked the truck and split up looking for anyone. Now this was at around 9-10 a.m. so not exactly the a*s crack of dawn mind you. We went into the post office, nobody, we went into the only bar in town which was unlocked, unattended with music playing, but not a single sole present. We went business to business to business and walked the streets and after about 25 min finally found one old guy who just seemed to appear out of nowhere in the middle of town walking alone. The first question we asked his wasn't even for directions. It was "where the hell is everyone" to which he replied: "Well I guess folks round here don't get up much till round noon". We asked him for directions to Snowshoe and he pointed to the road we came in on and said to go that way about 10 miles and make a right and we will find the interstate. We left quickly. We all had a very bad sense of unease about the whole thing.

As we left we were about 5 miles down the road and hit a lady dressed up in a state road uniform standing in the middle of a very long straightaway holding a stop sign. When we approached her she turned the sign from "slow" to "stop". We asked what was going on. She stated that there was road construction ahead. We told here of what just happened and she just kinda laughed and said those people in that town are kinda strange, but let it slide. So we actually started talking to here waiting for a line of traffic to come by from the opposite direction. We actually ended up talking to her for about 45 min to an hour, just shooting the s**t. Kinda got lost in the convo. Not one single vehicle EVER approached from the other direction or behind us. Eventually she said: "Well I guess it's clear now and y'all can go ahead" and slowly turned the sign from stop to slow and motioned for us to go ahead. We went straight ahead; the only direction you could possibly go for the next 30 some odd miles and didn't see any signs of construction, state road workers, or maintenance going on at all. She had no vehicle we figured she was a flag woman dropped off by some crew up ahead. After the encounter with the town and this woman we had enough and called it quits. We turned on the interstate as soon as we found it and headed north and home. Every single one of us still remembers this whole encounter in vivid detail to this day. I asked my friend about it actually about a few years ago at his wedding and it still freaks him out to no end.

#44

my car broke down a couple of miles outside of a small desert town. I walked into the town and immediately felt a strange vibe. It appeared to be virtually abanndoned. I was able to find an auto repair shop. The guys in there were just sitting around taking it easy.


I told them my car broke down. They laughed and welcomed me "home"
They said I could never leave. I was creeped out for sure. I asked them to tow my car in and fix it so I could be on my way. They insisted that I could never leave and might as well get settled in.
"See Joe here. Joe, didn't your car break down awhile back"
"Sure did. That was 9 years ago." I never left."


This happened 20 years ago. It took a while for me to become accustomed to this weird little town. Eventually a nice lady's car broke down. We got married and had a kid and also adopted a dog. Not a bad life. In the winter time the town comes alive. We are in the sunbelt, not far from the river. We get a lot of winter visitors. :)

#45

Road trip through the Ukraine a few years ago, me and my mate were looking for a place to stay for the night, and saw a lodge marked in the middle of a forest that was supposed to consist out of colorful houses.

After a desolate drive, we arrived at the exact coördinates, and what we found was an old rusty gate, straight from a horror movie. Behind it, not a single colored house was to be found. Instead, very decayed houses scattered the premises, and at the end of the road, there were a few 4x4's with guys all wearing army fatigues.

We hauled a*s out of there. Back on the main road, we ended up at a 5 star resort instead. A very warm welcome that we needed.

#46

Truro, South Australia. The tiny town is infamous for a series of murders in the 70s. My family and I drive through there a couple of times a year on our way to Adelaide, we stop occasionally but never for too long.

Its a hard feeling to describe, but there is almost a sense of dread when you arrive. There isn't really much there to stop for, apart from a p**s break or a pie from the bakery. In my mind at least, the town is marked, cursed or whatever and I get a feeling that if we stay too long something terrible is going to happen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truro_murders

#47

about 15 years ago, I was going to a ski resort with the boy scouts. The driver of the car I was in ended up taking a wrong turn and drove us 2 hours in the opposite direction. By the time we noticed, we were in the deep woods of West Virginia at around 1 am.

We passed what I thought was a ghost town (run down shacks, abandoned cars, collapsed buildings) there was a man just sorta standing in the street in a yellow rain coat, holding a lantern. Keep in mind, it wasn't raining, it was snowing.

#48

A camping site! My friend and i took a road trip from NL to France, camping. 1st we stayed at a lovely place, near a harbour. After 2 days we continued and ended up at a small camping site. When registering we met the custodian. After registration we already looked at each othet, but shrugged it off. We set up our tent and went inti town to find some food. The town was completely deserted: no people on the street, all blinds closed, hardly any restaurant open and the eery feeling came back. We walked back to the camping site, still feeling creeped out and decided there and then not to sleep there that night. We broke up camp, drove away as fast as we could. The feeling stayed for about 30 minutes. Weird part is: nothing creepy really happened. It was just a gut feeling: something is NOT right here...

#49

Driving through Western Kansas somewhere in the vicinity of Dodge on my way to Colorado Springs to visit a buddy. I wasn't in any special hurry, so when supper time rolled around I started looking for an exit with food advertised on the sign. Saw one with a pizza joint and pulled off the interstate. I pull up to this combination pizza joint/gas station/bed n' breakfast. I was the only car in the parking lot other than this old Chevy pickup with an equally old Lance camper on the back. I walked in and immediately got a bad vibe from the place. It was dim lit and just kinda smelled funny and there were only three people in the store, one man and two women that looked like they were part of the cast of Deliverance, all behind the counter and they were just staring at me. I asked for a menu and sat down and eventually the guy came over and took my order. The food was ok, and they were obviously slow, so it came out pretty quickly. As I was finishing up, the guy walks back over with the check. As I hand him a 20, he mentions that it's getting late and he could put me up in the bed and breakfast overnight. I thanked him and said I'd consider it. He walks off to get change and one of the women (I'm guessing his daughter) comes over and asks if I'm staying the night. I said I was thinking about it (I was thinking absolutely f*****g not) and she gets all excited and runs back into the kitchen area. That's when I decided that the 8 dollars and change didn't mean that much to me and I un-assed myself from there with a quickness while I still could. Looking back, they were probably just being polite and friendly and they probably didn't get much business besides the occasional trucker, but I was getting a serious 'wrong turn movie' vibe...I still kinda get the w*****s just thinking about it.

#50

There was one time I stopped in a gas station in Appalachia, it was like 11pm on a Friday. So this truck pulled in and the woman ran inside to pick up some stuff. The dude hope out and puts the tailgate down and starts playing the harmonica. Out come like 5 cats who all dance around him like he was a pied piper or something. After a couple of minutes the woman came back and he told the cats to get back in the bed of the truck and then they drove off.

#51

My sister lives in a small town in Alberta. I had come for a visit. First we drove around a bit, touring the scenery of her hometown. It got dark, and we continued our casual exploration.

We drove into the forest a bit, and enjoyed the stars and silence. There was a fork in the road, and she informed me that the right side leads to the cemetery (small town cemetery, hundreds of years old, includes the final resting place of our grandpa, and other family members). The left side is a backroad near the bottom of a mountain that will take us back to the main highway.

We decide to go left. No one would go to a cemetery at night. As we approached the fork in the road, I got an uneasy feeling. I can only describe it as sudden dread that served to increase with every second. My heart seemed to stop and race at the same time. I thought the feeling would subside once we passed the fork in the road, and moved away from the Cemetery. But it didn't.

It got stronger. My sister and I joked about our uneasy feeling, and kept going. We drove for about 30 seconds down the narrow, wondering road to the left until my sister slammed on the breaks.

In front of us was the darkest road I've ever seen. The forest was cut way closer to the road than expected (less than a foot), and it was immediate and thick. It was late fall, so the trees were mostly bare. There were no streetlights, and the car's headlights didn't penetrate the darkness at all: even though we were just looking at stars, the moon seemed hidden by clouds. There seemed to be a clear beginning to the darkness, where the light from the headlights unnaturally stopped lighting.

We looked at eachother, and shook our heads. I could see the fear in her eyes that I felt. My sister put the car into reverse and started backing up the narrow, winding road. While she was facing the way away from the Forest to guide the car, I was looking at the edge of it. I couldn't take my eyes off the darkness. it was mesmerizing, intriguingly terrifying, and I expected something awful to come leaping out of the shadows. When you looked into it, down the road, your eyes had nothing to focus on. It was as if a black wall had been placed in our way.

She used the fork in the road to do a u turn, and we sped away. Both of us were on the verge of tears, and she was shaking.

Until that moment, until we saw the dark Forest, we were laughing and joking. Catching up. The sudden change in atmosphere was seriously f****d.

#52

So one year my friends and I went to a convention and it was a 9 hour drive there. We left late Wednesday night due to one friend having to work later than she thought, and didn't get on the road until about 8pm. We'd called and made sure our room would be ready for early check-in on Thursday morning since we expected to be arriving around 5-6 in the morning and I was going to have to crash for a few hours, since I was going to have to drive the whole way because of some legal nonsense about my car insurance basically meaning my friends could not drive my car. And, honestly, we only took my car because I had a minivan and there were 8 of us going including myself and only my car could fit everyone so we didn't have to split into 2 or 3 separate cars.

Anyway it gets to be around 2am and I decide a stop is in order. Everyone else is fast asleep as we pull into this stop on the turnpike. We were in Ohio, and stops on the turnpike are usually pretty big; usually there's a bathroom, 3-4 fast food places and a general shop with maps, snacks, books, souvenirs, ect. I see a few other cars so I know there's people there, probably the fast food workers keeping the place open 24/7 with a skeleton crew and I park right up front next to the disabled parking spaces so I don't have to go far in the dark. I reached over and woke up my friend in the passengers seat, making sure she was really up and would stay up for a few minutes while I went inside so someone awake in the car knew what was going on.

Inside I go, intending to just use the bathroom and grab some coffee (maybe food) from a fast food place. I went to the bathroom first and didn't pay attention to the fast food places, and the bathroom trip was uneventful. But when I got back out into the main court area I just felt....off. Like someone was watching me, but I couldn't see anyone. 2 of the places were shut down and another 2 were open, lights on and all, but there was no one behind the counters. I went up to the counters and called out, but no one answered. Even the little general store was empty despite having the lights on and such.

I ended up getting some cheap coffee out of a vending machine, and a second cup to go, and getting out of there. The whole time I was just creeped out, and I felt that something was very wrong. When I got back out to the parking lot I saw the other cars were gone and only my little minivan was sitting there, and when I got in I asked my awake friend if she'd seen the other cars leave. She asked what cars, and I told her there were cars parked when we pulled in that I assumed belonged to the employees. She was adamant there had been no cars and she thought I was seeing things and asked if I was okay to drive.

Still to this day do not know what happened. I know it was late, but I've always been a night owl and I wasn't even that tired at the time, I only stopped because I knew the next rest area was over an hour out and didn't want to have been driving that long without a proper stop. So I'm fairly certain I wasn't seeing things, plus I know those kinds of stops always have the general store and at least one fast food place open and there should have been people there so I have no idea why there weren't and I can't explain the creepy feeling I got while inside. We drove on and the next stop, around 4am, was at a similar place that did have people working and I got more coffee and some breakfast from them with a few of my friends who were a little more awake at the time. But man that one rest stop was just creepy....

#53

In a town outside city, there’s a house that has a sign on it that says that it sells Easter Bunnies for 10$. Year Round. The neighborhood also has a high abuction rate and a lot of people go missing there. Not my favorite drive to say the least

Edit: for those of you asking it’s either in Orangevale, CA or Folsom, CA

#54

I was in a rental car in rural Colorado on a Sunday late in the afternoon. It was Fall and getting dark. I was driving on a two-lane highway and was getting desperate to find a gas station which was open (this was when self-service really hadn’t taken off). Finally I pulled into a place that clearly looked closed, but I was about to run out of gas. Front door was locked, etc. so I tried to see if maybe there was a few drops of gas in the hose. Out of nowhere a guy appears and helps me - and magically the gas started flowing. Tall skinny old guy who didn’t say a word. So then he stops and says “ok, that’s all” and hangs up the hose. He starts to walk away and I ask him if he needs any money! He says $2 totally randomly, which I pay even though it is way too low. I drive away now with a half tank of gas and felt exactly like I had just left the Twilight Zone.

#55

Neveda Missouri, Mena Arkansas, and Pocahontas Illinois... Straight country m***********s and scary as s**t... Especially in Mena. Its said when I get pulled over for speeding and the sheriff tells me its in my best interest to stay slow and get the hell out of town.

#56

I dunno where exactly it was, but a few months ago, I was passing through West Virginia on my way down to Florida. An accident on the highway backed traffic up, so Google Maps suggested some alternate paths using a few backroads. Since my sense of direction sucks a*s and I wanted to make time and get at least halfway through Tennessee by nightfall so I could stop and rest, I decided to listen to Google Maps.

The backroads took me deeper and deeper into the more hilly, forested, narrow-road parts of Wherever, West Virginia. The traffic became sparser, the signs and traffic lights dwindled away... okay, fine. My grandma lives in an area like that in Tennessee, fairly secluded.

The houses became more and more run-down and decrepit, as well, and an unsettling amount of Confederate flag-printed stuff started showing up. Crude fencing, hostile signs in the yards. I know about the reputation WV has with meth, as well. The fact that it was dusk didn't really help the ominous feel of things.

I was pretty relieved to get out of there and back onto the interstate.

#57

Well, I did stop this one place in Kansas. Lots and lots of nice corn, lots of kids. No adults that I could see though, and everything but the church was pretty run-down. Had a funky vibe.

Probably just my imagination acting up though.

#58

Up in ~~maine~~ vermont, just under a decade ago. On our way up to one of the mountains for some snowboarding, my cousins and I stopped at a "restaurant" for dinner. Had the sign and everything, but it's clearly just someone's house. Menus written out on sheets of printer paper, knick knacks everywhere. What was probably once an entryway to a living room appeared to lead to their side business, vhs rental. In like, 2011/2012. Maybe this was a popular spot for locals, idk. Creepy as f**k though, and unsettlingly quiet.

Edit: Was Vermont, not Maine.

#59

I’m not sure if this exactly what you want because the creepiness comes from a weird person, and not like something supernatural feeling, but it’s still a good (read as terrible) story.

My brother was moving from PA to FL, and stopped at a rest area to use the bathroom and then was going to nap in his truck. When he was in the bathroom some man came in and chose to use the urinal right next to my brother (I am a girl, and even I know this is a bad move). He said he felt super uncomfortable not only because if this, but also because the guys vibes were off. He went out to his truck and no one else was around, ate some food and leaned back to go to sleep. He had his windows cracked so he didn’t have to leave the car on. All of a sudden he wakes up to some weird noise, bathroom dude was jacking off through his window crack. My brother has a concealed carry permit and pulled his gun and the guy ran off, but he never stopped at a rest area to sleep again.

#60

My partner and I went on an impromptu road trio over a long weekend a few years ago. The kind of trip with no destination in mind, just a map book for when cell reception dropped, a tank of gas, and a vague plan to find somewhere to sleep other than the car.

On the second morning we woke up, checked out of the motel, and went on a hunt for breakfast. We were meandering around on back roads and came across a small town with a very "Deep South" sounding name, which isn't particularly common in Eastern Ontario. Right in front of us was a diner and, given that it was a statutory holiday in a small town just west of nowhere, we were surprised it was open.

From the outside you could tell it was a little dated. The blinds were sun bleached, the sign proclaiming "DINER" was a little faded, the windows were dusty. There was no name anywhere, just the Diner sign.

In we walk, and I swear the air changed. It was a 50's style diner, which isn't uncommon, but this one was different. None of the usual retro-but-newly-made jukeboxes, no over the top metal Coke and gas station signs, not a single picture of Elvis or Marilyn. There was on of those old blue radios with the antenna and handle playing oldies softly through tinny speakers and some sliced pies under glass cloches, but that was it in terms of decoration.

There was no one in there when we walked in, so we sort of loitered in the entry way bot sure if we should sit or wait, or if they were even actually open. An woman in her 40s came out, told us to pick a spot, and brought us coffee and took our order. Her nametag said "Dot" and her hair was in a poodle clip. If it had been red I'd have bet money she was Lucille Ball.

It was just my partner, Dot, and me there the entire time we ate. We didn't even see anyone outside the window. We could see Dot through the window to the kitchen, frying up our eggs. She chatted with us from behind the counter as we ate. She was nice.

We finished up, paid $10 including a decent tip, and got back in our car. Dot watched from inside and waved as we left the parking lot.

I don't know if it was just a *really* good recreation or what, but it was a very pleasantly odd experience. Not at all creepy but a little strange, and it left us feeling oddly nostalgic (especially odd, since my partner and I missed the 50 by about 30 years)

#61

I have a couple.

Once was driving back to college after a visit home. Stopped not too far from my destination for a pee/gas break. Now I know this area, have made the drive a lot, blag blah.

I pulled off the road into a town I swear to God doesnt exist anymore. Its like 7 pm, but everythings closed, no people, nothing. The weird part is I've never seen that place before or since, and I've looked. I gotta assume I was just tired and didnt realize I took a turn or something but it's always sat weird with me.

Another time I was driving cross country. We'd been calling ahead to make reservations at hotels and restaurants, so we called this place in Oklahoma City called "Spudders". Confirm they're open tonight, reservation for 5 pm, blag blah. We get there and the place is dead. No cars in the lot. No one answers the phone. Place doesnt have windows so we cant see in. We leave in a hurry, find somewhere else for a steak.

I've looked it up since, it still exists, people like it, no mentions of a haunting so... who knows? Was still eerie and weird.

#62

Lodi, Wisconsin.

Our car's transmission had just given up on the freeway and we needed a place to have a look at it and/or take it off our hands. We managed to get it into downtown Lodi to a service station where the guy there told us it was pretty much terminal. Since it had a new battery he'd take it off our hands and get rid of it if we sent him the title.

Since we just wanted to get to Chicago to a friend's wedding we agreed. He offered to call us a cab to get into Madison to rent a car. While waiting for the cab on the corner of the main drag we got the stink eye from the local policeman who was directing traffic. It looked like there was a school nearby and he was there to get traffic to stop for the kids getting out of school. I'm not sure why hey was eyeballing us so much. It was just my wife and me and our luggage waiting on the corner for the cab. His staring us down was giving both me and my wife the creeps.

After about 45 minutes of us waiting and being stared at by the policeman, the cab pulls up. We get in and we don't even get 3 blocks before the policeman who was eyeballing us stops the cab. The policeman asks for ID from all of us and writes the cabbie a ticket for speeding. He hadn't been speeding. At all. The policeman was extremely aggressive with the cabbie and demanded ID from my wife and I.

We did finally make it out of there, but the policeman tailgated us well into Madison.

#63

My family drove from a Denver suburb to Mount Rushmore when I was 8. The sun was going down and we were all hungry, so we stopped at a random exit in Wyoming. The town population was 108 and there were two restaurants. We picked one.

When we entered, it was right out of a movie. The place went dead silent, and everyone stared at us.

Ultimately I’d rate the experience 3.6 roentgen. The people weren’t rude or standoffish, but it was clear that we were outsiders.

I’ve tried searching for it on google maps but to no avail.

#64

It wasn't at all creepy, but time definitely passed differently there. The year after graduating college, my buddies and I went to Big Bend national park. To give you an idea of the size, our camp site was 70 miles from the entrance.

Driving around those desert roads, it was easy not to see another vehicle for half an hour or more. Even in spring break, it was a mostly empty desert.

Being so alone slowly started to change us. When we drove by another car, we would wave at the other driver, and he'd wave back. You'd feel good just to see another human. At a store, renting a boat or buying jerky, we'd have a ten minute conversation with the store owner.

Marfa, Texas seemed like a completely different way of life. With so few people, everyone seemed to appreciate what little bit of human contact they got. Seemed like a nice way to live if you could swing it.

#65

I used to live in a small town (sub 200 people) in the Mojave Desert. The thing a lot of people don't realize about small towns is the sheer amount of hopelessness and xenophobia that can be found. When you have no economic opportunities and you're essentially trapped in a spiraling black hole of despair and poverty, you start to look upon anyone who can drive into the town and leave, willing, with a bit of avarice and hostility.

#66

Was on a week long road trip with my S.O., her best friend, and her little brother back in 2015. We went around Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana visiting her family mostly, but also getting into young reckless good times....one of the longest weeks of my life.

Needless to say, we were all absolutely exhausted making our way back home that last day. It was unseasonably hot for late June in Eastern Washington. I didn't see the thermostat get below 104 and remember it getting up to 112. I have never in my life seen darker storm clouds roll in, out of nowhere, purple thunder and lightning, high winds, sage brush whipping across the highway in an almost comical way, like an old western. But that was the only part of the whole ordeal that was funny; I was terrified of the weather that was unfolding. Tornadoes rarely happen in the Northwest, but that's the kind of weather it looked like.

To top off this magnificent change in weather, we see we are running precariously low on gas, and in a stretch of Washington where you can go 100 miles without a gas station. We had already run out of gas one time that trip and still had PTSD about it. There were no towns or even other cars in sight for miles, no signs indicating how long till the next town. Cell reception was completely f****d.

Finally after almost an hour of clenching our butt cheeks watching the gas meter get lower and lower, there was a busted looking sign pointing to a town off the beaten path, 10 or so miles. We prayed it was a town with a gas station because we definitely didn't have enough to make it out to the town and back to the main road, only enough to get us to the town.

My expectations were low, there are a lot of ghost towns in that neck of the woods; "towns" with maybe a post office and that's it. No gas, no store, just a namesake more than an actual destination. No cell reception, I only had hope to rely on.

We get to the town and it is the creepiest piece of s**t I have ever seen in my life. There was like, a church with some demonic looking child-drawn signs on the side of the road, some old non-working mills from decades past, a gas station that was questionable at best, a tiny school with a rusted out swing set, and a few very decrepit houses, most had boarded windows. There were no people or cars to be seen. Genuinely felt like a B horror movie in real life (we jokingly refer to this town and memory as "The Children of the Corn incident"). I didn't honestly think the gas station was operational, just old and abandoned, like everything else in this town.

The one pleasant surprise and a huge sigh of relief: the gas station had gas! It was self serve and one of the two pump's credit card reader was smashed to bits, and there was nobody around to give cash, but thank God the other pump had a card reader that worked (barely).

The sense of relief didn't last long though; while we're filling the gas tank, out of nowhere amongst no other trace of life in that town, came a lone man eerily circling the gas station on his bicycle, like a vulture scouting out dead meat. He didn't say a word to us. He didn't make eye contact. Just circled and muttered things under his breath to himself. He had no shoes on. Sweatpants with holes and a sweat stained ripped white tee shirt. Hair a greasy mess. You could see he was clearly tweaked out of his mind and had a lot of missing teeth. I was so afraid, he being the only other living person we had encountered in an unfathomably vast area, that he might get the idea to rob us, or worse. I was so rattled and pissed by the whole thing by that point I just started muttering loudly and cursing and puffed out my chest, in a feeble effort to look scary, like a kitten poofing out its tail is how I imagine it.

We fill up, scramble as quickly as possible into the car, and rely on memory to get us back to the main road, all while the weather looked like the apocalypse was occurring.

Freakiest memory I can think of.

#67

Late to the party but I’ll share anyway!

My friend and I were on a road trip across the United States. I wanted to stop and get a postcard from each state as a memento. Washington, Idaho, Montana were all really easy to find postcards....Wyoming is where it got a little complicated. It was about 1 am and we were just about in South Dakota when I remembered that I hadn’t got a card yet.

We stopped at a Walgreens so I could find a card. I walk in and immediately get really uncomfortable. There is no one except for the cashier and a lady with a full cart of items. She’s all dressed in white. Like the whitest and cleanest white I’ve ever seen. She has matching white hair as well. I look around for postcards and don’t find any, so I walked up to the counter.

These two people have not moved an inch. The cashier is standing there, not moving, and holding the scanner. After about 3 minutes, she looks up at me like I just got there.

She said “What do you need?” in a really sleepy voice.

The lady in white turns around insanely fast and freaks me out a bit. She is incredibly pale, almost matching her outfit. She starts yelling “HE DOESNT HAVE ANYTHING! HIS HANDS ARE EMPTY! WHY DONT YOU HAVE ANYTHING!?”

For some reason, I managed to say I was looking for post cards and the cashier just stared at me, saying nothing at all. The lady in white just kept whispering and pointing to me while repeating quietly that I had nothing in my hands to purchase. The cashier never moved. I glanced back as I jogged out the door and they are right back to the exact positions they were in when I walked in.

#68

Not long-distance road trips, but both were a few years ago and extremely close to where I grew up:

One night, I was driving with a friend on a residential yet very slightly wooded street by the water that includes houses from possibly lower-class to very upper-class, which we were both quite familiar with. We noticed a sign that looked like it was home-made from wood and possibly black paint that said “Lynchers Ahead”. It could’ve been some stupid racists just trying to scare people or someone playing a dumb joke, but it was so weird and unsettling to see near my hometown, at night nonetheless. She had seen it as well and neither of us have seen it since.

Another time, in a very nearby city, I was with a couple of friends at the mall. My hometown has a mall, so I didn’t usually go to this particular one, and for some reason I got very uncomfortable and anxious. I thought I was just hungry and experiencing some social anxiety, so we went to the food court. I don’t remember the feeling completely going away, and I possibly still felt unsettled in the food court, but we ended up leaving. Not long after (I want to say a few days? Sorry I can’t recall since this was a few years ago) there was a shooting at the mall in the food court involving a few people, two of which died; it was some kind of domestic dispute. I personally still feel like I could have been anxious for a reason.

#69

My family was driving from Wisconsin to Mobile Alabama for vacation. There were 7 of us so we took 2 cars. My dad's Chrysler had a huge gas tank, but my mom's Honda didn't and struggled to keep up on the fast highway cruises so it was drinking fuel. Just after dark we turned off the main highway on to a small county highway and headed into the sticks of Al. The feel was very weird, the air was calm and sticky, everything was very dim and still. I could tell I wasn't the only one to feel that way because my dad locked the doors. Then the radio crackled to life and my sister said "dad, we need gas." He asked how bad, clearly worried about stopping, but she confirmed that it was urgent. A few miles later, on a lot carved out of the swampy field this gas station came into view. As we pulled in my dad got on the radio and said "gas only, no snacks, and stay in the cars." Then he looked back and said "intrebox, you're with me. Just keep your eyes open." Oh boy, did I. There was a purple Ford f150 in the parking lot with no windows but a bunch of guys sitting in the bed loudly drinking, a rusted out Oldsmobile toronado, and just people hanging around. Too many people for 9pm at a rural gas station. The lot was gravel and looked as if the pumps were just sunk into the dirt. I've never been to an unpaved gas station before or since. Loud country music and some very prominently displayed rifles adorned the purple truck.


The gas pumps were so old, they had the numbers that spun on a wheel, my dad swore. We would have to go on and pay cash. He gassed up both cars and we went in to pay leaving the girls in the cars. I poked his arm "dad?" And pointed. The truck boys had taken an interest in our cars. He paid the hillbilly cashier missing teeth and part of her lip fast and we headed outside to see the guys disembarking from the truck bed clearly with us as the target. He smacked the Honda's window and said "go" firmly and waited until they pulled out to get in and take off after them. The guys were maybe 10 feet from us, all of them, by by the time I closed my door. I've been in some spots, but I've never felt quite like I did there. Not a breath of wind anywhere as if it was too tense for the air to move. Not sure what would have happened with another few minutes there, but I didn't want to find out.

#70

Went Bassnectar concert with a buddy.

We hadn't planned ahead as we where naive young 20 somethings, thinking it would be easy to get a hotel the day of without reservations. Nope.

We drove around town searching for anything after the concert. All semi decent hotels/motels where booked. Turns out there was some kind of big college event of some sort going on as well (don't remember what it was).

We're Just about to give up when we happen upon a rather rundown looking hotel. We decide to walk in and see if there's a vacancy, as anything would be better than sleeping in my cramped 2 door wrangler with a barely working heater (it was Fall, starting to get chili).

We walk in, the place looks like it was used for other purposes back in the 70's, with dirty looking narrow empty halls with linoleum and dim but intensely white florescent lights. It had a real vibe of "renting rooms isn't our main business". We make it to the front desk, which is a small alcove in the hallway with those small diamond metal bars from the top of the cieling to the top of the counter, with the exception of a slit for dealings with the cleark. There doesn't seem to be a way into the office from our side of the hallway. We inquire about a room to the clerk behind the desk, (a heavier older man, balding, with a stained wife beater, he looks greasy to the touch) he tells us there's vacancy. We get a room.

The elevator was s**t, old creaky sloppy doors with a flickering light, stained carpet, and unidentifiable musk about it, like a damp odor but also like the smell of rot.

We arrive on our floor and step out. The hallway could have been plucked straight out of a horror film. Barely lit and narrow, with broken or dim soft white bulbs. Old 70's ish decor and upholstery. All the room doors seem like they are about 30% bigger than what a normal door should be. Faint sounds of hoarse coughing, and occasionally some yelling from above us (like two people verbally fighting), with a similar but not quite same odor as the elevator. Walking to our room, we notice a door has been broken in, like kicked in or beat down, with police tape across the doorway. Glancing in as we passed by revealed nothing as the room was pitch black beyond a foot or two past the doorway.

We arrive at our room. The room definitely felt like a 70's (Everything felt 70's era in this place) porn set. There was nothing close to the bed, not even a stand, with a multi light rail above it near the foot of the bed with 6 (I think) adjustable lights on it. Only other things in the room was a stand in the back right corner with a turn style phone on it, and a small round table with one shitty metal chair in the opposite corner near the bathroom door. There where no windows either (at least not in the room, maybe in the bathroom but we didn't check).

We agree to not sleep under the covers (we are sharing the bed) as we assume its disgusting. I shut the lights off and walk back to the bed using my phone as a light. I climb in bed and close my phone, and am immediately greeted with all consuming darkness. No light whatsoever. We can hear the faint gentle squeaking of floorboards, from what sounds like the room next to us, besides that, all the other sounds are gone, and the silence is almost deafening.

20 minutes later the room phone rings. Its startling, the noise is sharp, like metal chime being struck both firm and rapidly. My buddy gets up and answers it.

"...... hello.......hello??....." he slams the phone back down.

"We need to leave, NOW" he says to me.

I flicks the lights on, and I see the look on his face. I don't question him.

The clerk stands up and presses his hands against the bars as we pass by, and asks us where we are going in a rush, I say "we aren't staying here", he asks what about the money, I told him "keep it, we also left the keys in room" as we walk through the entrance doors back into the real world.

In the jeep my buddy urges me to get going ASAP. We get back on the road and ask him wtf happened.

"All I heard was breathing on the phone... Idk"


I left out my interpretation and feelings of this place as I told the story, as I wanted you to develop your own opinions. But I can tell you now, from the moment we walked in, till the moment we left, everything in me screamed "we shouldn't be here". I was ready to leave before we ever got the phine call, but I was determined to stick it through until then. Looking back, I legitimately feel that was the closest I've been to being brutally murdered, or maybe worse.

I'm telling this story almost 7 years later as well, so my memories of this place aren't 100%.

EDIT: To those interested, I believe I found it. Hotel Cadillac Rochester NY.

https://youtu.be/LKOQLuYzivM

#71

Not my story but I shall share it anyway.

So my coworker had been traveling and was on his way home from the airport late at night. Now the airport is a good distance from where we live so it was a decent drive. So he was cruising down the highway when he noticed he was almost out of gas. He took an exit and drove into this small town he had never heard of before. Now he described the town as falling apart in disrepair. A really rundown shady place. He pulled into the gas station and started filling up his car when a pickup started coming down the road with all the guys in it screaming and hollering. They too pulled into the gas station just as my coworker got into his car and started pulling out. As he was turning onto the road he realized the truck was following him, and it was moving quick. My coworker sped up so as not to get rammed by these madmen. After about 10 mins of just driving down this old road they final seemed to left off, and my coworker managed to get back into the highway.

Now that alone is a horror story, but what’s creepier is that he can’t find that town now. Not on maps, google earth, he even tried driving back there and he can’t find it. I teases it sounded like a twilight zone episode, but who knows.

#72

I love road trips, and this feeling is a pretty common one; you’ve got this metal box you and whoever else are in, in your own environment, that can carry you far far away from your environment. But I have one example that sticks out.

I had just flown from Phoenix to the East coast to buy a car and was driving it back. I stopped at a rest stop, and laid down under a tree a bit uphill from the building. I was completely separate from this environment. A family started a picnic not 25 feet in front of me. A couple people walked by, examined the tree, touched its bark. Some people sat on my car drinking Cokes, waiting for their driver to unlock theirs.

I ended up carrying that feeling through like, 80% of this country’s width. Nobody saw me, nobody talked to me unless I addressed them. It was so surreal. I don’t think I said more than ten words in four days.

#73

Not a road trip, but my alma mater. It's a little village in CNY. By day it feels fairly normal. People aren't too hard to find and businesses are open. It's when night sets in that it gets eerie. Passed 11:30pm the place is a ghost town. Almost no one is on the streets. As the night presses on a thick fog slowly engulfs the valley. As someone who spent elementary school in a city, I found the small village atmosphere creepy at night. It still doesn't feel right to this day.

#74

I actually don't remember most of this, but my mom told me this story from when I was little. One day, we had to go to Jackson Mississippi for personal reasons, on the way there my mom got too tired to drive much longer, so we stopped at a very cheap hotel that was some ways off the beaten path, only reason we knew it was there was because of a sign near the main road, so that my mom could sleep for an hour or two and then get back on the road. Well apparently I hated the place, my mom had to fight to get me out of the car. When we go to check in, no one is at the counter but there is a bell so my mom rings the bell and I s**t you not, within the actual second of my mom's hand touching the bell, a young man had just come out seemingly no where and places his hand on the bell to keep it from ringing. And this is one of few parts I can remember clearly, this man looked off, but not in an intimidating way per se, just off, like he didn't belong to this place or any place, it's really hard to describe. Well he gets us our room and what not but before me and mom go to our room, he says "Now please be quiet in your room, the other attendees are rather ill tempered" There were no other cars in the parking lot, in fact I don't think there were any cars for at least a few miles. Who the f**k are the others?? Well mom thought that maybe he was joking or something, that's a nope. From our room, we could clearly hear people in the other rooms, rummaging around, talking, and some strange other sounds that I honestly don't know how to describe. Well my mom passes out anyway, but I'm wide awake and this is where my memory of the situation is useless cause I can't remember the rest, my mom told me that I ended up waking her up and then saying to her "Mommy, we need to leave." Perfectly pronounced which was really weird for me at younger ages and apparently I had this dead fish kinda look in my eyes according to my mom, and she decided that she had slept enough so we left, the man who had checked us in was standing outside waving at us as we drove off. Here's the kicker, when I was about 13, me and my mom started a similar trip to Jackson, well on the way we noticed the same off road that led to the hotel, but no sign so me and mom were curious and checked it out again, we get there and looks like the hotel is closed down, even has foliage growing and s**t, there was an older man nearby, he looked somewhat similar to the guy who checked us in but much too old even considering the time that had passed, we asked about the hotel and he said that it was his and that he used to check people in along with handling the finances and business side of things, he went on to say that... that he shut the place down himself 30 years ago and then gave me and my mom a weird look and said "This might sound weird, but I think I've seen you two before, do I know you?" Me and my mom said nope and drove off.

#75

there is a town in south Missouri that my family and I drove through, named humansville. We had to stop for gas, so we pulled in and everyone was either walking their dog, smoking a cig or talking with their 8 doppelgangers in the same wife beaters and blue jeans on the porch of an apartment. it was quite small, less than 10 streets? I don't know, we only passed a few then went back onto the highway. everyone stopped to stare at us as we got gas and my mother felt weird walking back to the car.

#76

We have a town thats less than 10- miles from my house it's like the Beverly Hills of phoenix specialty grocery stores, pharmacies, the type where the ultra entitled live. When we accidentally found it, it felt like we were the hillbillies that wandered into civilization.

#77

As a British tourist getting ready to fly out of Miami, I stopped off in a Waffle House before I dropped off my rental car. I went there because of the Bloodhound Gang lyric in "The Bad Touch" and had randomly picked one off Google Maps.

It wasn't a neighborhood an British tourist normally goes to, I drew a fair few glances when I started speaking. But the food was extremely good.

#78

Cut and Shoot Texas. Had to stop and ask for directions. We were 3 cars deep filled with a very diverse group of individuals. Around 1988-89. We all pulled up to a old run down looking gas station. Some getting out to stretch their legs.I was lead car and got out to ask for directions. This old man about 100 years old steps out before I can make it to the door and spits out a foot long brown slimy mouth full of tobacco juice and says “ You must be lost, we don’t have folks like you round here. You done came to cut n shoot.(add the most southern drawl you can imagine) Best be running along”. He turned went back inside and locked the door. I didn’t tell anyone what he said. I just went back like I had directions and got the hell out of there!