Creepiest place you've ever been, or have YOU ever been to the Valley Lodge?

After falling into a reddit rabbit hole about creepy places the other day, which naturally made me think of everyone’s favorite satyrlike caretaker, my wife and I realised that neither of us has a real creepiest place. We’re a bit weird, though, and happily sit around the dinner talble talking about processing corpses and abnormal burial practices (we’re archaeological bone specialists, so that’s normal). I’ve also always been very science-brained and whenever I encounter something inexplicable I try to explicabalate it, plus I tend to listen to my lizard brain when it tells me to nope out of a situation. I’ll skip walking down Creepy Doom Alley, thanks, and I’ll just drive past this rundown gas station and find a clean new one.

I have been to a lot of places other people might find creepy, though. I’d probably find a lot of them more creepy if I was there in other circumstances. I’ve been around more skeletons than I can count, and I’ve been in dissection labs with heads piled up on a table for ear, nose, and throat trainees to use.

Some people get creeped out just hearing me talk about the Paris Catacombs, which are super cool and well worth a visit. We’ve visited a lot of castles and big houses and other old buildings, and I’ve been in a lot of rundown old buildings for work, but none ever struck me as disturbingly creepy. There was a really creepy looking old changing room in a park in London, but it never actually felt unsettling being in it, but I was only there during daylight. I drove past lots of creepy-looking places in rural America, and a few in Britain, but I always trusted my instincts and avoided my own personal Torgo.

What about you? Have you ever taken the wrong turn or climbed the half-hidden staircase in the back of that weird used book shop and found something really creepy or unexpected?

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Some of the stations (especially Essex Road and Old Street) on the Northern City Line in London, at least 'til recently, when some refurb work and new trains have taken the edge off the feeling you are both utterly alone and in an Eighties time warp.
But, up until a couple of years ago, the trains were old models, the platform branding was Network Southeast (which no longer exists) and the silence on the platforms (barely used outside rush hour) is quietly disturbing.

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Yeah, some underground stations are really creepy, especially if you’re the only one there. A few times I’ve been in one in the middle of the day and thought “Where the hell is everybody?” And it’s one of those situations where anything “off” about it, like branding, makes it super weird. I’ve used a few of the outer light rail lines, where it’s not quite normal trains but not the underground, and they always feel a bit creepy.

No, but I’ve spent several days in a row on an epic make-out session on the road leading to Valley Lodge.

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When I was growing up there was a “new age” shop in the basement of one of the buildings downtown. I went in once, and just got the eeriest feeling. There was the usual head shop stuff, and crystals, and the New Age music (“music… from the hearts… of space…”), but it all had this earnestness about it, like they really bought into it. I grew up around hippies, and my dad was well-liked by the local New Agers, so a little woo woo isn’t a big thing for me. But this place was just… off. Strangely, what got me most was these earrings made out of metal-plated GI Joe guns (specifically, the Baroness’s original, oversized rifle). They just creeped me out for some reason.

I can’t quite describe the feeling I had… it was a little like how I imagine it felt to get Thanos-ed: my skin felt like it was trying to peel and lift off of my body, and it definitely crawled. I might have a had a minor panic attack, but I was still in control when I told my companions very calmly and definitively that I’d be waiting out front. After a childhood filled with Scooby Doo I know when to GtFO. And your darn sure I never went back!

I’ve been in plenty of New Age shops since then, sometimes even voluntarily, and while I’m always a little on edge in them they are usually pleasant enough. I’ve never gotten that vibe from any other shop. It was more the vibe you get when you make a wrong turn in the city at night and stop for directions at a dimly lit gas station with the armored kiosk for the attendant. Danger all around.

In general, I have found that if I leave the supernatural alone, it doesn’t come looking for me. That time I felt a little stalked.

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Did you see Ernest Borgnine while you were in there, by any chance?

Your story reminds me of this weird map shop we found when I was a teenager. It was in a fancier part of town in an upscale minimall type place, but inside it was selling normal head shop sort of stuff. Very odd, but not as creepy as yours.

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I drove through Amboy, California at an ungodly hour in the morning, coming back from Vegas. Some weird s**t transpired. We saw a vehicle (headlights in the distance) and after a few minutes, I said “Shouldn’t we be closer to that vehicle?” I think something else “weird” happened, but that was in the mid-90s and I don’t recall. But I always remember that weird vehicle. We finally “caught up to it” and it was a small pickup truck, pulled over on the other side of the road. I use the word “road” loosely, out there in the high desert, a lot of roads are just sand and gravel. Fun times!!

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In my 20s, the price of gas suddenly became quite cheap again, and since I wasn’t involved in much of anything outside of work, I would often spend my days off driving to some random place. I had an old National Geographic atlas that included various points of interest, and that was my guide to random museums, parks, historic sites and markers. Most trips were only mildly interesting, but at least two left me creeped out:

The first was a spot on the map simply marked “Indian Massacre Site,” which led me down a dirt road into private hunt club land — until I reached a blocked and partially burned-out bridge. Being young and not particularly heedful of personal peril, I decided to cross the bridge on foot and continue down the road. Shortly after the bridge I came upon a side road with the familiar brown “Historic Site” sign. At the end of that short road was a stone marker describing the 18th century massacre of some settlers, but it was the sight along the short spur of road that set me on edge. Quite a number of deer corpses — presumably culled by hunters — had been left in various states of decay — and consumption by scavengers — along either side of the road. There were no skulls, just ribs and limbs. I was unexpectedly grateful for the one that still had part of its hide, confirming that they were in fact deer and not … something else.

On another excursion, I noticed an odd brick and stone marker, much like a gate, leading into a wooded stretch along a highway in South Carolina. The marker simply said “Mathews Field.” A short distance later, there was a side road that headed up an overgrown hill, and shortly after that the same marker facing the other direction on the highway. After passing this several times on trips, my curiosity got the better of me, and I pulled off that crumbling side road, parked my truck and walked up to find a small family cemetery that had clearly not been tended to for several years at least, as it was overgrown with weeds and untrimmed shrubs and flowers that had once been deliberately planted but were now running wild. The plot was surrounded by a rusted iron gate. I’ve always been fascinated by grave markers and cemeteries, so I entered the gate and began looking at the headstones. As soon as I stepped inside, everything became eerily silent. No bird sounds or wind through the tree branches or small creatures moving through the underbrush. All I could hear was my own breath. I stooped down at the first headstone and saw that the person interred there had been born precisely 100 years before the day of my own birth, and I suddenly had the very distinct feeling that something I couldn’t see was watching me, was not pleased by my presence, and was waiting to see what I would do next. So I very slowly and considerately exited the gate, walked down the hill, got back in my truck and never looked back.

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Well, there was the temp job where I had to scale a rickety-looking stepladder in an overgrown damp glass-paned closet while breathing poison gas. “Yeah, sorry.” Said the shop foreman. "There was supposed to be safety mask but it never came and the gal who normally does this just found out she’s gonna’ have a baby. "

:roll_eyes: Yyyeahhh… Maybe I’ll just take my chances with Torgo next time.

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You were TV’s Frank?!

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Without the buffet prowess, yeah. :confused:

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This place, Eastern Cemetery, ranks high. It’s literally right next door to Cave Hill Cemetery, a stunningly beautiful Victorian-Era garden cemetery, but Eastern, historic in its own right, just feels horrible. I’ve gone in there a few times for photography (I research and photograph graves for out-of-state genealogists), and OH, it just feels bad.

And with its history of mismanagement, body dumping, etc, I’m not surprised at the vibes of the place. It just makes my skin crawl.

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outside Rachel, Nevada

It’s right outside of Area 51. We stopped at a tiny diner there and never in my life have I gotten such a strong “we don’t like outsiders” vibe from people. Like, IMMEDIATELY. We just left. I’m not getting shanked in Nevada.

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One of the great mysteries of life: if you hate strangers why run a business which caters to them? If you only want to feed and speak to people you’ve known for 50 years, consider just eating at each other’s homes. Make a schedule and everything. I bet your overhead would be a lot lower.

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Years ago I worked as a Crisis Intervention Specialist in the Phoenix Metro area. The creepiest place we ever when was a Dialysis facility. It was the size of a warehouse and had dozens of dialysis machines with people at each one.
Each patient was sitting quietly at their machine and the only sound you could hear was the quiet “whir-whir-whir” of the machines.

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Cumbernauld town centre 20 years ago. That place was like Silent Hill after the sirens go off.

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Oh. Oh wow. That place is hideous.

Literally every business within 100 miles of Area 51 is something alien-themed. I assume they’re resentful because it’s stupid and cheesy but also the only way to make a living in the barren wasteland that is central Nevada.

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I have a penchant for eerie and abandoned places, but every so often an unexpected place catches me out. One such place was an old church in Harper’s Ferry, a town that vertiginously lines the sides of a mountain range. The church itself was lovely and had some scenic ruins adjacent, as you can see here.

It’s only when I got inside the church that I was confronted with possibly the most disturbing crucifix I’ve ever seen. I’ll spoiler-blur it for the squeamish.

What disturbs me more than the piece itself is imagining what the minds of parishioners must be like, attending service with that thing looming in front of them the whole time.

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That is some freaky, “Hello, outsider. We follow the true gospel here” level stuff right there.

I love half-collapsed ruined buildings. A few years ago when my parents were visiting, we took my dad to the old airbase where his dad was stationed in WW2. It was a bit weird seeing a B-17 in a stained glass window of the local church, but it was a nice gesture to the people who served there. We worked out where the barracks and things would have been, followed a path into the woods, and found a lot old foundations and bits of wall. Not particularly creepy during the day, but I imagine if you didn’t know the history of the town and stumbled on it in the dark you might be a bit weirded out.

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