Earlier this month, we shared a list of the creepiest places in the US, as told by people who experienced them firsthand. Now, let’s open it up to the whole world. Here are 76 of the scariest, darkest, and most unsettling cities, towns, and other destinations from all around the globe:

Hey, you! Have you visited or passed through a city, town, or other place that was so eerie, you won’t ever forget it? Tell us about it in the comments or anonymous form at the end of this article.

Note: The following submissions are simply people’s opinions. If you’re from one of these places and think they got it all wrong, set the record straight in the comments!

1. Annapurna in Gandaki Province, Nepal: “It’s a mountain in Nepal where 32% of climbers die.”

—u/thethird69

Annapurna is the 10th-tallest mountain in the world, and the deadliest of those over 8,000 feet. As of 2012, only 191 people have successfully made it to the top. The first ever to do so, French climbers Maurice Herzog and Louis Lachenal sacrificed all their toes to extreme frostbite and gangrene. Herzog had to have his fingers amputated, as well.

2. The Outback, Australia: “The true Outback. If you’re traveling, nobody expects to see you for up to a week, and nobody expects phone calls or messages as there’s no phone service. If you break down, it could take a couple of days until you are found by a passing car. And if they don’t find you in time, the dry extreme heat will kill you; you could never pack enough water to survive as long as it takes for someone to notice you’re even missing. It’s unforgiving and a horrible way to die. Not to mention that if you die, the heat will decompose you in a matter of days, and scavengers will scatter you, meaning your family may never know.”

—u/diggyminaj

3. Bountiful, British Columbia, Canada: “Bountiful is a freaky, freaky place. I was visiting a buddy in Cranbrook, and he decided to take me on a tour of the surrounding areas. He ended the tour in Bountiful, giving me the history of it* (everyone there is basically descended from, like, six men). We ended up parking at the church to walk around. It is rather beautiful out there, but it was like they had never seen other people in their lives. Some followed us around, some asked if I was my friend’s ‘woman’; it was hella creepy. Ended up cutting the walk short and just got the hell out of there. I will never set foot in that place ever again; it gave off such culty vibes. This was way before I knew of the polygamy going on in that place, but then I researched the town some more and wow…”

—u/Atomic-Kitties

Bountiful is a small community of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints — a sect of the Mormon church. Founded in the 1940s, they are known to practice polygamy, which is illegal in Canada. 

4. Boesmansgat (or Bushman’s Hole) in Danielskuil, South Africa: “It barely looks like much more than a pond, yet it is actually hundreds of meters deep, and multiple people have died there. It’s fascinating and also faintly terrifying.”

—u/Alexabyte

Boesmansgat is a freshwater cave on Mount Carmel Farm formed from a sinkhole. It’s 928 feet deep, and has claimed the lives of multiple divers.

5. Highway of Tears, British Columbia, Canada: “In Northern BC, there’s a long stretch of highway with absolutely nothing but dense forest, and it’s nicknamed ‘Highway of Tears’ in reference to an incredible amount of mostly First Nations women who’ve gone missing or have been found dead/murdered on the stretch of road.”

“After visiting family, my husband, kid (5), and I were headed south on that road, and during this one long stretch with few cars around us, a white cop car flashed its lights to get us to pull over. So we did, and once pulled over, he turned his brights on. As we waited for the cop, my partner and I tried to guess what it was about. We were driving an insured car at the speed limit, sober with a valid license. So after a couple of minutes, we were getting slightly worried that we had unknowingly done something. When the officer got close enough to actually see him…this dude was not a cop. His uniform looked like he had ordered off Wish. It looked ‘off.'”

“If you had never seen a police uniform or weren’t from this country, I don’t think you would have been able to tell. We asked to see his badge, and he got visibly nervous. He went back to get the badge from the car, and suddenly the brights switched off, and the car roared past us. When we reported it, we learned we weren’t the only ones stopped by a fake cop.”

—u/—annon—

6. Abilene, Texas, USA: “I was there for a friend’s wedding. I’m from the West Coast and very obviously not local. I kept getting honked at, even when I was literally doing nothing wrong. I got cut off a few times, too. Eventually, someone told me it was because of my out-of-state plates. A cashier at Walmart told me she could tell I was from out of town by the way I talked. She asked where I was from, and when I told her, she said, ‘Ew!’ I was very glad to have that town in my rearview mirror.”

—u/notreallylucy

7. The region surrounding Leipzig, Germany: “The city is full of open-minded students, but it’s a left-wing island in the rather right-wing state of Saxony. I’ve heard people say ‘don’t stop in certain towns if you’re Black or of Middle Eastern origin’…”

—u/Acc87

“Exactly my experience about 10 years ago in a town about a 20–30-minute ride away from the Leipzig train station. We were 16 and 17-year-old high school students on a student exchange in Leipzig. Everything was kinda OK, except when we went to the local pub. Everybody went quiet and just stared at us like we were disturbing something, but we literally just walked through the front door. We just turned around and noped out of there. We are from central Europe, so we didn’t stand out as much, but still, we knew we weren’t welcome.”

—u/slovencelj6

Related: “29 Truly Unhinged Ex-Roommate Stories That Will Leave You Speechless”

8. Carpathian Mountains, Romania: “I was traveling in Romania alone and stayed a few days in the mountains. It was so creepy, I remember thinking to myself that I could see how vampire and werewolf stories were so rampant there.”

—Anonymous

“I was hiking in the mountains of Romania. In the middle of nowhere, I found a paved road. It wasn’t on any maps, and I had no idea where it led or where it came from. There were no nearby villages or towns, just endless forests. And, somehow, there was this immaculate two-lane road cutting across the forest. I was legitimately creeped out; it was like one of those ‘staircase in the woods’ creepypasta type things.”

—Anonymous

9. Jaywick, Essex, England: “It’s the worst town in the UK, several years running. There’s just nothing there. All the houses are dilapidated… For a place so close to the sea, it’s so creepy, you can’t even hear the waves. It’s not a scary place, just really shitty, and it just makes you uncomfortable! It’s probably the only place in the UK you can buy a beachfront property for under £100,000, but I don’t even think that price would be worth it.”

—u/m_____676767

“I was there in the ’60s and early ’70s, and it was a great place to live and holiday. It’s fucking terrifying now.”

—u/Oscarmaiajonah

“British holiday resorts used to be the most popular places to travel — an expansive railway system and industrialization meant that lots of British city-dwellers would visit seaside resorts in the summer. With the rise of cheap air travel in the ’70s, most middle-class and working-class Brits started going abroad on holiday, often on package holidays. This meant, unfortunately, that many of these places saw their main industry die out and were just left to rot. In 2015, it was actually found to be the most deprived place in England! No real signs of it getting any better.”

—u/RJ25678923

10. Emmaville, New South Wales, Australia: “It’s an old mining town, still has some life in it. There’s a pretty good minerals museum there. The further you go into the place, the weirder and weirder it gets. The town didn’t get electricity until the ’50s, and it shows. There were all these black panther things* around, too, which I found off-putting and creepy. Panthers don’t live in Australia. Overall, it was a really strange place, in a way that makes the pit of your stomach tense up, and makes you want to run away.”

—u/unfakegermanheiress

*The panthers this person is referring to are the Emmaville Panthers, which have almost become a cryptid or local mascot of sorts in the area. It was reportedly first seen in the 1950s, despite Australia not having native big cats.

11. Troyes, France: “We were in the old medieval area, which was incredible. It was eerie because there were literally no other people there, and bizarre because there were sound systems pumping Britney Spears music into the streets. I felt like Shrek and Donkey walking into Duloc.”

—u/StructureNo3388

12. Sachsenhausen Memorial and Museum in Oranienburg, Germany: “Not sure if unwelcome is the word. It felt more suffocating and bleak. But the eeriest place I’ve ever been was at Sachsenhausen — a Nazi concentration camp that had been turned into a museum/memorial site after the war. I’m not superstitious or religious at all, but there was this really oppressive sense of the evil that had been perpetrated there. One of my classmates nearly had a panic attack when we went inside the gas chamber. There were still scratches on the walls that looked like they were from fingernails.”

“It was the first time in my life that I really understood why people share stories of the unquiet dead. Sometimes, you know that something atrocious and unforgivable has happened in a place, and you cannot imagine that the sorrow and fury of the dying would simply disappear.”

—u/Aduro95

13. Paisley, Ontario, Canada: “I was heading out there with friends for a camping-style music festival. This was before any of our group had a GPS on our cellphones. We ended up getting lost on some of the country roads because everything looked the same (just fields and dirt roads). We decided to stop at a farm to ask for directions. It was a very old-looking place. And as soon as we pulled up, a whackload of Amish-style dressed men, women, and children came out and surrounded the car. Legit, one guy even had a scythe. I rolled my window down, politely said we were lost, and asked how to get to our destination. One of the men got down low, leaned right into my window, and went, ‘There’s no place like that around here. How ’bout y’all stay here with us? You should stay here.'”

“And then he grinned this big, greasy grin that gave me chills. People were really gawking and closing in around the car at this point, and my friends started freaking out. I said something like, ‘Thanks, but we gotta go!’ then put my stereo system on blast, which got the guy out of my window and made the folks around the car back up. I immediately rolled up my window, revved my engine, and peeled out of there as fast as I could. We found the address about five minutes later, just down the road. Total Children of the Corn vibes for sure.”

—u/ZookeepergameSea3890

14. Hiljainen Kansa (or the Silent People) at Käpylä field in Finland: “If you are afraid of dolls or mannequins, [don’t go to] the Silent People field in Finland. It’s a field of mannequins facing the main road…and somebody goes and changes their clothes once in a while. It’s really creepy in spring when the nights are still dark.”

—u/snowyanonn

Located along National Highway 5, Käpylä field hosts about 1,000 dolls, almost like tiny scarecrows. The artist behind it, dancer and choreographer Reijo Kela, refuses to disclose a meaning behind the installation, saying visitors should form their own conclusions.

15. Ilha da Queimada Grande (or Snake Island) in Brazil: “There’s something crazy like a snake per square meter.“

—Anonymous

The deadly island is estimated to have between 2,000 and 4,000 highly venomous snakes as of 2014, due to the lack of natural predators there. The most abundant species, the golden lancehead viper, has such potent venom that it can kill you in under an hour. Special permission is reportedly required from the Brazilian government to visit.

16. Lewiston, Maine, USA: “It’s not the people, it’s the town. There is just something about the place that stains your soul. Even driving through the place and not stopping makes you want to shower afterward, but soap and water don’t make you feel clean, because it isn’t dirt, or pollution that is sticking to you, it’s the darkness that is Lewiston.”

—Anonymous

“Northern New England is a weird duality of gorgeous landscapes and depressing towns. So much of that area only survives due to tourism, so you get these towns that have shriveled since the mills and factories that once sustained them closed down, filled with residents that simultaneously hate tourists but know they need to be nice to them to survive. Most of those towns have a feeling to them that isn’t great.”

—u/TheEngineer09

17. Poveglia Island in Venice, Italy: “Throughout history, it was used as a quarantine zone during the plague outbreaks. There are multiple mass graves on site. Supposedly, it was just a dying ground for the afflicted, where, in some places, the very soil was composed purely of rotting plague corpses. The fun doesn’t end there. Later on, someone decided to build a mental asylum right on top of that, in 1922. There have been countless cases of observed hauntings by the patients, but nobody believed them, since they were supposedly ‘crazy.’ The headmaster of the institute then allegedly committed suicide by climbing the bell tower and jumping down.”

—u/Mattiee

18. Lake Lanier in Georgia, USA: “There is an entire town and cemetery under the lake’s surface. Many people die in it every year, and the rumor/urban legend is that it’s haunted because a lot of people die under suspicious circumstances. It’s also a major source of drinking water for the Atlanta metro area.”

—u/MasterChief813

19. Boulder, Colorado, USA: “During a training in Boulder, I — a mixed-race Dutch guy — visited a restaurant with my Latino coworker, a British instructor, and one local guy. We went cruising through the Rocky Mountains and ended up in the town of Nederland, named after the original settlers. It was a Friday night, the restaurant was packed with families, music was playing, and people were having a good time. We came through the door, and everyone stopped talking and stared at us. I swear, the music stopped as well. Our local friend was the last one to get in, and he just yelled a jolly, ‘Howdy folks!’ The music started playing again, and people continued talking. Felt like a scene from Blazing Saddles.”

—u/blahmeistah

20. The Overtoun Bridge in West Dunbartonshire, Scotland: “The bridge looks completely harmless. No issues other than simply walking across it. Many dogs have made a leap of faith (a 50-ft plunge) off the bridge for no apparent reason.”

—u/Chitownsly

Also known as the “Dog Suicide” bridge, approximately 50 dogs have died by leaping to their death since the 1950s, and 600 have jumped but survived. Some dogs are even reported to have survived the jump, returned to the bridge, and attempted to jump again. There are tons of theories as to what lures dogs to do this, from the scientific to the paranormal. Some believe the bridge is haunted due to a man throwing his baby off the bridge, believing he was the antichrist. Others think a specific scent is drawing dogs over the edge, such as the smell of mink or squirrels who live under the bridge.

21. Kalkajaka, or Black Mountain in Far North Queensland, Australia: “Stories have persisted for years of people disappearing into the interior of the mountain…and never coming out.”

—u/[deleted]

Related: “People Are Sharing Their F*cked Up Family Secrets They Weren’t Supposed To Know”

Per ABC Indigenous, the granite mountain has been nicknamed the “‘Bermuda Triangle’ of far north Queensland due to stories dating back to the late 1800s of disappeared people, horses and whole mobs of cattle.” Indigenous folks of the region consider it a sacred site, with one warning not to mess with it in the same way you’re warned not to play with a Ouija board. Another warned that no one is allowed to go to the site, and if they do, they’ll get very, very sick.

22. Covington, Virginia, USA: “I used to drive a lot for work, and about twice a week, I would find myself in Covington. The first thing you notice is the smell. It was like drinking hotdog water, but you were breathing it in. That was caused by the pollutants from the paper factory there. Almost 20% of the people who live there work at said factory, and factory work isn’t all rainbows and butterflies, so it makes sense that the people there wouldn’t be too happy in the first place.”

“All that aside, I drove by GPS for the most part, and before I even noticed the smell, as I was coming into town, I just felt off. Like someone was watching me or following me. But of course, no one was. I don’t believe in the supernatural, but that place freaked me out so much. I’m talking ‘Evil Dead 2013′ type of feeling. Thankfully, I am no longer in that line of work now, and I WILL NEVER SET FOOT IN THAT TOWN AGAIN.”

—u/belac4862

23. The Riverland region, Australia. “Cobdogla is fucking tiny and just weird.” “Can’t speak for all South Australians, but I’m from the state, and a lot of people I’ve met all seem to think the Riverlands is an odd place.”

—u/Enragedfrog and u/ColonelGonvilleToast

24. The Odessa Catacombs in Ukraine: “There’s a catacomb system under the city of Odessa. The Catacombs of Paris extend for about 300km, but the Catacombs of Odessa extend for 2,500km (approximately 1,553 miles). Unlike the Paris Catacombs, they have never been mapped in their entirety, either officially or by the urbex community. There is the Odessa Girl, who allegedly got lost when she wandered off [from her friends] while intoxicated, probably to use the bathroom. With no flashlight, warm clothing, or food, she either froze or starved to death alone in the dark before eventually being found [years] later.”

—u/1-1-19MemeBrigade

Unlike Paris’s catacombs, Odessa’s don’t house the dead. However, it does have at least 1,000 entrances that we know of thus far, and multiple levels.

25. Blytheville, Arkansas, USA: “The most evil-feeling town ever. The military base moved out in the ’80s, so it is a complete ghost town. Never otherwise in my life have I felt like someone was following me all the time. There was just a darkness you can’t explain. It was like every day was cloudy. I never left my house. I only stayed there for four months; I couldn’t stand it anymore.”

—u/Every-Classroom3429

OP went on to explain the history of the town. After the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, Blytheville became a hotspot, utilizing its abundance of lumber to rebuild the city. With the lumber boom also came some roudy company and the rise of saloon culture, which gave the town a bit of a bad reputation in the 1880s and ’90s. 

26. Drumnadrochit, Scotland: “It’s a small town on the shores of Loch Ness. When planning our road trip there, we’d heard about this being the place to visit on a trip to Loch Ness. There’s a tourist information center, a museum, the whole deal. My cousin and I arrived after about a four-hour drive from Edinburgh, and had a look around town. The museum and tourist center were closed and looked like they had been closed for a long time, even though there was no mention of that online. We decided to look for a place to eat, but it seemed like a (quite charming) sleepy little village with not much to do. In the middle of town, we found a single, small restaurant, so we went there. The best way to describe this place is like a cross between a funeral home and a diner.”

“The moment we set foot in the door, the whole place fell silent, and everyone looked at us. It was quite busy, but it was instantly clear that all the other people were locals and didn’t seem too used to visitors. I’d almost felt like they’d drive us out with pitchforks and torches. The vibe was really weird, but it was the only place to eat, and we were pretty damn hungry. So we took a seat at the only available table, quickly ate some (pretty decent) fish and chips, and noped the hell out.”

—u/Captain_Meekus

27. The Bolton Strid in Yorkshire, England: “It’s a river that looks almost quaint, but is anything but.”

—u/inksmudgedhands

Though there is no official death toll, some locals claim the river has 100% fatality rate for those who fall in due to its fast-moving waters as it narrows. Some consider it “the deadliest stream in the world.”

28. Sand Mountain, Georgia, USA: “It’s one of the least welcoming places I’ve ever been. The people who live there don’t like outsiders, but they especially don’t like some outsiders. Once, and never again. Census data* tells the story as well as I could.”

—u/-Blixx-

*Per Census Reporter, the population of Sand Mountain is 93% white.

29. Kawah Ijen in East Java, Indonesia: “The volcano constantly spews sulfur in gas and liquid, is lit up with bright blue flames, and has a lake of acid with a pH down to 0.5.”

—u/Gulleywhumper

The turquoise body of water in the top photo is Kawah Ijen Crater Lake, which — as mentioned above — can have a pH as low as 0.5 — similar in strength to that of car battery acid. It’s the world’s largest natural acidic lake. The bright blue flames coming from the volcano in the second photo are only visible at night. They’re a result of the high-pressure, high-temperature sulfuric gas it releases, which combusts in reaction to the oxygen in the air as well as the heat of the lava. It’s said that there’s such a high concentration of sulfur that the flames sometimes appear as though they are running down the side of the volcano like a river.

30. The Alnwick Poison Garden in Northumberland, England: “It’s a garden in England with every species of poisonous plant known to man. It has the gympie-gympie, deadly nightshade, etc.”

—u/TheEmoAssassin

31. Happy Valley, New York, USA: “It’s an abandoned ghost town that is now a state park. Local legend says that the town was wiped out by an outbreak of the bubonic plague, but the details are sketchy at best. When you pass by the entrance to the state park, you can see down the former main street that existed in the 19th century. I’d always get a chill up my spine.”

—u/PoorPDOP86

32. Hoia-Baciu Forest in Transylvania, Romania: “It is considered to be a haunted forest. Some people have allegedly gone missing in the forest. Visitors also report strange feelings of nausea, anxiety, and being watched.”

—Anonymous

Related: “Literally Just 36 A+++++++ Tweets From The Week”

The forest is also nicknamed “Romania’s Bermuda Triangle.” It’s named after a legend of a shepherd (or baciu) who vanished with a flock of 200 sheep in its woods. Along with the paranormal rumors, it’s also been linked to UFO sightings.

33. Mayak Nuclear Facility near Ozyorsk, Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia: “Including the nearby Lake Karachay and the Techa River. Probably the most polluted place in the entire planet, where there have been more nuclear accidents than I’d like to count. The authorities have been allegedly dumping nuclear waste into the lake for 50+ years… It’s unknown how many people living downstream might have suffered from radiation and poisoning of their water/food supplies. Storage facilities for high-level and low-level waste are essentially rotting away and neglected or poorly operated, leading to repeated critical events and explosions over their lifetime.”

—u/lordsteve1

Per CBC, a funeral worker in the nearby village of Brodokalmak along the river said he rarely buries people over the age of 50.

34. The “Toilet Bowl” sinkhole in Oahu, Hawaii: “It’s on the drive from Hawaii Kai to Kailua. It’s a pretty cool spot. It’s dangerous; you can see how scary it is during low tides and even high tides… People have definitely drowned in it. The danger comes that when a wave comes up, the pool rises by 5+ feet, then goes down 7+ feet when the tide goes out, [giving it the ‘flushing’ effect of a toilet]. Lots of people have gone in, but after the government blocked it off, only some locals go in from time to time. It doesn’t seem dangerous at all when you’re in it, though. People just get dragged down and bashed around in it. It’s a real easy way to drown.”

—u/Not_A_Bucket

35. Pulaski, Tennessee, USA: “I was visiting a friend who goes to college there, and while I was hanging out with them and some of their friends, they all told me not to go out at night for any reason. They were all really hesitant to explain why. After a while, though, they told me it was because the KKK still patrols the streets in that town. It turns out that’s where the KKK was founded, and they still have a strong presence around town.”

—u/for_the_boys1

36. Mount Barney, Queensland, Australia: “Specifically, the saddle (the top between two peaks). It took a day to climb (we weren’t that fit). The path was clear but eventually faded as we got higher, then kinda turned into a path of least resistance near the top. As we reached the saddle, open eucalyptus gave way to moist land closer to the rainforest. It’s a stark difference, not only in the trees around you, but in the air as well. The bush usually smells dry and warm, whereas the rainforest is always damp and humid. I’ve been in many different parts of the bush where I’ve felt calm and welcome, and others where I’ve felt unsafe and wouldn’t want to be there at night. I’ve even been in places that felt hostile for no obvious reason. This place felt like nothing else.”

“For a start, we couldn’t get a fire going. There was a fire ban, so we had to use a gas stove instead of a campfire. Even then, we struggled to get the fire to light or stay lit. It was basically just enough to boil water and cook a tiny amount of food, and it never felt hot. Besides that, though, the place felt…occupied. I felt like it knew we were there, and was curious about us. I didn’t feel unwelcome; I didn’t feel like I was being watched. But it didn’t feel like the empty bush. 

When I woke up in the morning, I found my bag had been opened, and my stuff had been thrown around, likely by the possums. I lost my torch on the climb to the peak. Somehow, on the way back down, a man came from behind, passed us, then gave me my torch back. I have no idea where he came from or how he found my torch amongst all the grass, rocks, and bushes.

There’s a logical explanation for all of it, of course. The rainforest feels very different to the bush; the guy probably climbed the other face starting early in the morning; possums are known to have a ‘fuck around when they feel like it’ attitude. But it certainly felt like *something* lived there and was veeery curious about us.”

—u/JackofScarlets

37. Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, Canada: “We went to Lunenburg in 2012. Neither my wife nor I had our driver’s licenses at that time, so we took a bus out there. It dropped us off at the center of town at 9 p.m. We didn’t know the town at all, so we stopped at the ESSO across the street to ask how to get to the street our B&B was on. The clerk had no idea, apparently never heard of that street before. We asked someone outside who pointed to a street sign one intersection away. In the morning, we had our breakfast and asked the proprietor where the bus station was. They said they didn’t think a bus came to Lunenburg. Well, we arrived by bus, so obviously it did, but oh well. We’d ask someone at a tourist spot.”

“That night, I looked online for info about the bus terminal. I found one 2km out of town. The bus stopped once per day at 9 a.m., so we resolved to get our asses out there VERY early and get tickets. In the morning, we got up at 7, packed our bags, opened the door…and there was the housekeeper, standing RIGHT in front of our door with the vacuum (switched off, but posed as though she was operating it). ‘Heading out?’ she asked. We turned the keys over to her and bailed… [We got to the bus stop, and] the attendant graciously allowed us to hang out in the closed pizzeria attached to the building. We got on our bus back to Halifax and were much relieved…until that afternoon, when someone stopped us on the street to tell us he recognized us from Lunenburg yesterday!!”

“We booked ourselves a room for the following night at a local hotel before continuing our day. At the Fisheries Museum, we asked if they knew where the bus station was. Nope, no buses come to or from Lunenburg, according to them. Huh. We grabbed lunch from a BBQ. No bus there either, but everyone wanted to know where we were staying for the night. When we told them which hotel, they wanted to know which room. We politely feigned forgetfulness. At dinner that evening, we got the same line of questioning from our waiter. ‘Where are you staying? Oh, the hotel? What room?’ Why does everyone want to know what room we’re staying in??”

“Everyone there was very kind and folksy, but sadly, there was a kind of…unsettling overtone caused by the nosiness of our sleeping location and the inability to help us leave the town.”

—u/Sad-Crow

Here are 39 more US-specific cities people realllllllly don’t recommend you visit:

38. Whittier, Alaska: “The entire population lives in a single apartment building, and the only access to the town is by boat or a 2.5-mile tunnel.”

—WeOwntheNightX

“The history of the place is that it used to be a military complex, and much of the town was built up because of its strategic location during WWII. The one building was built to house military personnel and their dependents, but by the time it was finished, basically all military operations in the area had finished, so it was only ever used residentially. 

A lot of people only live there seasonally, from what I gather, and nowadays it’s a bit more of a tourist town. I remember talking to a coffee shop owner who said they only stayed in town for the cruise ship season, about six or seven months out of the year, and then they go to Florida.

It is very beautiful, though. There’s a relatively unknown waterfall behind the main apartment complex, and there’s a gorgeous hike through the rainforest that goes up the mountain behind the building and gives you a great overlook of the town and the port. It is kind of creepy…the second largest building in the town is abandoned, and some of the people can be a bit overly-friendly.”

—u/ShitImBadAtThis

Whittier has about 200 residents, almost all of whom live in the Begich Towers.

39. Harrison, Arkansas: “It has billboards for White Power Radio. I had heard about it on the internet but had forgotten until some friends and I went camping on the Buffalo River. It’s 100% legit.”

—pickleparty16

“It is just openly white supremacist. I’m white, and I felt unwelcome there.”

—TireFryer426

40. Centralia, Pennsylvania: “An underground coal fire drove out most of the population, so it’s essentially an abandoned town. It was the inspiration for how Silent Hill is depicted in the first Silent Hill movie.”

—rookhelm

An underground mine fire has been burning beneath the town since at least 1962. While most of the small town’s residents have fled since then, a handful have remained.

41. Colorado City, Arizona: “Me and some friends were driving up to Duck Creek, UT from Vegas in winter and had to go in the back way via 89. This route takes you through Colorado City, Arizona, which is Mormon territory and about the creepiest place I’ve ever been. We had to stop for gas and we were watched like we were being hunted.”

—thai-stik-admin

“I stopped in there on my way to the north rim of The Grand Canyon back in 1999. This is not just Mormons, but Warren Jeffs’s polygamous sect. I went into the grocery store to get supplies. All the young women wore 19th-century style clothes and would not look me in the face when they spoke to me.

They tried to establish a compound in Texas several years later and Jess was arrested. Their idea of marriage was 50-year-old men marrying 12-year-old girls.”

—Troubador222

“So many polygamists. You can feel how unwelcome you are as you enter the town. We stopped there once on a family trip to get gas. A police officer immediately parked behind us and wanted to know where we were going and how long we were going to be in his town. He didn’t leave until we did and he followed us until we got to the town border. We never stopped there again. It’s basically a cult town.”

—ProfessorBrownie

42. Vidor, Texas: “We detoured through it due to a road closure. The residents hung white sheets saying, ‘Don’t stop’ and ‘Go that way.’ They seem to have lots of white sheets…”

—whatyoucallmetoday

“I did some engineering co-op assignments in the Golden Triangle area (Beaumont, Orange, Port Arthur) back in the early ’90s. Everyone I worked with warned me to never stop in Vidor for any reason. I took their advice to heart. They said the town’s claim to fame was being the former national headquarters for the KKK, and that there was a billboard on the stretch of I-10 that passed through Vidor that would occasionally get spray painted with the message ‘*n-word*, don’t let the sun go down on you in Vidor.'”

—underpants-gnome

43. Picher, Oklahoma: “It’s an EPA superfund site that was being cleaned up and bought out. The town was dying literally and figuratively, then a tornado came through and took care of enough that most who had remained left. Now it’s a ghost town.” As of 2014, a handful or so of persistent residents remain in the ghost town.

—u/sir_thatguy

“It’s an abandoned lead and zinc mining town that produced most of the lead for the World Wars. The town is riddled with sinkholes from poor mining practices and is the largest EPA superfund clean-up site. It’s now abandoned from a combination of people dying of lead poisoning, orange sulfuric acid waters, and a large tornado a few years ago.”

—Anonymous

Large “chat piles” were left behind after the lead and zinc they were mining for were separated from them, and could reach heights of 300 feet. They were made up of “crushed limestone, dolomite and silica-laden sedimentary rock,” and “became an integral part of the local culture,” as locals had picnics on them and the high school track team trained on them. Chemicals from the piles, such as lead, zinc, cadmium, arsenic, iron, and manganese, polluted the nearby creek, turning its waters red. Residents began experiencing physical symptoms of exposure to the heavy metals, including high infant mortality rates, high lung cancer rates, and the chronic lung disease pneumoconiosis having a rate 2,000% higher than the average. You can read more about the town here.

44. Carmel, Indiana: “It’s like Pleasantville. Everyone is white and trying to portray this ultimate ideal of good ol’ American perfection. Everything is named like it’s trying to be the 1950s. There are roundabouts everywhere that make you nauseous to top it off. I want to run screaming out of there every time I have to visit my family that lives there. It’s claustrophobic, and I can’t wait to escape as soon as I arrive.”

—Anonymous

This person isn’t exaggerating about the roundabouts — the city has 160+ in its 49 square miles, making it the city with the most roundabouts in the entire US.

45. Cassadaga, Florida: “Possibly the psychic capital of the country. Psychic stores, palm readers, and in the center of the town sits Hotel Cassadaga. Old and haunted. No children allowed, but you can hear children’s laughter in the halls. Stories of shape shifters abound. Quite an unsettling place to be.”

—Anonymous, 74, Deland, FL

46. Crestone, Colorado: “It’s the home of the Mother God cult, and its backdrop is the Sangre de Cristo mountain range as well as the Great Sand Dunes. The town is in the middle of nowhere and feels like the perfect place to disappear. “

—Anonymous

47. Upper Peninsula, Michigan: “We would drive up there in the winter or spring for sorority and fraternity banquets because the lodges were massive and cheap. The people who lived there just stared at us with their snow shovels in hand. I asked someone why it was so creepy there, and they said the locals don’t like outsiders. For example, when rich people from Chicago would come up to build large summer houses on the water, we were told they’d come back the next summer, and the house would be burnt down.”

—Anonymous

The Upper Peninsula makes up roughly a third of Michigan’s land area, but only 3% of its population.

48. Skidmore, Missouri: “A few years ago, I got lost in rural Missouri. Super lost. Like, back county roads lost. So I got directions from a gas station where the worker was super pissed I wouldn’t buy his overpriced map. He gave me directions, and I followed them down this backroad and ended up in Skidmore. It was like 2 p.m. and completely dead. Not a single person around. Mostly older houses, a run-down downtown, a new post office, that kind of thing. I was suddenly filled with dread. Like, Stephen King dread. There’s trash blowing everywhere and there’s just nobody. I drive by the library, and it’s pretty much abandoned. There are oversized books in the window, and they’re completely swollen from what I assume was water.”

“So I made it out of town and kept heading on my way, finally making it safely to my destination. Later on, I Googled the town, and what I found was wild. For a small town, it was full of gruesome murders, like one woman murdering another pregnant woman to get her baby, a guy terrorizing the entire town to the point where they just all kill him in the street, and murders from the 1800s. That kind of thing. 

It creeped me out more than any other place on three continents I’ve been on.”

—Vio_

49. Cairo, Illinois: “Driving through there was like going through a town in the Walking Dead. No people around, all the buildings are decrepit and worn down.”

—ArguingPizza

“Drove through on a delivery run. The town looked shuttered, boarded up, and random people were out on the street doing nothing; only places open seemed to be drug rehabs. A once thriving little river boom town, now abandoned, dirty, rundown, and mostly empty. It wouldn’t have surprised me to see zombies. But at night? Place is beautiful. It was lit up like Christmas (it wasn’t Christmas), with lights on in the buildings, street lights, the whole deal. It looked perfectly normal at night. Weird place.”

—ScatteredSmothered

50. Tonopah, Nevada: “It’s on the north end of the Tonopah missile range and Area 51. It’s the beginning of nowhere and is home to the world’s largest Clown Motel. The only reason to stop is for gas, then get TF outta there as quickly as possible.”

—littlebitstoned

51. Lancaster County, Pennsylvania: “I grew up an hour away and have family in that area. Lancaster County is built around the Anabaptist (Amish and Mennonite) communities. I have a cousin who ran away from our family to join the Mennonites. As a woman, whenever I went out there, I felt like I was being watched everywhere I went. It’s a huge tourist destination, and the popular belief is that it’s cute how quaint they are. Anabaptists are a high-control religion. I think it’s creepy, even if I agree that wood furniture and lard-filled pies are good. Every interaction you have as an ‘English’ person with Anabaptist women is watched, and I first noticed it when I was like 8.”

—Anonymous, 40

52. Truth or Consequences, New Mexico: “The vibe there…something is not right. 👀”

—Anonymous

The city, originally called Hot Springs until the ’50s, is known for its namesake. “T or C,” as it’s called by locals, was renamed after the ’40s NBC radio show, Truth or Consequences.

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53. “The Loneliest Road” (Route 50), Nevada: “I went on the ‘loneliest road’ in Nevada, and it truly gave me a sense of scale for America as a place. In Europe, you simply cannot go that distance without encountering multiple massive cities. Where I live, every square cm of land has been apportioned for centuries, and then you go to Nevada, and it’s just…OPEN. And you have actual warnings telling you to fill up your car or else.”

—Ok-Commercial8968

54. The Outer Banks, North Carolina: “They felt surreal to me…way too flat.”

—manicpixidreamgirl04

“The Outer Banks in the winter feels like they are lost in time and space, it’s VERY eerie.”

—StrangePondWoman

55. Yelm, Washington: “We moved there based on a Google search for low crime and good schools. Lived there for three years before moving to nearby Olympia. It doesn’t seem odd when you drive through, but stay for five minutes, and you’ll run into or be subjected to a member of the Ramtha School of Enlightenment. They have a military-like compound that is privately policed. It’s a weird cult with high costs.”

—Anonymous, 50, Peoria, IL

56. Point Pleasant, West Virginia: “I visited Point Pleasant on a road trip in 2021. There is a very weird aura around the town for sure. I didn’t go during peak hours, but it felt very macabre to be there. Knowing about the tragedy of the Silver Bridge and the history from Keel’s The Mothman Prophecies really put it into perspective, too.”

“The town felt very destitute and empty, really. A few people were wandering around, but I didn’t stick around for very long. Went across the river for dinner, and it was more lively there. Honestly, I don’t think I’d ever spend much longer than a few hours there. Lots of tourist traps around there, too. With the context of the tragedy, I felt like it was in poor taste, but hey, why would anyone else visit the town?”

—u/TacticalDoge

The Silver Bridge tragedy, which this person is referring to, occurred in 1967, when the bridge from Point Pleasant to Kanawha, OH, suddenly collapsed during rush hour, killing 46 people. The Mothman is a cryptid reportedly seen in the area before tragedies, like the bridge collapse. 

57. Flagstaff, Arizona: “My son and I found ourselves there on a road trip a few years ago, and we signed up for a nighttime walk. The entire thing lasted about two hours, and we were told stories about haunted hotels and the like. At the end of the tour, our guide stopped us on a street corner and told us the story of the Walkup murders… When our guide was done telling us this story, he pointed across the street. There stood the exact house where it happened… I’m not sure we’ll go back to Flagstaff anytime soon, but the town definitely has an eerie history.”

—Anonymous

In 1937, Marie Green Walkup smothered and speared her four children through the heart with an ice pick, and then reportedly committed suicide, while her husband was away. She left a note nailed to the front door, saying, “Because of my lack of discipline, the children are happier to go this way. Only grief would come to them…”

58. Horseshoe Beach, Florida: “We pulled into town while visiting a local state park nearby. The town is tiny. Like, one stop light tiny. Not far away are the remnants of a town called Rosewood, which was the site of a horrific anti-Black massacre in 1923*. Well, as you can probably imagine, that’s kind of the general spirit of that whole area. Pickup trucks drive around with ‘rebel’ flags unfurled. We happened to stop for gas, and as I exited my truck, I was being watched by a couple of guys on the other side of the parking lot. I realized it was because my wife is Hispanic soon after. It was unsettling, to say the least, because there is only one road in and out of this town, and my feeling was that troublemakers didn’t make it out. It was wild.”

—Anonymous, 54 Mission Viejo, California

The massacre this person is reffering to is the Rosewood Massacre, which began on the first of January in 1923 and lasted several days. White vigilante mobs violently beat and shot members of the small, predominantly Black town, and set their homes on fire. It’s believed the catalyst for this race riot was a woman named Fannie Taylor, who lived several towns over and claimed a Black man assaulted her. It’s believed that Fannie may have actually been partaking in an extramarital affair and lied so as not to get caught.

59. Mt. St. Helens area, Washington: “If you’re adventurous and have a truck, you can find the old forest service roads on the side of Mt. St. Helens that got blown out by the eruption. I found them at night driving through there on a whim. Old forest service signs with half of the sign melted or blown off, completely overgrown roads, muddy trails, and absolutely no light. It was a clear sky with a full moon and, I shit you not, I couldn’t see more than 50 feet ahead of me with the brights on. Eeriest shit I’ve explored, and I grew up exploring abandoned asylums and prisons. 14/10, absolute recommend.”

—Beautiful-Page3135

60. The Salton Sea area, California: “The area around the Salton Sea in Southern California — particularly the upper half of the western shore, towns like Salton City, Desert Shores, and Oasis. I actually quite enjoyed the people there. Back in the 1960s, a bunch of resort towns popped up along the sea. In the 1980s, agricultural runoff severely polluted the sea. There were also wild variations in the salinity of the sea, and those two factors combined to kill off a ton of the sea’s fish. The dead fish washed up on shore, the sight and smell of which pretty well killed the tourism industry. What remains is an ecological disaster and a bunch of not-quite ghost towns.

“It’s a really eerie corner of the world, and as someone who’s spent a lot of time in tiny back towns across the western states, the Salton Sea area is definitely unique in my memory.”

—MasteringTheFlames

61. Los Alamos, New Mexico: “Lots of land surrounded by barbed wire. Signs EVERYWHERE indicating ‘No drones allowed.’ Weirdly quiet. Pretty much everything closed at 3 p.m. We joked that it must be to give people time to get inside before all the radioactive monsters came out. A lot of the labs and facilities are still active for, I assume, reasons.”

—knittinator

62. Vineland, New Jersey: “A utopian sober town known as the home of Welch’s Grape Juice. NJ’s largest city by area, but it only has 60,000 people. Strange ‘planned’ city with huge spaces between buildings, ridiculously wide streets, and everything out of normal proportion.”

—tpatmaho

63. Red Haw, Ohio: “I’ve driven through it four times. Every single time it’s the same story. Cars parked on the sides of the road, but no traffic. Doors wide open, but nobody is visible. No music, no people. Legitimately saw a ball roll across the street once and nobody could have thrown it. It looks like everyone who lives there disappears whenever I drive through, and then spontaneously, they reappear when I leave.”

—GNSasakiHaise

64. Coeur d’Alene, Idaho: “Stopped at the visitor’s center, while passing through Coeur d’Alene. On the way through town, we passed by multiple breweries and interesting places to stop for lunch, but there seemed to be an odd feeling about the place. We chatted with the people at the visitor center while my friend went to use the restroom. When she came back, she changed her mind about staying in town for lunch. She had found out that Coeur d’Alene is home to a major compound for the Aryan Nations. We realized, as we left, that there were not any non-white people walking around downtown.”

—Grigio_cervello

65. Wallace, Idaho: “My husband and I decided to stop there overnight. We booked a room at a hotel and left an hour later because we could swear someone was watching us… It was downright eerie. We slept in the car that night, far from that town. We didn’t even want to stay in the city limits.”

—u/Waytoloseit

“I was merely walking down a street to look at some of their ‘historic’ landmark plaques and was followed by a sheriff’s car the whole way. The whole place gave off a vibe I have only experienced second-hand while watching fiction movies; it was weird.”

—Anonymous

As for the whole “center of the universe” thing, in 2004, its mayor declared it so, claiming it can’t be proven or disproven. It’s commemorated with a manhole cover and an annual celebration.

66. Salt Lake City, Utah: “I had to go to Salt Lake City for a conference. My company put me up at the Marriott, which was just fine, as it was connected to the conference center. However, stepping out of the hotel/conference center was surreal. All roads lead to the massive LDS Temple. It was interesting architecturally, so I thought I would go inside, as I’ve done with cathedrals in many cities. I was told I couldn’t go because I’m not Mormon. People were very friendly, but every single person, in every single shop, looked alike. It was all very strange and culty.”

—Anonymous, Ellie, 40-something

67. Covington, Virginia: “A few years ago, I worked as a subcontractor to banks. I was the guy who would knock on your door and tell you to call your bank about a missed payment. Anyway, I was driving in a new job territory, and as I was driving down the road, all of a sudden, I came upon a massive fog bank. It took a good five minutes to drive through it. Then, once I reached the other end, it was like someone just cut the fog with a knife. It suddenly ended, and it was stone-cold quiet. I mean, I even stopped my car and listened. No birds. No wind. No sound.”

“Feeling creeped out, I slowly drove a bit more and came out on top of a mountain looking down into the city valley. The fog smelled like hotdog water. I didn’t know it then, but that was due to the paper factory.

As I drove into town, it was just one storefront after another. It all felt like a Steven King movie. The whole town seemed like a zombie insect — dead, but still moving somehow.

As if all that wasn’t enough, the cherry on top was seeing a few Nazi flags flying in front of people’s houses. After seeing those, I got out of there as fast as I could.”

—u/belac4862

68. Aberdeen, Washington: “I drove through to get a feel for where Kurt Cobain grew up. It’s a timber industry ghost town. Definitely gives one a sense of the inspiration behind much of his music. Absolutely nothing worth driving there for other than for a sense of desperation.”

—Bill, Vista, CA

69. 29 Palms, California: “It has such a mystic vibe — the views, surroundings, some of the people you might meet. There were lots of witch covens, spiritualists, and the like. It was said to be a place of spiritual convergence.”

“Early one morning at a gas station, my friend was pumping gas and I looked across the windswept street to see four very attractive young ladies with long, wind-swept hair and long, faded desert gowns. Their heads were close together as they chatted secretively and watched me. I turned my head and told my friend, ‘It looks like we may have company.’ He looked back and said, ‘Who?’ I turned back, and they were gone.

There was absolutely no place for them to have disappeared to. It was a wide street, and the area around the station was empty lots. I walked across the street to see if there was a hole in the ground or something. There was absolutely no place for them to have gone. I came back and told my friend, ‘They’re watching us. I don’t know where from, but we are being watched.’ That was pure 29 Palms of the ’70s. Every day, it was something else strange.”

—Anonymous, 69, Texas

70. Barstow, California: “It’s the convergence of highways in the middle of nowhere. It’s like an entire town of unhinged hitchhikers who got dumped there. Freaky shit.”

—u/somehonky

71. Ruby, Arizona: “It’s a ghost town located south of Tucson. Weirdest feeling of being watched there. No one except a character named SunDog (there’s an online documentary about him) lives there. There is a gorgeous lake, a beautiful white sand beach, and a lot of the buildings still stand. We were in one, and the piano there plinked out a few notes on its own, and we were out of that building like a shot. Several murders occurred when it was an old western mining town, and they say those spirits still roam. And I believe them. “

—Jennifer Chaos, Tucson, AZ

As of 2014, SunDog has left Ruby in the hands of Michael Thistle, the town’s caretaker and sole resident.

72. Amboy, California: “All of the stories are true. My husband was stationed there a few years back. I heard stories of people getting run off the road, people pretending to have gotten in a car crash so you stop and help, candles being set up in the middle of the road, etc. His chain of command even had a meeting with them before the Marine Corps Ball about not stopping in Amboy because of how dangerous it was.”

—u/WallalaWonka

Amboy is an unincorporated community in the Mojave Desert.

73. Eureka, California: “It looked so charming until we got out of our car. We were the ONLY people walking around. We visited a couple of shops, but the shopkeepers were not interested in selling us anything. They barely looked up as we entered their stores. At one point, a man walked down the middle of the street screaming obscenities. The shopkeepers just stood in their doorways, watching him. We had planned to stay the night there, but my daughter refused. We hustled back to our car and headed out of town as fast as we could go!”

—Anonymous, 62, Philadelphia

74. Virginia City, Nevada: “It was a ghost town. It was the creepiest place I have ever visited. I felt such depression, like I never have before. It was like I could feel the desperation of the past with the people who had traveled there during the gold rush. It was so cold, and it chilled me to the bone being outside.”

—Anonymous, 76

75. Joshua Tree, California: “As someone who lives in a big city, I thought the desert was creepy as hell. I absolutely loved Joshua Tree, but it was hard for me to fall asleep. It’s completely silent out there at night.”

—AmericanWasted

That red, flying saucer-shaped building is called a Futuro House.

76. And finally, Macon, Georgia: “It just has really bad vibes for some reason… it felt empty and barren, but I couldn’t explain why. It’s the city equivalent of Backrooms nightmares. Every time we pass through it, I just can’t wait to get out.”

—u/Rhopunzel

“I grew up near Macon. I love it in theory – stunning old houses, great food, awesome live music scene, great nature nearby, some really good shops. But there is something so off about it.”—u/AsleepSignificance25

“I went on a road trip to South Georgia with my best friend, and Macon was the last big town we passed through en route to our destination. We stopped for gas near sunset on the edge of town, and despite thinking Macon looked totally fine on paper, I got the weirdest vibe just stepping out of my car. Wasn’t physically sketchy-looking or anything, just weird, just the entire vibe. Couldn’t put my finger on it. My friend (for context, both women) asked if she could run in to use the restroom, and I said no, and that we’d stop somewhere else. I just had this terrible gut feeling, and it wasn’t about any of the people at the gas station; it was just the city as a whole.”—Anonymous

Now it’s your turn! Have you ever visited a city, town, or other destination that was unsettling like these places? Let us know in the comments or via this anonymous form.

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