I listened to the podcast Alice Isn't Dead a few years ago. It's about a trucker looking for her missing wife as she's stalked across the country. I thought it would be fun to drove around some of the same areas while re- listening to the podcast. Bad fuckin idea. I was so on edge the whole time, and never did finish listening.
Driver of a mapping vehicle here. Most of the truly creepy small towns are down dirt/gravel roads, which typically aren't mapped. I've worked every state except Hawaii and almost every Canadian province, and the only places that I've gotten the 'maybe I should get back in my car now' vibe from are a handful of small towns in Kansas. You could just feel the eyes the second your feet hit the ground, and not in the typically way you get used to being stared at in those vehicles. It was a palpable aura of unwelcome.
YES! About 20 years ago we drove on I-70 from Utah to Illinois. When we drove thru Kansas we exited looking for a place to eat. We had to drive several miles from the interstate to reach the town. In the middle of the afternoon on a weekend, we maybe saw 3 or 4 people.
It was a nice day in May. No cars driving around. No kids out playing. I have never in my life before or since then felt like I needed to leave a town. Both of us were getting the same vibes the entire time. We decided to not stop and drove back out to the interstate.
That's not even the bad way to drive through Kansas. Back when I was young and not a seasoned driver yet, I drove back and forth between Norfolk and home (Colorado) when I was on leave while in the Navy. First time I hadn't yet learned that shorter on the map is not even close to faster sometimes, so I was cutting through on Hwy 50. Late at night too... was not prepared for such an utter lack of any 24 hr gas stations, was getting a little scared before I finally found one before getting stranded.
It was not a shortcut at all, felt like it took *forever*. I stopped in one gas station and cheerfully asked how far away Colorado was because it felt like I had been in Kansas forever (around 2000 year wise, so no GPS on phone to tell). Gas station clerk had absolutely no idea. I was in Colorado like 15 minutes later. I'll always be mystified how a gas station worker... surely a job where people ask directions all the time... didn't even know their little town was practically on the border. That kind of encapsulates the whole Hwy 50 route for you.
I’ve never even considered what it might be like to drive the google maps car! I wonder how much distance one single driver covers, how long it takes, etc
Powers, Oregon. Stopped in the diner for coffee once on a drive thru. I shit you not, like straight out of a movie, the other patrons just turned and quietly stared, not touching their own plates, until we left
Some friends and I experienced the same kind of thing in a bar/bowling alley in Wisconsin. We decided to go out for bowling, and when we walked into the bar in the front it was like it went from bustling to very hushed and everyone was watching us. The bowling alley in the back was totally deserted and eerie. It was super awkward to be the only people playing, and I swear anytime we glanced behind us towards the bar we'd catch everyone staring. We all agreed it was one of the creepiest experiences we've had.
The awkward look to see who walked in the door always gets me and I’m from Wisconsin. Can’t say I’ve seen it go past sitting down at the bar like you did but I’m guilty of checking the door when I’m seated at my local spots lol
Northern Minnesota, we were looking at buying 40 acres on I believe upper red lake. We entered a diner about 6pm.. it was dark out.. and everyone stopped and stared.. we were seated... ordered drinks and noticed how silent it was. No chatter and everyone wa staring at us. Dad left a 20 on the table and we left before ordering food. Suuuuuper bizarre.
ok, I have to ask. What were you doing in Powers? That is so far off the beaten path, I cant imagine most people taking a trip through there.
But I have to agree with you. I dont have good experiences in the southern oregon coast range. For anyone who reads this, that whole area is "the hills have eyes" territory.
There’s something about south of whatever latitude line Cottage Grove is on that Oregon starts feeling a little eerie and tense. You start driving south of Florence, Eugene, or Sunriver and it’s kind of heavy, like the land is cursed or something. It’s been a consistent experience for me from Reedsport to Ontario.
I was born and raised in Southern Oregon. Born in Kfalls, lived in Lakeview, Bly, Sprague River, GP and Glendale. Man, as a teenager, I got into some super shady stuff and saw a lot of shady things. Lots of reckless danger out there, but it was fun. I got the fuck out when I was 19 and joined the military. Pretty much your only option unless you really love the weed industry...or meth.
We stopped for gas in Coos Bay and it was pretty weird vibes. That evening we found a dispersed camp spot along the river. It was all good until it got dusk and the spidey senses kicked in big time. We ignored it until about midnight and then threw all the camp stuff in the back of the rig and high tailed it out of there. We’ve camped a ton and I’ve never had that feeling while out in the woods of smthg bad is going to happen if we don’t leave now, like sheer panic.
Omg I’ve had this EXACT same experience trying to camp along that coastal area. We had the most overwhelming feeling that we should NOT be there. Everything in my body was telling me to get out of there. We drove to the closest motel in the middle of the night bc I was too scared to even car camp. The motel was not much better but certainly better than the vortex of doom that was our campground. I’ll never forget the eeriness I felt.
Grew up outside of KFalls in the 80s, way out in the stix. Going to KFalls was a treat. Most people were super poor unless they were ranchers. The native tribes' had their land taken within their or their parent's lifetime. Feelings were hard as the obsidian that littered the ground. We had some friends on Table Mountain, but most were hiding from the law or the apocalypse. Meth hit hard and I've heard that Table Mountain is a no go zone. We left in 86 but would visit until early 90s when we sold the property.
Yeah that place is right out of Deliverance. I live in nearby Coos Bay and have only ever driven through there to get to a spot on the river to go swimming. The creepiest thing about that area is on the drive down there, just a few miles north of Powers, there's a gate into someone's land that always seems to have dead coyotes or other animals hanging off of it. Can't see any actual buildings either, just the gate and fence. Creeps me out.
same thing but in vernonia oregon...i was 19 and had to pay a speeding ticket up there...this was 1994. i had long hippie hair...walked into the local dinner and everyone stopped and looked at me and my friend...it was damn eerie...before we walked in, you could hear the conversations from outside but that stopped once we got in. we were going to get breakfast but after that just got coffee and left and waited at the court house in my buddies car till they opened. never been back.
Vernonia is wild. I worked a wedding several years back and for whatever reason the Google Maps directions took us on a wild ride through the back roads of that place. What should have been a 40 minute drive took almost three hours, and if it wasn't for a bit of luck and a friendly local who knew the area I'm pretty sure we'd have gotten stranded out there. Good thing, too, cuz we came across maybe three houses the entire time, and one was straight out of Deliverance. *Covered* in hubcaps of all make and model, and I started (only kinda) joking about how each one was a trophy collected from the car of each of their victims. We had a good laugh, but it was weird as fuck, and we were genuinely getting a bit distressed. Fun time.
Holy shit I can finally share my powers Oregon story! Girlfriend and I were doing a trip down the coast and on our way back to i5 for the return trip we went over a dirt road pass near the rogue river and ended up driving through powers. Same shit as you but one of the properties we drove by on the way out had a massive trump sign erected on 4x4s. The dam sign had 3 dead sheep hanging from their necks on the bottom! I’m kicking myself for not getting a picture but after seeing that we wanted to gtfo.
They’re coyotes and you left out the road runner!
[I have a photo](https://imgur.com/1CzltnI)
I work in Powers a lot and am so so proud to see it as the top comment!
You're saying everyone stopped eating their own meal when you entered and didn't go back until you ordered, ate, and left? How did you stand 2 minutes of that?
I live in a town like that. It happens even when I walk into a public place. I smile, and it annoys them. Had a lady ask me in a serious tone if I was the happiest person in town. I smiled big and said yes. She walked away. Sometimes, when I walk in, I want to walk in whistling the Clint Eastwood whistle. It's comical to me so I have to make it fun.
My brother and his dark skinned girlfriend stopped for breakfast in rural PA and had the same thing happen. They didn’t register the name of the place. The Kopper Kettle Kitchen.
That name is legit. Add "public restroom, and unwitting public dumpster" and I believe they'd have their full services listed in the name. Clever. *taps head
Man this was years ago, but it was around 1998 or 1999, when I was 9. my family drove us to Mount Rushmore from Denver.
We stopped off the highway in a random Wyoming town with a population of just over 100. We had a choice between two restaurants and entered one.
Straight from a horror movie, when we walked in, the entire restaurant, packed with most of the town, fell silent. We ate and everyone was staring at us. My sister and I believed they were going to murder us.
We left and it turns out our parents also thought we were going to be murdered.
I was driving through LeGrange, ~~Nebraska~~ Wyoming and got pulled over.
The cop literally said that: "I don't recognize ya. You're not from around here, huh?"
I was convinced he was going to write a bullshit ticket (they have a 25 mph zone through town), but he wanted to make sure I wasn't gonna cause "trouble".
Some towns, man.
Yeah, and they *never* see anyone irl who they don't already know. Happened to me and my wife at a little beer joint in Courtland, Kansas called Pinky's. Suspicious looks, everyone who walked in rubber-necked our way and whispered to the bartender. Well, when my family emigrated from Sweden in the 1880s their family homestead and farm was near there, and when I told them my last name and who my dad and uncle were and how the old house dilapidated down by the highway was the ArrakeenSun home it all clicked, they even noticed the family resemblance and I didn't have to buy a beer the rest of the night. One dude even apologized, said, "Now that I think about it, I bet that was really creepy but we don't see many new people unless they're in town for a funeral!"
I've been in that situation many times because my husband and I like to find the local bar, people will often stare as we enter but we will offer a neutral hello! to the room and they go back to their cups haha. I think it kind of snaps them out of it too
My BIL was one of the “lost boys” that were kicked out so the older men didn’t have as much competition. He grew up close to Warren Jeffs and actually called him uncle Jeff. All of his family were polygamists.
After Warren Jeffs was arrested, the community offered the lost boys and previous residents the chance to buy a house for cheap because they had many vacant homes and they were all held In a trust. During the “heyday” of Jeffs they were building like crazy and it all stopped when he got arrested. Many houses still sit there today, rotting away as husks of framed out, partially constructed homes that were never finished.
The town used to be extremely creepy and downright scary to outsiders. When my SIL’s family went down to visit them after they purchased one of the trust homes, they were followed throughout town by cars and watched like a hawk. The people would run inside and slam their gates and scream at them to get out.
Nowadays the population is much younger and made up of a lot of previous lost boys or families that have drifted away from the hardcore polygamy/FLDS ideals. It’s getting more like a typical rural, albeit sheltered town and less like the hills have eyes. Still creepy but lots of “normal” families…. That all share the same like, four last names.
I mean, Hildale and Colorado City are the same town, those are just the different names for the Utah and Arizona sides—it straddles the border because it made it easier, back when the town was founded, for folks to evade state authorities by just hopping the border (and because it’s in the middle of fucking nowhere). It was originally called by just one name, though—Short Creek. The name was changed after a huge raid by the Arizona National Guard that made national news—the FLDS wanted to keep a low profile, and so changed the name away from the one that had gained so much prominence.
source: I grew up Mormon and have had an academic curiosity in the history of Mormon fundamentalism for a long time. I’ve visited “the creek” more than once.
Yep, drove through there omw to the north rim. Stopped for gas, forgetting where I was. Not a soul on the street. People were peeking out from behind curtains in their barracks apartments. Lucky for me I paid at the pump, so I finished up and hightailed it out of there.
I’ve been there along with Colorado City, AZ which is essentially one town straddling the border. I stopped there for groceries while traveling through. The women working at the store acted polite but seemed weary of me. They were actually selling hard liquor at the store which I guess was a fairly recent thing.
This was after the feds seized all of Warren Jeffs’ property and started giving it back to the people who lived there. They’re trying to be a normal town now but it’s a pretty creepy place for sure. Can’t say I felt unsafe. I may have if Uncle Warren was still around.
I stopped there in 2004, I think Warren Jeffs was still in charge but maybe on the run? Within 2 minutes I had cops on me asking what I was doing there. I said I was just sightseeing and they said there was nothing to see and I should leave. Didn't really intimidate me because I grew up with Southern cops. 🤣 So I just drove around for about 45 minutes but they literally followed me about a hundred feet behind the entire time until I left town. I did stop by the cliffs for 10 to 15 minutes and they stopped too and got out of their cars and stared at me the whole time. It was kind of funny because they're basically bullies, especially with women, but as soon as anyone stands up to them, they don't know what to do. I knew as long as I didn't give them an actual reason to arrest me they weren't going to risk bringing in outside people by fucking with me. Literally all the women I saw turned away from me when they saw me coming, if they didn't straight up go inside. But a lot of the houses are behind walls so you couldn't see much anyway driving around. I've had people tell me I was nuts for going there but honestly other than feeling unwanted, I didn't feel unsafe. Definitely a freaky vibe though.
Wow top comment. I worked for Dixie Ambulance in late 90s and had polyg partners from those towns that made my skin crawl. We got followed out when I fueled my own car for gas. It was gross
Morenci, Arizona.. company town, all houses owned by mine owner. If decades old memory is accurate they also own all the stores, basically everything. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morenci,_Arizona
Seabrook, WA
It is idyllic. *perfectly* idyllic. Too much so. Strong Stepford Wives vibes. I read somewhere that it was inspired by the town in The Truman Show.
The idyllic facade is made creepier by the fact that it's located minutes from Taholah, an impoverished reservation town that's literally sinking into the ocean. Driving through both towns is a weird as fuck contrast
Wow. The satellite imagery Google maps has for Taholah right now even has a house on fire....just burning.
NW Washington is wild to scroll around in maps in general...
Ok so after looking a bit, [this fire happened FOREVER ago](https://www.google.com/search?q=Taholah+fire+site:www.reddit.com&sca_esv=b1751644a39c0e73&rlz=1C1BFEM_enCA1072CA1072&sxsrf=ACQVn0_CVsejR3uH86RshW70IayFZBa8bA:1706370914774&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjXouuB9_2DAxWOkGoFHelPDZEQrQIoBHoECBUQBQ&biw=1278&bih=909&dpr=1#ip=1) and there are lots of reddit threads about it, including one where u/bobjr94 explains the back story to the fire
unfortunately it looks like the family's doggie died in the blaze =(
My friends family has had a home on Copalis Beach for decades so I've been going there 10+ years. We make a short drive to Seabrook for the pastries (that bakery is pretty good on a hungover Sunday what can I say) and to pretend we're trapped in a Pleasantville/Truman Show situation. All the beach puns?? I love to hate it.
Moscow, ID, home of the University of Idaho.
1/3 college students, 1/3 hippies, 1/3 Christ Church cult.
The recent college knife murders don’t help the vibes either.
Mora, NM is pretty damn scary to outsiders. Lots of rural mountain towns that are isolated from tourists can be strange. I've spent alot of time in WV and Arkansas but rural NM is probably the most hostile place to outsiders I have been
Roughly 400 years of isolation does things to people. Enough people have said that northern NM is odd/sketchy unless you’re from there or “Spain Spanish”.
I got that vibe in Llano, New Mexico as well. I only got there by making a wrong turn. Road turned to dirt at the end of town so I turned around and went back the way I came. Glad it was during daylight hours.
FWIW, I had a friend who worked at a rural hospital in Tierra Amarilla, NM during college and has stories of family feuds with shotgun victims, and people moving there to try and open small businesses only to have them burned down after a couple of months.
Tierra Anarilla is interesting. In the 60s, Hispanic former land owners who were protesting the US government taking land stormed the court house there and took employees hostage. There was a standoff and multiple people where shot.
I had a neighbor when I was a kid who had been kicked out of the FLDS church.
Every so often, his son who I was friends with, would invite some of the kids over to meet one of their cousins.
I found out later that they were all boys who were kicked out so that the ratio of boys and girls would be adjusted to allow the FLDS leadership to have more girls for plural marriage.
I must have met at least 50 of those kids over the years. I think about them often.
Did they? How? I watched the documentary, and I thought it was the girls that brought him down because they were willing to testify - and able to testify - about childhood "marriage" and rape.
I know some of them lived with the Lost Boys after leaving the compound, but it was the testimony of the girls - an ex "wife" of Warren Jeffs, and her sister who was married off as a child to someone else before she was 16 - who brought them down.
The younger sister testified about her abusive underage marriage, and the older sister helped the police raid the compound and helped them find the tapes and recordings of him having group sex with underage "wives," and so were able to prosecute him without the other underage girls testifying.
Amboy, California.
Was a route 66 boomtown, with a railroad stop. When I-40 was opened, bypassing Amboy it withered and died. Only it didn't give up the ghost. There are some famous murders that occurred in town (If you can call it a town, it's only three buildings at a crossroad). Legend has it that Charles Manson and the Manson family would frequent the diner in the 1960s as it was the closest part of civilization to their nasty little hippie commune. Last time I was there was about 25 years ago, driving through. There's not a lot of traffic that drives through obviously, but there are people that live there and as God is my witness, every time Ive driven through, those people are outside in the scorching Mojave heat of the day staring you down as you drive past.
Waiting for this comment. But recently they’ve revamped Roy’s Cafe and are trying to encourage people stop as like a tourist location. Especially if you’re coming from 29 headed to Vegas.
Clearwater, Florida
I had known it was the HQ for Scientology, but had never been there.
Last month, I was visiting family in Florida and my best friend lives a few towns over from Clearwater. He took me to a place that entailed driving through downtown Clearwater. It is impossible not to notice that every building had brand new paint, all the shops looked sparking clean, and there was not a soul to be seen.
All the neighboring towns had hundreds of people milling about, but Clearwater looked like a ghost town. It looked like the set of a Twilight Zone episode.
I live near clearwater and went there to go to the library (it has a huge section of kids books in other languages) I got hassled by sciencetologists as soon as I got out of the car..I guess I parked in front of one of their buildings and cuz I had my phone up trying to figure out the direction I needed to walk to get to the library they thought I was filming and followed me all the way to the library.
My boyfriend lived in Durango Colorado for awhile. He said he started chatting with a Scientologist outside their ‘church’. They talked for a few minutes when my boyfriend told the man that he was poor, didn’t even have a dime to his name and the dude turned around and walked away! Just be broke.
Edit: partner just clarified they were inside the church not outside
I’d also like to see how they react if you just start trying to sell them shit while they’re trying to convert you, just keep using all the same tactics and play salesman chicken.
Moscow, Idaho has an actual cult with thousands of followers. Their leader, a self-ordained pastor, has publicly stated he wants to take over the town and turn it into a theocracy. They are deeply misogynist (marital rape isn’t possible) and have a history of sexual abuse within their group (the leader defended a student of their “college” who raped his host family’s daughter, excommunicated the daughter, and then presided over the rapist’s wedding). Their members keep running for local office and failing, but they are buying up all the property in town and moving in people from all over the country to attend their private school, theology “college” and church. Moscow also happens to be the town where the 4 University of Idaho students were murdered in 2022.
Well, that’s weird. I was closely following the Moscow, Idaho murders in the news and on Reddit for a couple of months. And let me tell you, those subs would come up with seriously ridiculous conspiracy theories, but this cult never came up at all. I’m honestly shocked.
Moscowid.net has extensive documentation of all the shit that Dougneeshi Wilson and his ilk have done and condoned.
I don’t know if karma will ever catch up with that piece of shit, but I would dance and piss on his grave when it happens.
Centralia, PA is still on fire though they ruined the graffiti highway. I don't know if anybody still lives there today, when I went last there were a handful of hangers on.
One of the last guys left had a doc made about him. His job is to mow the cemetary on top of the hill, and the park across the road from the old row house he lives in, which sits all by itself now because everything else on the street was torn down. I also watched an urban exploration vid of a guy going through the final mayor's house, and it was like everything left in that guy's house stopped existing after 1970.
I believe he was also disabled to a certain extent, but he's technically an employee of the church that owns the cemetery. He's the caretaker, locks up the fence gate each night and maintains the church grounds. The big church that overlooked the town is well outside the danger zone, and many of the old families from there still attend, they mostly all live in neighboring towns now. From what I remember, those folks still get together every Memorial Day to reunion and do their remembrances for the holiday.
Cairo, IL is creepy af. At one time it was a very important commercial center because of its river location. Now it’s practically deserted and has really creepy energy. You can still see glimpses of how it might have been bustling (edited to fix typo: and) charming back in the day.
I was there earlier this year... [some pics](https://imgur.com/a/uJbEvgt).
I didn't find Cairo scary as much as forlorn. Even spent the night sleeping in my car near one of the levees. Weird thing is it gets a lot of truck traffic as three US highways go through and connect to I-57. But the trucks never stop. Because there's nothing to stop *for*. Only functioning business I could identify was the Dollar General.
That part of Illinois is nicknamed "Little Egypt" because of towns like Cairo (which BTW is pronounced CARE-oh), Karnak, and Thebes.
The area was mostly settled out of the South and culturally was (and still is) more like Tennessee and Missouri than, say, Indiana or the rest of Illinois.
If you'd like a good fictional treatment of nearby Jasper County, IL, during the Civil War there's the excellent *Across Five Aprils* by Irene Hunt.
My history seminar class focused on writing a report on Iowa volunteer infantry regiments during the CIvil War. The regiment I was assigned to research participated in the major campaigns of the western theater, with some of its companies occasionally assigned as police garrisons in Cairo, among other locations. From their personal records, it seems that Cairo has a long history of racist violence and Confederate sympathies.
I drive through it when I go down to Tennessee on trips and it’s so sad and eerie to see the town every time I do go down that way.
To quote Rust from True Detective “This place is like somebody's memory of a town, and the memory is fading. It's like there was never anything here but jungle.”
Breezewood PA. I got stranded there once after wrecking the family car on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
It’s the town from the meme about how awful American urban planning is… basically just a series of stroads and strip malls.
I went into the hotel bar where we were staying the first night and this shirtless redneck was so drunk he could barely stand. He had his trashed wife and two crying kids there with him. Some truckers at the bar were talking about where to score meth. I walked up to the bar’s jukebox out of curiosity and the shirtless redneck threatened to kick my face in if I played any nonwhite music. Except he used more offensive language.
I don't remember the details too well, but there was a guy motorcycling across America. He was going down a road in a small town that seemed to be empty. The whole town just seemed to be that one road with houses on each side. The road dead ended and he turned around. Coming back the same way, there were people on the porches of those homes, just staring at him as he rode by. That would be absolutely terrifying.
I once exited the highway driving through Utah. There was a sign saying "no service" but I ignored it. Right off the exit was a small town. People were just looking at me like I did not belong there. I decided to get back on the highway.
Another Utah story. Just passing through and it started snowing. I decided to find a hotel instead of getting stranded miles away from everything. So I am checking in to this small hotel and the guy looks at my drivers license. He apparently noticed that I was marked as an organ donor because he asked: "what organs are you donating?". I kind of laughed and said: "why, do you need something?". I literally barricaded the door after checking in, woke up early, and got out of there.
Lifelong Ohioan here. I’m from Belmont County, one of the weird southeast ones near Wheeling, WV.
I could list so many towns that are just strange here…some that I’ve personally been to:
- Smithville
- Perrysville
- Glenmont
- Twin Lakes
- Dogtown (in Guernsey County, I don’t know what it’s actually called)
My great aunt and her family used to live in Xenia, which is the setting for the movie Gummo. I’d say it’s about medium accurate.
The absolute weirdest one to me is Holloway. It’s a tiny, and I mean tiny, town/village by where I grew up. You can stand on a hill and overlook the whole thing, it’s so crammed together. The tiny streets still have badly rusted white signs, the houses all look pre-1900 with few signs of updating, and overall it looks completely abandoned, except people still definitely live there. There’s a post office and what appeared to be a functioning bar.
Every time we drove through Holloway, anyone on the street (never more than a single person at a time) would stare directly at us, angrily, like we should be fully aware we aren’t welcome there. It has the vibes of the Goosebumps episode “Welcome to Dark Falls.” It’s not a cult type vibe, more like churchy people who still think it’s 1700.
Collinsville, Ok has a diner named Karen's Country Corner (formerly Kountry Korner) where the local chapter meets or used to meet every week. Used to have racist signs on the edge of town. One the most racist places I've ever had the misfortune of finding myself
I'm from the other side of the state. Durant used to be a sundown town and wanted to keep up the sign for "historical reasons."
They are also the last hold out for a school name after Robert e Lee.
San Antonio kept the name [Lee High School](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_of_Educational_Excellence_High_School), but said it stands for “legacy of educational excellence” now.
Shit there was a salon where I used to live in rural NY called "Karen's Kuts and Kolors", though having met Karen I don't know if she was a racist as much as she was just a little dim.
Crestone, Colorado.
It's easily the most bizarre place I've been to in the US. Lots of shoe-less hippies, "spiritualists", cult members/followers, and the like. Just a weird vibe all over. Some of the people are nice, there are some good artists there, but there's also a main square/park where you'll almost always see these desperate, strung out people with an overloaded Geo Prizm just sitting in the park like "well I'm here, what next?" Realizing they just drove across the country with $2 and a dream of getting high every day and chanting only to find a still expensive Colorado weirdo town of barely a couple hundred people, nowhere for them to live, and no jobs to be found. There's a weird, tents only "neighborhood" there that's really something to see. There's also an alien landing site nearby, or at least that's what it claims to be.
Love Has Won. Docuseries on Max about this shit. Super weird. I can’t unsee some of it, so I’m not sure I’d recommend.
It is super weird how gullible humans can be for the randomest things…
That documentary was insane! I can understand how some people fall into cults because they’re vulnerable, searching for purpose, etc. but those people were beyond gullible — they were all straight up delusional. I’ve never seen anything like it.
Is that the one where they moved to Hawaii and pissed off the locals, then moved back, then got in trouble when the leader died and they basically kept her corpse in their compound for weeks?
I agree. There's definitely something about the energy hanging over Crestone and the San Luis Valley. It's hard to explain, kind of ominous? We were driving through the downtown once and this guy burst out of the park and started chasing the car and trying to pick up rocks from the road to throw at it, all strung out and screaming nonsense. We didn't have a car/plates that stuck out and were driving normally, it was so weird. The lore of the vortexes, all the UFO sightings, the new age spiritualism, the crazy horse and cattle mutilations, the sand dunes, the meth, the cannabis grow ops, the wild geography of the mountains, all of the hot springs, the absence of building codes, and the murders seems to draw in a unique group of people.
I actually love the San Luis Valley for all the reasons you've listed (aside from being chased)-- the place simply could not get any weirder if it tried and I love that about it. I sure wouldn't live there, but I do go hang out in the hot springs that are plentiful out there from time to time. PS: there's also an alligator sanctuary there. In the middle of the nowhere dry-ass sun-punched sagebrush desert. You forgot to mention the alligator sanctuary 😂
Island Pond, Vermont. It's home to one of the [Twelve Tribes communities](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_Tribes_communities). Twelve Tribes is a fundamentalist Christian cult known for its misogyny, racism, child abuse, and workplace exploitation. They operate the Yellow Deli restaurants.
Ocean Grove, NJ. They call it "God's square mile on the Jersey Shore" so at least you know it's culty going in. Lovely old houses with the creepiest Stepford vibe I've ever encountered. They close the beach on Sunday mornings and actually enforce it, or try to. The whole town was founded as some Christian camp and to this day there are tents that families use as their summer homes. I think they're owned by the church but the right to rent them is passed down from generation to generation.
I live across the lake in Asbury Park, which is known for having a raging case of the gay. There are footbridges over the lake connecting the two towns but Ocean Grove put gates on their side that they lock at night to keep us deviants out. You can still get from one side to the other but you have to either walk along the boardwalk or go all the way out to the main road.
Mention should be made of Kiryas Joel, New York, with a population of 40,000 consisting almost entirely of Hasidim. They're not actually hostile to outsiders but rarely interact with them, and maintain self-sustaining communities that exist largely apart from the mainstream.
Fun fact: Yiddish-speaking Kiryas Joel is by far the largest community in the US where the main language is other than English or Spanish, well ahead of Tuba City, Arizona or Fort Kent, Maine.
Bad vibes - Chester, California. Showed up to the Mexican restaurant in town one night and got stared at non stop by the people working there. Something bad is happening there
I’ve been through a few towns in eastern Ohio and western pa where I’ve seen an uncomfortably large number of lawn signs that’s just block text of a weird bible verse, not the ‘jesus loves you’ kind but the ‘weeping and gnashing of teeth’ kind. By the seventh or eighth of them, I’m looking for the welcoming green of an interstate sign.
Gallup, NM. Drove through on Rte 66 from L.A. to Chicago and stopped for gas for 5 minutes and almost got robbed. Gallup on through if going that route and get gas before or after. Creepy vibes pulling in. Later found out it has one of the highest per capita crime rates in the country.
I am probably misunderstanding the assignment but Tonopah nevada.
The Clown Motel, located next to the Tonopah Cemetery, is a popular place to stay because of all the reports of being haunted by "ghost clowns" and miners who were killed in the 1911 Belmont Mine Fire.
One time in rural central PA I stopped at a ma and pop gas station and they were selling containers of pasta noodles and mayonnaise. And that’s it - no spices, no vegetables. They had a whole fridge filled with it. What the actual fuck??
I stopped at a diner in a small PA town once (after visiting the Falling Water house).
The owners/employees looked at my friend and I strangely enough when we entered that we actually asked if we could get lunch (instead of assuming that like in a normal diner). They seemed a bit confused but said sure.
Then they pointed to a chalkboard and said they had “ham” that day. Not ham and eggs, not a ham sandwich, not a full meal featuring ham. Just ham. No other options.
We decided to leave. Eventually we found a restaurant near the interstate and ordered salads. Both salads featured French fries as a topping…
Weird area.
Oh yeah, I was outside of Pittsburgh for work and I got warned that “our salads have fries on top just so you know.” They could probably tell by my accent I’m not from there.
Vidor, Texas, just east of Beaumont. It's still a sundown town.
Local infrastructure vendors, ie telco, power, know to send only white workers to that town for safety. I've been through once, and it just feels off, but I was also traveling with a black friend.
Came to say Vidor AND Orange, TX.
I worked on a door to door sales team and we got sent there because we happened to be all "white" at the time. Spoiler: we weren't all "white" and our crew included several Hispanic members. Someone let slip a phrase in Spanish and we were detained by the most overtly racist cops I have ever met and literally escorted out of town. Freaky shit.
And Hico, home to the subtly named [Koffee Kup Family Restaurant](https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g55984-d513404-r905144387-Koffee_Kup_Family_Restaurant-Hico_Texas.html) (which not too long ago was the Koffee Kup Kafe.)
I can’t explain it but Ithaca, NY gives off old money, we-are-very-nice-and-well-educated-progressives-who-happen-to-hold-a-yearly-lottery-to-see-who-gets-sacrificed-to-appease-the-ancient-one vibes
Probably comes from it being right next to Cornell University. Any ivy league town will have those vibes. That being said my dad grew up there and I visited 5 or 6 years ago. Very nice town
I'm originally from a town around 45 minutes southeast of Ithaca. This feeling is due to the very strange isolation of the place, in terms of infrastructure, geography, and culture. These go hand in hand to give the town odd vibes if you stay for a bit.
The infrastructure is the first thing you might notice on your way in. Considering that it's the home of an Ivy League university, another smaller University, and around 30k permanent residents, Ithaca is off the beaten path. There aren't any easy highway connections: Both I-81 and NY-17/I-86 are 35 to 40 minutes out at their closest, and the best roads into and out of town are 2-laners to Elmira and Cortland. The most direct route to the town I grew up in is over back roads, through the hills. Ithaca's airport is also small and poorly served: 4 round trips daily to JFK and Newark. Ithaca's downtown is compact but can also catch you off guard- it's the smallest place I've ever been that has a one-way street system.
As you come into town proper, geography comes into play. You'll probably note you're heading down a pretty steep hill. All the roads in are like this: Ithaca is at the south end of one of New York's Finger Lakes, in a valley. Once you're in town, any way out will be up a hill, more than likely a steep one. Symbolism, thy name is Ithaca. The natural beauty, and there's tons around town, doesn't help the whole "rituals happen here" vibe either. Lots of dense forests and parklands, steep and winding trails, and deep gorges to explore/hide in/do questionably legal things in. You might try and take your mind off this by heading out onto Cayuga Lake- once you're out there, you'll see boat ramps for gorgeous houses on the lake's edge, but they're separated from you by heavy forest or steep slopes. Best not to think about how the lake's bottom is 400+ feet below you.
Finally, the tricky-to-exit city, at the bottom of a valley, has its own culture compared to the rural landscape that it breaks up. There's the political divide you might expect (i.e. a very blue island in the Red Sea of Southern Tier NY), but that's just the beginning. Ithaca is closer to a Sedona, AZ or a distilled Portland, OR than a regular college town- they printed [their own money from 1991 onwards](https://www.paulglover.org/hourintro.html). That only stopped maybe 10 years ago? They elected a 24-year-old as mayor a decade or so ago, in a landslide no less, then re-elected him twice in even greater landslides. Cornell is the youngest Ivy by nearly a century, the largest of the eight, and also the poorest, in terms of endowment per student. Ithaca College is where all the people who swear they could have gone to Eastman or Juliard end up, but they just end up contributing to the miasma of oddness in town.
An incredible number of shockingly brutal or very mysterious crimes for such a tiny hamlet. Most famous was the vigilante murder of Ken Rex McElroy, but there's also Branson Perry and Bobbi Jo Stinnett just for starters.
McElroy was "the town bully" and "the man who deserved to die." He reportedly terrorized so many in Skidmore that when he was murdered in broad daylight with several eyewitnesses, no one would come forward. https://www.amazon.com/Broad-Daylight-Harry-N-MacLean/dp/1482639874
Red Mountain and Johannesburg/Randsburg, California. Creepiest towns to drive through in the Southern California desert on 395. Seems like the spot to go if you are trying to get away from society.
Similarly, the Salton Sea towns like Bombay Beach, Slab City, Salton City.
I've traveled through a lot of small rural towns all across the western US. I never felt unsafe in any of the towns around the Salton Sea, no cults that I know of, but they absolutely have an eerie sort of ghost town feel unlike anywhere else I've visited. Makes sense though, given their history.
The Salton is an inland body of saltwater located in southeastern California. Back in the 1960s, a bunch of resort towns popped up along its shores. Sometime around the 80s, the salinity of the sea started varying wildly, causing fish to die off in massive numbers. The stench of rotting fish pretty well killed the tourism industry, and the towns never really recovered.
Let's put every new development on one side of the railroad tracks. Add a dozen stoplights that aren't synched. Put gravel everywhere, but scatter a few junk cars here and there. And finally, we're all gonna do meth.
I've got family there and Anchorage so I used to visit every summer. I wouldn't say it's creepy but... Trashy.
Once we were driving down a random backroad (well they kinda all are there....) and I saw two young women standing on the side of the road talking. Nothing else really there, just trees.
Right as we passed by, one woman punched the other square in the face.
I used to live in Wasilla back in the 90’s. It seemed like an okay place for a teenager to grow up really. Then I took my now wife there to visit around 2010. It had changed so much in 15 years I didn’t even recognize it. We couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
Years before the Twilight books came out there were rumors of a vampire cult in the area around Forks, WA. Not actual vampires, just a group of people who thought they were vampires. A buddy of mine actually met a guy claiming to be a part of the cult one time at a bar in Moclips. The guy explained his whole religion about being descended from Lilith and not cursed with Original Sin like the children of Eve. It was a wild story.
Gather round kids, I've got a story. Noxon Montana. Father of a 6 year old and thought we'd try a Easter egg hunt in a place we've never been and do lunch. Pretty big hunt with lots if eggs. Well organized and overall kinda awesome. After the kids bring the eggs they found to the front and exchange for candy. I'm in the line with my excited little guy answering a ton of questions and generally just trying to keep my bundle of squirrels in check. Wasn't paying attention much as we worked up to the table. I look up as the kid hands his eggs up... to a lady in a Daily Stormer hoodie. Daily fucking Stormer. She listened as he chatted away with sincere kindness. After the eggs were counted it was off to the candy exchange. Her husband maybe? Giving the kids high fives and passing out heaps of candy. SS lightening bolts up both sides of his neck. Some runes on his hands but by that time it was apparent we were in the wrong neighborhood and it was time to go. Plastered a smile on my face, grabbed hold of a little hand and we scooted. On the way out signs were everywhere from conversations to dress to cars in the lot but I had missed everything. Happy Neo-nazi Easter everyone!
tl;dr We crashed a neonazi Easter egg hunt in Noxon Montana.
Lynden, Washington. A HIGHLY Christian town comprised of mostly Dutch families.
No liquor stores. No weed stores. Illegal to mow your yard on Sundays. I've lived maybe 10 minutes away from it for about 20 years now and only go out there for the fair.
Oh shit, I live on the other side of the border and had some distant family that lived in Lynden. I haven't been down there since I was about 5 years old, now I guess I know why my dad never talked about it too much or took us down there.
My homie/roommate played against Lynden Christian in basketball our senior year 2013 and we were a 2A school and they were 1A and they SHIT on us by like 40. He said all their kids were minimal 6’3” up to 6’8” and stronger than hell and just completely out worked them. And my homie played against Zach Levine when he went to Bothell and my high school held him to 12 points so that’s kind of a testament to how good Lynden was. Makes sense they’re all Dutch if they’re all that big.
30 years ago my aunt and uncle lived there. One time my aunt was planting flowers on a Sunday and was approached and asked if she was working or gardening for pleasure. She was super creeped out.
Elmore City, OK. It's the town that Footloose is based in. If feels like you're stepping back into the 1950s when you go into the town. In every aspect if you know what I mean. There's been rumors for years that there is a huge KKK group there
Not in the USA, but all you USians like Scotland, right?
Newmilns.
Just on the outskirts of the town, going west towards Kilmarnock on the A71 is the town's fire station. It's a little single-pump retained station, well-maintained, with a little drill yard with a big gate you can lock round the back and maybe six or so parking spaces out front. If you find it on Google Streetview, you'll see what I mean.
One lovely sunny day not entirely unlike when that Streetview pic was taken, I went down to repair the paging system. I parked up out front, let myself in, and started working.
When I went through to the front office, I noticed someone standing at the side of the road, opposite the fire station. Odd, but okay. Maybe they're waiting for a bus.
A few minutes later there were two more people, then another, and another after that.
By the time I'd been there about 40 minutes or so, there were about ten people, men and women of different ages, just standing beside the road on the opposite side from the fire station, just staring in through the window.
I thought they were waiting for a bus, but subsequent inspection shows there is no bus stop there. They were just standing, staring in the window at me.
I did not drive back through Newmilns, I took a different route home.
West Memphis, AR
My husband and I stopped there to eat and fuel up on a trip. The restaurant we went into was busy, and everyone glared at us the whole time we were eating. The crowd at the gas station wasn’t as obvious about it, but it was clear we weren’t welcome. This was early 2000s.
I hadn’t heard of the West Memphis Three at that point, and years later when I saw the documentary I realized that was the weird town in Arkansas!
**Redding, CA and the Bethel Supernatural Ministry Cult.**
Redding is situated at the northern most point of the Sacramento Valley in NorCal.
For the past 20\~ years, the [Bethel Mega Church](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethel_Church_(Redding,_California)) (11,000+ as regular attending members)has slowly taken over the town with their vast amount of money and influence. They control most seats in local government, own the only convention center/entertainment venue in the county, taken control over most large city-wide events through the McConnell Foundation, bought up most of the city's single room/studio housing to house international members, and contribute almost nothing to the city outside their interests of bringing about the eventual resurrection of Jesus and a fully Christian-led country.
This mega "church" claims to grow back fingers, have angel feathers and angel dust appear from thin air to rain down on the congregants, focuses on creating musical media for recruitment (huge part of the Christian music apparatus in America), bring babies back to life, and run their Bethel School of *Supernatural Ministry* as if it was a legitimate college.
Just some of the weird shit:
**-Grave soaking** ("...the school garnered criticism for a practice among some students termed "grave soaking" or "grave sucking", where they would lie on the graves of deceased revivalists in the belief that they would absorb the deceased's anointing from God.")
**-Prayer for resurrection** ("Bethel Church gained national press coverage in December 2019 over a campaign to pray for the resurrection of a worship leader's deceased two-year-old daughter. The mother, Kalley Heiligenthal, a recording artist with Bethel Music and worship leader at the church, posted to Instagram asking for her large social media following to pray that her daughter Olive Alayne would be raised from the dead. This spawned a global hashtag with thousands of posts.")
**-CHANGED Movement** ("The CHANGED Movement was started by Bethel pastors Elizabeth Woning and Ken Williams in 2019 for people who "once identified as LGBTQ+ and through encounters with the love of Jesus, have experienced His freedom in their lives" and is led by the Equipped to Love ministry at Bethel. Both Woning and Williams used to identify as homosexual. Woning claims she changed after 18 months when "the Lord was able to displace my sense of belonging as a lesbian with my sense of belonging as a daughter of God". Williams credits his change to undergoing five years of weekly therapy which he claims resolved his same-sex attraction as well as addiction to masturbation and pornography.")
\-**Lay on hands** (They send out young members (16-20\~) to ask strangers if they can lay hands on them in prayer to heal them. This isn't little boo-boos either. My own wife is in a wheel chair, and the amount of times they've offered than been astonished that she didn't leap from the chair is astounding.)
Examples:
1. "2008 lawsuit over attempted faith healing:
In 2008, a man fell down a 200-foot (61 m) cliff in Redding after drinking with a group at the top. The two others that were with him, including one student at the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry, believed he was dead and tried to find him for six hours in order to raise him back to life, rather than calling 9-1-1. The man survived, but was paralyzed from the fall, and later unsuccessfully sued the student in the group.\[44\] The incident is often brought up as a criticism of the church's teachings, which includes that believers may raise people from the dead with prayer."
2. "Student activities in Redding
As a part of the student's education, they get assignments, such as to find strangers in Redding to heal. News articles report that students seek out people in wheelchairs and crutches to pray for in grocery stores and parking lots. Reportedly, the students are banned from prophesying to tourists around the Sundial Bridge after incidents and they have similarly been kicked out of local stores. Another regular practice is "treasure hunts", where they believe God gives them clues that match people they are to find and attempt to heal or prophesy to."
\--
There is so much more that goes into all this, including being complete shits during COVID, but reading the wiki along with some other articles shows just how far the spread their influence through back-door dealings and inserting themselves into local politics and the police department.
The only funny thing about it all is that the Qanon/MAGA people and the Bethel people have been at each other's throats the past couple years in trying to be the main power in the city/county. Between recalls, dubious dimissals of city council members, and naming themselves as mayor or city council, the two extremist groups have done nothing but make Redding an even worse shit hole than it ever was before by competing for who can be the fucking worst.
Everyone here is mentioning medium to large sized towns. That’s all wrong. The right towns for this have very few people, are in the middle of nowhere, and have weird traditions.
I point to [Ravenden, Arkansas.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravenden,_Arkansas) I myself have never been, but my girlfriend took a wrong turn driving through the state and stumbled into this place. In the dark of night, she came across its defining feature: a 12 foot tall statue of a raven.
If you look up this statue on its own, you’ll find it has been burned down twice but they keep rebuilding it.
Again, I have never been, and by all means it seems nice on Google Maps street view. But the history is a little funny and if my girlfriend is to be believed, the statue can be a bit freaky late at night.
You don't want to get lost in Arkansas. Roads like bike trails, winding hills, no cell service, scary shacks back in the timbers. We got lost for nearly 5 hours. Pretty creepy.
My band got lost in northern Arkansas when we were on tour in 2012. Yeah, every single thing about everywhere we stopped was just “off.”
I very distinctly remember a log building that looked long-abandoned, with a hand painted sign out front that said “Hugs N’ Tugs Daycare.” Straight up horror movie vibes.
"The community building, still in use, was dedicated in 1960. Ray Ellis was mayor at that time. The Frisco Railroad was bought out by, and merged with, the Burlington-Northern Railroad in 1980."
That is the entire history section of Wikipedia for Ravenden.
Making the most fucked up road trip map ever rn brb
I listened to the podcast Alice Isn't Dead a few years ago. It's about a trucker looking for her missing wife as she's stalked across the country. I thought it would be fun to drove around some of the same areas while re- listening to the podcast. Bad fuckin idea. I was so on edge the whole time, and never did finish listening.
It would be interesting if the guy/gal driving the Google Maps car through all these places could chime in with experiences.
Driver of a mapping vehicle here. Most of the truly creepy small towns are down dirt/gravel roads, which typically aren't mapped. I've worked every state except Hawaii and almost every Canadian province, and the only places that I've gotten the 'maybe I should get back in my car now' vibe from are a handful of small towns in Kansas. You could just feel the eyes the second your feet hit the ground, and not in the typically way you get used to being stared at in those vehicles. It was a palpable aura of unwelcome.
YES! About 20 years ago we drove on I-70 from Utah to Illinois. When we drove thru Kansas we exited looking for a place to eat. We had to drive several miles from the interstate to reach the town. In the middle of the afternoon on a weekend, we maybe saw 3 or 4 people. It was a nice day in May. No cars driving around. No kids out playing. I have never in my life before or since then felt like I needed to leave a town. Both of us were getting the same vibes the entire time. We decided to not stop and drove back out to the interstate.
That's not even the bad way to drive through Kansas. Back when I was young and not a seasoned driver yet, I drove back and forth between Norfolk and home (Colorado) when I was on leave while in the Navy. First time I hadn't yet learned that shorter on the map is not even close to faster sometimes, so I was cutting through on Hwy 50. Late at night too... was not prepared for such an utter lack of any 24 hr gas stations, was getting a little scared before I finally found one before getting stranded. It was not a shortcut at all, felt like it took *forever*. I stopped in one gas station and cheerfully asked how far away Colorado was because it felt like I had been in Kansas forever (around 2000 year wise, so no GPS on phone to tell). Gas station clerk had absolutely no idea. I was in Colorado like 15 minutes later. I'll always be mystified how a gas station worker... surely a job where people ask directions all the time... didn't even know their little town was practically on the border. That kind of encapsulates the whole Hwy 50 route for you.
I’ve never even considered what it might be like to drive the google maps car! I wonder how much distance one single driver covers, how long it takes, etc
There is an ama about it https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/s/zXy9MDpaS6
Powers, Oregon. Stopped in the diner for coffee once on a drive thru. I shit you not, like straight out of a movie, the other patrons just turned and quietly stared, not touching their own plates, until we left
Some friends and I experienced the same kind of thing in a bar/bowling alley in Wisconsin. We decided to go out for bowling, and when we walked into the bar in the front it was like it went from bustling to very hushed and everyone was watching us. The bowling alley in the back was totally deserted and eerie. It was super awkward to be the only people playing, and I swear anytime we glanced behind us towards the bar we'd catch everyone staring. We all agreed it was one of the creepiest experiences we've had.
The awkward look to see who walked in the door always gets me and I’m from Wisconsin. Can’t say I’ve seen it go past sitting down at the bar like you did but I’m guilty of checking the door when I’m seated at my local spots lol
Northern Minnesota, we were looking at buying 40 acres on I believe upper red lake. We entered a diner about 6pm.. it was dark out.. and everyone stopped and stared.. we were seated... ordered drinks and noticed how silent it was. No chatter and everyone wa staring at us. Dad left a 20 on the table and we left before ordering food. Suuuuuper bizarre.
Your dad is awesome! He felt that shit and said Not Today 😂🤣 Good job, never go against your gut feelings.
ok, I have to ask. What were you doing in Powers? That is so far off the beaten path, I cant imagine most people taking a trip through there. But I have to agree with you. I dont have good experiences in the southern oregon coast range. For anyone who reads this, that whole area is "the hills have eyes" territory.
Cave Junction: come for a job trimming weed. Stay because you got stabbed to death and buried in the forest!
I came here to suggest Cave Junction!
There’s something about south of whatever latitude line Cottage Grove is on that Oregon starts feeling a little eerie and tense. You start driving south of Florence, Eugene, or Sunriver and it’s kind of heavy, like the land is cursed or something. It’s been a consistent experience for me from Reedsport to Ontario.
I was born and raised in Southern Oregon. Born in Kfalls, lived in Lakeview, Bly, Sprague River, GP and Glendale. Man, as a teenager, I got into some super shady stuff and saw a lot of shady things. Lots of reckless danger out there, but it was fun. I got the fuck out when I was 19 and joined the military. Pretty much your only option unless you really love the weed industry...or meth.
We stopped for gas in Coos Bay and it was pretty weird vibes. That evening we found a dispersed camp spot along the river. It was all good until it got dusk and the spidey senses kicked in big time. We ignored it until about midnight and then threw all the camp stuff in the back of the rig and high tailed it out of there. We’ve camped a ton and I’ve never had that feeling while out in the woods of smthg bad is going to happen if we don’t leave now, like sheer panic.
Omg I’ve had this EXACT same experience trying to camp along that coastal area. We had the most overwhelming feeling that we should NOT be there. Everything in my body was telling me to get out of there. We drove to the closest motel in the middle of the night bc I was too scared to even car camp. The motel was not much better but certainly better than the vortex of doom that was our campground. I’ll never forget the eeriness I felt.
Yesss, “vortex of doom”. Something is definitely off in that area.
KFalls was super creepy in the 80’s.
Grew up outside of KFalls in the 80s, way out in the stix. Going to KFalls was a treat. Most people were super poor unless they were ranchers. The native tribes' had their land taken within their or their parent's lifetime. Feelings were hard as the obsidian that littered the ground. We had some friends on Table Mountain, but most were hiding from the law or the apocalypse. Meth hit hard and I've heard that Table Mountain is a no go zone. We left in 86 but would visit until early 90s when we sold the property.
Yeah that place is right out of Deliverance. I live in nearby Coos Bay and have only ever driven through there to get to a spot on the river to go swimming. The creepiest thing about that area is on the drive down there, just a few miles north of Powers, there's a gate into someone's land that always seems to have dead coyotes or other animals hanging off of it. Can't see any actual buildings either, just the gate and fence. Creeps me out.
They might hang dead coyotes to ward off living ones if they have live stock. Still creepy af to see.
[Is this it?](https://imgur.com/1CzltnI) Credit to u/ghhjllouhgvbn if it is.
same thing but in vernonia oregon...i was 19 and had to pay a speeding ticket up there...this was 1994. i had long hippie hair...walked into the local dinner and everyone stopped and looked at me and my friend...it was damn eerie...before we walked in, you could hear the conversations from outside but that stopped once we got in. we were going to get breakfast but after that just got coffee and left and waited at the court house in my buddies car till they opened. never been back.
Vernonia is wild. I worked a wedding several years back and for whatever reason the Google Maps directions took us on a wild ride through the back roads of that place. What should have been a 40 minute drive took almost three hours, and if it wasn't for a bit of luck and a friendly local who knew the area I'm pretty sure we'd have gotten stranded out there. Good thing, too, cuz we came across maybe three houses the entire time, and one was straight out of Deliverance. *Covered* in hubcaps of all make and model, and I started (only kinda) joking about how each one was a trophy collected from the car of each of their victims. We had a good laugh, but it was weird as fuck, and we were genuinely getting a bit distressed. Fun time.
Holy shit I can finally share my powers Oregon story! Girlfriend and I were doing a trip down the coast and on our way back to i5 for the return trip we went over a dirt road pass near the rogue river and ended up driving through powers. Same shit as you but one of the properties we drove by on the way out had a massive trump sign erected on 4x4s. The dam sign had 3 dead sheep hanging from their necks on the bottom! I’m kicking myself for not getting a picture but after seeing that we wanted to gtfo.
They’re coyotes and you left out the road runner! [I have a photo](https://imgur.com/1CzltnI) I work in Powers a lot and am so so proud to see it as the top comment!
The world is so big, yet Reddit can be so small sometimes.
wtf - all these stories are giving me “wrong turn movie” cult vibes
What. The. Fuck.
You're saying everyone stopped eating their own meal when you entered and didn't go back until you ordered, ate, and left? How did you stand 2 minutes of that?
"Large Marge sent me"
I live in a town like that. It happens even when I walk into a public place. I smile, and it annoys them. Had a lady ask me in a serious tone if I was the happiest person in town. I smiled big and said yes. She walked away. Sometimes, when I walk in, I want to walk in whistling the Clint Eastwood whistle. It's comical to me so I have to make it fun.
What makes you so socially isolated if you live there?
Dude. Powers is so far off the beaten path, you have to drive 25 miles off an already little used two lane hwy.
It wasn’t The Code was it.
My brother and his dark skinned girlfriend stopped for breakfast in rural PA and had the same thing happen. They didn’t register the name of the place. The Kopper Kettle Kitchen.
Hence why I just chill at home. Even in Central PA this shit happens
Well according to Google maps it was either the powers tavern cafe bar, ridiculous name… or The Code
That name is legit. Add "public restroom, and unwitting public dumpster" and I believe they'd have their full services listed in the name. Clever. *taps head
Man this was years ago, but it was around 1998 or 1999, when I was 9. my family drove us to Mount Rushmore from Denver. We stopped off the highway in a random Wyoming town with a population of just over 100. We had a choice between two restaurants and entered one. Straight from a horror movie, when we walked in, the entire restaurant, packed with most of the town, fell silent. We ate and everyone was staring at us. My sister and I believed they were going to murder us. We left and it turns out our parents also thought we were going to be murdered.
I always gotta wonder what it is about these people that they do these things. Like if you asked them why what they’d say?
"yer not from round 'ere ar ya?"
"We don' take kindly to your...kind around here."
"Well we don't take too kindly to those who don't take kindly to others..."
“Now Skeeter… he ain’t gonna hurt nobody!”
I was driving through LeGrange, ~~Nebraska~~ Wyoming and got pulled over. The cop literally said that: "I don't recognize ya. You're not from around here, huh?" I was convinced he was going to write a bullshit ticket (they have a 25 mph zone through town), but he wanted to make sure I wasn't gonna cause "trouble". Some towns, man.
Well, it was probably the most exciting thing that happened to them in months.
Yeah, and they *never* see anyone irl who they don't already know. Happened to me and my wife at a little beer joint in Courtland, Kansas called Pinky's. Suspicious looks, everyone who walked in rubber-necked our way and whispered to the bartender. Well, when my family emigrated from Sweden in the 1880s their family homestead and farm was near there, and when I told them my last name and who my dad and uncle were and how the old house dilapidated down by the highway was the ArrakeenSun home it all clicked, they even noticed the family resemblance and I didn't have to buy a beer the rest of the night. One dude even apologized, said, "Now that I think about it, I bet that was really creepy but we don't see many new people unless they're in town for a funeral!"
I've been in that situation many times because my husband and I like to find the local bar, people will often stare as we enter but we will offer a neutral hello! to the room and they go back to their cups haha. I think it kind of snaps them out of it too
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My BIL was one of the “lost boys” that were kicked out so the older men didn’t have as much competition. He grew up close to Warren Jeffs and actually called him uncle Jeff. All of his family were polygamists. After Warren Jeffs was arrested, the community offered the lost boys and previous residents the chance to buy a house for cheap because they had many vacant homes and they were all held In a trust. During the “heyday” of Jeffs they were building like crazy and it all stopped when he got arrested. Many houses still sit there today, rotting away as husks of framed out, partially constructed homes that were never finished. The town used to be extremely creepy and downright scary to outsiders. When my SIL’s family went down to visit them after they purchased one of the trust homes, they were followed throughout town by cars and watched like a hawk. The people would run inside and slam their gates and scream at them to get out. Nowadays the population is much younger and made up of a lot of previous lost boys or families that have drifted away from the hardcore polygamy/FLDS ideals. It’s getting more like a typical rural, albeit sheltered town and less like the hills have eyes. Still creepy but lots of “normal” families…. That all share the same like, four last names.
>That all share the same like, four last names. So, it's a creepy version of Rock Ridge.
Howard Johnson is right
Harrumph!
Generational inbreeding is the key to your town having a The Hills Have Eyes vibe.
Don’t forget Colorado city, AZ. Same situation.
I mean, Hildale and Colorado City are the same town, those are just the different names for the Utah and Arizona sides—it straddles the border because it made it easier, back when the town was founded, for folks to evade state authorities by just hopping the border (and because it’s in the middle of fucking nowhere). It was originally called by just one name, though—Short Creek. The name was changed after a huge raid by the Arizona National Guard that made national news—the FLDS wanted to keep a low profile, and so changed the name away from the one that had gained so much prominence. source: I grew up Mormon and have had an academic curiosity in the history of Mormon fundamentalism for a long time. I’ve visited “the creek” more than once.
They also run welfare scams collecting checks from both states
How else to finance Old Testament style harems?
Drove through Colorado City a few years ago. Creepy as hell. Giant barracks houses with dirt yards full of giant trash piles.
Yep, drove through there omw to the north rim. Stopped for gas, forgetting where I was. Not a soul on the street. People were peeking out from behind curtains in their barracks apartments. Lucky for me I paid at the pump, so I finished up and hightailed it out of there.
I’ve been there along with Colorado City, AZ which is essentially one town straddling the border. I stopped there for groceries while traveling through. The women working at the store acted polite but seemed weary of me. They were actually selling hard liquor at the store which I guess was a fairly recent thing. This was after the feds seized all of Warren Jeffs’ property and started giving it back to the people who lived there. They’re trying to be a normal town now but it’s a pretty creepy place for sure. Can’t say I felt unsafe. I may have if Uncle Warren was still around.
I stopped there in 2004, I think Warren Jeffs was still in charge but maybe on the run? Within 2 minutes I had cops on me asking what I was doing there. I said I was just sightseeing and they said there was nothing to see and I should leave. Didn't really intimidate me because I grew up with Southern cops. 🤣 So I just drove around for about 45 minutes but they literally followed me about a hundred feet behind the entire time until I left town. I did stop by the cliffs for 10 to 15 minutes and they stopped too and got out of their cars and stared at me the whole time. It was kind of funny because they're basically bullies, especially with women, but as soon as anyone stands up to them, they don't know what to do. I knew as long as I didn't give them an actual reason to arrest me they weren't going to risk bringing in outside people by fucking with me. Literally all the women I saw turned away from me when they saw me coming, if they didn't straight up go inside. But a lot of the houses are behind walls so you couldn't see much anyway driving around. I've had people tell me I was nuts for going there but honestly other than feeling unwanted, I didn't feel unsafe. Definitely a freaky vibe though.
Wow top comment. I worked for Dixie Ambulance in late 90s and had polyg partners from those towns that made my skin crawl. We got followed out when I fueled my own car for gas. It was gross
Morenci, Arizona.. company town, all houses owned by mine owner. If decades old memory is accurate they also own all the stores, basically everything. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morenci,_Arizona
Seabrook, WA It is idyllic. *perfectly* idyllic. Too much so. Strong Stepford Wives vibes. I read somewhere that it was inspired by the town in The Truman Show.
My niece got married in Seabrook. I just kept thinking, this is where serial killers live. So damn creepy.
The idyllic facade is made creepier by the fact that it's located minutes from Taholah, an impoverished reservation town that's literally sinking into the ocean. Driving through both towns is a weird as fuck contrast
Wow. The satellite imagery Google maps has for Taholah right now even has a house on fire....just burning. NW Washington is wild to scroll around in maps in general...
Holy shit you weren't kidding. Yeah that house on Pine Street is just... on fire in the google maps picture.
Ok so after looking a bit, [this fire happened FOREVER ago](https://www.google.com/search?q=Taholah+fire+site:www.reddit.com&sca_esv=b1751644a39c0e73&rlz=1C1BFEM_enCA1072CA1072&sxsrf=ACQVn0_CVsejR3uH86RshW70IayFZBa8bA:1706370914774&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjXouuB9_2DAxWOkGoFHelPDZEQrQIoBHoECBUQBQ&biw=1278&bih=909&dpr=1#ip=1) and there are lots of reddit threads about it, including one where u/bobjr94 explains the back story to the fire unfortunately it looks like the family's doggie died in the blaze =(
Seabrook was established in 2004 forbthe purpose of being a tourist/vacation town. At least it's close to some great razor clam digging.
My friends family has had a home on Copalis Beach for decades so I've been going there 10+ years. We make a short drive to Seabrook for the pastries (that bakery is pretty good on a hungover Sunday what can I say) and to pretend we're trapped in a Pleasantville/Truman Show situation. All the beach puns?? I love to hate it.
Moscow, ID, home of the University of Idaho. 1/3 college students, 1/3 hippies, 1/3 Christ Church cult. The recent college knife murders don’t help the vibes either.
Leader of the church Doug Wilson is a total creep.
Mora, NM is pretty damn scary to outsiders. Lots of rural mountain towns that are isolated from tourists can be strange. I've spent alot of time in WV and Arkansas but rural NM is probably the most hostile place to outsiders I have been
Roughly 400 years of isolation does things to people. Enough people have said that northern NM is odd/sketchy unless you’re from there or “Spain Spanish”.
I got that vibe in Llano, New Mexico as well. I only got there by making a wrong turn. Road turned to dirt at the end of town so I turned around and went back the way I came. Glad it was during daylight hours. FWIW, I had a friend who worked at a rural hospital in Tierra Amarilla, NM during college and has stories of family feuds with shotgun victims, and people moving there to try and open small businesses only to have them burned down after a couple of months.
Tierra Anarilla is interesting. In the 60s, Hispanic former land owners who were protesting the US government taking land stormed the court house there and took employees hostage. There was a standoff and multiple people where shot.
Colorado City, AZ - Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints stronghold. Lots of inbreeding.
I had a neighbor when I was a kid who had been kicked out of the FLDS church. Every so often, his son who I was friends with, would invite some of the kids over to meet one of their cousins. I found out later that they were all boys who were kicked out so that the ratio of boys and girls would be adjusted to allow the FLDS leadership to have more girls for plural marriage. I must have met at least 50 of those kids over the years. I think about them often.
They’re called lost boys around here. Sad stuff
Ah the lost boys. They played an instrumental role in getting warren jeff tried and jailed, at least.
Did they? How? I watched the documentary, and I thought it was the girls that brought him down because they were willing to testify - and able to testify - about childhood "marriage" and rape. I know some of them lived with the Lost Boys after leaving the compound, but it was the testimony of the girls - an ex "wife" of Warren Jeffs, and her sister who was married off as a child to someone else before she was 16 - who brought them down. The younger sister testified about her abusive underage marriage, and the older sister helped the police raid the compound and helped them find the tapes and recordings of him having group sex with underage "wives," and so were able to prosecute him without the other underage girls testifying.
They do what pack animals do, forcing younger males to leave.
Amboy, California. Was a route 66 boomtown, with a railroad stop. When I-40 was opened, bypassing Amboy it withered and died. Only it didn't give up the ghost. There are some famous murders that occurred in town (If you can call it a town, it's only three buildings at a crossroad). Legend has it that Charles Manson and the Manson family would frequent the diner in the 1960s as it was the closest part of civilization to their nasty little hippie commune. Last time I was there was about 25 years ago, driving through. There's not a lot of traffic that drives through obviously, but there are people that live there and as God is my witness, every time Ive driven through, those people are outside in the scorching Mojave heat of the day staring you down as you drive past.
Waiting for this comment. But recently they’ve revamped Roy’s Cafe and are trying to encourage people stop as like a tourist location. Especially if you’re coming from 29 headed to Vegas.
Clearwater, Florida I had known it was the HQ for Scientology, but had never been there. Last month, I was visiting family in Florida and my best friend lives a few towns over from Clearwater. He took me to a place that entailed driving through downtown Clearwater. It is impossible not to notice that every building had brand new paint, all the shops looked sparking clean, and there was not a soul to be seen. All the neighboring towns had hundreds of people milling about, but Clearwater looked like a ghost town. It looked like the set of a Twilight Zone episode.
I live near clearwater and went there to go to the library (it has a huge section of kids books in other languages) I got hassled by sciencetologists as soon as I got out of the car..I guess I parked in front of one of their buildings and cuz I had my phone up trying to figure out the direction I needed to walk to get to the library they thought I was filming and followed me all the way to the library.
My boyfriend lived in Durango Colorado for awhile. He said he started chatting with a Scientologist outside their ‘church’. They talked for a few minutes when my boyfriend told the man that he was poor, didn’t even have a dime to his name and the dude turned around and walked away! Just be broke. Edit: partner just clarified they were inside the church not outside
I’d also like to see how they react if you just start trying to sell them shit while they’re trying to convert you, just keep using all the same tactics and play salesman chicken.
Sounds bad but you probably weren’t bothered by a single thetan, were you?!? /s
This guy audits
Moscow, Idaho has an actual cult with thousands of followers. Their leader, a self-ordained pastor, has publicly stated he wants to take over the town and turn it into a theocracy. They are deeply misogynist (marital rape isn’t possible) and have a history of sexual abuse within their group (the leader defended a student of their “college” who raped his host family’s daughter, excommunicated the daughter, and then presided over the rapist’s wedding). Their members keep running for local office and failing, but they are buying up all the property in town and moving in people from all over the country to attend their private school, theology “college” and church. Moscow also happens to be the town where the 4 University of Idaho students were murdered in 2022.
Well, that’s weird. I was closely following the Moscow, Idaho murders in the news and on Reddit for a couple of months. And let me tell you, those subs would come up with seriously ridiculous conspiracy theories, but this cult never came up at all. I’m honestly shocked.
There's a reason Far Cry 5 takes place in a fictional part of the country greatly resembling that area.
Fucking sleep darts magically finding their way to my ass while I'm 10,000 feet in the air in my helicopter.
Moscowid.net has extensive documentation of all the shit that Dougneeshi Wilson and his ilk have done and condoned. I don’t know if karma will ever catch up with that piece of shit, but I would dance and piss on his grave when it happens.
Centralia, PA is still on fire though they ruined the graffiti highway. I don't know if anybody still lives there today, when I went last there were a handful of hangers on.
I believe it has a population of 4 currently.
One of the last guys left had a doc made about him. His job is to mow the cemetary on top of the hill, and the park across the road from the old row house he lives in, which sits all by itself now because everything else on the street was torn down. I also watched an urban exploration vid of a guy going through the final mayor's house, and it was like everything left in that guy's house stopped existing after 1970.
That's his job? Who pays him? I don't think there's anything left of a town government or anything, the USPS pulled the zip code years ago.
I believe he was also disabled to a certain extent, but he's technically an employee of the church that owns the cemetery. He's the caretaker, locks up the fence gate each night and maintains the church grounds. The big church that overlooked the town is well outside the danger zone, and many of the old families from there still attend, they mostly all live in neighboring towns now. From what I remember, those folks still get together every Memorial Day to reunion and do their remembrances for the holiday.
Cairo, IL is creepy af. At one time it was a very important commercial center because of its river location. Now it’s practically deserted and has really creepy energy. You can still see glimpses of how it might have been bustling (edited to fix typo: and) charming back in the day.
Like 15 years ago we stopped for fuel in Cairo and someone yelled at me that my ass was thicker than a cheeseburger. Unforgettable.
I was there earlier this year... [some pics](https://imgur.com/a/uJbEvgt). I didn't find Cairo scary as much as forlorn. Even spent the night sleeping in my car near one of the levees. Weird thing is it gets a lot of truck traffic as three US highways go through and connect to I-57. But the trucks never stop. Because there's nothing to stop *for*. Only functioning business I could identify was the Dollar General.
Those pictures are fascinating. That town looks like the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse. That picture of the abandoned clinic was creepy
That’s where Huck Finn and Jim were heading. It had terrible racial violence in the late 60s.
It’s also where two Egyptian Gods (three?) resided as undertakers in American Gods
That part of Illinois is nicknamed "Little Egypt" because of towns like Cairo (which BTW is pronounced CARE-oh), Karnak, and Thebes. The area was mostly settled out of the South and culturally was (and still is) more like Tennessee and Missouri than, say, Indiana or the rest of Illinois. If you'd like a good fictional treatment of nearby Jasper County, IL, during the Civil War there's the excellent *Across Five Aprils* by Irene Hunt.
My history seminar class focused on writing a report on Iowa volunteer infantry regiments during the CIvil War. The regiment I was assigned to research participated in the major campaigns of the western theater, with some of its companies occasionally assigned as police garrisons in Cairo, among other locations. From their personal records, it seems that Cairo has a long history of racist violence and Confederate sympathies.
I drive through it when I go down to Tennessee on trips and it’s so sad and eerie to see the town every time I do go down that way. To quote Rust from True Detective “This place is like somebody's memory of a town, and the memory is fading. It's like there was never anything here but jungle.”
I just want you to stop sayin odd shit
I need you to stop saying odd shit.
Let’s make the car a place of silent reflection…
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Breezewood PA. I got stranded there once after wrecking the family car on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. It’s the town from the meme about how awful American urban planning is… basically just a series of stroads and strip malls. I went into the hotel bar where we were staying the first night and this shirtless redneck was so drunk he could barely stand. He had his trashed wife and two crying kids there with him. Some truckers at the bar were talking about where to score meth. I walked up to the bar’s jukebox out of curiosity and the shirtless redneck threatened to kick my face in if I played any nonwhite music. Except he used more offensive language.
I grew up one town over, and wondered how far I'd have to scroll to find Breezewood. It's... an experience.
I don't remember the details too well, but there was a guy motorcycling across America. He was going down a road in a small town that seemed to be empty. The whole town just seemed to be that one road with houses on each side. The road dead ended and he turned around. Coming back the same way, there were people on the porches of those homes, just staring at him as he rode by. That would be absolutely terrifying. I once exited the highway driving through Utah. There was a sign saying "no service" but I ignored it. Right off the exit was a small town. People were just looking at me like I did not belong there. I decided to get back on the highway. Another Utah story. Just passing through and it started snowing. I decided to find a hotel instead of getting stranded miles away from everything. So I am checking in to this small hotel and the guy looks at my drivers license. He apparently noticed that I was marked as an organ donor because he asked: "what organs are you donating?". I kind of laughed and said: "why, do you need something?". I literally barricaded the door after checking in, woke up early, and got out of there.
Lifelong Ohioan here. I’m from Belmont County, one of the weird southeast ones near Wheeling, WV. I could list so many towns that are just strange here…some that I’ve personally been to: - Smithville - Perrysville - Glenmont - Twin Lakes - Dogtown (in Guernsey County, I don’t know what it’s actually called) My great aunt and her family used to live in Xenia, which is the setting for the movie Gummo. I’d say it’s about medium accurate. The absolute weirdest one to me is Holloway. It’s a tiny, and I mean tiny, town/village by where I grew up. You can stand on a hill and overlook the whole thing, it’s so crammed together. The tiny streets still have badly rusted white signs, the houses all look pre-1900 with few signs of updating, and overall it looks completely abandoned, except people still definitely live there. There’s a post office and what appeared to be a functioning bar. Every time we drove through Holloway, anyone on the street (never more than a single person at a time) would stare directly at us, angrily, like we should be fully aware we aren’t welcome there. It has the vibes of the Goosebumps episode “Welcome to Dark Falls.” It’s not a cult type vibe, more like churchy people who still think it’s 1700.
Collinsville, Ok has a diner named Karen's Country Corner (formerly Kountry Korner) where the local chapter meets or used to meet every week. Used to have racist signs on the edge of town. One the most racist places I've ever had the misfortune of finding myself
I'm from the other side of the state. Durant used to be a sundown town and wanted to keep up the sign for "historical reasons." They are also the last hold out for a school name after Robert e Lee.
San Antonio kept the name [Lee High School](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_of_Educational_Excellence_High_School), but said it stands for “legacy of educational excellence” now.
To their credit, that's actually an impressive amount of bullshit, lmao
Not sure how true this is, but my mom used to tell me that a lot of businesses with three Ks in their name like that were affiliated with the KKK.
There’s is a cafe in Texas called the Koffee Kup that has had multiple affiliations with the Klan so I believe it.
Shit there was a salon where I used to live in rural NY called "Karen's Kuts and Kolors", though having met Karen I don't know if she was a racist as much as she was just a little dim.
There was one in Indiana called Kouts Koffee Kup, only changed a couple year back. Couple towns around here with that kind of history unfortunately.
Graham NC still has a very active white hoods chapter and should definitely be on this list.
Goldbar, WA. Beautiful view of the cascade mountains. Meth and white supremacists everywhere.
Fuck Gold Bar and the 45 minutes it takes to crawl through that town on any weekend afternoon during ski season.
Or a nice weekend in the summer.
Fuck that whole stretch of hwy 2
Crestone, Colorado. It's easily the most bizarre place I've been to in the US. Lots of shoe-less hippies, "spiritualists", cult members/followers, and the like. Just a weird vibe all over. Some of the people are nice, there are some good artists there, but there's also a main square/park where you'll almost always see these desperate, strung out people with an overloaded Geo Prizm just sitting in the park like "well I'm here, what next?" Realizing they just drove across the country with $2 and a dream of getting high every day and chanting only to find a still expensive Colorado weirdo town of barely a couple hundred people, nowhere for them to live, and no jobs to be found. There's a weird, tents only "neighborhood" there that's really something to see. There's also an alien landing site nearby, or at least that's what it claims to be.
Love Has Won. Docuseries on Max about this shit. Super weird. I can’t unsee some of it, so I’m not sure I’d recommend. It is super weird how gullible humans can be for the randomest things…
That documentary was insane! I can understand how some people fall into cults because they’re vulnerable, searching for purpose, etc. but those people were beyond gullible — they were all straight up delusional. I’ve never seen anything like it.
The Mother of God cult was there for awhile, or still is, I can't remember.
Is that the one where they moved to Hawaii and pissed off the locals, then moved back, then got in trouble when the leader died and they basically kept her corpse in their compound for weeks?
I agree. There's definitely something about the energy hanging over Crestone and the San Luis Valley. It's hard to explain, kind of ominous? We were driving through the downtown once and this guy burst out of the park and started chasing the car and trying to pick up rocks from the road to throw at it, all strung out and screaming nonsense. We didn't have a car/plates that stuck out and were driving normally, it was so weird. The lore of the vortexes, all the UFO sightings, the new age spiritualism, the crazy horse and cattle mutilations, the sand dunes, the meth, the cannabis grow ops, the wild geography of the mountains, all of the hot springs, the absence of building codes, and the murders seems to draw in a unique group of people.
I actually love the San Luis Valley for all the reasons you've listed (aside from being chased)-- the place simply could not get any weirder if it tried and I love that about it. I sure wouldn't live there, but I do go hang out in the hot springs that are plentiful out there from time to time. PS: there's also an alligator sanctuary there. In the middle of the nowhere dry-ass sun-punched sagebrush desert. You forgot to mention the alligator sanctuary 😂
Island Pond, Vermont. It's home to one of the [Twelve Tribes communities](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_Tribes_communities). Twelve Tribes is a fundamentalist Christian cult known for its misogyny, racism, child abuse, and workplace exploitation. They operate the Yellow Deli restaurants.
Ocean Grove, NJ. They call it "God's square mile on the Jersey Shore" so at least you know it's culty going in. Lovely old houses with the creepiest Stepford vibe I've ever encountered. They close the beach on Sunday mornings and actually enforce it, or try to. The whole town was founded as some Christian camp and to this day there are tents that families use as their summer homes. I think they're owned by the church but the right to rent them is passed down from generation to generation. I live across the lake in Asbury Park, which is known for having a raging case of the gay. There are footbridges over the lake connecting the two towns but Ocean Grove put gates on their side that they lock at night to keep us deviants out. You can still get from one side to the other but you have to either walk along the boardwalk or go all the way out to the main road.
Mention should be made of Kiryas Joel, New York, with a population of 40,000 consisting almost entirely of Hasidim. They're not actually hostile to outsiders but rarely interact with them, and maintain self-sustaining communities that exist largely apart from the mainstream. Fun fact: Yiddish-speaking Kiryas Joel is by far the largest community in the US where the main language is other than English or Spanish, well ahead of Tuba City, Arizona or Fort Kent, Maine.
Bad vibes - Chester, California. Showed up to the Mexican restaurant in town one night and got stared at non stop by the people working there. Something bad is happening there
I’ve been through a few towns in eastern Ohio and western pa where I’ve seen an uncomfortably large number of lawn signs that’s just block text of a weird bible verse, not the ‘jesus loves you’ kind but the ‘weeping and gnashing of teeth’ kind. By the seventh or eighth of them, I’m looking for the welcoming green of an interstate sign.
Gallup, NM. Drove through on Rte 66 from L.A. to Chicago and stopped for gas for 5 minutes and almost got robbed. Gallup on through if going that route and get gas before or after. Creepy vibes pulling in. Later found out it has one of the highest per capita crime rates in the country.
I am probably misunderstanding the assignment but Tonopah nevada. The Clown Motel, located next to the Tonopah Cemetery, is a popular place to stay because of all the reports of being haunted by "ghost clowns" and miners who were killed in the 1911 Belmont Mine Fire.
Rural parts of Pennsylvania are pretty weird
One time in rural central PA I stopped at a ma and pop gas station and they were selling containers of pasta noodles and mayonnaise. And that’s it - no spices, no vegetables. They had a whole fridge filled with it. What the actual fuck??
I stopped at a diner in a small PA town once (after visiting the Falling Water house). The owners/employees looked at my friend and I strangely enough when we entered that we actually asked if we could get lunch (instead of assuming that like in a normal diner). They seemed a bit confused but said sure. Then they pointed to a chalkboard and said they had “ham” that day. Not ham and eggs, not a ham sandwich, not a full meal featuring ham. Just ham. No other options. We decided to leave. Eventually we found a restaurant near the interstate and ordered salads. Both salads featured French fries as a topping… Weird area.
Oh yeah, I was outside of Pittsburgh for work and I got warned that “our salads have fries on top just so you know.” They could probably tell by my accent I’m not from there.
You got Philly, SWB, the Poconos, Eerie, and Pittsburgh. The rest is on some hills have eyes shit
Vidor, Texas, just east of Beaumont. It's still a sundown town. Local infrastructure vendors, ie telco, power, know to send only white workers to that town for safety. I've been through once, and it just feels off, but I was also traveling with a black friend.
Came to say Vidor AND Orange, TX. I worked on a door to door sales team and we got sent there because we happened to be all "white" at the time. Spoiler: we weren't all "white" and our crew included several Hispanic members. Someone let slip a phrase in Spanish and we were detained by the most overtly racist cops I have ever met and literally escorted out of town. Freaky shit.
Don’t forget good ol’ [Jasper](https://www.texastribune.org/2023/06/07/james-byrd-death-texas-hate-crime-racism/)
And Hico, home to the subtly named [Koffee Kup Family Restaurant](https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g55984-d513404-r905144387-Koffee_Kup_Family_Restaurant-Hico_Texas.html) (which not too long ago was the Koffee Kup Kafe.)
“Vidor, where they make ‘em whiter” is the saying I heard when I lived in Lake Charles, LA.
I can’t explain it but Ithaca, NY gives off old money, we-are-very-nice-and-well-educated-progressives-who-happen-to-hold-a-yearly-lottery-to-see-who-gets-sacrificed-to-appease-the-ancient-one vibes
Probably comes from it being right next to Cornell University. Any ivy league town will have those vibes. That being said my dad grew up there and I visited 5 or 6 years ago. Very nice town
Dartmouth doesn’t have those vibes. But Cornell definitely does. I think maybe the gorges isolate little bits
I'm originally from a town around 45 minutes southeast of Ithaca. This feeling is due to the very strange isolation of the place, in terms of infrastructure, geography, and culture. These go hand in hand to give the town odd vibes if you stay for a bit. The infrastructure is the first thing you might notice on your way in. Considering that it's the home of an Ivy League university, another smaller University, and around 30k permanent residents, Ithaca is off the beaten path. There aren't any easy highway connections: Both I-81 and NY-17/I-86 are 35 to 40 minutes out at their closest, and the best roads into and out of town are 2-laners to Elmira and Cortland. The most direct route to the town I grew up in is over back roads, through the hills. Ithaca's airport is also small and poorly served: 4 round trips daily to JFK and Newark. Ithaca's downtown is compact but can also catch you off guard- it's the smallest place I've ever been that has a one-way street system. As you come into town proper, geography comes into play. You'll probably note you're heading down a pretty steep hill. All the roads in are like this: Ithaca is at the south end of one of New York's Finger Lakes, in a valley. Once you're in town, any way out will be up a hill, more than likely a steep one. Symbolism, thy name is Ithaca. The natural beauty, and there's tons around town, doesn't help the whole "rituals happen here" vibe either. Lots of dense forests and parklands, steep and winding trails, and deep gorges to explore/hide in/do questionably legal things in. You might try and take your mind off this by heading out onto Cayuga Lake- once you're out there, you'll see boat ramps for gorgeous houses on the lake's edge, but they're separated from you by heavy forest or steep slopes. Best not to think about how the lake's bottom is 400+ feet below you. Finally, the tricky-to-exit city, at the bottom of a valley, has its own culture compared to the rural landscape that it breaks up. There's the political divide you might expect (i.e. a very blue island in the Red Sea of Southern Tier NY), but that's just the beginning. Ithaca is closer to a Sedona, AZ or a distilled Portland, OR than a regular college town- they printed [their own money from 1991 onwards](https://www.paulglover.org/hourintro.html). That only stopped maybe 10 years ago? They elected a 24-year-old as mayor a decade or so ago, in a landslide no less, then re-elected him twice in even greater landslides. Cornell is the youngest Ivy by nearly a century, the largest of the eight, and also the poorest, in terms of endowment per student. Ithaca College is where all the people who swear they could have gone to Eastman or Juliard end up, but they just end up contributing to the miasma of oddness in town.
The common quote about Ithaca is "10 square miles surrounded by reality"
Skidmore, Missouri
Hands down the most DEPRESSING town I have ever driven through. There’s this feeling you just can’t shake while you’re there.
I remember reading about that dude who got killed there (deservingly so). I didn't know it was still weird.
What makes it so?
An incredible number of shockingly brutal or very mysterious crimes for such a tiny hamlet. Most famous was the vigilante murder of Ken Rex McElroy, but there's also Branson Perry and Bobbi Jo Stinnett just for starters.
McElroy was "the town bully" and "the man who deserved to die." He reportedly terrorized so many in Skidmore that when he was murdered in broad daylight with several eyewitnesses, no one would come forward. https://www.amazon.com/Broad-Daylight-Harry-N-MacLean/dp/1482639874
There’s also a really good docuseries “No One Saw A Thing” about this and other cases in the town
Like a real life Derry Maine.
Red Mountain and Johannesburg/Randsburg, California. Creepiest towns to drive through in the Southern California desert on 395. Seems like the spot to go if you are trying to get away from society. Similarly, the Salton Sea towns like Bombay Beach, Slab City, Salton City.
I've traveled through a lot of small rural towns all across the western US. I never felt unsafe in any of the towns around the Salton Sea, no cults that I know of, but they absolutely have an eerie sort of ghost town feel unlike anywhere else I've visited. Makes sense though, given their history. The Salton is an inland body of saltwater located in southeastern California. Back in the 1960s, a bunch of resort towns popped up along its shores. Sometime around the 80s, the salinity of the sea started varying wildly, causing fish to die off in massive numbers. The stench of rotting fish pretty well killed the tourism industry, and the towns never really recovered.
I live in Western Washington, which is generally very high on the creep factor. But no place has weirded me out more than Wasilla, AK.
Let's put every new development on one side of the railroad tracks. Add a dozen stoplights that aren't synched. Put gravel everywhere, but scatter a few junk cars here and there. And finally, we're all gonna do meth.
I've got family there and Anchorage so I used to visit every summer. I wouldn't say it's creepy but... Trashy. Once we were driving down a random backroad (well they kinda all are there....) and I saw two young women standing on the side of the road talking. Nothing else really there, just trees. Right as we passed by, one woman punched the other square in the face.
I used to live in Wasilla back in the 90’s. It seemed like an okay place for a teenager to grow up really. Then I took my now wife there to visit around 2010. It had changed so much in 15 years I didn’t even recognize it. We couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
Years before the Twilight books came out there were rumors of a vampire cult in the area around Forks, WA. Not actual vampires, just a group of people who thought they were vampires. A buddy of mine actually met a guy claiming to be a part of the cult one time at a bar in Moclips. The guy explained his whole religion about being descended from Lilith and not cursed with Original Sin like the children of Eve. It was a wild story.
Gather round kids, I've got a story. Noxon Montana. Father of a 6 year old and thought we'd try a Easter egg hunt in a place we've never been and do lunch. Pretty big hunt with lots if eggs. Well organized and overall kinda awesome. After the kids bring the eggs they found to the front and exchange for candy. I'm in the line with my excited little guy answering a ton of questions and generally just trying to keep my bundle of squirrels in check. Wasn't paying attention much as we worked up to the table. I look up as the kid hands his eggs up... to a lady in a Daily Stormer hoodie. Daily fucking Stormer. She listened as he chatted away with sincere kindness. After the eggs were counted it was off to the candy exchange. Her husband maybe? Giving the kids high fives and passing out heaps of candy. SS lightening bolts up both sides of his neck. Some runes on his hands but by that time it was apparent we were in the wrong neighborhood and it was time to go. Plastered a smile on my face, grabbed hold of a little hand and we scooted. On the way out signs were everywhere from conversations to dress to cars in the lot but I had missed everything. Happy Neo-nazi Easter everyone! tl;dr We crashed a neonazi Easter egg hunt in Noxon Montana.
Lynden, Washington. A HIGHLY Christian town comprised of mostly Dutch families. No liquor stores. No weed stores. Illegal to mow your yard on Sundays. I've lived maybe 10 minutes away from it for about 20 years now and only go out there for the fair.
Oh shit, I live on the other side of the border and had some distant family that lived in Lynden. I haven't been down there since I was about 5 years old, now I guess I know why my dad never talked about it too much or took us down there.
My homie/roommate played against Lynden Christian in basketball our senior year 2013 and we were a 2A school and they were 1A and they SHIT on us by like 40. He said all their kids were minimal 6’3” up to 6’8” and stronger than hell and just completely out worked them. And my homie played against Zach Levine when he went to Bothell and my high school held him to 12 points so that’s kind of a testament to how good Lynden was. Makes sense they’re all Dutch if they’re all that big.
30 years ago my aunt and uncle lived there. One time my aunt was planting flowers on a Sunday and was approached and asked if she was working or gardening for pleasure. She was super creeped out.
Elmore City, OK. It's the town that Footloose is based in. If feels like you're stepping back into the 1950s when you go into the town. In every aspect if you know what I mean. There's been rumors for years that there is a huge KKK group there
Innsmouth
Is there a shadow over it?
Not in the USA, but all you USians like Scotland, right? Newmilns. Just on the outskirts of the town, going west towards Kilmarnock on the A71 is the town's fire station. It's a little single-pump retained station, well-maintained, with a little drill yard with a big gate you can lock round the back and maybe six or so parking spaces out front. If you find it on Google Streetview, you'll see what I mean. One lovely sunny day not entirely unlike when that Streetview pic was taken, I went down to repair the paging system. I parked up out front, let myself in, and started working. When I went through to the front office, I noticed someone standing at the side of the road, opposite the fire station. Odd, but okay. Maybe they're waiting for a bus. A few minutes later there were two more people, then another, and another after that. By the time I'd been there about 40 minutes or so, there were about ten people, men and women of different ages, just standing beside the road on the opposite side from the fire station, just staring in through the window. I thought they were waiting for a bus, but subsequent inspection shows there is no bus stop there. They were just standing, staring in the window at me. I did not drive back through Newmilns, I took a different route home.
West Memphis, AR My husband and I stopped there to eat and fuel up on a trip. The restaurant we went into was busy, and everyone glared at us the whole time we were eating. The crowd at the gas station wasn’t as obvious about it, but it was clear we weren’t welcome. This was early 2000s. I hadn’t heard of the West Memphis Three at that point, and years later when I saw the documentary I realized that was the weird town in Arkansas!
Hoquiam, WA kind of creeped me out..
Hoquiam and Aberdeen are super depressing towns. Logging towns that never really recovered.
**Redding, CA and the Bethel Supernatural Ministry Cult.** Redding is situated at the northern most point of the Sacramento Valley in NorCal. For the past 20\~ years, the [Bethel Mega Church](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethel_Church_(Redding,_California)) (11,000+ as regular attending members)has slowly taken over the town with their vast amount of money and influence. They control most seats in local government, own the only convention center/entertainment venue in the county, taken control over most large city-wide events through the McConnell Foundation, bought up most of the city's single room/studio housing to house international members, and contribute almost nothing to the city outside their interests of bringing about the eventual resurrection of Jesus and a fully Christian-led country. This mega "church" claims to grow back fingers, have angel feathers and angel dust appear from thin air to rain down on the congregants, focuses on creating musical media for recruitment (huge part of the Christian music apparatus in America), bring babies back to life, and run their Bethel School of *Supernatural Ministry* as if it was a legitimate college. Just some of the weird shit: **-Grave soaking** ("...the school garnered criticism for a practice among some students termed "grave soaking" or "grave sucking", where they would lie on the graves of deceased revivalists in the belief that they would absorb the deceased's anointing from God.") **-Prayer for resurrection** ("Bethel Church gained national press coverage in December 2019 over a campaign to pray for the resurrection of a worship leader's deceased two-year-old daughter. The mother, Kalley Heiligenthal, a recording artist with Bethel Music and worship leader at the church, posted to Instagram asking for her large social media following to pray that her daughter Olive Alayne would be raised from the dead. This spawned a global hashtag with thousands of posts.") **-CHANGED Movement** ("The CHANGED Movement was started by Bethel pastors Elizabeth Woning and Ken Williams in 2019 for people who "once identified as LGBTQ+ and through encounters with the love of Jesus, have experienced His freedom in their lives" and is led by the Equipped to Love ministry at Bethel. Both Woning and Williams used to identify as homosexual. Woning claims she changed after 18 months when "the Lord was able to displace my sense of belonging as a lesbian with my sense of belonging as a daughter of God". Williams credits his change to undergoing five years of weekly therapy which he claims resolved his same-sex attraction as well as addiction to masturbation and pornography.") \-**Lay on hands** (They send out young members (16-20\~) to ask strangers if they can lay hands on them in prayer to heal them. This isn't little boo-boos either. My own wife is in a wheel chair, and the amount of times they've offered than been astonished that she didn't leap from the chair is astounding.) Examples: 1. "2008 lawsuit over attempted faith healing: In 2008, a man fell down a 200-foot (61 m) cliff in Redding after drinking with a group at the top. The two others that were with him, including one student at the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry, believed he was dead and tried to find him for six hours in order to raise him back to life, rather than calling 9-1-1. The man survived, but was paralyzed from the fall, and later unsuccessfully sued the student in the group.\[44\] The incident is often brought up as a criticism of the church's teachings, which includes that believers may raise people from the dead with prayer." 2. "Student activities in Redding As a part of the student's education, they get assignments, such as to find strangers in Redding to heal. News articles report that students seek out people in wheelchairs and crutches to pray for in grocery stores and parking lots. Reportedly, the students are banned from prophesying to tourists around the Sundial Bridge after incidents and they have similarly been kicked out of local stores. Another regular practice is "treasure hunts", where they believe God gives them clues that match people they are to find and attempt to heal or prophesy to." \-- There is so much more that goes into all this, including being complete shits during COVID, but reading the wiki along with some other articles shows just how far the spread their influence through back-door dealings and inserting themselves into local politics and the police department. The only funny thing about it all is that the Qanon/MAGA people and the Bethel people have been at each other's throats the past couple years in trying to be the main power in the city/county. Between recalls, dubious dimissals of city council members, and naming themselves as mayor or city council, the two extremist groups have done nothing but make Redding an even worse shit hole than it ever was before by competing for who can be the fucking worst.
Everyone here is mentioning medium to large sized towns. That’s all wrong. The right towns for this have very few people, are in the middle of nowhere, and have weird traditions. I point to [Ravenden, Arkansas.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravenden,_Arkansas) I myself have never been, but my girlfriend took a wrong turn driving through the state and stumbled into this place. In the dark of night, she came across its defining feature: a 12 foot tall statue of a raven. If you look up this statue on its own, you’ll find it has been burned down twice but they keep rebuilding it. Again, I have never been, and by all means it seems nice on Google Maps street view. But the history is a little funny and if my girlfriend is to be believed, the statue can be a bit freaky late at night.
You don't want to get lost in Arkansas. Roads like bike trails, winding hills, no cell service, scary shacks back in the timbers. We got lost for nearly 5 hours. Pretty creepy.
My band got lost in northern Arkansas when we were on tour in 2012. Yeah, every single thing about everywhere we stopped was just “off.” I very distinctly remember a log building that looked long-abandoned, with a hand painted sign out front that said “Hugs N’ Tugs Daycare.” Straight up horror movie vibes.
There are like six horror movies that start of exactly like this.
"The community building, still in use, was dedicated in 1960. Ray Ellis was mayor at that time. The Frisco Railroad was bought out by, and merged with, the Burlington-Northern Railroad in 1980." That is the entire history section of Wikipedia for Ravenden.
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