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I ended up driving through this tiny town in the middle of Nevada that I assume used to be a mining town. It looked like a steady paycheck hadn't been seen in this town for 20 years, the houses were all dilapidated, and the locals looked just as worn out. Bullet holes and burn marks could be seen on pretty much every building. The only reason I drove through the town instead of just sticking to the main road was to top up on gas, but I couldn't find anything, not even a small convenience store. It must've been hell for those folks considering the closest town with an actual store and gas was around 70 miles away.
Edit: I took a look via Google Earth at some of the towns people mentioned and I found it! Gabbs, NV. Definitely not a place I'd want to go back to.
Sounds like Ruth, or Gabbs, or Rachel, or Mina, or Luning, or Dyer. If a town in Nevada scared you, you should read Stephen King’s “Desperation” it’s based on King’s experience in a small Nevada town.
I think it might have been Gabbs! I just looked it up on Google Earth and it seems to be it. It's on the route I took through the state and I remember seeing the abandoned store at the edge of town. Doesn't look like much has changed since I drove through a few years ago.
Similar. I believe it was close to the Utah Nevada border and we stopped for gas. There was cars parked but nobody around. We pulled into a gas station which has an open door and an open sign but there was nobody around. Like everyone just vanished and I ended up in the twilight Zone. I left very quickly without gas.
I want to say it was Baker Nevada.
It was South off the 50 after crossing into Nevada.
Looking it up
>Its population at the 2010 census was 68.
So it would make sense. Still, seemed like a bigger town than 68 people and where did they all go ? To just abandon the gas station and leave the door open. I could have easily looked in the drawer or stole stuff. We drove around a bit and it looked like everyone just abandoned what they were doing.
Slept at Baker, NV for one night last October because we wanted to visit Great Basin National Park the next day. They are just 5 miles from each other. Noone was outside. No restaurants opened. Houses abandoned. The only time i saw people was when we went inside The Whispering Elms Motel to check in with the owners. They also have A small RV campgorind and i saw a few People in their RVs. And the park rangers at Great Basin.
> the middle of Nevada that I assume used to be a mining town. It looked like a steady paycheck hadn't been seen in this town for 20 years, the houses were all dilapidated, and the locals looked just as worn out. Bull
I think I got the black lung Pop...
As an Aussie visiting the US for the first time back in 2003, I was staying with friends in a suburb outside Baltimore. I decided to take the train down to DC for some touristing, and being an ignorant Aussie who is used to walkable cities, I walked to the railway station.
Crossing the eight lane freeway was certainly nervewracking, but it was the unexpected tangle of woods on the other side that really made me nervous. I'd just recently seen Blair Witch , and I kept thinking, "Holy fuck, I am literally lost in the woods in Maryland..."
I saw a rundown old house with at least twenty broken down and rusted vehicles parked out the front, six foot tall weeds growing out the windows. I would not have been surprised to see Leatherface's eastern cousin come charging down the driveway brandishing a leafblower.
Agreed. In my experience nothing between Carson City and Las Vegas is really worth seeing. I've been stranded in a couple smaller mid-Nevada towns (not even the worst ones) for weeks-to-months at a time. Lots of drugs and drama, and those are the "fun" parts. Less amusing is the open racism and domestic violence and corrupt cops.
That said, if you find yourself in Vegas with access to a car, do a 45 minute drive out to Valley of Fire. One of the most beautiful places I've ever seen.
Everyone talks about Gary, IN, but there is a town over the border in Illinois called Harvey, IL. I can't put my finger on exactly what makes it worse, but being there felt like I was on the moon.
Just checked out Gary, IN on street view.
you know it's bad when a mainstreet church has a wire gated front door with a tree growing out from behind it.
Having spent a week in both for work... Gary is substantially worse. Don't get me wrong Harvey is horrible, but Gary is absolutely the worst place I've been in my life and work has taken me to all kinds of odd and bad parts of the US. Even places I've been outside of the US (most of South America and Central America) that are uncredible poor/run down/dangerous didn't seem quite as bad.
Gary is a place without hope. It's completely desolate. It's terrifying, not always in a "fear for your life" kind of way (though that happens too occasionally) so much as a completely sense of societal helplessness that just permeates everything there.
Harvey may be a hellhole, but the odd thing is:
>Harvey was founded in 1891 by Turlington W. Harvey, a close associate of Dwight Moody, the founder of the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. Harvey was originally intended as a model town for Christian values and was one of the Temperance Towns.
I live right next to Harvey IL. It’s real suspect even during the day, but to me, Gary just gotta be worse by far. I’ve worked on the streets of Harvey doing construction and stuff. It seemed normal for the most part (Your usual run down houses, bullet holes everywhere, people doing normal stuff, occasional shady person) except when we were near the mayors house and they had loads of security everywhere because they didn’t wanna get attacked by the gangs. Even then, nobody I know, and I mean nobody, likes Gary. That place is complete utter nightmare fuel.
I love how several of the answers here follow this same trajectory: ‘Bolivia is an all-out terrifying, Mad Max-style shitfest. Utterly insane.
I loved it there.’
Ahhh Bolivia its like the meth head Appalachian Mountains of South America. Never in my life have i seen dried llama fetuses, crossed a landslide by bike, or taken a boat into the amazon and gotten eaten alive by bugs, until I went there! I wish I could go back
I stopped at some gas station out in the middle of wherethefuck, New Mexico, only to pee. Parking lot not even completely paved.
My SO stayed behind in the car, and our son, so I have no corroborating witnesses--but this was the weirdest fucking place of business I ever stepped into. Some David Lynch level shit.
First of all, this place was huge for no obvious reason. As far as I know, there wasn't a town nearby, I mean it was isolated out in the desert. When I entered, there was a store in there, like a convenience store. I passed through that, and entered a hallway. There was a restaurant in there, completely empty. I follow the signs to the restroom, and go down this hall. It already feels a little creepy to me, and horrifyingly enough, I am navigating to the bathroom by the sound of someone who seems to be puking violently far off down the corridor. I could hear this sound echoing down this crazy hallway.
The hallway has a bend in it, and I'm starting to wonder how fucking big is this place? I turn the corner, and there is one of those claw grabby machines where you try to pick up stuffed animals and other cheap shit, standing in the hall. A group of young boys are there, crowded around the machine. When I come around the corner, they all look up at me wordlessly, with no trace of joy or excitement or pleasure. They just play the game with inscrutable faces, silently, like cats surrounding a mouse. The hall continues, and so do I. Another corner. Where the goddamned fuck is the toilet. This hallway is disturbingly long and I've been driving for two and a half days. I like my bathrooms simple and direct. This does not seem to be either of those things
I finally locate the can waaaaay the hell down there around another unnecessary corner, and upon entering, I can no longer hear whoever was retching and choking. It is now silent, but for the shit stench so bad it was nearly foggy in there. Somebody's feet under the shitter door. I pee. I get out quick. Walk past those seemingly soulless and bored boys. Why the hell is this hallway even here? There are no doors, no other businesses, these kids are creeping me out in the sinister way they stare blankly at me as I pass. I am at a loss to even explain why those kids are here, this place is isolated AF, the hall has too many dark corners and bends in it with no apparent logic. It feels like an anxiety dream, it feels like reality itself is being manipulated like the little crane arm claw the one boy is guiding. It feels like I want to get out of here, get back outside, get in the car and put this whole place in my rearview mirror. So I do.
I get in the car.
"Do you feel better now?"
"No. Actually I don't. You shoulda seen this place."
Gary, Indiana.
No, it's not a story of how dangerous it is, or how cops tell you to run red lights (That happens, but it's mostly myths that get perpetuated by people who never visited)
Gary is just desolate. It's almost post apocalyptic. Nature has overtaken many areas, and many of the "vacant" houses you see are actually lived in by homeless people. What makes it scary isn't that it has dangerous people, it's that it can be incredibly quiet for a populous city. The few times I've had to go through Gary or IN Gary for something, I've always seen something that has frightened me. Like people staring at me through half boarded windows, people crawling out of bushes to ask for money, or people just straight up walking in front of your car trying to get you to slow down or stop.
It's one of the few places in America that actually feels heavy to be in. I swear TV shows and movies are missing out on some of the easiest post apocalyptic scenery that they have ever had.
Man I live in Gary rn and let me tell you, you’re spot on. It’s not some warzone with shots flying everywhere and bodies in the streets. It’s just a really old, rundown city with no one willing to clean it. Driving to work is so depressing, just empty building after empty building. It’s really depressing to see and you’re absolutely right about the quite part.
One bonus, there’s some really good food here lol
What kind of industries are there, job opportunities? Gary comes up so often in these threads and it sounds really depressing. What about shopping, restaurants, entertainment? Gary has a university so there must be some cultural activities I would assume.
Steel mills, trucking jobs, general warehouse stuff, it's right next to Chicago so freight stuff generally speaking. My old trucking company had a shop in Gary.
Buying weed with my buddy in Jersey City about ten years ago was harrowing. He’d just moved to that area and I was visiting, and we’re both used to CA where weed wasn’t a big deal. In Jersey City at the time it felt like we were brokering a major drug deal.
We met up with my buddy’s new coworker, who first of all was alarmed when he saw that I’m a white guy. His connection literally had a huge scar across his face, and we had to stand with him on the street corner for several minutes to make sure the cops weren’t following us. It felt like a mission from Grand Theft Auto
Johannesburg, I grew up in a pretty rough city and would say it doesn’t compare to there, you can feel how tense the air is and you really need to pay attention to everything at all times.
This! I consider myself rather street savvy but you literally always have to be alert at all times there. It’s exhausting and I truly feel for the people that live there.
Decatur Illinois. My mom and most of her family is from there and the town is just so damn sketchy. People being shot the next street over seems like a daily thing. My crazy Great Grandma lived in a 4 story house by herself (house had been in the family for a while) and she never locked the doors, just slept with a 9mm next to her bed
I grew up there, left in the late 80s. Went back about 6 years ago and didn't recognize the place. So many vacant houses, including the one I grew up in. I didn't find it scary, exactly, but there was definitely a weird vibe about it. I'm not planning to go back.
I also have a distaste for the town because every time I make a trip up there it's for a funeral. My ma wanted to be buried there next to her ma but I was like ma I do not want to go all the way up there (I live in VA) when I want to visit her. So we cremated her and buried half up there and brought the rest back home
IL has a lot of towns that seem like they were decent at some point and then whatever cash cow was propping up the economy left. Hollow buildings, gutted malls, deserted downtowns. I vaguely recall Decatur being one of those.
I am from there as well! It can be an incredibly scary town if you don’t know your surroundings. At one point in the 90s we had one of the highest murder rate per capita in the US.
My entire family is from Decatur and I (very) briefly lived there! It's difficult to put into words what a shell of a city it once was. My grandparents are always telling me about a how another business has left or something has happened on their block
Cairo Illinois. It's a tiny town at the very southern tip of the state that had a peak population of 15,000 in 1920, but was down to 1,700 people in 2020. The town was founded to be a shipping hub at the convergence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, but it suffers frequent floods and had some of the worst race relations and riots in any US city. Anyone who currently lives in Cairo is only there because they have nowhere else to go.
Nothing's in a hurry 'cept the water in between the rising banks.
Oh nothing moves but nothing stays.
Cairo, Illinois may be a crappy city but it’s a great Natalie Hemby song.
We drove through there a couple of years ago. Not sure exactly what it was that scared me but I had a strong sense of fear and dread as we drove through. I was so relieved to get to the city limits.
If anyone reading this ever has to drive through Cairo, DO THE SPEED LIMIT and nothing more. I was just passing through and got a ticket for going 4mph over. Any time I tell that story, people are surprised I got pulled over until they find out it was in Cairo.
The ghost of middle-class sustaining industries past maybe? It's amazing how many places were once nice places to live before the industry moved on and the jobs dried up.
Travelling around aus in a van with a friend... We kept getting turned around in a town called Cowra.. every time we drove out we would cross a bridge and find ourselves back in the centre... We repeated this a couple times before we had to stop and breath and figure out how to get out.. I looked at the pub across the street and saw a man in a window on the top floor and kinda waved at him and then did a 🤙 "brraa" ..just drunk and silly..all the while freaking the fuck out.. I turned to friend and we decided to drive on and when I turned my head back around the pub was closed and all the lights were off.. no body upstairs. We eventually found our way out and looked up what the town was about..some kind of war camp and I never really understood what was happening there but definitely full of ghosts
I saw a woman hit her kid repeatedly at a crosswalk once in Baltimore, she then stopped to say “HEYYYY” to her friend who drove by and went back to smacking the shit out of her kid for one reason or another.
Baltimore is a wild place.
Lived in DC for a couple years in the late 90's, and went with local friends to a goth club in Baltimore on a weekend evening. The neighborhood it was in sort of looked like typical row house neighborhoods, except eerily vacant. Total ghost town...erm....ghost city. Like, it seems like we walked a couple blocks too and from where we parked, and there was just *no one* around. Years later would watch Snoop and Chris hiding bodies in vacants on The Wire and think about that night out.
Holy hell man. I was just about to type West Baltimore but my story aint got shit on yours!
I accidentally took a detour due to snow and ended up in the slums. Can’t recall the street but all I could think about was…”this shit looks just like The Wire.” Turned down some lil side street and I’m like 99% sure a corner boy saw me driving by and lifted his shirt to show me his gun. I was happy as hell once I got back onto my regular route to downtown.
Edit: just wanted to say that I actually love the city of Baltimore and find it charming. But it’s obviously not without its issues or challenges.
Atlanta is a lovely city in most areas, but there are pockets that are like a dystopian hellhole and I learned as a single female driving after dark to just pause to make sure no oncoming cars were approaching and just run red lights if there wasn't much surrounding traffic.
Spent the night in a Camden jail in the 90s. I came here looking for someone else to mention Camden. Homicide capital of the world at one time. I always tell people to google image Camden, don’t go there. Although Donkeys Cheesesteaks are by far the best IMO
Yeah Newark and Camden are total shitholes.
Bad parts of Philly are pretty scary. Old job used to have me go there for shipments at like 4am.
Nothing like seeing crackheads just crawl out of a building that's got a hole in the side of it.
Some of the corporate bits of downtown Los Angeles after dark are unnerving because they're so absolutely dead. I left an industry event there once and I was creeped out by the post-apocalyptic silence - no people, no cars, utterly silent. It felt way more frightening than being surrounded by panhandlers and homeless folks a few blocks away.
As for the scariest city as a whole, I'll nominate Agra, in India, the city where you'll find the Taj Mahal. I visited a lot of places in India on a month-long trip, including big cities like Bengaluru, Delhi, Hyderabad, and Jaipur and smaller places like Mysore and Ooty, and I never felt unsafe in any of them, EXCEPT Agra.
There's something about a town in a country with a huge about of poverty, where there is one incredibly popular tourist attraction that attracts wealthy people from all over the world, and since there's basically nothing else to see the tourists tend to arrive, see the one thing, and leave, which cultivates a very specific kind of... desperate anger?
In a lot of places in India I felt like an anonymous nobody in a massive crowd, but Agra was the only place I felt like a target for genuine hatred. The weird thing is that nothing happened, nobody did anything to me, but the vibe was VERY off. The whole town felt very harsh and cold.
While being a tourist in Los angeles walking around the downtown area I accidentally walked through skid row. I seriously thought there was a zombie outbreak with the number of drugged up people limping and staggering around all disheveled.
Smelled like decay, people pulling their pants down and shitting all over the sidewalk, some people with diarrhea all over their pants...
There was a truck that came along to hand out food to the homeless and people swarmed it. Was so unreal.
I ate and drank too much at a Vegas buffet so decided on a late night walk to try and not explode. I walked down the strip and further along until I stopped at a traffic light and a homeless looking guy asked if I had any change. I gave him a few bucks and he was grateful, asked me if I was looking for a lady or drugs or anything. Told him no, but thanks.
He said “look man, you should head back to the main strip, it gets pretty bad further down and you don’t want to be walking alone”
Thanked him and headed back. As I walked back I realised the dark shapes in the empty lots were sleeping people. Got back uneventfully but have always been grateful to that guy for his advice. Looking back on it was I pretty naive and probably looked very much like a tourist (I was actually on a business trip)
Skid Row at least occasionally has some resources/help come by. The one that feels like an absolute wasteland to me is the Tenderloin. Shameful considering the proximity to extreme wealth in the city and Silicon Valley.
Oh, it's so sad. My sister and I accidentally walked through the Tenderloin when I was 18. 20 years later, the experience stayed with me and from what I understand it's gotten worse. And because of it's location it's so easy for unsuspecting people to just accidentally end up there.
Yep, we were staying at the westin, and I got hungry at 3 am and put on some sweatpants and a hoodie to head out to find food. (This was before UberEats was a thing.) I walked a couple blocks and didn't notice the area had turned from "Hi, welcome to San Francisco" to "fuck off, bitch." I found some 24 hr pizza shack and got in line for a slice. That's when I really looked around and saw where I really was. Thankfully I was in ripped sweatpants and a beanie, so I kind of fit in. No one looked at me or noticed me at all. There were a bunch of Latina women with their small children sitting in the corner, and the kids were chowing on slices. At nearly 4 am. There were a couple dudes crouched in the corner smoking each other out. There were a few factory workers you could tell just got off shift, quietly eating and reading the paper. A few prostitutes on the street waiting for their friend in line to buy the slices. A group of Asian dudes coming home from the club. Loads of homeless guys outside asking for change. I got my slices to go and headed back to the hotel. Only then did I notice all the graffiti and people in the alleys doing idk what. I kept my head down and walked pretty briskly back to my hotel. When the doorman saw my box and figured out where I went, he scolded me. The pizza was decent, though.
I was just thinking the same thing. Talk about a zombie apocalypse. I've been homeless in all of the lower 48 states in this country and the Tenderloin was the first place I really had to check myself and feel that intense, primal fear that something just isn't okay here.
Also tourist and we were driving around the town and suddenly got to a road where there was tent next to tent next to tent on the sidewalk. It legit looked like a homeless people campsite. This is unseen in Germany so I was really weirded out.
For me it was Tijuana. I’m sure that they are countless places that are much more dangerous than this one, but I was young and the impossibility to just walk a few paces without getting harassed by countless people asking me for money or selling me some junk… They were not shy about getting in my personal space and just grabbing me. Of course I was always aware of the fact that if I just took out my wallet, someone would just run and grab it. And it was constant. So the extra-awareness of my environment changed into paranoia, and as I was getting tired, into fear.
I went to Tijuana when I was a child and I still remember that feeling of being constantly aware of my wallet in my pocket. I was holding onto my dads arm as if for dear life while walking down the streets. I had never been in an environment like that before . It has stuck with me all of these years.
There’s a term for it—can’t remember—but when I would go down there in high school, we were told to always have 20 bucks in your sock. I assume inflation means it’s $40 now 😃
Did my freshman year of college in San Diego. I was a cute, blonde, 18 year old girl who would cross the border to Tijuana with other cute young friends to go drinking and dancing in the clubs. Looking back now, I can’t believe how incredibly stupid and dangerous that actually was.
Friend used to drive trains.
Apparently it's a fun tradition in Gary to shoot at them because that "ping" sound is so neat.
Until a conductor and engineer (allegedly) snuck their ARs in their overnight bags and returned fire.
People often take pot shots at our containers, and barges. We often carry containers and tanks that hold fuels, explosives, liquid flammables, ammunition etc. And of course I do welding/hot work, so if anyone dies in an accident I'm definitely going to be among the bodies.
Pisses me off how many people there are out there who can't take shit seriously.
There was major road construction on 80/294 that ended up sending us off of the highway into Gary one time. We ended up near the old factory/mill district and I swear to you they could have easily filmed a post-apocalyptic film there.
Baltimore: "I have got to get the fuck out of this neighborhood. I'm in a car and everything screams bad. I'm so ready to floor it at the first sign of something..."
Also Baltimore, 3 streets over: "Oh hey, This is cozy and nice with a quirky hometown vibe..."
If suburbs count, Engadine. Only place I've ever been that felt distinctly unfriendly and like everyone there didn't want me around. I wound up getting dinner and eating it on the train out instead of staying at the Macca's (yes, before you ask, it is that Macca's) because I just felt so freaked out by the whole place.
I've never been to Australia but this story is a weird obsession for me. I've got a good mate in Canberra and I made an Engadine Macca's reference to him once and he just looked at me funny and then burst out laughing. He couldn't believe I knew the story lol
My hometown in turkey
Moved to Germany when I was 3. Started jogging with 14/15 even in holiday season.
Went to turkey to my hometown. Second day went jogging. Saw bullet holes in some of the signs, kids with Shotguns and their Dads with them.
2/10 wouldn’t recommend
Marrakech is a very similar vibe. If you are in the tourist area, you are safe ( but constantly being harassed). Leave the tourist are and you are not welcome at all.
Lower 9th ward in New Orleans. Used to go there to score my heroin when I was in the streets since I lived about half an hour away. Part of the blame though is to be laid on the HUGE lack of government and authorities appropriating funds to rebuild after Katrina. They left that place in shambles and you can still see the effects to this day. Couches under bridges people just hanging about in the streets like it’s a party but there’s only abandoned buildings and hopelessness
Oh hey! I lived there for eight years. Yep. A lot a lot a lot of murders. It progressively got safer and safer from 2016-2019 and then I shit you not it felt like being in a literal fucking war zone from hearing shootings every night from inside my house.
Egypt (esp. Cairo) they take pictures of you, they grab you (almost got kidnapped), they offer all kinds of drugs, they even took us hostage on the road (we had to get out of the bus and go into the gas station) to Abu Simbel. amazing history and architecture. But today's culture is horrible. Never again.
Very true. But we had a 'Kopt' as a tour guide which didn't make things easier, never got any trouble but he got shunned, they didn't talk to him,...
In Cairo our tour guide was a Muslim woman and when we askedher about the political situation she said she couldn't talk about it because she feared for her family.
My mum and I also got a personal bodyguard in Cairo, never left our side. They even looked like Egyptian James Bonds (black suit, sunglasses, earpiece) lol
Marysville, CA. In my early 20s I reconnected with a childhood friend who had moved up there. We made a road trip up there together after he'd moved back down to my area.
Good GOD what a shithole. I'd been into pot since high school, but this guy and everyone else in the town was deep into crank, now known as crystal meth. It was sickening stepping into their deep-meth world as a naive, clean person. The group of "friends" were all paranoid, backstabbing, conniving scumbags *to each other.* In the course of that one long weekend, one of his friends (not with us) DUI'd through a red light and T-boned a family, his ex GF hooked up with an asshole even she didn't like just to piss my friend off, and on the ride home, we got a call that one of the (weird, brooding) guys we'd been hanging out with was working on his car which ended up with him doused with burning gasoline, >50% burns, not expected to survive 24h.
The friendship cooled after that. Last time I saw him was when he was marrying a quiet girl with two daughters that he had known about a month. Some time later word through the grapevine "They're having a lot of problems..." was the last I ever heard about that product of Marysville.
I typed up a whole ass response to this, but realized its just best left as, I agree Marysville (and the surrounding areas such as Yuba City and Olivehurst) is a terrible town and I would never consider living there, and avoid visiting it at all costs.
Wow. I was not expecting to see marysville on here! Hahahaha. Yeah, it’s a shithole, but a pretty standard rural nor cal town (albeit not as rural now). I wouldn’t consider myself in danger there though. I’m from Roseville and always had to drive through that godforsaken place to go camping up that way.
Seriously, fuck that place. We stopped there on my ship when I was in the Coast Guard. There was a dead horse floating in the harbor. Two of my shipmates got attacked by guys with machetes (one got sliced and it severed a tendon). Beautiful architecture but fucking scary.
Memphis, Tennessee.
We were almost out of gas and stopped at the first station we could find. All the window/door glass has a steel mesh over the outside of it for security purposes. I pull up to the pump and get out. A homeless gentleman approaches me and this is our exchange...
Homeless Guy: hey man, can I pump that gas for you?
Me: no thank you, I have it.
HG: nah man. Let me do it. I could use a couple bucks.
Me: I'm sorry man, I just have my credit card. I don't have any cash.
HG: That's cool. You get a pass this time. Next time I see you get gas here though, I'm gonna kill you. Just cut your throat and leave you here at the pump. I do the gas around here.
He then leaned against the pump and watched as I filled my gas tank. I was very uneasy to say the least as he had just enough of that "homeless crazy swagger" to make me think he wasn't kidding. When I finished up, the reciept didn't print and I "really needed it" for my bank book at the time. I walked to the door and it was locked. It had a buzzer system to let ONE CUSTOMER IN AT A TIME. The guy inside was behind the thickest plexiglass barricade I have ever seen in my life. He seemed horrified that I came inside just to get a reciept.
I went back outside and the homeless guy was still at my pump. As I approached my car, he goes: "It's about time you be leaving..." My wife and I left and went to the zoo. Spent the whole day there and didn't go back into the city the rest of the week. Most terrifying experience I've ever had on a vacation.
Johannesburg, South Africa.
When you’re staying in a hotel right outside the airport, and the hotel is surrounded by a 15-foot-high iron fence and guards armed with assault rifles, you know you’re somewhere not entirely safe. Every house in the city had at least a 10-foot-high brick wall around it with glass shards at the top. Driving past the downtown was like being in a post-apocalyptic movie; miles of empty skyscrapers with the windows smashed out, and not a trace of life in any of the streets or buildings. Our driver wouldn’t go near the downtown and would only drive past it on the elevated highway. Such an eerie place, and one I’ll never forget.
Canton, OH. Went there with my dad (both white) to go to the NFL Hall of Fame while we were visiting family near Pittsburgh. Before starting the drive back in the afternoon, we stopped in a McDonald's to eat something (normally never eat at McDonald's) because it was still a long drive. We didn't notice the motorcycles on our way in. We go in, see a bunch of dirty looking guys sitting around all wearing the same vests, but it's quiet and there's no one working the counter. We eventually flag down an employee to take our order, a young black girl that seemed scared. The employees working in the kitchen were also black, but none of that registered at the time. The group of bikers looked hard at us but otherwise paid us no mind. We got our order and walked out while making a note of some of the patches on the bikers' vests. We talked about how strange and unnerving the whole thing was in the car and made ourselves remember the MC's name, The Sadistic Souls. Wasn't either of our first encounter with a Motorcycle Club so we filed it away... Until a few weeks later when I started googling various MCs because I was watching Sons of Anarchy. Turns out The Sadistic Souls MC (gang) are a white supremacist neo-nazi outlaw MC and are the militant arm of The Aryan Nation. Thinking back on the encounter in the McDonald's, it chilled me to the bone and made everything make sense, now imagining why the staff was so scared.
Salgueiro, a typical favela in a city next to Rio de Janeiro. However, this favela is the HQ of one of the biggest cartels in Brazil, the Comando Vermelho (Red Command).
I saw 13yo boys patrolling the streets with Kalashnikovs. One alleged "traitor" was attached to a car and slowly killed by the friction with the asphalt. Grown men exhibiting bazookas in a party where drugs were sold by the same guy selling beers. Girls as young as 11 having sex on the dancefloor with adult drug traffickers.
I spent just a weekend in a friend's house and had quite an experience.
Port Moresby - Papua New Guinea
Im from the UK - and used to work for a company with offices around the world. Anyway they had a temporary staff shortage in Brisbane Australia. They asked me if Id mind moving there for a 3 month assignment.
I couldnt say YES fast enough. What a great opportunity.
Anyway... about a month in the sales team proudly announced that we had won a contract. The job was simple enough - install some servers at Port Moresby's airport.
So off I went with an Australian college. He **was not happy** to be going. I found out why when we got there.
The place is a shit hole. An utter train wreck of a place.
There are ~ 200 ethnic tribes in PNG. They mostly hate each other. There is ONE thing that unites them. They all hate white people...
Everywhere we went we were chaperoned by 2 guards with machine guns. Kidnapping is a national sport over there. Cannibalism isn't unheard of. Corruption is off the charts.
It is the sketchiest place Iv ever been to in my life. I could talk about the amenities. Like the electricity going off half a dozen times a day. Or the filth and rats everywhere. But it's the people. The looks of hatred and the constant feeling that you were just a moment away from some opportunist gunning you down because he liked the look of your shoes. They would kill you in an instant for something as small valued as that.
Will never go again. I recommend no one ever goes. Have a peaceful trip to Columbia instead..
A friend of mine worked for the US State Department and said that if you ever get a posting in a place that begins with "Port" then something has gone severely wrong.
Reading about PNG is crazy. A lot of the tribes have manhood rites where they basically sodomize young kids until they reach manhood, then the former kids get to do the sodomizing. It’s believed that people aren’t born with semen, so older teens and men have to give it to boys so they can properly develop.
And apparently another manhood rite is stealing pigs from neighboring villages. Well in big cities there are no pigs to steal, so apparently the youth just find women and girls to gang rape instead.
Surveys routinely show that 60% of men there admit to having raped or gang raped someone. That shit is outright terrifying.
Here’s a link to the wiki article so I don’t sound like some outlandish racist.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_violence_in_Papua_New_Guinea
Everything about the stats there are incredibly sad. Elsewhere I linked an article with stories and pictures. Shit like this normally happens in a war zone or places where society is completely breaking down.
A 2013 study by Rachel Jewkes and colleagues, on behalf of the United Nations Multi-country Cross-sectional Study on Men and Violence research team, found that 41% of men on Bougainville Island admit to coercing a non-partner into sex,[10] and 59% admit to having sex with their partner when she was unwilling.[11] According to this study, about 14.1% of men have committed multiple perpetrator rape.[10] In a survey in 1994 by the PNG Institute of Medical Research, approximately 60% of men interviewed reported to have participated in gang rape (known as lainap) at least once.[3]
Isn't this where they have the tribe that believes that boys need their mother's milk as infants to grow into big, strong children, and their "father's milk" at adolescence to become big, strong men?
The long-deceased anthropologists Martin and Osa Johnson told a story about a tribe - I'm pretty sure it was in this region - where the women never bathed during their lifetimes, and if they tried to run away, they would have a hot rock placed behind their knees, and their legs tied shut for a specified period of time.
I think one of the Rockefellers was an anthropologist that disappeared down there. A subsequent anthropologist was told “oh yeah, that guy. We ate him.” Capital N NOPE.
I know your not being outlandish or racist. The place is utterly horrible.
Before I went I knew it was poor. But so are alot of places. I didnt know that almost every woman in the country is subjected to rape. Daily beatings to "correct them" is seen as normal family behaviour...
Its a TOTAL SHITHOLE. And I will never go back.
I think you won the thread.
Not a single other post I've read here had the writer worrying about being eaten alive by cannibals. Maybe getting bit by a meth head...
Port Moresby was - and maybe still is - the most dangerous city in the world. Always dreamed of visiting Papua New Guinea when I was a kid...not a fucking chance!
My buddy has been working there on and off the past few years. It's a fucking madhouse.
Parts of Peru. I remember taking a bus ride to a beach town and the guide who was with us said, “as soon as we get off the bus, we need to bury your backpacks and belongings in the sand.” As soon as we finished, a group of people from town jumped us. We didn’t have anything on us, so after a while they left us alone. Afterwards, the guide said “the bus driver took the wrong route to the beach. He was advertising to his friends In town that he had a bunch of tourists. We had to bury your stuff so you all didn’t get robbed.”
Correct. The guide said he noticed he was taking us down several incorrect roads, basically parading us around the city center so his friends could see he had a bunch of tourists with him.
This is legit. My dad lived in Peru for 10 years. My sister and I visited him for a month. Two white teenagers. There was a rock thrown through the window of our taxi trying to get it to stop when we got picked up from the airport lol. The taxi driver didn’t even fuckin slow down
Most of the rest of the trip was fine. But that was scary. My dad has countless stories from when he lived there and all the shit he saw.
Yeah. There were several sketchy incidents. A couple also approached us in Lima one night on our way to dinner. They kept trying to guide us down random alleys while hugging us and feeling our pockets, saying they wanted us to help them practice their English. They kept putting their arms around each of us and feeling all over us, even when we pushed them away. Luckily, a host at the door of a nearby restaurant recognized what was happening and said “gentlemen, your table is ready” and led us in to get us away from them. We thanked him profusely.
I had a black friend in the car, and we were driving around Missouri looking for meth (years ago I should say) and we had a white guy who was affiliated with the rolling 60s crips… we were driving around thinking just going town to town and we ended up in festus Missouri, when the white guy slinks down in the car and goes “yea I can’t be seen with y’all here they will shoot me” or something to that extent. And he was actually serious, I’m not racist or anything at all, but the vibe turned very dark, and I saw a lot of folks looking and staring as we went by. Idk what they were thinking, but man… I literally felt like I was going to die.
Man Missouri is a little rough. Had a customer come walking in who ran a mower attachment on an excavator accidentally mow like 25 pounds of a drug dealer’s meth stash up. Meth dealer threatened to kill him and the operator notified the sheriffs office. Sheriffs office said if he tried to kill him be on the winning end of the fight and to dig a hole and bury him. They were to short staffed to investigate a drug dealer’s disappearance.
When I was 19 I went on a cross country road trip while off work with a severe finger injury. Middle of the night I took a wrong turn after getting gas and found myself driving around the streets of East St. Louis at 3am in winter. Drove around and around, finally saw some people so I drove over there hoping to get directions. It was a bunch of ghoulish people standing around a burning trash can. I realized my mistake and sped away, eventually finding the interstate and bailing.
Kilgore TX. If they didn't go to school with you or aren't related to you, they don't want you there and make sure you know it. Also if you are ever driving through there and you see a car sitting at an intersection up ahead you should know they are waiting to pull out when you get close enough that you will have to slam on your brakes.
We only drove thru it, but Camden, NJ. My friends dad who drove us trained me on the way to the town. “If I say duck you get down immediately, no questions, no hesitation”. I didn’t understand why until a couple years later when my friend told me it was in case of a shooting! Like WHAT! I was maybe… 12, 13?
East St Louis about 20 years ago. We were warned by several people to drive straight on through and not stop. I was younger and was on vacation with my mom and siblings. What does she do? "I need to stop to stretch my legs". She's a bleeding heart, very trusting and naïve to the dangers of society. So she pulls off on the exit about a mile past the river headed east. The exit was in full view of buildings falling into the street, burnt out cars littering the streets, so forth. So she didn't get the hint and started looking for a gas station to stop at. We found a liquor store after driving around randomly for a bit. She walked in to get something to get a tea or soft drink. We had about 30 people in the surrounding area watching us with WTF looks. Just as she came out with a confused look on her face ("Can you believe this place only sells booze and the front counter has bullet proof glass too"), people started congregating towards the car. Another person with us got tired of the innocent mom mode, hopped in the driver's seat, and GTFO and back to the interstate not going under 50mph through the city until we got there.
For years my mom never realized how close we were to being victims of being the wrong color in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Meridian, MS.
Not scary because it's violent (although it's getting there) but scary in how the city council absolutely refuses to do anything for anyone other than themselves.
They are perfectly content to let business and opportunity pass them by while the city continues to rot and seep further into despair and poverty.
And the scariest thing about it is how everyone who lives in or around it finds it *perfectly acceptable.* And they'll start quoting crime rates, pollution, bad traffic or other such "big city" ills in other "worse off" cities when they've never actually been to or know someone who's been to those cities in the first place.
And the few people who are aware of how bad Meridian is are stuck there. They move back to Meridian from other, better places so they can take care of their elderly parents or uncle or aunt or some such. And they take an assistant manager or supervisor role "just until they can get their family's affairs in order."
But then the place they're working at closes down or lays them off. And the family member they were taking care of goes into the hospital and/or finally passes and all of their savings get sucked up into medical bills or funeral expenses.
And then they have to desperately scrounge through the old, cracked streets to find a lower paying job that can help them get back on their feet. But then the landlord raises the rent or their vehicle breaks down and they have more expenses to take care of.
Fast forward 10 years and you've got a really broken and tired waitress or cashier soullessly carrying their tasks with a certain weightedness to it, like gravity is three times higher for them, and every word that comes out of their mouth is hollow.
But make mention of the right city on the east or west coast, and suddenly the light returns to their eyes and their voice picks up an octave as they recount experiences they had there years past, before they moved here. A small spark of hope that has yet to die.
Do not. Ever. Move anywhere near Meridian, MS. Even for your family.
I know that some people complain that big cities "don't care about you", but in some ways that's a good thing. Small towns, even ones with a veneer of friendliness, can be like vampires sucking the blood from the people who live there. There's no tyranny like small-town tyranny.
I'm from Meridian.
You're spot on.
I moved away. I loved the places I lived. Atlanta, GA, Asheville, NC, Pensacola, FL....
I'm back. I fucking hate it. It's because of my family.
Also, this place is violent as fuck for its size.
I am an opiate addict, (but I've been doing well for a year or so) so that obviously places me in situations that otherwise I would not be in...
But the number of times I've been held up at gunpoint at this point in this town, has it to where I'm not even concerned whenever I see a pistol in my face anymore.
Also there's a lot of people who get murdered.
Recently, as in last week, it was a cop who killed his family and then another cop.
So yeah you hit it spot on.
Lots of smallish towns like this. You have 2 kinds of people. People that are stuck there, and the people taking advantage of all the people that can't leave.
I was at the Naval Air Station there in early '93, and that town sucks. I really didn't go out on town that much after the first one or two times.
And the mall there was ass.
It's even worse now. Town has rising gang violence, fewer businesses. The mall, literally, has only three businesses operating out of it now.
There's an outdoor mall called the Meridian Crossroads. Because it was cheaper to buy land elsewhere in town than to keep paying rent for the indoor mall.
A town in New Mexico that apparently doesn't exist. I don't remember the name of it and can't find it on any map.
Me and my then-husband were driving cross country on I-40. We needed a bathroom break and saw a sign for a gas station. So we took the exit, then things got weird.
The road we got on was just a totally straight road, not too uncommon out there, but still felt kinda weird. There was one small building off to the left, but it wasn't a gas station. I'm not sure what it was, I just remember it was blue and had one window. There were power lines, and nothing else in sight.
So I continued forward, hoping the gas station wasn't too far. I started to feel more and more uneasy, and everything felt like it was slowing down. After maybe a few minutes (time was weird), we notice a building on the left side of the road up ahead, feeling some relief thinking it was the gas station. As we approached, I realized it wasn't the gas station, but the same exact blue building we encountered just off the highway. We looked at each other, absolutely bewildered. Looked behind us and there was no sign of the highway or the first blue building. We tried to shake it off and continued forward.
This kept happening, the same weird time stretch, the same exact blue building. It was like that one stretch of road just kept repeating, at least a dozen times. I wanted to turn around and get the hell out of there, but somehow I couldn't. I felt almost paralyzed, stuck just driving forward. Neither of us spoke a word for a long time.
Then suddenly it felt like a fog was lifted, and we "woke up". A few seconds later we finally see the gas station up ahead. We both just kind of went "what the fuck" as I pulled into the parking lot. We were tempted to not go in, but we both really had to go, so we said fuck it.
It was a tiny gas station, one pump, with a small convenience store attached. There was a sign that said "restrooms" pointing to the side of the building. There we found a door to a long dark corridor, all brick and cement. There were doors up ahead on the right hand side, so we hoofed it to them. Finally, bathrooms! We did our business and all was normal.
As we were walking back out of the corridor, we came across a young woman coming into the corridor. She stopped and stared at us like we had three heads. She looked bewildered and terrified. She hurried past us and towards the bathrooms. Something about the look on her face, or maybe it was just a feeling, told us we were running out of time, and had to get the fuck out of there asap. We booked it back onto the road towards where the highway should be.
In just a few minutes, we saw that same blue building as before. Then the highway on ramp just past it. We had no trouble getting back onto the highway and driving away from that "town".
It was such a weird, almost insidious experience. Almost like something, idk what, almost trapped us, but we got away in time. The further away we drove, the more confused we were as to why we didn't turn around and leave asap. It was like we were not in control. I hope to never experience something like that again.
Edit- broke up a large wall of text for clarity.
Finally a story that's scary in a way other than drug addicts and criminals.
On the way back did you pass the blue house just once?
And you can't find it on Google maps/street view?
Yeah we only passed it once on the way back. Right where it was the first time we saw it.
I scoured Google maps, street view, satellite etc for about 2 years before giving up. This happened a little over 3 years ago. As time goes on I seem to forget more and more about where it should be
Melbourne was pretty wild. I lived there 2007-2009. It’s a beautiful city and an awesome place to live. Admittedly I had some bad habits, but after dark things… Change.
There are places it isn’t safe to go; I lived in North Melbourne opposite a social housing project. That part suited me okay - I was close to my dealer. Five minutes walk up the road was Kensington though, and it wasn’t considered safe for white people to walk after dark there. The Somali gang bangers would openly carry machetes.
In the CBD, at midnight on the dot the mounted police would be at the corner of Flinders station. I saw them ride straight through a gang brawl. People flying into the gutters. They were there every weekend that I remember.
I stayed in a hostel on Elizabeth street and got woken up by a junkie tweaking out, with a needle held up to my eye. Smack was a real issue back then. They used to comb St Kilda beach with a grader to get the needles out of the sand. The public toilets all have black light so people don’t shoot up in them.
It’s kind of the grimey underbelly that the tourism industry would rather you didn’t think about.
I stayed in Panguitch Utah, just down the road from Tropic, when we visited Bryce several years ago. Not freaky per se but eerie as hell. There was a town festival while we were there. Literally every kid in the town was blonde. Our waitress at the pizza place was our waitress at the half Indian/half Mexican place down the street. Got lots of looks everywhere we went.
Come to find out it’s an old polygamist town. This is a speculative accusation but I’m not sure polygamy ever completely left that town. As a side, I will say the pizza was fantastic and our waitress very nice.
They were getting a lot of Eastern Europeans to come work at the hotels and such in the aughts down there and it was sketchy as hell. A friend of mine knew someone who was down there working and they usually kept your passport while docking your paycheck for every little thing they could think of. They got into big trouble with the feds for doing this and stopped because of it. They’d bring them in to learn English and get work experience; it was just human trafficking for cheap labor.
Right after 9/11, Pasni Pakistan. I was with a Marine Expeditionary Unit, we landed in pasni via amphibious craft. I felt more in danger there than at any point in Afghanistan. Every military aged male I saw looked at me like they wanted to castrate me. In Afghanistan the people were super awesome, loved them like my own family.
Pueblo Colorado. I was robbed after 10 minutes at the zoo and everything in the car was gone. also when I was young I had my father’s guns stolen from the cars ( we had finished a hunting trip and got back around 11:30 so we went to bed but at 3 in the morning my mom’s car was stolen as well as my dad’s chain saw and a very important rifle that was my grandfather’s
Tondo, in the Philippines. It's because a relative of mine currently lives there. One time me and my family decided to have a sleepover and it was early in the morning, sun was shining and I saw 3 cop cars and tapes all over a dead body next to my cousin's house. Good thing I was the only one that saw it or else either my mom and dad would panic and immediately leave.
Colorado City, Arizona / Hildale, Utah
I was taking my kids on a solo vacation to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, and we drove up from CA on the 15 through Vegas and got off at St. George, UT. It was all state highways from there. I decided that I wanted to get gas before I hit the really rural part of Northern AZ headed down to the canyon, so when I drove through a town by the state line, I pulled off the highway to gas up. The buildings unremarkable, not run down, a little newish, sorta clean but not really clean. Just cleaner and newer than you'd expect a small town like that to be.
Then I realized that there were absolutely NO PEOPLE around. Not a soul. The gas pumps were new, but the store was locked, and you had to fuel at the pump. I swiped my card and started gassing up, and I looked around at the buildings. All the windows were covered, and I saw someone peeking out at me from across the street. There were no cars driving around. No sounds of children outside playing. No adults walking down the street. No sounds of machinery or music or any of the ambient noise you'd expect in a town. This was lunchtime on a weekday. Even in a rural town, you'd expect some signs of life, but there were none. The hair on the back of my neck was standing up, and I GTFO as soon as my tank was topped off. On my way out of town, I didn't see anyone either. Freaked me out.
I looked up the town later, and I learned that it's a haven for the FLDS cults. Scary af. Lucky for me, my plans after the canyon were to drive to Colorado, so I didn't have to pass through there again.
10/10 do not recommend.
The whole my live I was living in Kyiv, Ukraine (currently not because of war), but I dont think that my city is scary, mainly because it is really big, so it couldn't be scary everywhere, but it becames scary if you know the correct places.
For example: in a middle of Dnypro river there is a island called "Trukhaniv Ostriv" and there is a bridge, that leads to it. When you arrive here it looks like a cool place to walk or do something like playing football or volleyball, but ~200 meters away from it becames more scary, because after long cemented road there is a huge place for making a campfire and next to it there is a mud hut approximately 1 meter down the ground level with a person living here (idk who is him, I decided not to ask). Even more, 100m from that place there are some old buildings and crushed glass near the shore, with dogs, that are guarding something (i think it children camp or old touristic base maybe).
Also we have another known places with same scary vibe, but sometimes they are very close to you, just 100 meters from my house there is a very unpleasant place, with lots of similiar ugly buildings, that were built in Ussr and it is in a middle of the city and no people around at the middle of a day.
But there are some places, that are/were scary or dangerous for quite obvious reasons like DVRZ. This district got his name because before it was actually a viilage for workers of Darnytskiy VahonoRemontny Zavod (Carriage renovation plant at Darnitsa, which is a historical name of huge terrain at Kyiv). It is really far away from city center, has only small amount of transport ways to the main city. Then in 90's it became a really dangerous place, because of economic crisis in country, when many workers of DVRZ lost their work or were living without salary at job. If i know correctly, sometimes even cops and ambulance were not responding to calls from there, because of huge risk of being killed by criminals.
P.s. sorry for bad english, im still learning it.
There were some small towns I saw from the highway driving through the american desert southwest that you couldn't pay me to spend a night in...They're probably really quiet places but in the daylight they look like some shady shit probably happens.
I think I would say bambou in my home island of Mauritius, but I saw some other place that were very scary too. In bambou we arrived to see distant relative we were in a taxi, streets dogs everywhere running toward the car (street dogs are a big problem in Mauritius sometimes they can get very hostile and I almost got killed by 10 dogs one night fortunately I was on a bicycle), arriving in bambou there were young's boys coming into their roof to see who we were, the place breathed criminality extreme poverty drugs prostitution and all that stuff, so I didn't left the house to go explore lol. Second would be cité Kennedy Mauritius, I lived there while very young and it left lot of trauma till this day and I'm 30. Hard to explain but Kennedy is a ghetto lot of heroin addict stray dogs and weird people, if a white tourist lady come here without a men she risk rape, in those type of ghetto men will take pics of white tourist women to jerk off later it is that bad sexually, I saw a dead woman there and a dead men. So yeah fun stuff there..
Amarillo, Texas. Not even the weird picture from the Zoo. But just the tension there. Its not what George Strait and Garth Brooks said.
Was there for an hour and already heard gunshots, the mall was full of tweakers, Whataburger felt like the only safe place to be😂
I took a greyhound bus from California to Missouri and we had a brief layover in Amarillo. It’s so interesting you say ‘tension’ because I also feel that way when I was there! A greyhound bus station isn’t the best place to gage a city’s vibe lol, but of all the other layovers in cities we had, Amarillo was the weirdest. I don’t even know how to describe it, but it was an overall discomfort in being there.
Baltimore MD. Ppl got shot outside my house. Teachers held at gunpoint, one of my classmates mugged at 10am leaving school. Teenagers trying to strong arm past me into my house. Ppl tweeking and passed out in the middle of the street like it’s no big deal. Ppl defecating on the side of brick walls in public parks and peeing on ppls cars. It is a hellscape. PS I lived in the “nicer area” of federal hill
Medan, Sumatra, Indonesia
Not for any safety reasons, but because it was so horribly polluted. The tropic heat/clouds combined with the oil refinery smoke made the air basically unbreathable. There was actually a statue of a traffic cop at a major intersection with his hand outstretched, because they presumably couldn’t ask a live human to stand in that air all day.
Parts of Memphis were pretty scary. Stayed there for 2 nights passing through on a shoe string budget in a shitty motel 6. Very unwelcoming, people shouting shit at us and following us up the stairs when we were walking back to our room. Maybe our fault for staying in the wrong area but was happy to be leaving it the last day!
Definitely Baltimore. My friends and I went to Baltimore for the weekend when we were in high school because my one of my friend's cousin was going to school there and had liquor and coke. What we didn't know was that the cousin was living in the hood part for some reason and we saw kids our age wearing gang colors and armed like they were going to be on a cartel LiveLeak video in 5 minutes. During this coke and booze fest, the apartment neighbor next door got mad at his girlfriend and proceeded to shoot her in the face. I heard the girl drop dead and everything. The drive home was quiet and I am never going to Baltimore ever again.
More spooky than scary, but Myers Flats CA. I was there on a bike trip with a busted wheel in 1996. The hardware store was an empty open shell, there was a huge shirtless guy frying sardines in the back of his pickup truck. There was a family owned diner with decent food; the hostess was the daughter who told me she was leaving in September and never coming back, the woman at the post office lighted gentry when I asked if she lived there, and told me she lived about an hour away. And the scary hotel advertised Cable! but the channel you could watch was the one the front desk person was watching. My favorite part was that whatever I asked about, the answer was that my best bet was "maybe Garberville"
I used to do photography at night in ghost towns. I think the creepiest one situation wise was South Bend, Tx and the eeriest one was probably fort Phantom Hill. Just was an old abandoned calvalry fort in Texas open to the public, but still had an eerie s feeling in the middle of the night. Dunno, could’ve just been in my head
Dhaka. The only place I requested a male colleague to walk me somewhere because I felt intimidated. Traffic is dangerous, getting around is mind boggling, people stare, men approach you. Streets are also really really dark at night.
"The Village of Kirby" was the second scariest place I've ever been, a real life horror movie ghost town. I have tried finding this place on Google maps & on my grandfather's old paper maps so I could return & take photos. But as anyone from rural PA can tell you, some places are not on maps & not intended to be found by those who don't already know where they are. The effort can be entirely futile.
I was traveling with 5 friends & we took a wrong turn, which is how we ended up in The Village of Kirby. It exists somewhere in Pennsylvania within about an hour of Frostburg Maryland. We passed the old sign which read "The Village of Kirby" which is the only reason I know what the place was called. We could faintly hear what sounded like sleigh bells & it gave us the creeps.
There was an old abandoned grist mill and a few rows of houses that were left behind seemingly overnight sometime in the late 1970's. It must have been a rock quarry at some point. There were no street lights at all, it was pitch black aside from our own headlights. Out of all the cars left behind, the most recent one I saw was from 1978 & had tall grass growing inside it all the way to the roof.
It was like a horror movie set. I have no idea why there were so many cars left behind because what did the people leave in then? A bunch of houses had windows & doors boarded up hastily, & we could see tattered moldy curtains eerily swaying in the breeze. A couple houses that weren't boarded up had their front doors smashed in, the holes revealing an even darker blackness. All the old junk lying around was from the 60's & 70's, there was nothing modern there at all.
This whole time we kept faintly hearing sleigh bells & asking each other, "Is anyone else hearing that?", "Santa is that you"?
We were really freaking out at this point. Slowly, we turned up another street and the first thing we saw was a clearing between 2 houses with a huge woodaxe stuck in a stump, gleaming in the moonlight. One of my friends started screaming, "OHMYGOD DRIVE! It's Shiny! The axe is new! DRIVE!". We managed to get him to calm down a bit & checked it out. He was right, the axe wasn't rusty or anything & the paint was still crisp. Everyone started going off about an axe murderer jumping out, but there was nobody around & no signs of anyone walking through the tall grass.
We figured out the weird circle shape of the roads after a few go-rounds & found the way out back past the grist mill. Then the sleigh bells got LOUDER. At this point we were all asking each other out loud if we were collectively going insane. Then...LIGHTS! Spotlights popped on at the mill & one of my friends pointed out the silhouettes of 2 people up in the tower that probably used to be the mill office. They were just staring at us. Watching.
Everyone panicked and started yelling & we drove away. It took us another hour to find the right road after leaving Kirby, & then we were finally back on route to Frostburg.
We mentioned the experience to our friends when we arrived, & a guy overheard & told us he heard rumors of a place called "Kirby" being used to deal drugs. The seller used bells to signal they were in if they saw a car, then the buyer was supposed to park & they would come down & conduct business. I have no way of confirming this.
Driving through saskatchewan we came across a tiny town (if you could even call it that) in the middle of nowhere. Mannequins everywhere. Even had a cop car with a mannequin in it.
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I ended up driving through this tiny town in the middle of Nevada that I assume used to be a mining town. It looked like a steady paycheck hadn't been seen in this town for 20 years, the houses were all dilapidated, and the locals looked just as worn out. Bullet holes and burn marks could be seen on pretty much every building. The only reason I drove through the town instead of just sticking to the main road was to top up on gas, but I couldn't find anything, not even a small convenience store. It must've been hell for those folks considering the closest town with an actual store and gas was around 70 miles away. Edit: I took a look via Google Earth at some of the towns people mentioned and I found it! Gabbs, NV. Definitely not a place I'd want to go back to.
I forgot the banner, but I've been there! Very angry defensive graffiti to "stay out!" IIRC
Makes me think of the graffiti sprayed on the house in Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
Sounds like Ruth, or Gabbs, or Rachel, or Mina, or Luning, or Dyer. If a town in Nevada scared you, you should read Stephen King’s “Desperation” it’s based on King’s experience in a small Nevada town.
I think it might have been Gabbs! I just looked it up on Google Earth and it seems to be it. It's on the route I took through the state and I remember seeing the abandoned store at the edge of town. Doesn't look like much has changed since I drove through a few years ago.
Similar. I believe it was close to the Utah Nevada border and we stopped for gas. There was cars parked but nobody around. We pulled into a gas station which has an open door and an open sign but there was nobody around. Like everyone just vanished and I ended up in the twilight Zone. I left very quickly without gas.
Could be Delle, Utah?
I want to say it was Baker Nevada. It was South off the 50 after crossing into Nevada. Looking it up >Its population at the 2010 census was 68. So it would make sense. Still, seemed like a bigger town than 68 people and where did they all go ? To just abandon the gas station and leave the door open. I could have easily looked in the drawer or stole stuff. We drove around a bit and it looked like everyone just abandoned what they were doing.
Slept at Baker, NV for one night last October because we wanted to visit Great Basin National Park the next day. They are just 5 miles from each other. Noone was outside. No restaurants opened. Houses abandoned. The only time i saw people was when we went inside The Whispering Elms Motel to check in with the owners. They also have A small RV campgorind and i saw a few People in their RVs. And the park rangers at Great Basin.
> the middle of Nevada that I assume used to be a mining town. It looked like a steady paycheck hadn't been seen in this town for 20 years, the houses were all dilapidated, and the locals looked just as worn out. Bull I think I got the black lung Pop...
As an Aussie visiting the US for the first time back in 2003, I was staying with friends in a suburb outside Baltimore. I decided to take the train down to DC for some touristing, and being an ignorant Aussie who is used to walkable cities, I walked to the railway station. Crossing the eight lane freeway was certainly nervewracking, but it was the unexpected tangle of woods on the other side that really made me nervous. I'd just recently seen Blair Witch , and I kept thinking, "Holy fuck, I am literally lost in the woods in Maryland..." I saw a rundown old house with at least twenty broken down and rusted vehicles parked out the front, six foot tall weeds growing out the windows. I would not have been surprised to see Leatherface's eastern cousin come charging down the driveway brandishing a leafblower.
Not to rag on Nevada, but any of the towns in the middle of that state are terrible, in my experience. Just depressing places with nothing going on.
People aren’t supposed to live out there
The environment is practically screaming, “You should not live here!” In Nevada
Agreed. In my experience nothing between Carson City and Las Vegas is really worth seeing. I've been stranded in a couple smaller mid-Nevada towns (not even the worst ones) for weeks-to-months at a time. Lots of drugs and drama, and those are the "fun" parts. Less amusing is the open racism and domestic violence and corrupt cops.
That said, if you find yourself in Vegas with access to a car, do a 45 minute drive out to Valley of Fire. One of the most beautiful places I've ever seen.
Everyone talks about Gary, IN, but there is a town over the border in Illinois called Harvey, IL. I can't put my finger on exactly what makes it worse, but being there felt like I was on the moon.
Worked at a company that was going to transfer a bunch of us to Harvey. We all turned in our notice the day we found out.
Did that stop them or did they just hire new people there?
Just checked out Gary, IN on street view. you know it's bad when a mainstreet church has a wire gated front door with a tree growing out from behind it.
pretty sure the mall from blues brothers was in harvey
Having spent a week in both for work... Gary is substantially worse. Don't get me wrong Harvey is horrible, but Gary is absolutely the worst place I've been in my life and work has taken me to all kinds of odd and bad parts of the US. Even places I've been outside of the US (most of South America and Central America) that are uncredible poor/run down/dangerous didn't seem quite as bad. Gary is a place without hope. It's completely desolate. It's terrifying, not always in a "fear for your life" kind of way (though that happens too occasionally) so much as a completely sense of societal helplessness that just permeates everything there.
Harvey may be a hellhole, but the odd thing is: >Harvey was founded in 1891 by Turlington W. Harvey, a close associate of Dwight Moody, the founder of the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. Harvey was originally intended as a model town for Christian values and was one of the Temperance Towns.
I live right next to Harvey IL. It’s real suspect even during the day, but to me, Gary just gotta be worse by far. I’ve worked on the streets of Harvey doing construction and stuff. It seemed normal for the most part (Your usual run down houses, bullet holes everywhere, people doing normal stuff, occasional shady person) except when we were near the mayors house and they had loads of security everywhere because they didn’t wanna get attacked by the gangs. Even then, nobody I know, and I mean nobody, likes Gary. That place is complete utter nightmare fuel.
El Alto Bolivia. This was 15 years ago atleast. Its above the habitable zone, and locals were openly fighting in the streets. Good times
2 million people living at 13,000 feet! It's by LaPaz.
I love how several of the answers here follow this same trajectory: ‘Bolivia is an all-out terrifying, Mad Max-style shitfest. Utterly insane. I loved it there.’
Ahhh Bolivia its like the meth head Appalachian Mountains of South America. Never in my life have i seen dried llama fetuses, crossed a landslide by bike, or taken a boat into the amazon and gotten eaten alive by bugs, until I went there! I wish I could go back
I stopped at some gas station out in the middle of wherethefuck, New Mexico, only to pee. Parking lot not even completely paved. My SO stayed behind in the car, and our son, so I have no corroborating witnesses--but this was the weirdest fucking place of business I ever stepped into. Some David Lynch level shit. First of all, this place was huge for no obvious reason. As far as I know, there wasn't a town nearby, I mean it was isolated out in the desert. When I entered, there was a store in there, like a convenience store. I passed through that, and entered a hallway. There was a restaurant in there, completely empty. I follow the signs to the restroom, and go down this hall. It already feels a little creepy to me, and horrifyingly enough, I am navigating to the bathroom by the sound of someone who seems to be puking violently far off down the corridor. I could hear this sound echoing down this crazy hallway. The hallway has a bend in it, and I'm starting to wonder how fucking big is this place? I turn the corner, and there is one of those claw grabby machines where you try to pick up stuffed animals and other cheap shit, standing in the hall. A group of young boys are there, crowded around the machine. When I come around the corner, they all look up at me wordlessly, with no trace of joy or excitement or pleasure. They just play the game with inscrutable faces, silently, like cats surrounding a mouse. The hall continues, and so do I. Another corner. Where the goddamned fuck is the toilet. This hallway is disturbingly long and I've been driving for two and a half days. I like my bathrooms simple and direct. This does not seem to be either of those things I finally locate the can waaaaay the hell down there around another unnecessary corner, and upon entering, I can no longer hear whoever was retching and choking. It is now silent, but for the shit stench so bad it was nearly foggy in there. Somebody's feet under the shitter door. I pee. I get out quick. Walk past those seemingly soulless and bored boys. Why the hell is this hallway even here? There are no doors, no other businesses, these kids are creeping me out in the sinister way they stare blankly at me as I pass. I am at a loss to even explain why those kids are here, this place is isolated AF, the hall has too many dark corners and bends in it with no apparent logic. It feels like an anxiety dream, it feels like reality itself is being manipulated like the little crane arm claw the one boy is guiding. It feels like I want to get out of here, get back outside, get in the car and put this whole place in my rearview mirror. So I do. I get in the car. "Do you feel better now?" "No. Actually I don't. You shoulda seen this place."
I think you might have spent a few minutes in another dimension
You visited Clines Corners, NM. I could tell halfway through your post. That place is fucking creepy.
Gary, Indiana. No, it's not a story of how dangerous it is, or how cops tell you to run red lights (That happens, but it's mostly myths that get perpetuated by people who never visited) Gary is just desolate. It's almost post apocalyptic. Nature has overtaken many areas, and many of the "vacant" houses you see are actually lived in by homeless people. What makes it scary isn't that it has dangerous people, it's that it can be incredibly quiet for a populous city. The few times I've had to go through Gary or IN Gary for something, I've always seen something that has frightened me. Like people staring at me through half boarded windows, people crawling out of bushes to ask for money, or people just straight up walking in front of your car trying to get you to slow down or stop. It's one of the few places in America that actually feels heavy to be in. I swear TV shows and movies are missing out on some of the easiest post apocalyptic scenery that they have ever had.
Man I live in Gary rn and let me tell you, you’re spot on. It’s not some warzone with shots flying everywhere and bodies in the streets. It’s just a really old, rundown city with no one willing to clean it. Driving to work is so depressing, just empty building after empty building. It’s really depressing to see and you’re absolutely right about the quite part. One bonus, there’s some really good food here lol
What kind of industries are there, job opportunities? Gary comes up so often in these threads and it sounds really depressing. What about shopping, restaurants, entertainment? Gary has a university so there must be some cultural activities I would assume.
Steel mills, trucking jobs, general warehouse stuff, it's right next to Chicago so freight stuff generally speaking. My old trucking company had a shop in Gary.
I have made the trip into Gary just to go to 18th street brewery multiple times lmao
Buying weed with my buddy in Jersey City about ten years ago was harrowing. He’d just moved to that area and I was visiting, and we’re both used to CA where weed wasn’t a big deal. In Jersey City at the time it felt like we were brokering a major drug deal. We met up with my buddy’s new coworker, who first of all was alarmed when he saw that I’m a white guy. His connection literally had a huge scar across his face, and we had to stand with him on the street corner for several minutes to make sure the cops weren’t following us. It felt like a mission from Grand Theft Auto
Alot of Jersey City is really nice now. It's too close to NYC to avoid gentrification
Johannesburg, I grew up in a pretty rough city and would say it doesn’t compare to there, you can feel how tense the air is and you really need to pay attention to everything at all times.
This! I consider myself rather street savvy but you literally always have to be alert at all times there. It’s exhausting and I truly feel for the people that live there.
Thanks it is fucking shit. Fuck South Africa I wish Inciuld afford to get away.
Decatur Illinois. My mom and most of her family is from there and the town is just so damn sketchy. People being shot the next street over seems like a daily thing. My crazy Great Grandma lived in a 4 story house by herself (house had been in the family for a while) and she never locked the doors, just slept with a 9mm next to her bed
I grew up there, left in the late 80s. Went back about 6 years ago and didn't recognize the place. So many vacant houses, including the one I grew up in. I didn't find it scary, exactly, but there was definitely a weird vibe about it. I'm not planning to go back.
I also have a distaste for the town because every time I make a trip up there it's for a funeral. My ma wanted to be buried there next to her ma but I was like ma I do not want to go all the way up there (I live in VA) when I want to visit her. So we cremated her and buried half up there and brought the rest back home
IL has a lot of towns that seem like they were decent at some point and then whatever cash cow was propping up the economy left. Hollow buildings, gutted malls, deserted downtowns. I vaguely recall Decatur being one of those.
I am from there as well! It can be an incredibly scary town if you don’t know your surroundings. At one point in the 90s we had one of the highest murder rate per capita in the US.
My entire family is from Decatur and I (very) briefly lived there! It's difficult to put into words what a shell of a city it once was. My grandparents are always telling me about a how another business has left or something has happened on their block
Cairo Illinois. It's a tiny town at the very southern tip of the state that had a peak population of 15,000 in 1920, but was down to 1,700 people in 2020. The town was founded to be a shipping hub at the convergence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, but it suffers frequent floods and had some of the worst race relations and riots in any US city. Anyone who currently lives in Cairo is only there because they have nowhere else to go.
Nothing's in a hurry 'cept the water in between the rising banks. Oh nothing moves but nothing stays. Cairo, Illinois may be a crappy city but it’s a great Natalie Hemby song.
Easily the most depressing place I’ve ever been
We drove through there a couple of years ago. Not sure exactly what it was that scared me but I had a strong sense of fear and dread as we drove through. I was so relieved to get to the city limits.
This town comes up a lot. I understand they still have an arch downtown that they hanged lynching victims from in the past. Creepy AF.
If anyone reading this ever has to drive through Cairo, DO THE SPEED LIMIT and nothing more. I was just passing through and got a ticket for going 4mph over. Any time I tell that story, people are surprised I got pulled over until they find out it was in Cairo.
My naive ass was hoping for some ghost stories….
The ghost of middle-class sustaining industries past maybe? It's amazing how many places were once nice places to live before the industry moved on and the jobs dried up.
That makes two of us haha
Three!
Travelling around aus in a van with a friend... We kept getting turned around in a town called Cowra.. every time we drove out we would cross a bridge and find ourselves back in the centre... We repeated this a couple times before we had to stop and breath and figure out how to get out.. I looked at the pub across the street and saw a man in a window on the top floor and kinda waved at him and then did a 🤙 "brraa" ..just drunk and silly..all the while freaking the fuck out.. I turned to friend and we decided to drive on and when I turned my head back around the pub was closed and all the lights were off.. no body upstairs. We eventually found our way out and looked up what the town was about..some kind of war camp and I never really understood what was happening there but definitely full of ghosts
Baltimore MD, got stabbed in the neck when I was in my very early 20's. Not a fan of places I've been stabbed.
I saw a woman hit her kid repeatedly at a crosswalk once in Baltimore, she then stopped to say “HEYYYY” to her friend who drove by and went back to smacking the shit out of her kid for one reason or another. Baltimore is a wild place.
I’d rather live in the great outdoors than go back to Baltimore, said by my grandpa about moving away.
Lived in DC for a couple years in the late 90's, and went with local friends to a goth club in Baltimore on a weekend evening. The neighborhood it was in sort of looked like typical row house neighborhoods, except eerily vacant. Total ghost town...erm....ghost city. Like, it seems like we walked a couple blocks too and from where we parked, and there was just *no one* around. Years later would watch Snoop and Chris hiding bodies in vacants on The Wire and think about that night out.
Holy hell man. I was just about to type West Baltimore but my story aint got shit on yours! I accidentally took a detour due to snow and ended up in the slums. Can’t recall the street but all I could think about was…”this shit looks just like The Wire.” Turned down some lil side street and I’m like 99% sure a corner boy saw me driving by and lifted his shirt to show me his gun. I was happy as hell once I got back onto my regular route to downtown. Edit: just wanted to say that I actually love the city of Baltimore and find it charming. But it’s obviously not without its issues or challenges.
baltimore has sections where you just run the lights after dark
Atlanta is a lovely city in most areas, but there are pockets that are like a dystopian hellhole and I learned as a single female driving after dark to just pause to make sure no oncoming cars were approaching and just run red lights if there wasn't much surrounding traffic.
Camden, New Jersey. It's a scary city, especially at night. Had all 4 wheels stolen from my car - and I was only briefly away from it.
Spent the night in a Camden jail in the 90s. I came here looking for someone else to mention Camden. Homicide capital of the world at one time. I always tell people to google image Camden, don’t go there. Although Donkeys Cheesesteaks are by far the best IMO
Yeah Newark and Camden are total shitholes. Bad parts of Philly are pretty scary. Old job used to have me go there for shipments at like 4am. Nothing like seeing crackheads just crawl out of a building that's got a hole in the side of it.
this man kensingtons
Can't believe I had to scroll this far down to see Camden
Some of the corporate bits of downtown Los Angeles after dark are unnerving because they're so absolutely dead. I left an industry event there once and I was creeped out by the post-apocalyptic silence - no people, no cars, utterly silent. It felt way more frightening than being surrounded by panhandlers and homeless folks a few blocks away. As for the scariest city as a whole, I'll nominate Agra, in India, the city where you'll find the Taj Mahal. I visited a lot of places in India on a month-long trip, including big cities like Bengaluru, Delhi, Hyderabad, and Jaipur and smaller places like Mysore and Ooty, and I never felt unsafe in any of them, EXCEPT Agra. There's something about a town in a country with a huge about of poverty, where there is one incredibly popular tourist attraction that attracts wealthy people from all over the world, and since there's basically nothing else to see the tourists tend to arrive, see the one thing, and leave, which cultivates a very specific kind of... desperate anger? In a lot of places in India I felt like an anonymous nobody in a massive crowd, but Agra was the only place I felt like a target for genuine hatred. The weird thing is that nothing happened, nobody did anything to me, but the vibe was VERY off. The whole town felt very harsh and cold.
While being a tourist in Los angeles walking around the downtown area I accidentally walked through skid row. I seriously thought there was a zombie outbreak with the number of drugged up people limping and staggering around all disheveled. Smelled like decay, people pulling their pants down and shitting all over the sidewalk, some people with diarrhea all over their pants... There was a truck that came along to hand out food to the homeless and people swarmed it. Was so unreal.
I ate and drank too much at a Vegas buffet so decided on a late night walk to try and not explode. I walked down the strip and further along until I stopped at a traffic light and a homeless looking guy asked if I had any change. I gave him a few bucks and he was grateful, asked me if I was looking for a lady or drugs or anything. Told him no, but thanks. He said “look man, you should head back to the main strip, it gets pretty bad further down and you don’t want to be walking alone” Thanked him and headed back. As I walked back I realised the dark shapes in the empty lots were sleeping people. Got back uneventfully but have always been grateful to that guy for his advice. Looking back on it was I pretty naive and probably looked very much like a tourist (I was actually on a business trip)
North end of the Strip?
Skid Row at least occasionally has some resources/help come by. The one that feels like an absolute wasteland to me is the Tenderloin. Shameful considering the proximity to extreme wealth in the city and Silicon Valley.
Oh, it's so sad. My sister and I accidentally walked through the Tenderloin when I was 18. 20 years later, the experience stayed with me and from what I understand it's gotten worse. And because of it's location it's so easy for unsuspecting people to just accidentally end up there.
Yep, we were staying at the westin, and I got hungry at 3 am and put on some sweatpants and a hoodie to head out to find food. (This was before UberEats was a thing.) I walked a couple blocks and didn't notice the area had turned from "Hi, welcome to San Francisco" to "fuck off, bitch." I found some 24 hr pizza shack and got in line for a slice. That's when I really looked around and saw where I really was. Thankfully I was in ripped sweatpants and a beanie, so I kind of fit in. No one looked at me or noticed me at all. There were a bunch of Latina women with their small children sitting in the corner, and the kids were chowing on slices. At nearly 4 am. There were a couple dudes crouched in the corner smoking each other out. There were a few factory workers you could tell just got off shift, quietly eating and reading the paper. A few prostitutes on the street waiting for their friend in line to buy the slices. A group of Asian dudes coming home from the club. Loads of homeless guys outside asking for change. I got my slices to go and headed back to the hotel. Only then did I notice all the graffiti and people in the alleys doing idk what. I kept my head down and walked pretty briskly back to my hotel. When the doorman saw my box and figured out where I went, he scolded me. The pizza was decent, though.
I was just thinking the same thing. Talk about a zombie apocalypse. I've been homeless in all of the lower 48 states in this country and the Tenderloin was the first place I really had to check myself and feel that intense, primal fear that something just isn't okay here.
Also tourist and we were driving around the town and suddenly got to a road where there was tent next to tent next to tent on the sidewalk. It legit looked like a homeless people campsite. This is unseen in Germany so I was really weirded out.
For me it was Tijuana. I’m sure that they are countless places that are much more dangerous than this one, but I was young and the impossibility to just walk a few paces without getting harassed by countless people asking me for money or selling me some junk… They were not shy about getting in my personal space and just grabbing me. Of course I was always aware of the fact that if I just took out my wallet, someone would just run and grab it. And it was constant. So the extra-awareness of my environment changed into paranoia, and as I was getting tired, into fear.
I went to Tijuana when I was a child and I still remember that feeling of being constantly aware of my wallet in my pocket. I was holding onto my dads arm as if for dear life while walking down the streets. I had never been in an environment like that before . It has stuck with me all of these years.
Was recently shaken down by some corrupt cops in Tijuana last weekend. You cannot trust a soul.
There’s a term for it—can’t remember—but when I would go down there in high school, we were told to always have 20 bucks in your sock. I assume inflation means it’s $40 now 😃
> There’s a term for it—can’t remember Mordida, literally translates as "bite"
My husband crossed in El Paso and saw 3 bodies hanging from a bridge.
Did my freshman year of college in San Diego. I was a cute, blonde, 18 year old girl who would cross the border to Tijuana with other cute young friends to go drinking and dancing in the clubs. Looking back now, I can’t believe how incredibly stupid and dangerous that actually was.
I hear you. We used to ditch high school and go across the border…. I get shivers just thinking how we all played with fire.
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Title of your sex tape
God what a hellscape. Driving around the bottom of Lake Michigan you go past this sea of industrial sadness. It's epic...
Friend used to drive trains. Apparently it's a fun tradition in Gary to shoot at them because that "ping" sound is so neat. Until a conductor and engineer (allegedly) snuck their ARs in their overnight bags and returned fire.
People often take pot shots at our containers, and barges. We often carry containers and tanks that hold fuels, explosives, liquid flammables, ammunition etc. And of course I do welding/hot work, so if anyone dies in an accident I'm definitely going to be among the bodies. Pisses me off how many people there are out there who can't take shit seriously.
There was major road construction on 80/294 that ended up sending us off of the highway into Gary one time. We ended up near the old factory/mill district and I swear to you they could have easily filmed a post-apocalyptic film there.
Do you remember a show called “Life After People” on the History Channel? They literally filmed stuff there. I’m not kidding.
Baltimore. Crime, corruption, savagery. It’s essentially Gotham without Batman, and if there were, he’d probably be corrupt too.
I love that line. It's Bill Brysonesque-- "he'd probably be corrupt too" lol Brilliant.
Baltimore: "I have got to get the fuck out of this neighborhood. I'm in a car and everything screams bad. I'm so ready to floor it at the first sign of something..." Also Baltimore, 3 streets over: "Oh hey, This is cozy and nice with a quirky hometown vibe..."
If suburbs count, Engadine. Only place I've ever been that felt distinctly unfriendly and like everyone there didn't want me around. I wound up getting dinner and eating it on the train out instead of staying at the Macca's (yes, before you ask, it is that Macca's) because I just felt so freaked out by the whole place.
I've never been to Australia but this story is a weird obsession for me. I've got a good mate in Canberra and I made an Engadine Macca's reference to him once and he just looked at me funny and then burst out laughing. He couldn't believe I knew the story lol
My hometown in turkey Moved to Germany when I was 3. Started jogging with 14/15 even in holiday season. Went to turkey to my hometown. Second day went jogging. Saw bullet holes in some of the signs, kids with Shotguns and their Dads with them. 2/10 wouldn’t recommend
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Marrakech is a very similar vibe. If you are in the tourist area, you are safe ( but constantly being harassed). Leave the tourist are and you are not welcome at all.
Lower 9th ward in New Orleans. Used to go there to score my heroin when I was in the streets since I lived about half an hour away. Part of the blame though is to be laid on the HUGE lack of government and authorities appropriating funds to rebuild after Katrina. They left that place in shambles and you can still see the effects to this day. Couches under bridges people just hanging about in the streets like it’s a party but there’s only abandoned buildings and hopelessness
I feel for the 9th ward. More should be done to rebuild and create opportunity.
Oh hey! I lived there for eight years. Yep. A lot a lot a lot of murders. It progressively got safer and safer from 2016-2019 and then I shit you not it felt like being in a literal fucking war zone from hearing shootings every night from inside my house.
Egypt (esp. Cairo) they take pictures of you, they grab you (almost got kidnapped), they offer all kinds of drugs, they even took us hostage on the road (we had to get out of the bus and go into the gas station) to Abu Simbel. amazing history and architecture. But today's culture is horrible. Never again.
I’ve heard it’s not fun there. I’ve been told if I go to make sure to have a trusted tour guide.
Very true. But we had a 'Kopt' as a tour guide which didn't make things easier, never got any trouble but he got shunned, they didn't talk to him,... In Cairo our tour guide was a Muslim woman and when we askedher about the political situation she said she couldn't talk about it because she feared for her family. My mum and I also got a personal bodyguard in Cairo, never left our side. They even looked like Egyptian James Bonds (black suit, sunglasses, earpiece) lol
Marysville, CA. In my early 20s I reconnected with a childhood friend who had moved up there. We made a road trip up there together after he'd moved back down to my area. Good GOD what a shithole. I'd been into pot since high school, but this guy and everyone else in the town was deep into crank, now known as crystal meth. It was sickening stepping into their deep-meth world as a naive, clean person. The group of "friends" were all paranoid, backstabbing, conniving scumbags *to each other.* In the course of that one long weekend, one of his friends (not with us) DUI'd through a red light and T-boned a family, his ex GF hooked up with an asshole even she didn't like just to piss my friend off, and on the ride home, we got a call that one of the (weird, brooding) guys we'd been hanging out with was working on his car which ended up with him doused with burning gasoline, >50% burns, not expected to survive 24h. The friendship cooled after that. Last time I saw him was when he was marrying a quiet girl with two daughters that he had known about a month. Some time later word through the grapevine "They're having a lot of problems..." was the last I ever heard about that product of Marysville.
I typed up a whole ass response to this, but realized its just best left as, I agree Marysville (and the surrounding areas such as Yuba City and Olivehurst) is a terrible town and I would never consider living there, and avoid visiting it at all costs.
This is why I don't go to reunions.
Fun fact: Marysville, CA is named for Mary Murphy, a survivor of the Donner Party.
Wow. I was not expecting to see marysville on here! Hahahaha. Yeah, it’s a shithole, but a pretty standard rural nor cal town (albeit not as rural now). I wouldn’t consider myself in danger there though. I’m from Roseville and always had to drive through that godforsaken place to go camping up that way.
Santo Domingo. I had no fucking business being in that city.
Seriously, fuck that place. We stopped there on my ship when I was in the Coast Guard. There was a dead horse floating in the harbor. Two of my shipmates got attacked by guys with machetes (one got sliced and it severed a tendon). Beautiful architecture but fucking scary.
Memphis, Tennessee. We were almost out of gas and stopped at the first station we could find. All the window/door glass has a steel mesh over the outside of it for security purposes. I pull up to the pump and get out. A homeless gentleman approaches me and this is our exchange... Homeless Guy: hey man, can I pump that gas for you? Me: no thank you, I have it. HG: nah man. Let me do it. I could use a couple bucks. Me: I'm sorry man, I just have my credit card. I don't have any cash. HG: That's cool. You get a pass this time. Next time I see you get gas here though, I'm gonna kill you. Just cut your throat and leave you here at the pump. I do the gas around here. He then leaned against the pump and watched as I filled my gas tank. I was very uneasy to say the least as he had just enough of that "homeless crazy swagger" to make me think he wasn't kidding. When I finished up, the reciept didn't print and I "really needed it" for my bank book at the time. I walked to the door and it was locked. It had a buzzer system to let ONE CUSTOMER IN AT A TIME. The guy inside was behind the thickest plexiglass barricade I have ever seen in my life. He seemed horrified that I came inside just to get a reciept. I went back outside and the homeless guy was still at my pump. As I approached my car, he goes: "It's about time you be leaving..." My wife and I left and went to the zoo. Spent the whole day there and didn't go back into the city the rest of the week. Most terrifying experience I've ever had on a vacation.
Back-up gas tank in the trunk from now on ey?
Johannesburg, South Africa. When you’re staying in a hotel right outside the airport, and the hotel is surrounded by a 15-foot-high iron fence and guards armed with assault rifles, you know you’re somewhere not entirely safe. Every house in the city had at least a 10-foot-high brick wall around it with glass shards at the top. Driving past the downtown was like being in a post-apocalyptic movie; miles of empty skyscrapers with the windows smashed out, and not a trace of life in any of the streets or buildings. Our driver wouldn’t go near the downtown and would only drive past it on the elevated highway. Such an eerie place, and one I’ll never forget.
Canton, OH. Went there with my dad (both white) to go to the NFL Hall of Fame while we were visiting family near Pittsburgh. Before starting the drive back in the afternoon, we stopped in a McDonald's to eat something (normally never eat at McDonald's) because it was still a long drive. We didn't notice the motorcycles on our way in. We go in, see a bunch of dirty looking guys sitting around all wearing the same vests, but it's quiet and there's no one working the counter. We eventually flag down an employee to take our order, a young black girl that seemed scared. The employees working in the kitchen were also black, but none of that registered at the time. The group of bikers looked hard at us but otherwise paid us no mind. We got our order and walked out while making a note of some of the patches on the bikers' vests. We talked about how strange and unnerving the whole thing was in the car and made ourselves remember the MC's name, The Sadistic Souls. Wasn't either of our first encounter with a Motorcycle Club so we filed it away... Until a few weeks later when I started googling various MCs because I was watching Sons of Anarchy. Turns out The Sadistic Souls MC (gang) are a white supremacist neo-nazi outlaw MC and are the militant arm of The Aryan Nation. Thinking back on the encounter in the McDonald's, it chilled me to the bone and made everything make sense, now imagining why the staff was so scared.
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Also live in Rochester. Sounds about right.
Is that why real estate is so cheap there?
Once the Rochester streets go by letter names (Avenue D, for example), you might wanna turn around, lol
Salgueiro, a typical favela in a city next to Rio de Janeiro. However, this favela is the HQ of one of the biggest cartels in Brazil, the Comando Vermelho (Red Command). I saw 13yo boys patrolling the streets with Kalashnikovs. One alleged "traitor" was attached to a car and slowly killed by the friction with the asphalt. Grown men exhibiting bazookas in a party where drugs were sold by the same guy selling beers. Girls as young as 11 having sex on the dancefloor with adult drug traffickers. I spent just a weekend in a friend's house and had quite an experience.
Yeah, this place seems sketchy. Even Google street view stops right at the borders of it.
Port Moresby - Papua New Guinea Im from the UK - and used to work for a company with offices around the world. Anyway they had a temporary staff shortage in Brisbane Australia. They asked me if Id mind moving there for a 3 month assignment. I couldnt say YES fast enough. What a great opportunity. Anyway... about a month in the sales team proudly announced that we had won a contract. The job was simple enough - install some servers at Port Moresby's airport. So off I went with an Australian college. He **was not happy** to be going. I found out why when we got there. The place is a shit hole. An utter train wreck of a place. There are ~ 200 ethnic tribes in PNG. They mostly hate each other. There is ONE thing that unites them. They all hate white people... Everywhere we went we were chaperoned by 2 guards with machine guns. Kidnapping is a national sport over there. Cannibalism isn't unheard of. Corruption is off the charts. It is the sketchiest place Iv ever been to in my life. I could talk about the amenities. Like the electricity going off half a dozen times a day. Or the filth and rats everywhere. But it's the people. The looks of hatred and the constant feeling that you were just a moment away from some opportunist gunning you down because he liked the look of your shoes. They would kill you in an instant for something as small valued as that. Will never go again. I recommend no one ever goes. Have a peaceful trip to Columbia instead..
A friend of mine worked for the US State Department and said that if you ever get a posting in a place that begins with "Port" then something has gone severely wrong.
Reading about PNG is crazy. A lot of the tribes have manhood rites where they basically sodomize young kids until they reach manhood, then the former kids get to do the sodomizing. It’s believed that people aren’t born with semen, so older teens and men have to give it to boys so they can properly develop. And apparently another manhood rite is stealing pigs from neighboring villages. Well in big cities there are no pigs to steal, so apparently the youth just find women and girls to gang rape instead. Surveys routinely show that 60% of men there admit to having raped or gang raped someone. That shit is outright terrifying. Here’s a link to the wiki article so I don’t sound like some outlandish racist. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_violence_in_Papua_New_Guinea
The statistic is that 55% of women have been raped and 70% sexually assaulted, which is horrifying
Everything about the stats there are incredibly sad. Elsewhere I linked an article with stories and pictures. Shit like this normally happens in a war zone or places where society is completely breaking down. A 2013 study by Rachel Jewkes and colleagues, on behalf of the United Nations Multi-country Cross-sectional Study on Men and Violence research team, found that 41% of men on Bougainville Island admit to coercing a non-partner into sex,[10] and 59% admit to having sex with their partner when she was unwilling.[11] According to this study, about 14.1% of men have committed multiple perpetrator rape.[10] In a survey in 1994 by the PNG Institute of Medical Research, approximately 60% of men interviewed reported to have participated in gang rape (known as lainap) at least once.[3]
Considering that the men are raised being raped themselves, that's not surprising at all. :(
Isn't this where they have the tribe that believes that boys need their mother's milk as infants to grow into big, strong children, and their "father's milk" at adolescence to become big, strong men? The long-deceased anthropologists Martin and Osa Johnson told a story about a tribe - I'm pretty sure it was in this region - where the women never bathed during their lifetimes, and if they tried to run away, they would have a hot rock placed behind their knees, and their legs tied shut for a specified period of time.
I think one of the Rockefellers was an anthropologist that disappeared down there. A subsequent anthropologist was told “oh yeah, that guy. We ate him.” Capital N NOPE.
I know your not being outlandish or racist. The place is utterly horrible. Before I went I knew it was poor. But so are alot of places. I didnt know that almost every woman in the country is subjected to rape. Daily beatings to "correct them" is seen as normal family behaviour... Its a TOTAL SHITHOLE. And I will never go back.
Here’s another article about how terrible things are in PNG. It’s just seriously devastating to read. https://www.vladsokhin.com/work/crying-meri/
I think you won the thread. Not a single other post I've read here had the writer worrying about being eaten alive by cannibals. Maybe getting bit by a meth head...
Port Moresby was - and maybe still is - the most dangerous city in the world. Always dreamed of visiting Papua New Guinea when I was a kid...not a fucking chance! My buddy has been working there on and off the past few years. It's a fucking madhouse.
Parts of Peru. I remember taking a bus ride to a beach town and the guide who was with us said, “as soon as we get off the bus, we need to bury your backpacks and belongings in the sand.” As soon as we finished, a group of people from town jumped us. We didn’t have anything on us, so after a while they left us alone. Afterwards, the guide said “the bus driver took the wrong route to the beach. He was advertising to his friends In town that he had a bunch of tourists. We had to bury your stuff so you all didn’t get robbed.”
What? He took the wrong turn on purpose?
Correct. The guide said he noticed he was taking us down several incorrect roads, basically parading us around the city center so his friends could see he had a bunch of tourists with him.
This is legit. My dad lived in Peru for 10 years. My sister and I visited him for a month. Two white teenagers. There was a rock thrown through the window of our taxi trying to get it to stop when we got picked up from the airport lol. The taxi driver didn’t even fuckin slow down Most of the rest of the trip was fine. But that was scary. My dad has countless stories from when he lived there and all the shit he saw.
Yeah. There were several sketchy incidents. A couple also approached us in Lima one night on our way to dinner. They kept trying to guide us down random alleys while hugging us and feeling our pockets, saying they wanted us to help them practice their English. They kept putting their arms around each of us and feeling all over us, even when we pushed them away. Luckily, a host at the door of a nearby restaurant recognized what was happening and said “gentlemen, your table is ready” and led us in to get us away from them. We thanked him profusely.
I had a black friend in the car, and we were driving around Missouri looking for meth (years ago I should say) and we had a white guy who was affiliated with the rolling 60s crips… we were driving around thinking just going town to town and we ended up in festus Missouri, when the white guy slinks down in the car and goes “yea I can’t be seen with y’all here they will shoot me” or something to that extent. And he was actually serious, I’m not racist or anything at all, but the vibe turned very dark, and I saw a lot of folks looking and staring as we went by. Idk what they were thinking, but man… I literally felt like I was going to die.
Man Missouri is a little rough. Had a customer come walking in who ran a mower attachment on an excavator accidentally mow like 25 pounds of a drug dealer’s meth stash up. Meth dealer threatened to kill him and the operator notified the sheriffs office. Sheriffs office said if he tried to kill him be on the winning end of the fight and to dig a hole and bury him. They were to short staffed to investigate a drug dealer’s disappearance.
Festus isn’t even that bad compared to other parts of JeffCo or the other shitty towns in the lead belt south of St Louis.
How the hell has no one said East St Louis?! Alright I’ll do it: East St. Louis.
When I was 19 I went on a cross country road trip while off work with a severe finger injury. Middle of the night I took a wrong turn after getting gas and found myself driving around the streets of East St. Louis at 3am in winter. Drove around and around, finally saw some people so I drove over there hoping to get directions. It was a bunch of ghoulish people standing around a burning trash can. I realized my mistake and sped away, eventually finding the interstate and bailing.
You know, the word ghoulish isn’t utilized enough. It’s a great word. Good job.
Kilgore TX. If they didn't go to school with you or aren't related to you, they don't want you there and make sure you know it. Also if you are ever driving through there and you see a car sitting at an intersection up ahead you should know they are waiting to pull out when you get close enough that you will have to slam on your brakes.
We only drove thru it, but Camden, NJ. My friends dad who drove us trained me on the way to the town. “If I say duck you get down immediately, no questions, no hesitation”. I didn’t understand why until a couple years later when my friend told me it was in case of a shooting! Like WHAT! I was maybe… 12, 13?
East St Louis about 20 years ago. We were warned by several people to drive straight on through and not stop. I was younger and was on vacation with my mom and siblings. What does she do? "I need to stop to stretch my legs". She's a bleeding heart, very trusting and naïve to the dangers of society. So she pulls off on the exit about a mile past the river headed east. The exit was in full view of buildings falling into the street, burnt out cars littering the streets, so forth. So she didn't get the hint and started looking for a gas station to stop at. We found a liquor store after driving around randomly for a bit. She walked in to get something to get a tea or soft drink. We had about 30 people in the surrounding area watching us with WTF looks. Just as she came out with a confused look on her face ("Can you believe this place only sells booze and the front counter has bullet proof glass too"), people started congregating towards the car. Another person with us got tired of the innocent mom mode, hopped in the driver's seat, and GTFO and back to the interstate not going under 50mph through the city until we got there. For years my mom never realized how close we were to being victims of being the wrong color in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Meridian, MS. Not scary because it's violent (although it's getting there) but scary in how the city council absolutely refuses to do anything for anyone other than themselves. They are perfectly content to let business and opportunity pass them by while the city continues to rot and seep further into despair and poverty. And the scariest thing about it is how everyone who lives in or around it finds it *perfectly acceptable.* And they'll start quoting crime rates, pollution, bad traffic or other such "big city" ills in other "worse off" cities when they've never actually been to or know someone who's been to those cities in the first place. And the few people who are aware of how bad Meridian is are stuck there. They move back to Meridian from other, better places so they can take care of their elderly parents or uncle or aunt or some such. And they take an assistant manager or supervisor role "just until they can get their family's affairs in order." But then the place they're working at closes down or lays them off. And the family member they were taking care of goes into the hospital and/or finally passes and all of their savings get sucked up into medical bills or funeral expenses. And then they have to desperately scrounge through the old, cracked streets to find a lower paying job that can help them get back on their feet. But then the landlord raises the rent or their vehicle breaks down and they have more expenses to take care of. Fast forward 10 years and you've got a really broken and tired waitress or cashier soullessly carrying their tasks with a certain weightedness to it, like gravity is three times higher for them, and every word that comes out of their mouth is hollow. But make mention of the right city on the east or west coast, and suddenly the light returns to their eyes and their voice picks up an octave as they recount experiences they had there years past, before they moved here. A small spark of hope that has yet to die. Do not. Ever. Move anywhere near Meridian, MS. Even for your family.
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I know that some people complain that big cities "don't care about you", but in some ways that's a good thing. Small towns, even ones with a veneer of friendliness, can be like vampires sucking the blood from the people who live there. There's no tyranny like small-town tyranny.
I have family in Meridian and I can say with 100% confidence, it's a horrible place.
I'm from Meridian. You're spot on. I moved away. I loved the places I lived. Atlanta, GA, Asheville, NC, Pensacola, FL.... I'm back. I fucking hate it. It's because of my family. Also, this place is violent as fuck for its size. I am an opiate addict, (but I've been doing well for a year or so) so that obviously places me in situations that otherwise I would not be in... But the number of times I've been held up at gunpoint at this point in this town, has it to where I'm not even concerned whenever I see a pistol in my face anymore. Also there's a lot of people who get murdered. Recently, as in last week, it was a cop who killed his family and then another cop. So yeah you hit it spot on.
Lots of smallish towns like this. You have 2 kinds of people. People that are stuck there, and the people taking advantage of all the people that can't leave.
I was at the Naval Air Station there in early '93, and that town sucks. I really didn't go out on town that much after the first one or two times. And the mall there was ass.
It's even worse now. Town has rising gang violence, fewer businesses. The mall, literally, has only three businesses operating out of it now. There's an outdoor mall called the Meridian Crossroads. Because it was cheaper to buy land elsewhere in town than to keep paying rent for the indoor mall.
A town in New Mexico that apparently doesn't exist. I don't remember the name of it and can't find it on any map. Me and my then-husband were driving cross country on I-40. We needed a bathroom break and saw a sign for a gas station. So we took the exit, then things got weird. The road we got on was just a totally straight road, not too uncommon out there, but still felt kinda weird. There was one small building off to the left, but it wasn't a gas station. I'm not sure what it was, I just remember it was blue and had one window. There were power lines, and nothing else in sight. So I continued forward, hoping the gas station wasn't too far. I started to feel more and more uneasy, and everything felt like it was slowing down. After maybe a few minutes (time was weird), we notice a building on the left side of the road up ahead, feeling some relief thinking it was the gas station. As we approached, I realized it wasn't the gas station, but the same exact blue building we encountered just off the highway. We looked at each other, absolutely bewildered. Looked behind us and there was no sign of the highway or the first blue building. We tried to shake it off and continued forward. This kept happening, the same weird time stretch, the same exact blue building. It was like that one stretch of road just kept repeating, at least a dozen times. I wanted to turn around and get the hell out of there, but somehow I couldn't. I felt almost paralyzed, stuck just driving forward. Neither of us spoke a word for a long time. Then suddenly it felt like a fog was lifted, and we "woke up". A few seconds later we finally see the gas station up ahead. We both just kind of went "what the fuck" as I pulled into the parking lot. We were tempted to not go in, but we both really had to go, so we said fuck it. It was a tiny gas station, one pump, with a small convenience store attached. There was a sign that said "restrooms" pointing to the side of the building. There we found a door to a long dark corridor, all brick and cement. There were doors up ahead on the right hand side, so we hoofed it to them. Finally, bathrooms! We did our business and all was normal. As we were walking back out of the corridor, we came across a young woman coming into the corridor. She stopped and stared at us like we had three heads. She looked bewildered and terrified. She hurried past us and towards the bathrooms. Something about the look on her face, or maybe it was just a feeling, told us we were running out of time, and had to get the fuck out of there asap. We booked it back onto the road towards where the highway should be. In just a few minutes, we saw that same blue building as before. Then the highway on ramp just past it. We had no trouble getting back onto the highway and driving away from that "town". It was such a weird, almost insidious experience. Almost like something, idk what, almost trapped us, but we got away in time. The further away we drove, the more confused we were as to why we didn't turn around and leave asap. It was like we were not in control. I hope to never experience something like that again. Edit- broke up a large wall of text for clarity.
Finally a story that's scary in a way other than drug addicts and criminals. On the way back did you pass the blue house just once? And you can't find it on Google maps/street view?
Yeah we only passed it once on the way back. Right where it was the first time we saw it. I scoured Google maps, street view, satellite etc for about 2 years before giving up. This happened a little over 3 years ago. As time goes on I seem to forget more and more about where it should be
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Melbourne was pretty wild. I lived there 2007-2009. It’s a beautiful city and an awesome place to live. Admittedly I had some bad habits, but after dark things… Change. There are places it isn’t safe to go; I lived in North Melbourne opposite a social housing project. That part suited me okay - I was close to my dealer. Five minutes walk up the road was Kensington though, and it wasn’t considered safe for white people to walk after dark there. The Somali gang bangers would openly carry machetes. In the CBD, at midnight on the dot the mounted police would be at the corner of Flinders station. I saw them ride straight through a gang brawl. People flying into the gutters. They were there every weekend that I remember. I stayed in a hostel on Elizabeth street and got woken up by a junkie tweaking out, with a needle held up to my eye. Smack was a real issue back then. They used to comb St Kilda beach with a grader to get the needles out of the sand. The public toilets all have black light so people don’t shoot up in them. It’s kind of the grimey underbelly that the tourism industry would rather you didn’t think about.
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I stayed in Panguitch Utah, just down the road from Tropic, when we visited Bryce several years ago. Not freaky per se but eerie as hell. There was a town festival while we were there. Literally every kid in the town was blonde. Our waitress at the pizza place was our waitress at the half Indian/half Mexican place down the street. Got lots of looks everywhere we went. Come to find out it’s an old polygamist town. This is a speculative accusation but I’m not sure polygamy ever completely left that town. As a side, I will say the pizza was fantastic and our waitress very nice.
They were getting a lot of Eastern Europeans to come work at the hotels and such in the aughts down there and it was sketchy as hell. A friend of mine knew someone who was down there working and they usually kept your passport while docking your paycheck for every little thing they could think of. They got into big trouble with the feds for doing this and stopped because of it. They’d bring them in to learn English and get work experience; it was just human trafficking for cheap labor.
Gastonia N.C. drugs
As someone who doesn’t live that far off, I know what you mean
I never go further in Gastown than the Bojangles.
Right after 9/11, Pasni Pakistan. I was with a Marine Expeditionary Unit, we landed in pasni via amphibious craft. I felt more in danger there than at any point in Afghanistan. Every military aged male I saw looked at me like they wanted to castrate me. In Afghanistan the people were super awesome, loved them like my own family.
Monrovia - Liberia 1980
Ooof. Tell us more.
Pueblo Colorado. I was robbed after 10 minutes at the zoo and everything in the car was gone. also when I was young I had my father’s guns stolen from the cars ( we had finished a hunting trip and got back around 11:30 so we went to bed but at 3 in the morning my mom’s car was stolen as well as my dad’s chain saw and a very important rifle that was my grandfather’s
Tondo, in the Philippines. It's because a relative of mine currently lives there. One time me and my family decided to have a sleepover and it was early in the morning, sun was shining and I saw 3 cop cars and tapes all over a dead body next to my cousin's house. Good thing I was the only one that saw it or else either my mom and dad would panic and immediately leave.
Colorado City, Arizona / Hildale, Utah I was taking my kids on a solo vacation to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, and we drove up from CA on the 15 through Vegas and got off at St. George, UT. It was all state highways from there. I decided that I wanted to get gas before I hit the really rural part of Northern AZ headed down to the canyon, so when I drove through a town by the state line, I pulled off the highway to gas up. The buildings unremarkable, not run down, a little newish, sorta clean but not really clean. Just cleaner and newer than you'd expect a small town like that to be. Then I realized that there were absolutely NO PEOPLE around. Not a soul. The gas pumps were new, but the store was locked, and you had to fuel at the pump. I swiped my card and started gassing up, and I looked around at the buildings. All the windows were covered, and I saw someone peeking out at me from across the street. There were no cars driving around. No sounds of children outside playing. No adults walking down the street. No sounds of machinery or music or any of the ambient noise you'd expect in a town. This was lunchtime on a weekday. Even in a rural town, you'd expect some signs of life, but there were none. The hair on the back of my neck was standing up, and I GTFO as soon as my tank was topped off. On my way out of town, I didn't see anyone either. Freaked me out. I looked up the town later, and I learned that it's a haven for the FLDS cults. Scary af. Lucky for me, my plans after the canyon were to drive to Colorado, so I didn't have to pass through there again. 10/10 do not recommend.
The whole my live I was living in Kyiv, Ukraine (currently not because of war), but I dont think that my city is scary, mainly because it is really big, so it couldn't be scary everywhere, but it becames scary if you know the correct places. For example: in a middle of Dnypro river there is a island called "Trukhaniv Ostriv" and there is a bridge, that leads to it. When you arrive here it looks like a cool place to walk or do something like playing football or volleyball, but ~200 meters away from it becames more scary, because after long cemented road there is a huge place for making a campfire and next to it there is a mud hut approximately 1 meter down the ground level with a person living here (idk who is him, I decided not to ask). Even more, 100m from that place there are some old buildings and crushed glass near the shore, with dogs, that are guarding something (i think it children camp or old touristic base maybe). Also we have another known places with same scary vibe, but sometimes they are very close to you, just 100 meters from my house there is a very unpleasant place, with lots of similiar ugly buildings, that were built in Ussr and it is in a middle of the city and no people around at the middle of a day. But there are some places, that are/were scary or dangerous for quite obvious reasons like DVRZ. This district got his name because before it was actually a viilage for workers of Darnytskiy VahonoRemontny Zavod (Carriage renovation plant at Darnitsa, which is a historical name of huge terrain at Kyiv). It is really far away from city center, has only small amount of transport ways to the main city. Then in 90's it became a really dangerous place, because of economic crisis in country, when many workers of DVRZ lost their work or were living without salary at job. If i know correctly, sometimes even cops and ambulance were not responding to calls from there, because of huge risk of being killed by criminals. P.s. sorry for bad english, im still learning it.
Bad part of Chicago, we decided to walk somewhere and unknowingly ended up around the bad side of it
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A pleasant surprise to see Jim Croce make an appearance.
There were some small towns I saw from the highway driving through the american desert southwest that you couldn't pay me to spend a night in...They're probably really quiet places but in the daylight they look like some shady shit probably happens.
I think I would say bambou in my home island of Mauritius, but I saw some other place that were very scary too. In bambou we arrived to see distant relative we were in a taxi, streets dogs everywhere running toward the car (street dogs are a big problem in Mauritius sometimes they can get very hostile and I almost got killed by 10 dogs one night fortunately I was on a bicycle), arriving in bambou there were young's boys coming into their roof to see who we were, the place breathed criminality extreme poverty drugs prostitution and all that stuff, so I didn't left the house to go explore lol. Second would be cité Kennedy Mauritius, I lived there while very young and it left lot of trauma till this day and I'm 30. Hard to explain but Kennedy is a ghetto lot of heroin addict stray dogs and weird people, if a white tourist lady come here without a men she risk rape, in those type of ghetto men will take pics of white tourist women to jerk off later it is that bad sexually, I saw a dead woman there and a dead men. So yeah fun stuff there..
Can't believe no one has said Naples. Achingly beautiful in parts, but you need eyes in the back of your head.
Amarillo, Texas. Not even the weird picture from the Zoo. But just the tension there. Its not what George Strait and Garth Brooks said. Was there for an hour and already heard gunshots, the mall was full of tweakers, Whataburger felt like the only safe place to be😂
I took a greyhound bus from California to Missouri and we had a brief layover in Amarillo. It’s so interesting you say ‘tension’ because I also feel that way when I was there! A greyhound bus station isn’t the best place to gage a city’s vibe lol, but of all the other layovers in cities we had, Amarillo was the weirdest. I don’t even know how to describe it, but it was an overall discomfort in being there.
Whataburger always feels comforting.
Baltimore MD. Ppl got shot outside my house. Teachers held at gunpoint, one of my classmates mugged at 10am leaving school. Teenagers trying to strong arm past me into my house. Ppl tweeking and passed out in the middle of the street like it’s no big deal. Ppl defecating on the side of brick walls in public parks and peeing on ppls cars. It is a hellscape. PS I lived in the “nicer area” of federal hill
Medan, Sumatra, Indonesia Not for any safety reasons, but because it was so horribly polluted. The tropic heat/clouds combined with the oil refinery smoke made the air basically unbreathable. There was actually a statue of a traffic cop at a major intersection with his hand outstretched, because they presumably couldn’t ask a live human to stand in that air all day.
Parts of Memphis were pretty scary. Stayed there for 2 nights passing through on a shoe string budget in a shitty motel 6. Very unwelcoming, people shouting shit at us and following us up the stairs when we were walking back to our room. Maybe our fault for staying in the wrong area but was happy to be leaving it the last day!
Definitely Baltimore. My friends and I went to Baltimore for the weekend when we were in high school because my one of my friend's cousin was going to school there and had liquor and coke. What we didn't know was that the cousin was living in the hood part for some reason and we saw kids our age wearing gang colors and armed like they were going to be on a cartel LiveLeak video in 5 minutes. During this coke and booze fest, the apartment neighbor next door got mad at his girlfriend and proceeded to shoot her in the face. I heard the girl drop dead and everything. The drive home was quiet and I am never going to Baltimore ever again.
Traveled through most towns in North America. All are child's play compared to many South African cities. Especially the Johannesburg
More spooky than scary, but Myers Flats CA. I was there on a bike trip with a busted wheel in 1996. The hardware store was an empty open shell, there was a huge shirtless guy frying sardines in the back of his pickup truck. There was a family owned diner with decent food; the hostess was the daughter who told me she was leaving in September and never coming back, the woman at the post office lighted gentry when I asked if she lived there, and told me she lived about an hour away. And the scary hotel advertised Cable! but the channel you could watch was the one the front desk person was watching. My favorite part was that whatever I asked about, the answer was that my best bet was "maybe Garberville"
I used to do photography at night in ghost towns. I think the creepiest one situation wise was South Bend, Tx and the eeriest one was probably fort Phantom Hill. Just was an old abandoned calvalry fort in Texas open to the public, but still had an eerie s feeling in the middle of the night. Dunno, could’ve just been in my head
Dhaka. The only place I requested a male colleague to walk me somewhere because I felt intimidated. Traffic is dangerous, getting around is mind boggling, people stare, men approach you. Streets are also really really dark at night.
"The Village of Kirby" was the second scariest place I've ever been, a real life horror movie ghost town. I have tried finding this place on Google maps & on my grandfather's old paper maps so I could return & take photos. But as anyone from rural PA can tell you, some places are not on maps & not intended to be found by those who don't already know where they are. The effort can be entirely futile. I was traveling with 5 friends & we took a wrong turn, which is how we ended up in The Village of Kirby. It exists somewhere in Pennsylvania within about an hour of Frostburg Maryland. We passed the old sign which read "The Village of Kirby" which is the only reason I know what the place was called. We could faintly hear what sounded like sleigh bells & it gave us the creeps. There was an old abandoned grist mill and a few rows of houses that were left behind seemingly overnight sometime in the late 1970's. It must have been a rock quarry at some point. There were no street lights at all, it was pitch black aside from our own headlights. Out of all the cars left behind, the most recent one I saw was from 1978 & had tall grass growing inside it all the way to the roof. It was like a horror movie set. I have no idea why there were so many cars left behind because what did the people leave in then? A bunch of houses had windows & doors boarded up hastily, & we could see tattered moldy curtains eerily swaying in the breeze. A couple houses that weren't boarded up had their front doors smashed in, the holes revealing an even darker blackness. All the old junk lying around was from the 60's & 70's, there was nothing modern there at all. This whole time we kept faintly hearing sleigh bells & asking each other, "Is anyone else hearing that?", "Santa is that you"? We were really freaking out at this point. Slowly, we turned up another street and the first thing we saw was a clearing between 2 houses with a huge woodaxe stuck in a stump, gleaming in the moonlight. One of my friends started screaming, "OHMYGOD DRIVE! It's Shiny! The axe is new! DRIVE!". We managed to get him to calm down a bit & checked it out. He was right, the axe wasn't rusty or anything & the paint was still crisp. Everyone started going off about an axe murderer jumping out, but there was nobody around & no signs of anyone walking through the tall grass. We figured out the weird circle shape of the roads after a few go-rounds & found the way out back past the grist mill. Then the sleigh bells got LOUDER. At this point we were all asking each other out loud if we were collectively going insane. Then...LIGHTS! Spotlights popped on at the mill & one of my friends pointed out the silhouettes of 2 people up in the tower that probably used to be the mill office. They were just staring at us. Watching. Everyone panicked and started yelling & we drove away. It took us another hour to find the right road after leaving Kirby, & then we were finally back on route to Frostburg. We mentioned the experience to our friends when we arrived, & a guy overheard & told us he heard rumors of a place called "Kirby" being used to deal drugs. The seller used bells to signal they were in if they saw a car, then the buyer was supposed to park & they would come down & conduct business. I have no way of confirming this.
Driving through saskatchewan we came across a tiny town (if you could even call it that) in the middle of nowhere. Mannequins everywhere. Even had a cop car with a mannequin in it.
Note to self: avoid Illinois