19 People On The Weird Place That Gave Them The Heebie Jeebies
Have you ever been on a road trip and happened on a town that just gave you bad vibes? People shared some of their creepiest travel stories where they ended up in towns that gave them the heebie jeebies. It turns out there are a lot of places in the world that we should all stay away from.
Get out of town.
Gary, Indiana. I got off the highway to get gas.
Driving through the city was like a post apocalyptic movie complete with burned out cars, crazy guy in underwear walking down the middle of the street with a baseball bat and all the windows were broken or boarded up.
I stopped at a gas station and the guy came out and said ‘Get back on the highway son. It’s not safe here.’ I had enough gas to get to a safer rest stop to refuel.
This was around 1994-95.
u/[deleted]
Greetings from the apocalypse.
Coatesville, Pennsylvania. I was with a friend who had come up from Mexico and we were staying a few nights at his grandmother’s ranch nearby. Coatesville was the only town around where we could find Mexican ingredients. This is an old steel town that feels post-apocalyptic, everyone there didn’t really seem to be doing anything or going anywhere, it was so creepy. The store we ended up going to had nearly empty shelves and I think the guys were a bit surprised to see us there. All in all just very strange and eerie.
u/the_short_viking
The feeling of being watched.
I used to live in Southern Africa and we did charity work in a lot of very remote, rural areas, and when I say remote, I mean several hours rough driving on roads that can barely be called roads. Many times we would come across settlements that were not on any map, just a collection of cinderblock and mud houses sometimes well off the road. […]
One day, we are working in the area near the borders of South Africa, Namibia, and Botswana, and we see some smoke well off the road. Thinking it may be a village, we decide to go off road to take a look. It was fairly well hidden, behind a small hill, and from the road you would have never known it was there if it were not for the column of smoke on the horizon. We get to it, and sure enough it looks like one of these unmarked working villages, maybe 10 or so huts, but something seemed very off. It took a second and we realized that there was no one around, and yet it seemed as if whoever lived there was there only moments before. We head to where the smoke came from, and it was a large bonfire, when we looked closer, we noticed bones in it, goat and cattle bones. Other than the sound of the fire, there was not a peep from anything else. Once I stepped out of our truck to get a closer look, I had this overwhelming sense that I was being watched from afar, and that I was not welcomed here. The other guys in the truck said they felt the same, and that we needed to go. So we did.
A couple of weeks later when we were driving back, curiosity got the better of me and I decided I wanted to check the site again. This time however, the village was stripped bare. Anything that could be taken was gone. All that was left was the shells of the huts and a black patch of ash where the fire was. There was one thing that was still there though, the sense of being watched. We didn’t stay any longer and never went back.
u/badcgi
More from Gary, Indiana.
Me and a friend were driving through Gary one night when we stopped at a red light and a police car pulled up right next to me and said “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Do not stop at the red lights here, you’re safer if you run it and get out of here.” That’s all you need to know about Gary
u/jovsnow
A narrow escape.
My partner went to Florida with her family when she was younger and they were driving around trying to find some food until they found a Chinese restaurant and they went in and had some food.
There were no other customers, lots of staff, everyone seemed very tense but the food was great. They left and had a lovely rest of their day.
During breakfast the next morning they turned on their tele and the news showed the place they had eaten and they were like ‘wow look we went there’. Then the story started and it turns out no more than 10 minutes after they left there was a massive shoot up and they all killed one another.
Turns out that the ignorant british tourists just sat in-between some kind of asian turf war.
u/[deleted]
Don’t trust the bunnies.
In a town outside city, there’s a house that has a sign on it that says that it sells Easter Bunnies for 10$. Year Round. The neighborhood also has a high abduction rate and a lot of people go missing there. Not my favorite drive to say the least
u/penisman911
The AirBNB from hell.
My boyfriend and I had a stay in Melbourne for a few nights. We told them 8pm and they still kept asking before saying they had to go out and ‘Frank’ would let us in.
We had no mention of this guy before then but fine, whatever. We’d had a long day and were pretty tired. Then we get to the house. Frank is this tall, thin, muscley older guy, really intense and absolutely no chill. We were both really uncomfortable from the start but my bf makes small talk, jokes about Sydney vs Melbourne. This guy doesn’t like it. To the point where he stopped walking, swung around and got in my bf’s face. Bf de-escalated the situation real quick and we got to our room and immediately locked the door.
We both got some bad vibes off the place and the guy but we couldn’t work out why. We thought we were just tired but kept debating the pros and cons of staying, and the room wasn’t helping! It was freshly painted and the fumes were so strong I was getting a migraine, there was a door to the backyard that was blocked off with a dresser, so much dust under the bed it was ridiculous.
And then we noticed two things.
One was the wooden plank holding up the curtains. It was big, thick, heavy looking thing – and it was holding onto the wall by a nail on each side. Half of it had already leant right off the wall, leaving a huge gap. This was right above the head of the bed. That was it for my bf, he wanted out.
This second point was my big thing. The door to the rest of the house had a lock but there was also a gap between it and the floor. I’m not talking a small space for air. I’m not talking fit a finger underneath. I’m talking big enough for tall, muscley, big guy Frank to fit his entire arm under.
We grabbed our things and snuck out. Went to the nearest grocery store for supplies, shopped around for a place to stay, let the Airbnb know we left, and ended up driving through the night back to NSW and slept in the car for a few hours.
u/Sil_7
Don’t trust the man in the yellow rain coat.
About 15 years ago, I was going to a ski resort with the boy scouts. The driver of the car I was in ended up taking a wrong turn and drove us 2 hours in the opposite direction. By the time we noticed, we were in the deep woods of West Virginia at around 1 am.
We passed what I thought was a ghost town (run down shacks, abandoned cars, collapsed buildings) there was a man just sorta standing in the street in a yellow rain coat, holding a lantern. Keep in mind, it wasn’t raining, it was snowing.
u/Moots_Point
A spooky street in Berlin.
Me and my girlfriend were on holiday walking through central Berlin, a weekday morning. The streets were fairly busy, a typical day, when we turned down a long wide street with large buildings on either side. As we walked down we noticed it was very quiet and that there was no one else on the street at all, which was strange in itself considering it was 10-11am. As we carried on walking, I can’t really describe what happened but I noticed that the buildings we were walking past weren’t actually real, but like movie set buildings? The windows and doors looked normal from a distance but up close they were waaaay too big to be normal, I just felt really uneasy the whole time but we didn’t say anything until we turned off the street and back into the hustle and bustle of Berlin.
I have absolutely no idea what happened at all but my girlfriend said she felt/seen exactly the same thing. It was like we stepped into a different world for a few minutes. Totally bizarre.
u/MyDogHasBarkingsons
It’s safer to sleep in a bush.
When hitch hiking in the south island [of New Zealand] I got stuck in a town in the middle of nowhere because no one would pick me up. It got dark and I didn’t have enough money for a motel so I was planning to chill at this little shack where people would pull over to rest while driving. Over the course of several hours, I got offered meth by a couple, some local random dude tried to convince me to go to his house to smoke weed and another couple smoked a cigarette with me while they told me about how they heard voices. After they left I ended up jumping over a fence and slept in a bush somewhere until my sister could pick me up the next day because she was driving through the town.
0/10 don’t try hitch hiking out of Omaru.
u/trucknjoe
Missing time.
I was on a road trip on the south island of New Zealand and one night at around 9pm decided to stop in a small town to get some rest. Already while driving into the town I noticed that there were Christmas decorations everywhere, like decorated trees and plastic Santa’s, reindeer etc. Excessive amounts of decorations on the streets and in every window. This wouldn’t have been too weird if it hadn’t been in the middle of August.
I got to the motel and checked in and the old lady at the front desk was short and rude with me. She also wouldn’t give me the wifi password even though they advertised free wifi. She quite literally told me to piss off and let her get back to her newspaper.
After that I went out and the whole time I was there I never saw any people on the street. I went to a diner near the motel (both also stuffed with Christmas decorations) and had the same experience with the waitress while ordering. She told me they are out of almost everything and the only I was able to get was a cheese sandwich. There were other people in the restaurant who were all eating what I suppose were meals from the menu. They didn’t have to order a plain cheese sandwich. While waiting for my food I noticed that no one in the whole diner was talking even though there were families and other groups of people. Even the kids ate in silence. Or not really silence, as there was Christmas music blaring.
After I was done eating I just paid and left. I was also the only one leaving. No one in that diner, the whole time I was there, got up to leave or go to the bathroom or do anything really. They all just sat there. When I left I felt like they were all starting holes in my back. The whole time I was in that town I got a feeling that everyone wanted me to leave and like they were somehow angry with me.
This was 4 years ago and tbh I don’t remember anything after leaving the diner. I don’t remember going back to the motel or going to sleep and just barely remember being on the road early the next morning. I told some of my NZ friends this story, bc I thought it was some kind of weird theme town, but none of them ever heard of it and I can’t for the life of me remember the name of that town or how I found it.
u/urneighborhoodwitch
Welcome to Spooky McDonalds.
I was traveling through Arkansas with my friend in the army. He was a big ol black dude and I was a medium height white dude. Everyone in McDonalds literally stopped and just stared at us until we ordered food and left. It was super weird and we made sure to bypass the place on the way back to post.
u/dafighder
Trust your gut.
A camping site! My friend and I took a road trip from NL to France, camping. 1st we stayed at a lovely place, near a harbor. After 2 days we continued and ended up at a small camping site. When registering we met the custodian. After registration we already looked at each other, but shrugged it off. We set up our tent and went into town to find some food. The town was completely deserted: no people on the street, all blinds closed, hardly any restaurant open and the eerie feeling came back. We walked back to the camping site, still feeling creeped out and decided there and then not to sleep there that night. We broke up camp, drove away as fast as we could. The feeling stayed for about 30 minutes. Weird part is: nothing creepy really happened. It was just a gut feeling: something is NOT right here…
u/SuspectNumber6
Reality shifts at night.
My girlfriend and I went to an AirBnB in a town called Tiger, Georgia to see a bunch of her old college friends. There was one other couple who got there about the same time we did. By day the cabin looks pleasant enough- 3 stories of rustic comfort with a hot tub overlooking the forest and sunrise. We didn’t get there by day. We got there as the sun was sinking low. Rooms seemed to shrink and tighten. The stairwells were only as wide as a single body. And at the bottom of the basement stairs, a rug hid a padlocked trapdoor. It felt like the start of a horror movie.
We’re trying to ignore the weird vibes and decide to go to dinner. We spent nearly an hour driving around searching for a place to eat. Steakhouses closed by 7pm, an Italian joint which was now someone’s house. A Mexican eatery now abandoned and overgrown with vines… Finally we find something. It’s suitably called “The Last Dive Bar On Earth”, and it’s sitting on the edge of a retention pond. The parking lot is full of pick up trucks all festooned with old political bumper stickers from the late 90s and early 2000s. We head in. It’s like we’ve entered another decade. But the beer is good, they have pizza, and the prices aren’t bad. We eat in a hurry and get out of there.
As we get back to the cabin, the other couples are there and talking about how they had such a nice time in town. It was only by daylight at the end of the weekend that as we descended the mountain we found a ton of local shops and restaurants that I swear to fucking god were not there the first night.
On the first night, the electrical outlets in the house fried my phone, leaving me with no way to contact the outside world.
The weekend ended up being nice, but the entire time we all felt like we had fallen through a crack into somewhen else.
u/mxmnull
Can someone explain the shackles?
Yep, stopped in a no name town in Texas for gas. Bunch of guys wearing nothing but denim hanging out in front of the gas station. Denim, cow boy hats, cow boy boots. It wasn’t just a lot of people, EVERYONE was wearing that. Their drawls were so thick I could barely understand what they were saying to one another, a lot of hooting and hollering.
About 50 yards away, there was a guy sitting under a tree. He was wearing a black and white striped jump suit…and was chained to the tree by a shackle on his leg. Didn’t see any law enforcement around, maybe they dropped him off? A girl with huge tits, one and a half arms, and an eye-patch complimented my car and smiled at me when I was pumping gas. I saw a cow trotting down the side of the road, no one seemed to be chasing it. The fact it was twilight seemed to make everything surreal.
I unassed myself from that place as quickly as I could.
u/I_love_asparagus
Mysterious newspapers.
Back in 2011, my ex and I took a trip to go visit my dad, who at the time lived in the tiny town of Middleton, Tennessee. I lived at the other end of the state, so it was about an eight hour trip. Decided to go it at night so I wouldn’t have to deal with anyone on the interstate other than truckers and the occasional car.
The trip was fine until we got off the interstate and went through some small town maybe an hour or so before Middleton? My memory’s hazy on exactly where it was, but at that point it was about four in the morning. We were rolling through the town, and it was foggy and dark, minimal streetlights, all the houses were completely dark and still… it was a little creepy looking but nothing really out of the ordinary.
Until we got a little further down the road and there were fucking newspapers everywhere. Scattered all on the road, in the empty fields and the yards of the houses we passed, just loose pages of newspaper everywhere we looked. I’m sure there was a reasonable explanation, but both of us just suddenly felt like something was off, and it was creepy as hell. One of us cracked a joke about suddenly landing in a horror movie without realizing, and I sped up the car a little bit, but for about ten minutes it was just us and the newspapers and the fog in the complete stillness in this dark town, and we both sighed audibly in relief once it fell behind us. We talked about it for years after that trip.
u/zanarkandfayth
The pied piper of cats.
There was one time I stopped in a gas station in Appalachia, it was like 11pm on a Friday. So this truck pulled in and the woman ran inside to pick up some stuff. The dude hopped out and puts the tailgate down and starts playing the harmonica. Out come like 5 cats who all dance around him like he was a pied piper or something. After a couple of minutes the woman came back and he told the cats to get back in the bed of the truck and then they drove off.
u/goodsam2
Locked from the outside.
On my first trip to Europe, we started in Rome, and drove down to Sicily, and on the way back north, we decided to stay the night in a small town instead of a major city. We ended up at a town called Lauria right on dark, and hadn’t booked any accommodation yet. As we drive around the town looking for a hotel, every local is stopping in their tracks and watching us like we are very out of place. We find and pull up at the only hotel we could find, a multi level building with an empty car park, no guests or staff around. Went in and booked a room, and the guy who served us took our bags, put us in the elevator and sent us on the way to our room. we get up 3 floors and here he is waiting for us with our bags, not puffed out having out ran an elevator while carrying 3 bags. It’s the classic horror movie hallways, seemingly too long for the building and only half the lights are working.
It’s dead quiet inside so we put our stuff in the room and get out to see if the town is really that bad. We head out for dinner, again everyone stopping and staring at us as we walked down the streets. The next morning, we wake up early to GTFO and find all the doors are locked and cannot be opened from the inside without a key, no staff anywhere so we left the key on the desk and had to break out of the hotel window to get out. 10/10 was spooked.
u/Foxbat_Flyer
The murder town of South Australia.
Truro, South Australia. The tiny town is infamous for a series of murders in the 70s. My family and I drive through there a couple of times a year on our way to Adelaide, we stop occasionally but never for too long.
Its a hard feeling to describe, but there is almost a sense of dread when you arrive. There isn’t really much there to stop for, apart from a piss break or a pie from the bakery. In my mind at least, the town is marked, cursed or whatever and I get a feeling that if we stay too long something terrible is going to happen.
u/Jab-Machka