Halloween is approaching very quickly and this article is just PERFECT for this spooky season.
We’re going to hear some creepy, true stories from people about places that a lot of us would not want to be stranded in…especially if we were alone…
What’s the scariest place you’ve ever been to?
Here’s what AskReddit users had to say about this.
1. The outskirts.
“A small gas station on the outskirts of El Paso.
It was winter, I was 19 or 20. I remember people had mentioned random violence in the area, but I needed gas in my car. I stopped at a station to fill up, it’s cold so I wore my jacket. As in filling up, 3 guys start walking my way.
I saw them from my peripheral and kept a watch on them but didn’t make it obvious. They approached the car, one standing on the opposite side and the other two each going on a separate side.
I stopped pumping fuel and casually said what’s up, to which they asked if they could have some cash for food. I told them I didn’t have any cash on me.
I remember one of them saying “I said…” in an aggressive tone, and they started coming closer. I stepped back, unzipped my jacket and stuck my hand on my side Inside the jacket and said “I don’t know what you want, but I don’t have it and this isn’t going to be worth it.”
They looked at eachother and there was a palpable tenseness in the air, but they eventually went across the street and left.
To this day I’m convinced by the entire thing and how it felt I was close to being jumped and/or car jacked. I’m glad they thought I was armed, because I didn’t have sh*t inside my pocket but a pack of cigarettes and a Sears Tower zippo lighter.”
2. In the hollar.
“Pennington Hollow (Hollar to the locals) in Ashe County North Carolina.
I don’t know if it’s still this way today, but back in the ’90s everyone who lived there was named Pennington and you didn’t go there unless your name was Pennington. The cops didn’t even go there.
Think the movie ‘Deliverance’… There was a whole classroom in my high school for the special Pennington kids…
I once accidentally drove my little 49cc scooter into Pennington hollar when exploring random back roads. Once I realized where I was I turned off my engine and went into bicycle mode and noped the f*ck out of there.”
3. Russia.
“Russia.
Everyone I met had minimum 1-2 immediate family members who had wither been murdered, committed suicide, or died young in an “accident”, or were in prison.
Once I got home, within a month at least 3 of the very close people I’d met, all from one family, had died by different reasons. 1. Picking mushrooms, died alone in the forest. 2. Died alone in apartment, no reason. 3. Died from “tuberculosis” (doubt it, she was 7 mo pregnant when I’d seen her, bad partner, super depressed. My guess, suicide or intimate partner violence)
Scary place.”
4. This is creepy.
“Egypt. I was 16 and blonde.
The tour company made me have my own armed guard with me at all times. Men kept trying to hold my hand. One tour guy held me hand in the pyramids and tried to take me into rooms nobody else was allowed in.
Twice I was told upon entering a museum that my body needed to be searched (nobody else was told this). My guard would start yelling and ushering me away.
Very heavy moments to wrap my head around at that age.”
5. Lost in Camden.
“Camden, NJ about 20 years ago.
I was there for a concert and took a wrong turn. Literally witnessed 2 drug busts and an arson in progress while attempting to find my way back (pre-GPS on phones).”
6. Sounds horrible.
“Inside a coal mine in Mexico.
First world mines are mostly mechanized and safe. In Mexico… not so much. One day I went in and a new branch of the mine was being excavacated, so support beams were installed every so often to keep tons and tons of earth from swallowing everyone.
Wood beams support a hole in the ground about the size of a door and about twice as wide. Over time the vertical beams start to sink and the horizontal beam start bend. A week in miners need to duck to not hit their head on the ceiling. Consider the average height of a mexican is 5’4″.
Two months in and you have to hunch over and squat to get in. Pretty much all miners develop insane roadie run skills.
Also it’s dark, filthy (miners don’t go topside to take a piss), coal dust flying everywhere, hot and suffocatingly humid.”
7. Bahamas.
“Nassau, Bahamas, port side.
It’s a sh*thole to begin with, but my family and I were there on their Labor Day. They had a parade, everyone was having a good time until a dude with a big flat bed truck with massive speakers on it decided to get out to party a little while the parade had stopped.
He forgot to set the parking break and the truck rolled down a hill killing three people. Cops came and the locals started getting rowdy. There was an energy that was brewing that’s very hard to describe in words. My wife and 2 kids got out of there.”
8. Frightening.
“The market at night near my grandparents house in India.
For context, I am Indian-American, so I visit India pretty often. One time, my grandparents needed something from the market, so they asked my mom to go. Typically, women don’t go by themselves at night because, sadly, it is really common for a woman to be r*ped. So my mom asked me to come with her too.
That sh*t is SCARY AS F*CK. There were only about three street lamps (mind you, this was in a pretty big city in India, so that’s kinda uncommon). The market itself was the whole street, and we had to go deeper into the market to get to the store we needed.
There wasn’t a single woman or kid – only grown men staring at us while they had a drink or cigarette. The entire time I was only thinking about what my mother and I would do in case any of them attacked.
We got to the store we needed and got the thing. But the store keeper looked at us really weird, as if he was surveying us. Even after we left the store, I could still see him looking at us. I wanted to go back to my grandparents house as fast as possible, but my mother was wearing a saree (she doesn’t wear that in America, just in India), and it is impossible to run in that sh*t (at least the way my mom was wearing it, it was super hard).
Eventually, after we passed a group of men sitting on a motorcycle, we see them all get up and start following us. At this point, my mom also started to panic and we both practically ran (more like speed-walking but my mom was going as fast as she could). We got on to the main road, where there were far more people and a lot more light. The men stopped and went back to the motorcycle.
I honestly can’t tell you how scary that was. The fact that I could have been murdered and my mom possibly r*ped before she was murdered. There was no mistake – those men were coming after us, and ever since then, neither me or my mom or anyone from my family went to that market at night.”
9. Interesting.
“My friend and I visited a Scientology church for an extra credit paper back in college. We knew next to nothing about it at the time, other than some bizarre stories we’d heard about people mysteriously going missing after trying to leave the church or speaking out against it, etc.
All three of the people we directly interacted with had a sort of emptiness to their eyes and interrogated us about why we were there. They refused to believe we were writing a paper for school, like we were there for some malicious purpose or something, and kept asking more and more questions to get to the bottom of the purpose of our visit.
They finally let us go to the second floor (first floor was only reception and bathroom), large room with but one or two people in sight. They made us sign in with our name, address, and email address, and my friend whispered, “You didn’t leave your real info, did you?” It was already so incredibly creepy and intense, and nothing had even happened.
They sat us down by ourselves to watch a video which was super vague and boring, and all we wanted was enough info to write a one page paper (which we weren’t getting from the video), so we got up to explore.
Immediately, an older woman was in our faces (empty eyes and all) asking why we didn’t finish the video, we needed to finish the video, sit down and finish the video. We felt like five year olds being punished for not sitting still.
After another attempt at finishing the video, we were getting antsy and creeped out, so again decided to take a quick look around then peace out.
The area we were in was set up like a museum with gallery walls covered in blown up versions of news articles documenting the public’s attempt to understand Scientology. We expected to come across something that would indicate what Scientologists do or believe in or something, but never did.
We only did a quick loop through the room, but every time we looked over our shoulders, one of the sign in/interrogator guys and the woman demanding we watch the video were lurking behind us, glaring at us suspiciously, whispering to one another. We held hands, completely terrified, our imaginations racing at what could possibly lie in our future.
When we felt the opportunity, we jetted to the elevator, pushed the buttons frantically, and literally sprinted across the parking lot to our car.
The intensity of being in that place (especially on the second floor) is incredibly difficult to put into words, but has stayed with both of us. We still talk about how lucky we feel to have gotten out of there without them taking our souls (that we know of, anyway — ha).”
10. Holiday in Cambodia.
“When I was in my late 20s my dad and I went on a tour to Cambodia.
Part of the tour included half a day at the Cheung Ek killing fields about half and hours drive outside of Phnom Penh. My dad must have seen that movie The Killing Fields because he opted to stay at the hotel but I wasn’t as bright as he was and gladly went with our group.
The entire atmosphere was really creepy. Even though it was in the middle of a jungle, I don’t recall hearing any birds or insects the entire time I was there. It was like nature itself knew the place was cursed and abhorred it.
One of the trees was called the Baby Killer because Khmer Rouge soldiers had smashed out the brains of infants against its trunk and the branches were festooned with trinkets from its victims. I even had to be careful where I stepped because there were human remains buried all over the place and they poked through the soil in certain places.
And if all of this wasn’t disturbing enough, the center of the killing fields had a stupa (a buddhist shrine/grave thing) with a display case loaded with the skulls of the killing field victims. Many of the skulls prominently displayed the gruesome injuries which had killed the victims. And there were speakers playing a creepy sounding buddhist dirge.
I never want to go back to that place ever again.”
11. Never went back.
“I’ve been to most of the Middle East and not in a tourist capacity, but getting chased by teens with machetes yelling Mzungu Mzungu (white devil) in Uganda kinda sets the bar.
Last time I went to Africa as a tourist.”
12. Totally sketchy.
“An Airbnb in Barcelona. I’ve spent quite a while in Spain, speak Spanish, and have visited Barcelona multiple times. I’ve also used Airbnb multiple times, and know what to check for. Two friends and I (all 20sF) picked an Airbnb with several favorable ratings, in a good neighborhood. One of the ones that’s a room in someone’s apartment.
Show up, and the two guys look nothing like the picture, but are very hospitable, so we went inside. They showed us around, and the apartment looked like the photos. Then they showed us the room and let us be. We open the door to the room and it’s nothing like the photos.
It’s essentially a closet, 3 dirty twin mattresses on the floor with no pillows and blankets covered in old food. Furthermore, the door to the room has no interior lock on it—but it DID have an exterior lock. It’s at this point that we also realize they never gave us a key to the apartment.
We took pictures of everything and waited until we heard them leave the apartment, and watched them from the window until they were out of sight. We gathered our packs and SPRINTED out of there, with no plans on where to go, just calling random hostels until we found one that had room.
But it was on the other side of the city, and the metro had closed for the night. So we walked an hour and a half. Thankfully the hostel was lovely, and Airbnb refunded us and removed the listing, but we’re convinced it was a human trafficking setup.”
Okay, now it’s your turn!
In the comments, tell us about the absolute scariest place you’ve ever been in your life.
We can’t wait to hear your stories!
