Some places just feel off. It’s a feeling that is hard to describe until one actually experiences it. The one that gives the heebie-jeebies and makes it impossible to shake off the suspicion that something is wrong.
America seems to be particularly full of such locations because when redditor _Persona-Non-Grata asked netizens what are some mysterious, cult-like, bad-vibes towns across the USA, more than 7K of them shared the most creepy sites that have left a lasting impression on them.
If walking through the local cemetery no longer fazes you, then you may want to check these small towns straight from a horror movie below. Who knows, perhaps they’ll inspire you to take a spooky road trip and see them for yourself.
And while you're at it make sure to check out a conversation we had with travel blogger Jenny Miller, who is a connoisseur of macabre and shares tips on visiting spooky sites online.
More info: London Dark Tourism
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America’s history is rich with tales guaranteed to send shivers down your spine. Some of its towns and cities have a connection to the eerie and supernatural like Massachusetts, Louisiana, and New Orleans which are known for their witch trials and voodoo subculture (religion connected to nature, spirits, and ancestors).
They are rich in significant and spooky events from the past, but can these places hold onto the negative energy that makes us feel the heebie-jeebies or is it just a figment of our imagination?
It turns out that our surroundings may not be as neutral as we might think, explaining the goosebumps and tightness in the chest one may experience in abandoned homes, towns, or sites where violence or hauntings took place.
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There are three main theories to explain this phenomenon and the first one is the emotional residue theory. According to it, emotions have the potential to infect the physical environment even when its source is no longer there.
Several psychological studies have found that the human nervous system can pick up on chemical signals left by sweat and tears. For example, a Dutch study in 2012 found that women who smelled sweat from men who felt fear or disgust reported sensing these emotions.
Another theory is the “geopathic stress” which proposes that Earth emits energy that can cause poor health in humans. Supposedly, geological faults, mineral deposits, and underground waters are points where certain energy vibrations erupt from the ground.
Advocates of this theory say that people should avoid spending too much time near them or they might suffer from fatigue, headaches, insomnia, and overall negative feelings. Hence the uneasiness people may feel when visiting these eerie sites.
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But despite the two theories, our expectations and associations could be even more powerful. If we anticipate feeling a certain way (happy or sad), that can influence our perceptions. So the old and empty house across the street might not be haunted, even if it makes you uneasy when you’re near it. It could just mean that you’re from a neighborhood with few neglected buildings and tend to link them with negative connotations.
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To learn more about the macabre places that surround us, Bored Panda reached out to a travel blogger Jenny Miller who has a passion for dark tourism and knows a lot about spooky locations.
Naturally, we were curious to know how she got interested in it. She told us "I've always been interested in the darker side of things. Some people travel to Instagrammable hotspots, and I travel to see old prisons and haunted castles. I love traveling and exploring places that have a long history. For me, it's the closest you can get to time travel because I believe places hold onto energy from the past - both good and bad."
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Miller was also kind enough to share with us her most memorable spot she came across during her dark tourism travels. It's the Ragged School Museum - a Victorian school for the most impoverished children in the East End. In 1877 the organization was groundbreaking as it was one of the first ever free schools in London, which changed countless lives.
She said "Being there right when it opened (hot tip: always go to London museums first thing to avoid the school groups), I was the only visitor in the building except for staff. I was wandering the classrooms when from behind me, I heard the running footsteps of two children, a whoosh of air moved my hair, and I heard a child's laughter.
I turned around - thinking I planned poorly and the school tour groups had already arrived - but there was no one there. I followed the direction in which the children went, and there was nothing. The docent saw my confusion, smiled, nodded, and simply said, "They were happy here. They're still here." So it's not all doom and gloom."
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For those interested in trying dark tourism Miller provided some great advice as well.
"My biggest piece of advice for other "dark tourists" is to be respectful. If you're visiting murder locations, go to remember the victims and not the perpetrator. It's totally normal to be curious about this stuff and where it happened, but when you're visiting dark locations, make sure you remember and respect the impact of those events.
This applies to posting on social media, too - don't be Justin Bieber at Anne Frank's house.
I think there is a respectful way to honor the past and be a "dark tourist," and you have to be mindful that these are real people who had very real lives, no matter how their lives ended."
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This will probably get buried under all comments but it's one of the strangest small town experiences I have ever had. I don't know the name of it, I was driving in my state on a main highway, traffic was bad and I thought I'd take a back road to get to the old trucking highway (a small "highway" in the rural sense, meaning it's a long road going through a good portion of the state) and go north from there, at the time I didn't have Spotify premium so I listened to the radio. I was following my maps and it took me down some weird back roads, then I lost cell service but was confident that my next move was to stay on this road until it hit the 37. I kept driving and the radio station faded out, I changed it over to another station and it was a Christian hymn station, not unheard of in rural Michigan. I kept going through all the stations my car could receive, religious talk radio, more hymns, there were only 3 or 4 stations I would receive. As I kept driving I came into a small town, and immediately the vibes felt off. I had left my radio on the Christian talk radio station just to have something in car and the signal was fading, but another signal was coming through. It was still christian talk radio but this pastor was very traditional fire and brimstone. Ranting and raving about the need to repent and beg God for salvation, all the different reasons I'm going to hell, and what awaits me there.
As I was driving through I entered into the down town, it was what you would expect from a small downtown strip but there were no people out and about, no cars on the road, I even tried to glance into the shops and restaurants but I didn't see anyone! Then the church bell started ringing so I checked the time, thinking it must be a new hour (some small towns still have a bell that rings on the hour to let you know the time) but it was 3:15.
As the bell rang I noticed I could faintly hear it through my radio, which freaked me out a bit, because that would mean that this is a live broadcast from inside the church. The part that terrified me the most was hearing this pastor stop his sermon, and say "god has brought us a visitor, welcome to our paradise friend, please stay with us a while."
I tried to brush it off as a coincidence, fully expected to hear another voice on the radio, but it was silent, then I heard a hymn that I was not familiar with being sung in the background. I figured that was enough of that, I'd stop at the gas station at the end of the downtown area, get some gas, and ask for directions. As I pulled into the gas station the pastor then said "we all need to refuel ourselves on the journey God has set for us"
I have never left a town so fast in my life. I didn't care if I'd run out of gas, it would have been better to be 30 minutes down the road, than spend another minute in that town. As I was driving away, looking in the rearview, I noticed there were people downtown, a large group, standing in the middle of the road, walking.
I made it to the highway and stopped for gas. Since then I've tried to look for this place on Google maps, but I have yet to find it. If you're ever in the middle of nowhere, and all the stations are local church radio, I hope you have enough gas to get where you're going!Ocean Grove, NJ. They call it "God's square mile on the Jersey Shore" so at least you know it's culty going in. Lovely old houses with the creepiest Stepford vibe I've ever encountered. They close the beach on Sunday mornings and actually enforce it, or try to. The whole town was founded as some Christian camp and to this day there are tents that families use as their summer homes. I think they're owned by the church but the right to rent them is passed down from generation to generation.
I live across the lake in Asbury Park, which is known for having a raging case of the gay. There are footbridges over the lake connecting the two towns but Ocean Grove put gates on their side that they lock at night to keep us deviants out. You can still get from one side to the other but you have to either walk along the boardwalk or go all the way out to the main road.Vidor, Texas. A well known sundown town. My step-mom (half black, half mexican, but looks black) and my dad made the mistake of stopping there in the evening for gas. Went in to use the bathroom, and as soon as they walked in, the guy at the register slammed a shotgun on the counter and told them to get out in not nice terms. The whole town is that way.Centralia, PA is still on fire though they ruined the graffiti highway. I don't know if anybody still lives there today, when I went last there were a handful of hangers on.I believe it has a population of 4 currently.The town is quite literally built on top of the equivalent of hell.Man this was years ago, but it was around 1998 or 1999, when I was 9. my family drove us to Mount Rushmore from Denver.
We stopped off the highway in a random Wyoming town with a population of just over 100. We had a choice between two restaurants and entered one.
Straight from a horror movie, when we walked in, the entire restaurant, packed with most of the town, fell silent. We ate and everyone was staring at us. My sister and I believed they were going to murder us.
We left and it turns out our parents also thought we were going to be murdered.Let me introduce you to the Flathead Valley in Montana. Have you ever played or know the game FarCry 5? Set in a "fictional" Montana town where a religious cult takes over?
Well! Fresh Life Church owns half of the town of Kalispell Montana, and their pastor, Levi Lusko, is treated like the ***actually resurrected Christ*** instead of the pastor of a church. Then, down the road in a place called Lakeside, there is a Christian ~~slave camp~~ mission group called Youth With A Mission, or YWAM, pronounced why wham. This group gets Christian youths (shocker) and makes them work there for several years.
They perpetually brain wash these kids with things like literal multi hour long prayer sessions, give them ***literally zero work or life experience*** and don't pay them. They are making generations of people who cannot think for themselves, can't go work anywhere else, and depend on the organization for food and lodging.
There are people in their ***thirties*** who ***literally*** can't get jobs anywhere else. These people have kids of their own! They can't support the kids...the church does.
It's only a matter of time until FarCry 5 is just literal reality in that valley.Colorado City, AZ - Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints stronghold. Lots of inbreeding.I've driven by there dozens of times to get to Vegas from Colorado. It's such an eerie and scary drive. Seabrook, WA. It is idyllic. Perfectly idyllic. Too much so. Strong Stepford Wives vibes. I read somewhere that it was inspired by the town in The Truman Show.My niece got married in Seabrook. I just kept thinking, this is where serial killers live. So damn creepy.Moscow, Idaho has an actual cult with thousands of followers. Their leader, a self-ordained pastor, has publicly stated he wants to take over the town and turn it into a theocracy. They are deeply misogynist (marital r*pe isn’t possible) and have a history of sexual abuse within their group (the leader defended a student of their “college” who raped his host family’s daughter, excommunicated the daughter, and then presided over the r*pist’s wedding). Their members keep running for local office and failing, but they are buying up all the property in town and moving in people from all over the country to attend their private school, theology “college” and church. Moscow also happens to be the town where the 4 University of Idaho students were murdered in 2022.i had a panic attack in a hotel in Barstow, CA because every ‘human’ I interacted with was so unsettling and erie I was convinced my organs were going to be harvested.
I went to mcdonald’s before getting a hotel. In the drive thru, there was a homeless man standing directly in front of the menu just staring at us. thought he was going to ask for money, he didn’t. just stood 3 feet from us and stared.
i asked the mcdonald’s employee which town we were in, as i had been driving all day. She said “You’re in Barstow CA, the crackiest of the crackiest! Enjoy!” That was the most normal interaction i had there. The employee at the second window looked completely -empty- i mean nothing was in his head. Employees behind him also just looked so uncanny and off. I didn’t eat the food. I didn’t trust it.
Hotel check in was awful, same just weird uncanny blank stares and a couple of words.
I went to the bathroom once i got in my hotel, i went to wash my hands and the water was RED. I smelled my hands and it just smelled like the strongest odor of pennies and ammonia. I turned on the shower, same color, whole bathroom engulfs in the awful smell. Ran out to my car and used an entire bottle of hand sanitizer just to try to get the smell out. it didn’t.
Went back to my hotel and had a panic attack.I can’t explain it but Ithaca, NY gives off old money, we-are-very-nice-and-well-educated-progressives-who-happen-to-hold-a-yearly-lottery-to-see-who-gets-sacrificed-to-appease-the-ancient-one vibes.Powers, Oregon. Stopped in the diner for coffee once on a drive thru. I s**t you not, like straight out of a movie, the other patrons just turned and quietly stared, not touching their own plates, until we left.Collinsville, OK, has a diner named Karen's Country Corner (formerly Kountry Korner) where the local chapter meets or used to meet every week. Used to have racist signs on the edge of town. One the most racist places I've ever had the misfortune of finding myself.Another Florida candidate: Cassadega, an old Spiritualist community and now "the psychic capital of the world," full of supposed mediums, clairvoyants, and other metaphysically-gifted types. I haven't been there in a long time, but my parents used to live in nearby DeLand, so I used to visit occasionally. Pretty little town with a lot of yard signs advertising psychic readings.Island Pond, Vermont. It's home to one of the Twelve Tribes communities. Twelve Tribes is a fundamentalist Christian cult known for its misogyny, racism, child abuse, and workplace exploitation. They operate the Yellow Deli restaurants.Lynden, Washington. A HIGHLY Christian town comprised of mostly Dutch families.
No liquor stores. No weed stores. Illegal to mow your yard on Sundays. I've lived maybe 10 minutes away from it for about 20 years now and only go out there for the fair.Cairo, IL is creepy af. At one time it was a very important commercial center because of its river location. Now it’s practically deserted and has really creepy energy. You can still see glimpses of how it might have been bustling and charming back in the day.Gallup, NM. Drove through on Rte 66 from L.A. to Chicago and stopped for gas for 5 minutes and almost got robbed. Gallup on through if going that route and get gas before or after. Creepy vibes pulling in. Later found out it has one of the highest per capita crime rates in the country.Sandpoint, Idaho. Went there with my Phillipino brother in law. They thought we were Mexican and you could just feel the creepy "we don't want you here" vibe.Let me tell you about a little town you may not have heard of - Rexburg, Idaho. It’s a small town of almost 40,000 people (it has actually doubled in size the last 20 years). It is estimated that 95% of residents are Mormon. The town has a Mormon university there called BYU-Idaho which is basically the little brother to BYU Utah.
And you think BYU Utah might be strict for Mormons? BYU-Idaho is even more strict. Some people call it the Saudi Arabia of Mormonism. You’re not allowed to wear shorts, capris, flip-flops and men can’t have beards. There are stories of men being sent home from class for 5 o’clock shadows that are too long. And of course all the other Mormon stuff applies - no coffee, tea, alcohol, caffeinated beverages of any kind, strict early curfews, no opposite sex people in your dorm/apartment etc. Heavy Mormon indoctrination throughout all aspects of life.
Think you’ll find any diversity in Rexburg Idaho? Nope try again. The place is almost all white - the Mormon church is historically incredibly racist and didn’t allow blacks to hold their priesthood until 1978.
Oh, and have you followed any of the Chad and Lori Daybell stuff - the wackos that chopped up and burned their 2 children? Yep, they’re Mormon and lived in Rexburg, getting most of their crazy ideas from doomsday Mormon thinking.
If you want a little trip into the twilight zone you should check out Rexburg Idaho at some point.Honestly... It's not the mysterious ones that are trouble. It's the ones who wear exactly what they are on their sleeve.
I used to live in a town (Deep South, yay) where I was told before moving that it was "a bit of a racist town". That was the understatement of the century. There were flyers up all over town advertising the KKK and their family friendly activities (!), and signs up everywhere where they'd flat-out just sponsored every stretch of road they could.
Every time I saw a POC in that town I worried for them. Some of the a******s would literally glare anyone who wasn't white out of the room, no matter where they were.
So glad I got out of that place.I am probably misunderstanding the assignment but Tonopah, Nevada. The Clown Motel, located next to the Tonopah Cemetery, is a popular place to stay because of all the reports of being haunted by "ghost clowns" and miners who were killed in the 1911 Belmont Mine Fire. This is exactly what I thought of when I read the question.We did a roadtrip from Reno to Las Vegas and stayed a night in Tonopah at the Clown Motel. We stopped at a bar to try to eat dinner and as soon as we walked in, the place went quiet and everyone just stared at us. They didn’t serve food, so we left, but we both thought it was a very odd thing. I’ve never felt so uncomfortable walking into a public place in my life.We did stay in the “It Suite” with no issues, but we won’t ever be doing that again.I’ve been through a few towns in eastern Ohio and western PA where I’ve seen an uncomfortably large number of lawn signs that’s just block text of a weird bible verse, not the ‘jesus loves you’ kind but the ‘weeping and gnashing of teeth’ kind. By the seventh or eighth of them, I’m looking for the welcoming green of an interstate sign.Severy, Kansas. I grew up there. It was basically a ghost town then. 30 yrs later it looks like something out of a horror film. All of the houses are half falling apart. The school closed down and someone lives in it now. The lot where the hardware store burned down in like 97/98 is still vacant. The only grocery store that was in town closed. Both the small gas station/mechanic place and the truck stop just on the edge of the town all closed. The only thing open besides the government places like the post office, fire station and town hall is the junk yard. The co-op and maybe the bar. Other than that everything is closed. The whole "town" covers just one maybe 2 of were being generous square miles. The rest is all farmland. The entire town reaks of decay.My husband was finance director for the county that included Colorado City and Hillsdale. He had some amazing stories about the fraud there. I accompanied him on a site visit. It was such a sorrowful, backward area. So many people living in the 1800’s. So many sad women and children. Since Warren Jeffs's incarceration, there has been a new influx of non-FLDS people and the regulations have replaxed. Women now hold positions in city governments.Crestone, Colorado.
It's easily the most bizarre place I've been to in the US. Lots of shoe-less hippies, "spiritualists", cult members/followers, and the like. Just a weird vibe all over. Some of the people are nice, there are some good artists there, but there's also a main square/park where you'll almost always see these desperate, strung out people with an overloaded Geo Prizm just sitting in the park like "well I'm here, what next?" Realizing they just drove across the country with $2 and a dream of getting high every day and chanting only to find a still expensive Colorado weirdo town of barely a couple hundred people, nowhere for them to live, and no jobs to be found. There's a weird, tents only "neighborhood" there that's really something to see. There's also an alien landing site nearby, or at least that's what it claims to be.Clearwater, Florida
I had known it was the HQ for Scientology, but had never been there.
Last month, I was visiting family in Florida and my best friend lives a few towns over from Clearwater. He took me to a place that entailed driving through downtown Clearwater. It is impossible not to notice that every building had brand new paint, all the shops looked sparking clean, and there was not a soul to be seen.
All the neighboring towns had hundreds of people milling about, but Clearwater looked like a ghost town. It looked like the set of a Twilight Zone episode.Redding, CA and the Bethel Supernatural Ministry Cult. Redding is situated at the northern most point of the Sacramento Valley in NorCal. For the past 20~ years, the Bethel Mega Church (11,000+ as regular attending members) has slowly taken over the town with their vast amount of money and influence. They control most seats in local government, own the only convention center/entertainment venue in the county, taken control over most large city-wide events through the McConnell Foundation, bought up most of the city's single room/studio housing to house international members, and contribute almost nothing to the city outside their interests of bringing about the eventual resurrection of Jesus and a fully Christian-led country. This mega "church" claims to grow back fingers, have angel feathers and angel dust appear from thin air to rain down on the congregants, focuses on creating musical media for recruitment (huge part of the Christian music apparatus in America), bring babies back to life, and run their Bethel School of *Supernatural Ministry* as if it was a legitimate college. Just some of the weird s**t: **-Grave soaking** ("...the school garnered criticism for a practice among some students termed "grave soaking" or "grave sucking", where they would lie on the graves of deceased revivalists in the belief that they would absorb the deceased's anointing from God.") **-Prayer for resurrection** ("Bethel Church gained national press coverage in December 2019 over a campaign to pray for the resurrection of a worship leader's deceased two-year-old daughter. The mother, Kalley Heiligenthal, a recording artist with Bethel Music and worship leader at the church, posted to Instagram asking for her large social media following to pray that her daughter Olive Alayne would be raised from the dead. This spawned a global hashtag with thousands of posts.") **-CHANGED Movement** ("The CHANGED Movement was started by Bethel pastors Elizabeth Woning and Ken Williams in 2019 for people who "once identified as LGBTQ+ and through encounters with the love of Jesus, have experienced His freedom in their lives" and is led by the Equipped to Love ministry at Bethel. Both Woning and Williams used to identify as homosexual. Woning claims she changed after 18 months when "the Lord was able to displace my sense of belonging as a lesbian with my sense of belonging as a daughter of God". Williams credits his change to undergoing five years of weekly therapy which he claims resolved his same-sex attraction as well as addiction to masturbation and pornography.") -**Lay on hands** (They send out young members (16-20~) to ask strangers if they can lay hands on them in prayer to heal them. This isn't little boo-boos either. My own wife is in a wheel chair, and the amount of times they've offered than been astonished that she didn't leap from the chair is astounding.) Examples: 1. "2008 lawsuit over attempted faith healing: In 2008, a man fell down a 200-foot (61 m) cliff in Redding after drinking with a group at the top. The two others that were with him, including one student at the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry, believed he was dead and tried to find him for six hours in order to raise him back to life, rather than calling 9-1-1. The man survived, but was paralyzed from the fall, and later unsuccessfully sued the student in the group.[44] The incident is often brought up as a criticism of the church's teachings, which includes that believers may raise people from the dead with prayer." 2. "Student activities in Redding As a part of the student's education, they get assignments, such as to find strangers in Redding to heal. News articles report that students seek out people in wheelchairs and crutches to pray for in grocery stores and parking lots. Reportedly, the students are banned from prophesying to tourists around the Sundial Bridge after incidents and they have similarly been kicked out of local stores. Another regular practice is "treasure hunts", where they believe God gives them clues that match people they are to find and attempt to heal or prophesy to." -- There is so much more that goes into all this, including being complete sh**s during COVID, but reading the wiki along with some other articles shows just how far the spread their influence through back-door dealings and inserting themselves into local politics and the police department. The only funny thing about it all is that the Qanon/MAGA people and the Bethel people have been at each other's throats the past couple years in trying to be the main power in the city/county. Between recalls, dubious dimissals of city council members, and naming themselves as mayor or city council, the two extremist groups have done nothing but make Redding an even worse s**t hole than it ever was before by competing for who can be the f*****g worst.Mora, NM is pretty damn scary to outsiders. Lots of rural mountain towns that are isolated from tourists can be strange. I've spent alot of time in WV and Arkansas but rural NM is probably the most hostile place to outsiders I have been.New Town Saint Charles Missouri. It looks like a Truman Show set. It's in the middle of a plane, surrounded by farmland. Imagine A UFO sliced and scooped a piece of a town up and dropped it somewhere. The edges of town just.. stop. The roads and sidewalks just stop at the edge. The "main street" has shops with living space above them. There's only a one lane road in and one lane road out of the town.
