The United States of America is filled with many great places that are lovely to visit and live in. However, just like everywhere else, for every amazing city, there will be some creepy town that you would rather not stop in when passing through.
When one Redditor recently asked people online about their opinions on which one of these towns is the creepiest, netizens were quick to fill the thread with answers, sharing all kinds of stories and making some of those places sound like something straight out of a horror movie. Scroll down to see what they said!
More info: Reddit
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There is something eerie about small towns around the world, and they don’t necessarily need to be in the USA. After all, it is not without reason that there are many successful horror movies set in places with small towns.
In fact, there’s even a whole movie genre called Small-Town Horror. Among some of the top films of the genre in the list on Ranker are classics like Halloween (1978), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Jaws (1975), Psycho (1960), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), and the more recent title It (2017). And that is without going into all the series, like Twin Peaks (1990) and Stranger Things (2016).
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Of course, it’s easy to argue that some of the imagery we now have in our heads might also have been created by these very movies. It could also be that big cities are very different in comparison or that our minds simply find it hard to accept that everything that looks so calm and perfect can just be like that without any hidden agenda.
As Horror Head wrote on Medium, places like these tend to look picturesque, with many trails, wide open parks, warm homes, and stores, as well as friendly people welcoming you with open arms—all of it looking as if it hasn’t changed one bit in the past few decades.
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This type of scenery usually makes one feel like what they see in front of their eyes is too good to be true, and so, the mind wanders, looking for whatever could be lurking beneath this beautiful surface.
And sure enough, every small town has something to say. If you find the right person to talk to, you’ll likely hear about all kinds of things, from myths and urban legends to haunted historical tales and dark secrets. While it may be difficult to tell how much of it is true, it will most likely sow a little bit more doubt in you, making you doubt the perfect exterior just a little bit more.
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But in the end, every place is different in its own way, and every city or town has its own plusses, minuses, and horror stories. So, if you’re planning a trip where you might visit any one of these spots that these Redditors mentioned, it may be wise to remember what they said. But try not to take their words as an undeniable truth because every experience is personal, and there’s no guarantee that whatever you read will come true.
What did you think about this story? Do you know any other creepy towns in the USA that you’d like to add to the list? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Centralia, PA. Has been on fire for over 50 years.Colorado City, Arizona. F**k you, Warren Jeffs.Gotta say it. My wife and I were vacationing in Bar Harbor, Maine, and decided to drive to the easternmost point in the US. So we made it Lubec, Maine. It was kind of foggy and looked totally deserted. I get Stephen King novels now.Salton Sea, CA went to clean out a family members house after they passed…didn’t see a single car on the road…or human…that whole weekend. Felt sooo creepy.Whittier, Alaska
Most of the town’s residents live in a single apartment building. There’s nothing else there. The town is accessible by water and a one-way tunnel through the mountain.Gary, Indiana.Amboy, California
All of the stories are true. I lived out in 29 palms while my husband was stationed there a few years back. I heard stories of people getting run off the road, people pretending to have gotten in a car crash so you stop and help, candles being set up in the middle of the road, etc. His chain of command even had a meeting with them before the marine corps ball about not stopping on amboy because of how dangerous it was. I worked out there too and I know at least 10-15 bodies have been found in the last few years.Covington VA. I've told this story before and I'll tell it again. A few years ago I worked as a subcontractor to banks. I was the guy who would knock on your door and tell you to call your bank on a missed payment. Anyway, I was driving in a new job territory. And as I'm driving down the road, all of a sudden, I come upon a massive fog bank. It takes a good 5 minutes to drive through it. Then once I reach the other end, it was like someone just cut the fog with a knife. It suddenly ended, and it's stone cold quite. I mean I even stopped my car and listened. No birds. No wind. No sound. Feeling creeped out, I slowly drive a bit more. And come out on top of a mountain looking down into the city valley. And it smells like hotdog water. I didn't know it then but that was due to the paper factory.As I drove into town, it was just one store front closed after another. It all felt like a Steven King movie. The whole town seemed like a zombie insect. Dead but still moving somehow.As if all that wasn't enough, the cherry on top was seeing a few [totalitarian] flags flying in front of people's houses. After seeing those, I got out of there as fast as I could.Most towns in East Texas, close to the LA border. They don't want you there, and they'll let you know it. I'm a white Texas native, and I don't even feel welcome.Point Pleasant, West Virginia. The Moth Man is hiding there, somewhere.How has no one said Harrison Arkansas? It's the home of the [infamous clan with a 'k'], and they aren't shy about it.Vidor, Texas. Super racist east Texas piney woods.East St Louis, IL. Never seen a town that looked post-apocalyptic before going through there.I grew up in the poorest town in America. Littleton , West Virginia. It's not even Incorporated anymore and is literally been articled on Google as the poorest most depressing place in America and most definitely in Appalachia. My parents moved us there when I was about 3 out of the city in Pittsburgh when a flood destroyed the whole street of houses we lived on. The city bought it out to put a trolley track through. My parents were off with the wind. I think at the time my parents thought we were going to move to the country and it was going to be peaceful and quiet and we could start over. Between the [substance] epidemic, the poverty levels, and the reality of living in such a rural area with limited access to close jobs and stores was far different. I wouldn't change it now that I'm grown , but I definitely saw some things that fit the Appalachian uneducated narrative, trauma and bad parenting etc . However though, I also met many people who are incredibly kind , well-educated , well-rounded human beings and I do not think that the stereotype is fair. A lot of people hear a person is from West Virginia and immediately assume that they're uneducated , don't wear shoes and are inbred living in a shack with No electric. Sadly not true at all and all of those things can be relevant in other places across the world. But Littleton , West Virginia definitely is a wasteful black hole of a place , and not a pleasant place to grow up By any means.I've traveled through a lot of tiny little back towns all around the western US. In southeastern California, the towns up the west shore of the Salton Sea have a unique kind of eerieness I've never felt anywhere else. Towns like Salton City, Desert Shores, and Oasis.
The Salton Sea, for those unfamiliar, is an inland body of saltwater. Back around the 1960s, a bunch of little resort towns popped up along its shores. But sometime in the 70s or 80s, a combination of agricultural runoff and wild variations in the salinity of the sea caused fish to die off in massive numbers. The stench of rotting fish pretty well killed the tourism industry, and the towns along the sea have never recovered. They're not quite ghost towns, there are still a few thousand people living in each of the cities I named. But they're only a fraction of the population they once had. I could definitely feel sort of a depressing weight on the towns, and the dead fish smell is still to this day a constant presence all along the seashore.Florida, Missouri
Creepy, creepy, creepy.
I just checked. It's now listed as uninhabited (by the living). I'm not surprised.Barstow, California. It’s the convergence of highways in the middle of nowhere. It’s like an entire town of unhinged hitchhikers who got dumped there. Freaky s**t.It's barely a town anymore but definitely Mineral Springs, Missouri.
It was once a bustling town with a famous hot spring, but it dried up. Now various people live in very old houses with no electricity. No one knows their names but they send one person into town a month for groceries.
If you're there very long at all, they WILL shoot at you.As a minority, Kingman az. I used to live near there. It’s such a f*****g racist a*s sundown town, that sasha baron cohen did a piece there for his show Who is America? He f****d with them in a fake town hall meeting where he was proposing to build a mosque in town. It was not received well, and that town of racist f*****g lunatics showed their true colors!My vote is with Las Vegas. Lotta desperate and creepy people and that is just the tourists. The flashing lights and constant sound failed to distract me from the dark underbelly that is right in your face.Picher, OK. It’s an EPA superfund site that was being cleaned up and bought out. The town was dying literally and figuratively, then a tornado came through and took care of enough that whoever had remained left. Now it’s a ghost town. Beaver, Oklahoma. Way out in the panhandle. Don’t go there if you’re a minority.Tonopah, Nevada. Clown Motel next to a cemetery full of infants and workers who [perished] in a silver mine.Elgin Kansas.
The motto of the town is “A town too tough to die”
A person told me a story about a time they stopped there on a cross country motorcycle trip. When they parked they could see people peaking round the corners of buildings. Shortly after a woman in an old dirty wedding dress came around a building pushing an old Victorian baby stroller. There wasn’t a baby in the stroller it was a toy baby.
There are trees growing out of buildings. The Main Street is an out of place, super wide, brick road for herding cattle through the town back in the way back times. For such a small town of nothing, in the middle of nothing. It was for a short time “one of the World’s busiest cattle shipping towns”
It’s a creepy place.
Edited: town motto. Still just as cool.Shreveport is like The Last Of Us at night time.Danville illinois. It is also dangerous as f**k.Clovis, NM. Where criminals go to hide.Medicine Bow, WY. I only stayed in the hotel for a night but it was super creepy. Lights off in the front and hasn't been renovated since early 1900s with a bunch of creepy Victorian Era paintings and mouse s**t everywhere.Tenderloin in San Francisco is an experience to say the least. Especially at night.
