Places with dark or malevolent energy

Disneyland

My last workplace.

Tulum, Mexico

The Datalounge.

Mar-a-Lago

Cassadaga, FL.

I didn't feel anything weird when I was in Tulum.

Mel’s poozy

Nevada

Carnival midways, especially after dark

One of the bedrooms in my grandparents' house. Spooky energy that always gave me the creeps.

I-10 between Houston and Lake Charles and Louisiana north of Baton Rogue.

Cartagena, Columbia felt so dark and evil. It was Spanish America’s largest slave port…maybe that has something to do with it. It just had a horrible, sad energy. The place that I visited with the coolest, happy energy was Matala, Greece. Hippies lived in the caves in the 60’s. The town still has that cool vibe.

J.Lo's bed.

Small Canadian prairie towns.

The church my family went to when I was growing up. It felt like evil inside of there. It felt like there were dozens of lingering souls all over that place, and it would give me anxiety to be in there-especially at night. They leave it unlocked, so sometimes I would go there to play the piano after school. Once, it got dark before I realized it, and I had to run out of there (screaming) because it was so creepy. I still get creeped out when I think about that place.

Dubai. The acrid stench from non-stop exploitation of desperate people from poor countries. That place and its citizens are cancerous.

I'm going to Dubai!

East St. Louis and Granite City Illinois

My cousin said he sensed Albuquerque NM was evil when flew over it or drove through it or something. I lived there for a few months and there was something odd about its feeling. My family has psychic abilities.

Fox News studio.

Shopping malls after dark.

Any gay bathhouse in America

Boot Hill cemetery, Tucson, Arizona.

Most of Scotland, the further north I went.

Too many to mention in Germany and Eastern Europe.

Bucharest, Romania.

R19 - that's funny - there is something 'off' about Albuquerque. It does feel 'dark' and not a lot of positive energy.

Los Angeles is just a stream of sad, desperate broken dreams and people.

Go two blocks off the Las Vegas strip and it's the same feeling. Las Vegas does not have good energy - at all.

Parts of Baltimore are lovely but you can turn the corner and suddenly the birds are silent.

South Philadelphia

Much of Mqryland is like that. r26. Parts of Connecticut too. I think we had a thread about that.

Roy’s Motel, Amboy, California. Route 66

Hunting Island, SC; and the lighthouse

We've had several threads over the years about how Gothic and unsettling parts of Connecticut are. Also the small towns and surrounding desert areas of California and Nevada.

KEY WEST!!!!!

Parts of Wisconsin, The Vatican.

People in LA idealize the Hollywood Hills, but I lived there for one year and moved out on the first day I could. Narrow streets with creepy people in street-level windows staring at you in the middle of the night. Serial killers and murderers dump bodies in the winding, desolate streets. Desperation and deception overload, I avoid the area as much as possible and would never consider living there again.

My vagina.

The Townhouse.

The Ozarks portion of Missouri

Staten Island

Ivanka at R35, I know that feeling

[quote] People in LA idealize the Hollywood Hills, but I lived there for one year and moved out on the first day I could. Narrow streets with creepy people in street-level windows staring at you in the middle of the night. Serial killers and murderers dump bodies in the winding, desolate streets. Desperation and deception overload, I avoid the area as much as possible and would never consider living there again

MARY!

Maryland . There is a cruelty and complete lack of charity to the people that is just disconcerting and gives off weird vibes. It's too bland to be called creepy though.

Anything east of California.

I never liked the East Coast from Maine to Florida. Lots of human trafficking that is like a string that never ends. Ugh, avoid the Eastern United States like the plague. Please, don't raise your little ones there!

The South, throw some salt because the soil is cursed. Troglodytes abound. Crudness, Nastiness, and oppression permeate the air. Lost of family rape and murderers. Delete delete delete.

The Rust Belt, it's not the place. It's the people. Inbred ignorant fuckers are hanging from the trees. Lots, and I mean a lot of people with mental illness.

The Plains, animal fuckers all of them. Perverts with no ambition whatsoever. Run from them.

Birmingham, AL.

San Francisco

New Orleans

Washington DC

Donald Trump's bathroom

Las Vegas has some seriously negative energy.

Trump Tower

Andy Cohen's coked-up butthole.

[quote] Andy Cohen's coked-up butthole.

Wonky brown eye.

New Haven

[quote] Places with dark or malevolent energy

Your mom’s butt.

NYC, Long Island.

First time crossing the Mississippi (east bound) was a few years ago and as soon as I was on the other side of the river, I felt an immediate shift in energy. I wouldn't say it was dark/evil necessarily, but the South feels like nowhere else I've ever been in America.

Gay bars, high schools, universities, airports

R42 Yeah, because California is known for its morals, values and helpful, caring people.🙄

Datalounge.

Definitely Tasmania. A white trash redoubt with a dark history, and A LOT of damaged DNA. A LOT. Did I say A LOT?

Denver International Airport

A lot of Eastern Oregon; the Green Mountains region of Vermont; parts of Eastern Massachusetts; Butte, Montana.

Meant WESTERN Massachusetts, not eastern

Places that had mass, violent carnage, and Gettysburg and Johnstown in Pennsylvania both fit the bill.

Thunder Bay, Ontario

The Great Pyramids oh Egypt.

Original home of the devil.

The abandon settlement of Dogtown, Massachusetts that dated back to 1600s.

A town literally built on top of the fires of hell, Centralia, Pennsylvania

To the guy who posted Scotland: why is it?

Is it because life there was brutal for many centuries?

While not exactly dark or malevolent, the forests of the upper Midwest--Michigan, Minnesota, but especially Wisconsin--sometimes have an ancient, alien feeling to them that feels totally removed from the human sphere. It's an odd feeling that has flashed across me numerous times there that I've never felt in other wilderness. It's like there's something there that's older than us and that doesn't care much for our presence.

Twenty-Nine Palms, Ca., and a lot of the small Mojave Desert towns. It's not the desert itself, which is beautiful and contains the good-vibe town of Palm Springs, its that the Californians who can't cope with civilization seek out the desert, and their anti-social vibes dominate whole towns.

Charleston SC., the only major Southern city i've been to. Sad, dark, hopeless vibe haunting the lovely old buildings constructed by slave labor. I'd bet my 401K its a lot worse in other Southern cities, like New Orleans.

Alcatraz prison. Did a tour several years ago and as soon as I walked in, I felt awful. I have no psychic ability or anything like that. It was just a creepy sadness. It bothered me that people were walking into the solitary confinement cells and talking smiling selfies. All I could think of was how many men must’ve lost their minds in those spaces.

Indiana. A proud Klan state with a profoundly racist history that lives on today.

Dogtown was probably a colony of witches. That's why they fled civilization.

Vienna

Spokane, Washington. It feels very beaten-down and poor. A lot of pawn shops.

Italy. The Catholic church. The mafia. Fascism. Italian operas are documentaries. A very sick nasty vicious people with death just an alley away.

The gelato though is excellent.

R72 - weirdest thing you should say. I am a guy that believes in zero superstitions and stuff like that. I remember coming, for the first time, for a 2 week meeting when they opened up the office in Romania via Vienna. I could hardly wait to visit Vienna after being here so I arranged to leave such that I would have 3 days there. I had a mole removed prior to leaving, no big deal, no need for painkillers besides some Tylenol. When I got to Vienna, at a boutique hotel, a weird energy hit me and I had to lay down. It was muggy, high pressure, and hot. I fell asleep and, though I rarely have vivid dreams, dreamed as though my late partner was in the room with me...sitting on the bed and talking about how I would be ok, how it was just hot, etc. Then, I couldn't see him, but I could hear his voice and I kept calling him and he wasn't visible anymore. A huge thud woke me up, and I realized the wind blew the windows open. I was drenched in sweat and had major colitis symptoms all of a sudden (I had been ok before I got there). Spent the first day hot and shivering and just spaced out. By the next morning I was ok, but the whole experience was surreal. I think the only thing that made me feel better was that at breakfast the next morning, a Hungarian girl who was cleaning the rooms struck up a conversation (she was a student there) and asked if I was ok and told me about a good place to go eat and we went there and chatted a bit before she went on her way. Very weird because each time before I fell asleep, in that almost asleep phase, I continued to hear my late partner call my name clearly, which would wake me up freaked out. Was fine the minute I got home.

Bangor, Maine.

Plaza de la Corredera, Cordoba, Spain Another vote for Alcatraz Auschwitz, obviously Gary, Indiana Ardrossan, Scotland East Harlem Tenderloin district, San Francisco Newhaven, East Sussex Millom, Cumbria South Bronx

You all need to tell us how/why you felt that energy like I did at R75. Just naming a spot on the map isn't interesting. Also, for those naming places like Auschwitz, c'mon...that's pretty much a horrible place for any human being with a modicum of soul.

The neighborhood where I grew up. If I weren’t an atheist, I’d say that Satan himself created that desolate and vile place. Bullies, gossipy old women and everyone seemed to have a terminal case of Schadenfreude (sp?).

Where you from r79

DC. It has the most stereotypical racist white gays I’ve ever met! When I was there every single time a white gay showed up, he’d soon start complaining about black people. It was insane. Even in places like WeHo I never experienced that.

Philadelphia r80.

Maybe I’ve read too many HP Lovecraft stories, but Boston creeps me out with the ancient cemeteries just thrown in among business areas and neighborhoods.

There is a strange presence and feeling of time in some southwest Ohio towns, particularly Yellow Springs, Lebanon, Waynesville, and Germantown.

Great thread for the most part. Just naming a city or place isn’t interesting. Give some detail.

Angkor Wat.

I got a distinct sense of emptiness, that this was a place that had been deserted by gods.

Or maybe visitors from outer space who helped build the once magnificent architecture, seemingly beyond local capability

New Orleans. Feels haunted.

1) I second Vienna.

2) Any place where a priest was, except the priest at my high school.

3) An airport transport van that William Kennedy Smith briefly boarded.

Mississippi. No other place has ever given me such a sense of dread and gloom palatable in the air. I don't believe in ghost but I'm not so sure after my visit there. People were friendly enough but I almost got the impression they were trapped in some massive haunted house and every part of my body was telling me to get the fuck out of the entire state. I was there for a business trip that couldn't end soon enough.

Vienna. Hitler was Austrian.

I spent a week in Vienna in 1992. Visiting a friend who was there for work. I never want to go back.

Almost all the men were killed in WWII. The city was left awash in bitter, lonely, old women, who lost all the young men in their lives fifty years earlier. They sat on park benches and glowered.

The vibe of Vienna was horrible. Just horrible.

The entire state of Vermont .

Several months ago there was a thread about worst places you've lived or something like that (tried searching. I'm sure someone will find it.) In that thread I mentioned Maryland as one of the worst places I've lived, and interestingly, there are several responses above that feel MD gives of a dark energy! I lived there for 8 years and never felt like it was "home". There was just something off about it, can't quite put my finger on it. I lived in Montgomery county (DC "side" of MD).

R91. I posted about MD at r41. Montgomery county is a very anxiety inducing place. It has the feeling of a DMV or a hospital waiting room in that no one actually wants to be there. There's also a uneasy sense of " you're on your own here , don't expect any help from anyone" that I've never felt in places that were far rougher on paper. I think part of the issue is Moco has the stress of a heavily populated area without the benefits.

There are a few buildings I know in New York that have been repurposed into luxury residential spaces. There’s one that was some kind of hospital, down on First Avenue and maybe 16th Street? The apartments are configured weirdly and there’s a weird and unpleasant energy. I remember looking at one of the apartments and just wanting to GTFO. But people do live there, so maybe they don’t feel it.

Just this morning I passed a lovely building that is now a luxury condo building but was once, I believe, a home for “unwed mothers”. I’ve never been inside, but imagine there might be residual sorrow and despair.

R92 that's really how it felt....very joyless. For several years I would have to go back occasionally (I've lived in NJ since '06 and love it here) for work related nonsense (company HQ was in Bethesda). Thankfully, new job etc. I do feel bad because I have a few friends who still live in the Gaithersburg/Germantown/Frederick area, and just can't bring myself to go visit them. Weird!

The Ambassador Hotel but I took care of it.

Vienna is a sehr schön city. R75 Had more to do with your bowels. R89 had more to do with your religion.

LaLaurie Mansion in New Orleans. I've been to many "haunted" locations and many of them are simply older locations with histories which the owners and tour guides attempt to play up to create an eerie and unsettling atmosphere. But with the LaLaurie Mansion, as soon as you get near the location, you feel *something* and once you step inside, that feeling is intensified.

The Viper Room in Los Angeles.

R75 that a very interesting story.

R77 Newhaven? Seriously? There's only the port and fort there. What vibe did you get?

Seattle. The only friendly people I met were fellow out of towners. The natives seemed ok at first but either proved incompetent or self absorbed to the point of insanity.

Really really bad vibes at the Stone House on Manassas Battlefield. But this is understandable due to the violence that took place there before and during the Civil War.

R59 why WMass? I’m curious.

Irving, Illinois. Everyone listens to REO Speedwagon there on the loudspeaker.

I second Auchwitz. I've been to other concentration camps like Daccau, but Auchwitz was really earie. Out in the countryside, but no birdsong. Nothing. Gave me the chills.

Vienna gave me the chills in the Prater amusement park. Seeing the Ferris wheel just gave me the heeby-jeebies.

East Berlin in the 1980s was weird and oppressive. There was very little colour. It was like being in a black and white movie.

Good God, but some of you have extremely overactive imaginations.

Folkestone, Kent, UK.

It’s like a place where all hope has fled. Misersble, empty, and soul-sucking.

R89 in the recent thread about Europeans freak weather & climate change, someone recommended that someone aiming to avoid the worst effects to come should aim to live and work in Austria rather than Germany or France or England. Perhaps I’ll avoid Vienna and stick to the countryside...

I wouldn’t call it evil because I loved it but New Orleans has a seriously heavy energy like nothing I’ve ever experienced. There were parts of the city where I felt intense emotion and was even brought to tears. As soon as I arrived I was just in awe.

Las Vegas.........even with all the lights and glitz ..it just seems terribly vacant...and dark.....like that fuckin Stephen King novel... The Stand.

Montecito.

OP’s anus.

The original World Trade Center buildings. Even in the spacious areas, it felt heavy and suffocating. Elevator rides were always uneasy.

R96 - you maybe right. But the weird thing is, when I took my mom there she also had a weird reaction to the wind in the summer. Maybe the climate combined with bowels? But it was absolutely bizarre and disturbing. It was strange and R105, you should visit Vienna as it is absolutely a beautiful city. Unfortunately, I didn't get to see it in fall during the Mozart festival. Christmas markets are also magnificent. Worth 2 visits in my book. The Hofburg, St. Stephan's cathedral, the Schoenbrun...amazing places. Beautiful historical city center as well. Find an authentic place for food instead of a tourist trap. Best schnitzel is at small, family-owned places.

I spent a lot of time in the wtc complex and it never felt dark or foreboding to me, r110.

Agree on the elevators but to me it was never due to negative energy. It was always the awareness of how ridiculously high up you were!

R106 New Orleans is below sea level. Go to cities at sea level or below and you can have the same heavy energy.

I worked in the WTC. They were glamorous and not dark energy at all.

Hudson New York is creepy and tense.

As charming and beautiful as I find Savannah, GA., it has a sinister energy.

The Dyatlov Pass

Saint-Tropez

That your opinion R114 and in light of what happened, you were way off base.

I grew up in a city at sea level on an island r113 and it never felt that way.

??? Their dark energy INVITED the terrorist attack? Created it? Are you Dr. Mabuse or Madame Blavatsky?

R120 what "city" is that?

Santa Cruz, CA.

Nanaimo and now I live in Vancouver.

Santa Cruz is not an island and much of it is not on hills. What the fuck are you going on about? New Orleans is (or was) a huge historic city and it is 5-10 feet below sea level.

ah ok I misunderstood who was responding to me.

Your unknown "city" has an average elevation of 28 meters. Oh, it's a town. Try VENICE Italy, or New Orleans, or Miami, or Rangoon. All feel heavy.

Okay calm down r127

Not fucking arguing with any of you over the WTC, so you can all shove it.

This thread is the The Dyatlov Pass crowd. No use arguing with them. Special people. Like Kennedy family stans.

DORK-SIDED PLACES!!

Eastern Oregon

Um, that heavy feeling in below sea level cities is humidity, dear hearts.

Aberdeen, WA. All joy seems to have been sucked out of that town.

People from the Midwest and Northeast complain about humidity but they don't know the true misery humidity until they visit the Gulf Coast.

Indiana. It's the Alabama and Florida of the north. It's the mistake of the Midwest--Illinois, Michigan, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin, Ohio, all have some redeeming qualities; Indiana does not. People from Indiana will always brag how much cheaper their houses are. My response is always "but you live in INDIANA"! And even visiting northwestern Indiana can feel like visiting a place that is 10 years behind Chicago. When I attended grad school there, it seemed like people had hairstyles, clothing, etc. that was common in Chicago 10 years earlier.

[quote]Mississippi. No other place has ever given me such a sense of dread and gloom palatable in the air.

R88: Writers who travelled through ante-bellum Mississippi sometimes commented on the haunted and disturbing qualities of the landscape, particularly the remote plantation Kansas along the Mississippi River. (And these were not the observations of writers particularly indisposed to slavery.)

There are some fairly hair-raising descriptions of the remote areas and how inhospitable they were beyond geography and climate.

I forgot to mention--Indiana is the place where the KKK had its rebirth. To this day, the white people in Indiana who lost their factory jobs still seem to harbor a lot of hate for black people.

Trump Tower. I worked in the neighborhood. Hated that atrium mall. Hated the brass and ugly marble.

Somebody upthread posted DL but I'm not so sure the joke is just a joke. To me this place has gotten weirder, stupider and angrier in equal measures in the last six or so weeks. I don't know what's going on but this place weirds out at points. I've dropped out, reset my own head and then come back in six months or a even a year - the odd thing is once this isn't a habit the idea of it becoming a habit again seems kind of repellent. But, COVID and home lockdown.

Don't get me wrong there are a number of witty, clever, sharp tongued and sometimes even kind people here, but we're always outnumbered and then, for periods, we are circled by the jetsam. Feels to me like this may be one of those times. There's on thread in particular you could call a portal to the dark side. This is a fascinating, hilarious and sometimes dark and malevolent site.

Lovecraft and Hawthorne both tapped into the unique malevolence of New England, but while HPL projected it onto space cephalopods and other figments of his paranoid imagination Nat correctly locayed it in the hearts of Puritans..

Which thread r140?

I worked in Gary, Indiana for a few days in 2002, and that was an interesting city- half of the city was abandoned because of the high asbestos content, so when you drove down the main street at night time, one side of the city was a black hole, the other, normal. Churches, houses and a hospital complete with files and gowns still in there.

I'll agree with Las Vegas- it has a taking energy- moisture, money, dreams. There is a reason gangsters were attracted to it to dump bodies.

Vienna and Berlin? Visited both in 2017, and I loved them. Vienna is spectacular.

Auschwitz. For a few months after visiting, I had the sense that I had brought something out of there with me.

I agree about Albuquerque, just driving through it I felt so much anxiety and this sense of doom. It felt as if it was on the edge of the earth, for some reason. Yet I didn’t feel that way in Taos or Santa Fe or even El Paso.

R143 it kind of makes sense that a case as creepy as this came out of Gary. Even if you don’t think there was a supernatural angle the whole thing is just so bizarre and sad.

The House of Terror in Budapest was eerie too.

r146, that is very similar to the Enfield Poltergeist case in the 70's:

The EL-DE Haus in Cologne which was the Gestapo HQs during the war was creepy Too.

R145 and others. Here's an observation. I am loosely connected to a Tibetan Rinpoche, in the Nyingma tradition. They believe/acknowledge that there is a geography of psychic energies - both positive and negative. They identified south-central New Mexico as one of the points on the world map were they built a temple where positive cosmic energy could counteract the dark negative energy. Not far from Alamogordo - where atomic weapons were first developed and successfully added to the Human arsenal of death and destruction.

200 miles south of Albuquerque.

rural Maine.

R151

Tijuana, especially near the border. I remember walking over there from San Diego for a day trip and can't wait to get back. The place was just sad. Maybe it's those broken dreams of those people failing to cross over looming in the air. That and the feeling of danger lurking in every corner.

The Tri-Cities in eastern Washington state. A completely arid, dreadful, depressing place in the middle of nowhere.

One of the three cities, Richland, lives up to it's name. It's full of rich people in big houses. Imagine Orange County but without the ocean or any semblance of culture. The other two cities, their names escape me now, are shabby dumps. One's filled with racist white trash, and the other is filled with Mexicans who don't, or won't, speak English. There's also some military facilities nearby, which always adds to the charm of a place. I think the atom bomb was built at one of them, something the town's proud of.

Some of the dark stuff that happened during the month or so I was out there: Meth-heads would just run out into traffic; I had to dodge two different drug addicts on two different nights. A teenaged boy some friends of friends of friends knew got arrested for raping a baby who he was babysitting. A friend of a friend saw a family accidentally drag their dog to death behind their SUV. (To be clear, these things don't *only* happen in the Tri-Cities, but they certainly didn't help alleviate the crushing dread the place brought on.)

This was in the mid-2000s, so I can only imagine what the place is like these days.

The darkened woods between northern California and southern Oregon -- especially along Highway 199. I wouldn't want to get lost up there.

The men's room at Gwyneth Paltrow's agent's office. Somebody's making voodoo sacrifices in that building to keep Goop's career alive, and they have to flush the goat heads somehow...

DIFF’RENT DARK PLACES, OK!?!?

trump rallies. The concentration and release of so much evil cannot help but manifest negative conse-quences.

^ consequences

The alleyway and parking area behind WeHo’s ole “Circus of Books”.

Those who know, KNOW.

The only cemetery in my little town had an old section in the very back with all the tall tombstones (and a bunch of little ones just with initials on them). There was one very tall one in a little gated section with a metal railing all around it. I was dared to ride my bike back there and go in the gate and touch that tombstone at dusk, which I did. Scariest moment of my life!

R161, rock/paper/scissors?

[quote] Spokane, Washington. It feels very beaten-down and poor. A lot of pawn shops.

Pawn shops will give any place a bad vibe. In Oceanside, CA (military base), there used to be lots of check-cashing (same day) and tattoo shops. Tattoo shops have been elevated in status. Check-cashing places, not sure if those places still exist or got taken over by the internet.

I was on a west to east (US) road trip with a friend. We made a stop in Idaho to eat. To this day, I can't remember the name of the town or the restaurant. (My friend is now dead from diabetes complications, so I can't ask.) Anyway, this restaurant had a hostile vibe. All of the waitresses were pregnant and reminded me of characters out of a Flannery O'Connor story. It was my turn to drive as we exited the restaurant. IIRC, I jumped a curb upon exit (didn't see that there was no "transitional grade" between the parking lot and the road).

This is my one and only experience involving Idaho. I'm sure there are nice places there. I just felt really unwelcome at that little diner.

Shreveport Louisiana, dead and sorry as all get out.

Albany, NY.

Auschwitz. And I was there in early winter, the cold was so bitter.

Pine Barrens in NJ. Not far from civilization but there’s a strange feeling of death there.

The mountains in Central PA are super creepy and feel ‘haunted’ or more like cursed in an ancient way. Hard to describe. Parts of the Catskills in NY feel that way too.

There’s also something off about Texas panhandle/eastern NM. Can’t put my finger on it. It’s like the sky is watching.

Johnson, Vermont. I won't even go there as an adult. When I was a kid it was the quintessential template of any Stephen King book in Derry, Maine. Extremely creepy with a veneer of 'quaint, picturesque' and terrible people who completely let their eyes skim over the terrible things that happen there.

[quote] Pine Barrens in NJ. Not far from civilization but there’s a strange feeling of death there.

There's a really good episode of the Sopranos (Season 3) called "Pine Barrens." Paulie & Christopher attempt to bury a body there & end up lost in the snow and woods.

Outer Sunset and Outer Richmond (San Francisco) both have a dark, desolate energy.

To the posters who said Tulum, Mexico can you explain? Details please.

R172 I was wondering this as well since I was just thinking I’d like to go there today. Would be a shame if it was awful. I’ve heard Cancun proper has bad vibes.

I agree about Las Vegas and will add most of AZ.

I was going to say Aberdeen, WA R134! Kurt Cobain's hometown. Poor guy!

St. Patrick's Cathedral on Fifth Avenue in NYC. It seethes with the dark energy from the church hierarchy.

There is nothing warm, welcoming, or friendly about the place. It is a political stage for the Catholic Church in NY.

Planet Earth

R140 I agree. There are some vile and nasty people on DL Liars who want to destroy other Dataloungers or celebs that they hate with a passion - for no reason. They just take pleasure in ugly gossip. A decent conversation with those folks is impossible. There are some nice people, too. But they're in a minority. Sadly.

Totally agree with the posters who said parts of the Catskills and Albany. It seems there is a great deal of depression and desolation in the various little hamlets in and around those areas. There seemed to be a lot of joblessness and daily drug use. Even in some of the charming touristy towns there was a dark undercurrent and it felt like I had to keep my guard up.

A lot of the small towns in Southern Oregon creep me out. I grew up in Portland, but have spent a fair amount of time in the southern part of the state. Ashland, the home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, is quaint and overrun with rich hippies, but there is something inexplicably dark about it. Same with Jacksonville, which is a short drive away. Wolf Creek along I-5 is also extremely creepy—there is an old inn there that has some lore attached to it about a traveler who was allegedly bitten by a "vampire-like" creature there in the 1970s. That is obviously a tall tale, but even without factoring it in, it is an eerie place. A lot of old Hollywood stars used to stay at the inn because it is about 2/3 of the way between Los Angeles and Portland. I think Clark Gable frequented it, and Jack London finished a book there. There isn't really a town to speak of, just a few old buildings and houses. The vibe there is very strange and dark. I stopped there once and wanted to leave almost immediately, for no tangible reason.

It sort of reminds me of Wallace, Idaho, another odd small town nestled in the mountains, except Wallace actually has a proper downtown/business district and isn't quite "dark" feeling—even still, though, Wallace does have a strange "lost in time" vibe about it. Wallace was a mining community, which might have something to do with it. A lot of the old mining towns in Montana (many of which are literal ghost towns) have a similar energy. There is a lot of tragedy that came with the mining enterprise, and I have to wonder if all that digging in the earth and extracting ore can mess with the natural energy fields, resulting in a weird or off-putting feeling.

R180

I was just in Wallace this summer. It's a nice town, but there's a definite tension between the tasteful locals and the trash hicks who blast into town on their UTVs and jacked-up brodozer pickups to stink up the place.

Gothic churches all look hellish to me.

There was a small town west of Asheville NC that my friend and I drove through. It was in a very narrow valley and in late afternoon, although the sky looking up was still light, everything was in deep shadow because of the mountains. I can’t remember the details why but I just thought, this place is creeeepy.

Another vote for the House of Terror in Budapest. It was the headquarters of the Nazi and Communists regimes in Hungary. The first thing you see is a tank sitting on a sloped plinth. There is some sort of viscous liquid that comes down the sloped sides into the pit like those old clocks that had wires with liquid moving along them, if anyone remembers those. The basement is a series of cement cells where dissidents were tortured. You can FEEL it. It's so oppressive. You kind of make yourself small so you don't rub against a wall or anything and absorb the misery of the place. That's not to discourage anyone from going. It's the best historical museum I've ever been to. Really fascinating and well done.

Seaside, FL. I was there on a warm, sunny day. I've never felt so uneasy in my life. Not even in the terror museum. I can't explain why but it's so contrived and falsely cheery. It's hard to describe. I was waiting for all of the shiny, happy people to unzip their human suits to expose whatever aliens or lizard people they really were. Horrible, I couldn't wait to get away. I looked it up later to see if it was built an ancient burial ground or was a slave hub or SOMETHING to explain that feeling. All I found is that it is where The Truman Show was filmed. I've never been to that fake Disney town, but I bet it's similar. Do not recommend!

Echoing several others, I also hated Vienna. The people there are very cold and the whole place just has an unwelcoming vibe. I loved seeing Sisi's private rooms though.

Naples (Italy), especially the train station. I can't explain it.

So basically the entire US has been covered in this thread.

Anywhere that isn't my house.

The West Side Club in particular, R22.

I am curious about R33's mention of Wisconsin. I've never been there, but I have seen a lot of pictures of it, and there does appear to be something off-putting about the landscape there. The green rolling hills and patches of woods are spooky looking. Some of the towns also look like they've been lifted straight out of a horror movie. Take Mineral Point, for example:

There was not a pool where I was staying in the Catskills. I drove to an area municipal pool that was next to a scenic overlook and some hiking trails. The pool was overcrowded with screaming kids so I decided against it. I walked over to the scenic overlook. Immediately I was overcome by a feeling of dread that took my breath away. I felt evil lurking and ran as fast as I could to my car.

Because you are insane, R190.

Don't blame that on the Catskills.

Another vote for Aberdeen, Wa. I will go further and say pretty much the entire Pacific Northwest Coast line. The area just feels sad and joyless. Its a shame because the scenery is beautiful, but there is no spark to it.

Philadelphia has an oppressive heaviness about it. Every time I was there, I got a uneasy feeling.

Los Angeles has a strange energy about it. Its constantly buzzing with the feeling like a powder keg is about to explode. Some nights it just felt very foreboding. I wonder if its because the constant moving of the tectonic plates does something, and people can pick up on it.

R191 Lol, I may be insane but it was incredibly creepy and later I wondered if there was some perv hanging around trying to grab a kid leaving the pool.

29 Palms is dusty and desolate and creepy.

I’m surprised to see so many votes for Vienna. I absolutely love it there and have never gotten malevolent vibes - even when in the opera house or the Rathaus after hours. Autumn is spectacular, and Christmas time in Vienna is simply magical, too. I’d move there in a heartbeat if there were a legal way for me to do so.

Kissimmee, FL, a hell hole of poverty and neglect. The derelict hotels that line the highway rent rooms by the week or month.

Another vote for Las Vegas. I think you have to be born there (have good memories of growing up there). I don't understand moving there as an adult unless you have a high-paying job set up there.

There's just not much to LV, IMO. There's no core. It's like a house of cards.

R166, those state government buildings towering over Albany are ominous. Brutalist architecture. They freak me out when coming into the city.

R198 Those buildings always remind me of Dario Argento's 'Tenebre.' I'm not sure why.

Any casino. Just sad and dispiriting. People with food on a tray because they won’t leave their chosen slot, and you know they’re wearing diapers too. Filled with smoke. Ugh. Depressing and desperate.

Vienna is kind of mixed for me. Husband and I spent our honeymoon there over Christmas and while it was rather charming and beautiful he got suddenly, violently ill for 24 hours and we could never figure out why. I’ve never seen anything like it, scared me to death. And I got no Vienna gay vibe whatsoever, not sure where the Vienna gays were.

Second or third New Haven. There is a claustrophobic feel from the narrow streets and trees and the buildings are shabby and old. It’s not just that however (I didn’t get a similar feeling in Detroit for example, and it wasn’t as intense in surrounding towns). Just a weird heavy energy. I was glad to leave.

This could have been a great thread, but instead, most people just put places they don’t like or places that make them feel uncomfortable. Only a few people mentioned places that fit the title.

My childhood home was built at the base of Indian Hill, a Native American burial ground. A couple family members who lived within pretty much went mad in this place.

I’ve only felt dark energy in two locations. One was at Hampton Court. When walking through the gallery that is supposedly haunted by Catherine Howard, it felt like the air was pressurized with the oxygen lowered and a sense of foreboding.

I have been to Hampton Court and it is the tragic history of Anne Boleyn (She and Henry spent much time there) that makes the energy dark for me.

Tower of London. I went up all the way, the stairs were narrow. Felt very strange.

New Orleans. That place is cursed. All that voodoo they practice etc

What city r204?

Are all the people mentioning New Haven talking about the one in Connecticut?

Regarding the Pacific NW coast... IMHO the towns on the Oregon Coast are just poor, with the same vibe as any other town where none of the jobs pay more than minimum wage, and all the brighter and more ambitious young people leave and don't come back. And everyone who stays has to put up with the prosperous tourists like me passing through and prosperous retirees staying, and if these towns have an air of despair and resentment in spite of the beautiful setting I think that's why.

The two exceptions are Crescent City, Ca., which creeped the fuck out of me, and Santa Cruz, Ca., which has enough negative energy to have inspired "The Lost Boys".

Crescent City is home to a super-maximum security prison, and I've heard the vibe explained by both the sociopathic guards and the families of superviolent offenders settling there, and breeding the current population. Whatever caused it, I wanted to stop there for a burrito and a pee and maybe a walk along the harbor, but I ended up leaving fast, hungry, and looking for a turnout. When your gut instinct says "keep moving, no really, KEEP MOVING", you move.

And how's Santa Cruz doing these days? Gentrified? Filled with homeless drifters? Because when I knew the place, from the 70s through the 90s, yeah. It was a party town where people came from the Bay Area to enjoy the beach, the boardwalk amusement park, and the bars. But behind the brightly colored tourist attractions were sinister drifters sitting in the shadows like they were looking for prey, burned-out old hippies, the memories of a couple of notorious serial killers, shambling homeless ahead of the trend, and a strong dark undercurrent to everything.

Lalaurie Mansion

[quote] Regarding the Pacific NW coast... IMHO the towns on the Oregon Coast are just poor, with the same vibe as any other town where none of the jobs pay more than minimum wage, and all the brighter and more ambitious young people leave and don't come back.

I agree that poverty will give a town dark energy. The town where I used to live had a large underbelly of really poor, uneducated people. Part of the problem was that there was no place (at the time) to get a 4-year college degree.

The first time I went to the drug store, I went to buy some toothpaste, toothbrushes, etc. I saw something I had never seen before: some type of DIY kit to do your own fillings (for cavities).

To those of you who live in proximity to a non-prestigious college - be grateful. It's much worse to live in a place where college (brick and mortar) is not even a possibility for those who don't want to move.

Have you been there r117?

R194 - but isn't 29 Palms filled with young, handsome, horny Marines? I've always thought it would be a paradise in the desert.

I'm not seeing much in the Southern Hemisphere being mentioned here. Maybe that's where we all should be.

I'm seeing a lot of obvious places in this thread. It's one thing to go to a place where you know bad things happened and feeling bad vibes. It's a whole other thing to go someplace and get those bad vibes without any obvious prompt.

Buenos Aires. Odd, fucked-up city when I visited in 2008. 16x worse today because of the economy and Covid.

R211 Santa Cruz does have an army of homeless (like most towns on the west coast... good weather, lots of drugs, tolerant government officials, political activists). It was, and always will be, a home for hippies... not so old, and now ancient. It's got so much "good spirituality" - multiple buddhist and hindu centers, new age stuff, prosperity Gospel Jesus stuff - that it really doesn't have a dark atmosphere. Most oldtimers will suggest that the darkness now comes from the Silicon Valley workers and their families... small bungalows on the westside going for millions.

It used to be the mass murder capitol of the world, but nothing lasts forever.

I enjoyed visiting Santa Cruz when I lived in SF in the early 2010s. It never really struck me as a seedy. However, I was living a block north of the Tenderloin at the time, so maybe I'd been desensitized.

lol "a seedy."

Santa Cruz has become a wealthy suburb of Silicon Valley. Because the city is so liberal, they offered such complex array of support and services for the homeless, it became a magnet for the usual crowd of drug addicts. People started complaining about the needles, crime and violence, a la Venice Beach.

I was at Cal in the 80s and used to take the campus party bus to S Cruz to spend time with my brother who was a student there. Never found it seedy.

Yeah, I've been to Santa Cruz a couple of times, didn't find it dark or seedy. Kind of cheesy with the year-round carnival.

R223 Ha, not carnival, Boardwalk. While it's def "carny" and corny, it does keep the place from being too gentrified.

It definitely still has some of that old California beach town noir... what folks I guess call seedy. Mercifully so - old bohemians, kooks, decrepit hippies, and surfer culture of every kind/class/epoch. The gentrification sometimes is depressing.

Just this week they passed a new ordination re: homeless and camping. The third attempt in the last couple months. Huge issue, with real attempts to get a handle on it... personally, I'm not holding my breath.

Kingsman, AZ

I was driving cross country and became so sleepy I couldn’t make it to Flagstaff. So I pulled into what appeared to be the nicest motel in town. The next morning, I awoke and felt an ominous vibe. I checked out and left as fast as possible. I passed several cars whose occupants seemed just to be sitting in their cars and staring at me.

^Kingman

R225 Meth, Jesus, and white supremacy. Not a good mix.

I'm going to argue the whole country has a dark or malevolent energy. We are trapped in a volatile and unpredictable battle for the national character, for the future, for democracy. Guns, abortion, COVID, wealthy inequality, truth... All things are now political and all things are now partisan and people who know better in the Republican party are sacrificing them anyway. You may not agree with Republicans but not so long ago it was unimaginable they would destroy the country. Now, is it still?

I'm not sure good wins this time.

All of North America. Its history is filled with bloodshed. Any prosperity is a result of the direct result of the slaughter of Indigenous people and the theft of their land. Every single inch of it.

Um, there was a lot of bloodshed in Europe, and everywhere the Mongols went. North America ain’t that special in that regard.

Um, there's a big difference between what happened in Europe and what went down in North America, R230, but you know that. And WTF do the Mongols have to do with anything? Are you trying to justify the slaughter of Indigenous people and the theft of their land or what? Besides, the OP's question was about places with dark or malevolent energy and I answered it by saying North America. I didn't say only North America....

R14, that's Wendigo.

I wouldn't say dark energy, but a couple places I've lived had weird energy.

When I lived in Norfolk, VA I felt that there was no sense of belonging or wanting to be there. Everyone was a student or in the navy and was just waiting to finish their gig there and move on. It was not a warm feeling.

When I lived on Long Island, it felt that everyone had chips on their shoulders because they weren't from Manhattan. The people were angry and mean and pushy.

R233 - nah, everyone in Long Island just have chips on their shoulders. Some of the most crude, vile, and mean people you will ever find are on Long Island. Yes I know there are some wealthy and nice areas, but in general the people can be truly awful.

Las Vegas, and New Orleans are obvious picks. But I'll also add Tampa (or the rest of Florida really), Charleston, and Seattle.

The one common denominator: the presence of a Datalounger.

Coincidence?

Berlin is creepy as fuck. The whole city oozes evil. It wasn't that long ago they were pushing gays into ovens. Yeah, it's easy to get hot cock there, but the dark history overwhelms everything.

College campuses when the students are mostly gone, especially in the central PA of r168. Creepy, scary, Bundy vibes.

Also, I'll never understand how anyone chooses to run on even designated paths if they are isolated with no "escape" route. Or walk across a bridge. Or camp. Aren't people afraid of being accosted or worse? Bad vibes.

But then, I've more than once hoofed it alone near midnight from Madison Square Garden (31st/7th) to the Port Authority (41st/8th) and felt safe, if foolhardy.

And lakes. I don't like lakes. They're usually surrounded by ominous trees.

There's a reason so many terror movies have lakes as their setting.

R225 Kingman is awful. Did you ever feel anything in Flagstaff or elsewhere in AZ?

I’ve always wondered if there is any marker or commemorative plaques honoring the victims in Chicago for the H.H. Holmes murder house and if any paranormal activity takes place around there? Especially if it might be one of those high murder by gunshot neighborhoods.

I mentioned that places where people died violently and unjustly like Gettysburg and Johnstown Pennsylvania have unsettling energy. Not that I felt it so much, but on the NYU campus you have the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory building still in existence despite being where so many woman died from the fire, many jumping to their deaths rather then being burned alive.

There was even said to be a mysterious young man who would escort them to the ledges before they plunged down. Then across the street you have the NYU Library, which was a notorious locations for a string of campus suicides of young people jumping off the balconies into the indoor central courtyard to their deaths. This continued unabated even when barriers were put up and in the end required radical alterations of the design to keep it from happening and people flinging themselves to their death.

R.e. R219/R222/R223/R224, for stoke who doesn’t know Santa Cruz was the inspiration for Santa Carla, the fictional boardwalk setting of cult schlocky teen horror-comedy movie THE LOST BOYS (1987).

Interesting that only a few of U.K. locations have been mentioned so far. Cheers for the compliment!

We have got some dingy sad towns & cities here, though. Birmingham is a prime example—it’s not an accident that Tolkien used it as the inspiration for Mordor. It’s a scary, dark, dirty and tragic hovel of a place; a blemish on the otherwise lovely West Midlands (my home region).

Of pervasive cultural worth or note, the enormous and diverse old city of Brum has given us W.H. Auden, Joan Armatrading, THE ARCHERS, PEAKY BLINDERS, and Jack Grealish. That is it.

1. Salton Sea, CA----My friend insited we check out the horrible dead lake with thick brown foam washing up on shore. Dead birds, bleached shells, rocks and mud. Creepy meth head people stared from derelict porches as we drove by. Great place to get robbed, raped, murdered or poisoned by filthy water. Nasty creepy place on a bright sunny day. Will never go back.

2. New Orleans, the first time I was there, I felt an oppressive sense of suffering...I felt super aware of how old the city was, how many people had lived & died there, and how many lived under enslavement, passing through as they were shipped in and sold off to lives of misery. This was juxtaposed with the weird feeling of familiarity that a childhood spent at Disneyland gave me when I was in the French Quarter. I've been back four times since but don't get that weird feeling any more.

[quote] Because the city is so liberal, they offered such complex array of support and services for the homeless, it became a magnet for the usual crowd of drug addicts. People started complaining about the needles, crime and violence, a la Venice Beach.

I had friends at UC Santa Cruz back in the 90s, and visited them several times during that decade. I have to concur with the seedy, troubling vibe it had back then (haven't been in years). Long before the current CA homeless crisis, it was overrun with panhandlers, and not just any panhandlers--these were aggressive and didn't take no for an answer. They thought nothing of invading your space at an outdoor eating place or anywhere you might be congregated. Even if you turned them down, they'd keep hanging around and goad you. We were followed several times when we tried to extricate ourselves. I guess it never occurred to them that a bunch of broke college kids weren't the best marks for money. I was coming up from LA to visit so it wasn't like I was sheltered, but these people were like the murder hornets of the homeless. My friends and the other students seemed to be resigned to having to deal with these disturbing adults around every corner, but I was never able to achieve the same attitude

Someone said in another thread that Haiti has that awful feeling.

R241, I had been in the NYU Bobst Library prior to the redesign which I have not seen. The upper floors were unsettling and one felt "invited" to jump. Never made the connection with the nearby Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.

Dyer, Indiana and Akron, Ohio.

Ugly subdivisions sparsely furnished in upholstered pine furniture suites, white Jesus judging from all corners.

I have been to that library too. I didn't feel anything but looking down, the floor can be a trip if you're on drugs and most of these jumpers were probably on something.

Utah. Or Hat[e]-u, backwards. Utah, devil's claw.

Another place, "Desert Hot Springs Spa Hotel" with its courtyard of pools -- for 3 reasons: creeps at the pools (the lesser of the 3 evils); the cold-gripped feeling one gets by just putting the room key to the door - that many bad things have happened there; AND the silent entities that pass through the room in the middle of the night coming off the balcony and going out the door: I'm not even kidding, wasn't even high.

OH, another creepy AF hotel is the "Many Glacier Hotel" Built by the Great Northern Railway in 1914-15, Many Glacier Hotel is inside Glacier National Park. Spectacular carpentry yet one could not help thinking of the people who must have died while it was being built.

It has to have been redone since I went years ago, but holy moly the whitewhitewhite Stepford people, the Swiss flag emblems on the doors, they served terrible food and strictly regulated the hours (7-8 am for breakfast, sorry you missed it, same for lunch & supper, oddly restricted hours) and some kind of sing-alongs giving it the elder-care home vibe. The staff were extremely religious, I mean, if you said 'Jesus Christ!' that was swearing. You want to go enjoy the lake? then go enjoy the grizzlies: they suggested you stay inside.

Has anyone else ever been there? It can't still be like that. I was there in the 70s. Before The Shining was made, and it had that kind of vibe, I hope it hasn't lived on.

West Haven CT.

R210 I know I am.

R252 more than New Haven?

There is no difference between the marauding in Europe or North America. Conquerers came and conquered. It was a brutal, bloody, usual assertion of power. R231 is stupid.

[quote]Of pervasive cultural worth or note, the enormous and diverse old city of Brum has given us W.H. Auden, Joan Armatrading, THE ARCHERS, PEAKY BLINDERS, and Jack Grealish. That is it.

Don't forget Ozzy and Tommy Iommi, half of Led Zeppelin, and most of Duran Duran!

R255 they weren’t forgotten. They were deliberate omissions.

Gotcha r256. I was kind of being facetious myself, but didn't make it clear.

Berlin can be very dark and brooding, especially in winter. Given the city's history and the East-German population, it's no wonder…

Some towns in Mexico I travelled through in 2019 had a bit of that malevolent energy. And I wasn't in famous live-or-die places like Tijuana, stayed well within the 'safe zones'.

Parts of England and Northern Ireland can feel very dark and destitute. Hopeless, really.

The Valley of the Fallen, just outside Madrid. I visited there in the 1980s and it was a horrible place. The design is a pious celebration of over-the-top unbridled Fascism. All of it made worse by being a glorified tomb for Francisco Franco.

Now that his remains have been removed and reburied elsewhere, progress has been made. But I can't see the site being anything less than evil until it is dismantled and the bits scattered to the four corners of the Earth.

The Old House, Collinsport, Maine

[quote] All of North America. Its history is filled with bloodshed. Any prosperity is a result of the direct result of the slaughter of Indigenous people and the theft of their land. Every single inch of it.

Warfare, slavery and land theft weren’t unknown among native peoples prior to the arrival of Europeans.

R241, the Murder Castle is now a post office, and there are no plaques. HH Holmes was almost forgotten until Erik Larson's Devil in the White City came out.

One from my roommate. A building her dad managed in the 1980's on Fuller in WeHo. About 90% of the residents were affluent gay men and the other 10% Eastern Europeans. The building and pool was fine. However, she remembers there were some musty old rooms downstairs which may have served as pool table rooms or something and had some crazy decor from the 1960's. They were always deserted when her dad would do the rounds and take her with him but she says there was a weird, creepy feeling there. Also, it was next to the abandoned Errol Flynn estate which was essentially a park full of junkies at that point. Police helicopters all night and, at the same time, many residents were dying off. However, it was just this bottom level that kind of had the creepy factor. Said her dad thought it was actually used for drugging and orgies before and now that cameras were installed and it was locked up, it became dank and musty. Now that building is a luxury condo place for young hipsters but it has a dark history of AIDS suffering and overdoses and the criminal activity in the abandoned estate next door.

Speaking of hotels, how’s about the Days Inn in Glendale?

Utica, NY. The people that choose to live there are dead inside.

Well, well, well, I put fourth Bobst Library at NYU (R241) and went searching for further proof and found this article. The names sake was a pharmaceutical manufacturer and a horrible person possibly committing incest and pedophila, as well as being an anti Semitic and friend of Nixon. Of course I knew about Johnson’s Nazi flirtation, but not that he made the floor supposedly unattractive to jumpers, but that obviously backfired.

Totally didn’t make the obvious connection with the fact that Washington Square Park was of course a Potter’s field and originally filled with perhaps a thousand plus angry corpses. Many of those obviously died in poverty and rough lives, I don’t recall if slaves were buried there or not, a whole other reason to be unsettled. Surprisingly, they did not make the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory connection, though the plaque is beside the library. I wonder if it’s there for any particular reason, such as maybe the bodies of jumpers and burn victims being laid out there for identification?

Hotel Bothwell, Sedalia, Missouri.

It is a hotbed for active, malevolent energy. Beautiful, clean, historic (a fine seven-story hotel from the 1920s). I have stayed there three nights while traveling on business. The first time I had no knowledge of its reputation.

On all three visits I had very interesting but extremely unpleasant experiences. I work in research and live a mostly rational life - I don't "see" things.

The first night was a perfect stormy night. The hotel is across the street from the courthouse, which has a clock that chimes the hours. At 2 am I was still working while lying in bed, lights off with computer, and a form took shape and "walked" towards the foot of the bed. I later saw references to "shadow man" apparitions, and this was one. Darker than dark, blacker than the darkness around it, it wore a fedora and had a long overcoat, appearing like a silhouette. It stood there exuding the deepest hate I ever felt, which makes no sense to hear but it's what occurred. (I am not "spooked' by darkness, night, and other such things.) I finally cursed it and told it to leave, and it moved off towards one of the room doors and disappeared.

Heading down to breakfast, I stopped at the desk and asked if any guests had ever reported odd experiences. She looked at me and said, "We usually don't hear about anything from that room." She said the owners didn't like the staff to talk (They seem to have changed their minds since then.) but she pulled out a thick binder and asked me what had happened. She said the staff kept their own record, and hated working the night shift. Some won't leave the desk area at night, because several parts of the hotel "activate" - in the basement and in various rooms.

The second night I experienced a growling voice, like an angry dog, coming from one corner. It went on and on until I told it to shut up.

The third day it was late afternoon. I returned to the room and immediately something started up in the same corner, like part of the space started spinning in a vortex. No, I wasn't drunk or stoned. It was very localized. Suddenly (no shit) the door opened and three workmen walked in, surprised to see me. They said they had to move some furniture and would need to take the door off the hinges to do it. I told them this was ridiculous, since I was in the room, and called the desk. The clerk said she would move me to a much nicer room, and they carried my bags and clothes down the hall to the other side of the floor. I had no sense of anything unusual there, and spent a quiet, typical night. The circumstances were very odd, though.

Long story and perhaps not of interest. But I came to wonder about the irrational and rather impossible occurring with someone not prone to such "sensitivity." Sure, I'd stay there again. Fascinating. Locals assume the hotel being used as a KC mob spot during the 1930s and 1940s may have something to do with it, and for a while there was a speakeasy in the basement.

What about that hotel in LA that just had the Netflix documentary about bad juju?

[quote] Parts of England and Northern Ireland can feel very dark and destitute. Hopeless, really.

Dutchie has definitely been to Cinderford before, then.

(R104) I was thinking nearby Dover, but yes on Folkestone. Many UK seaside towns have this kind of bleak energy. This misery quotient is so high.

Of course, one of the many heartbreaking things about the Rwandan Genocide was that it was the most Catholic of all African countries at the time and many sought Sanctuary in the churches, but instead there were quite a few corrupt and complicit priest and nuns who aided in the slaughter and turned many churches into murdering factories.

A few of them have become Genocide shrines and include catacombs of bones on-site and they also have displays of clothing, shoes and belongings of murdered victims. There are blood splats on the walls where babies and toddlers were smash against them until killed, and what looked at first like perhaps the making of a memorial art piece of little holes piercing the ceiling that in the darken building seems like a night sky, but was in actuality from shrapnel bombs that were thrown into the building to kill people and it pierced the corrugated tin ceiling, which you can make out in the image below.

And this church in Nyamata on the outside looked like any 1970s suburban Catholic Church you could have found in the USA at the time, making it even more unsettling. It is a very visceral experience to visit and conveys the weight of the event that many Western memorials and commemorations can only hint at when they try to honor such similar places of devastation. You see what took place here and you can’t look away or stop from feeling the sadness and loss and it honestly changes you.

[quote] blood splats on the walls where babies and toddlers were smash against them until killed

...ok, I think R271 wins.

Seriously, how have these poor people been allowed to get so hungry and desperate as to do that without another thought?

R272 The heartbreaking thing was this wasn’t a divide between people who were different races, different languages, different cultures, different religions, no they all shared those things. This was an arbitrary divide created by the Belgian government and fueled as hate between these groups despite intermarriage, being neighbors, coworkers, teacher/students and having richly intertwined lives. It gives one pause how out of control and devastating a situation can be created for hate, murder and genocide.

[quote]R22: Any gay bathhouse in America

Graymalkin/blackberrypie, is that you?

The best example of somewhere in the UK that has a dark, dangerous and destitute vibe is Blackpool. An ageing seaside city with a big theme park, it’s probably the poorest place in England and would certainly be a culture-shock for any American who visited on a Saturday night. Miley Cyrus once visited and described the town as weird.

R275 Is that the town Morrissey wrote Everyday is Like Sunday about? It would make sense then.

Tudor City in Manhattan, for me. Gloomy, dark and oppressive energy. Worse when you go inside one of the buildings. Agree with other posters about Berlin, especially at Checkpoint Charlie, you can feel the ghosts of despair.

R273. People don't realize that there are always small scale tribal warfare all over Subsaharan African nations. Some erupt and become massacre type events.

I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Nigeria, where 25 years prior, the Yoruba decided to exterminate the Igbo. I would listen to BBC Africa every day, and was always amazed every day there were stories of tribal warfare and massacres (small scale).

In fact, since I was a non Muslim in a Muslim area, some Christian neighbors showed me an escape route if they came for me, basically involved running into the bush and hiding. Fun times in Africa. Meanwhile I had friends doing P Corps in Thailand, eating great food and going to beautiful beaches...

[quote] Meanwhile I had friends doing P Corps in Thailand, eating great food and going to beautiful beaches...

and fraternizing with the local Thai lady bois.

r242, Jordan Peele also made Santa Cruz of the epicenter of the Others (or whatever they're called) for, "Us"

Positing dark energy because of genocidal outrages or horrific massacres is stupid.

Obviously some people are insensitive and think there is something intellectual or "should be a place of malevolent energy" because of activities.

It is more complicated than that. Otherwise all hospitals would vomit the psychic pain of what has happened there (They usually don't, although the room of the exorcism in Alexian Brothers Hospital (now destroyed) in St. Louis was, indeed, kept locked with a light on for over 30 years, as confirmed to me by two people who worked there.).

My pussy.

I vehemently disagree with those who keep mentioning Vienna in this thread. Sure, the weather can be very gray in the winter, but most of those posters sound like they haven't seen the place since the Cold War. Actually, given the average age on DL, that's probably the truth.

It's a gorgeous city with vineyards, music and oodles of culture, and quite gay-friendly (although, as everywhere, the further out in the county you go, the less progressive people are). Before COVID, it was becoming overrun with tourists, due in part to its charm and in part to its location smack in the middle of Europe.

I moved to Vienna from NYC years ago, and I've never felt any malevolent energy here.

I'm also surprised to see Vienna - such a beautiful, charming city. Chokful with rich, classic history.

But, I guess it's all in the eye of the beholder.

[quote] Utah. Or Hat[e]-u, backwards. Utah, devil's claw.

I was in Salt Lake City as a teenager. I was only there for a day and it was a Sunday. Imaging my disappointment that every fucking thing was closed. Oppressive!

Places with state-run liquor stores are also depressing.

New Haven, CT? Seriously? It has poor areas like any city of it's size. But it's on the shore. And Yale is there. It's energy is neither dark nor malevolent.

I've enjoyed this thread because I like ghost stories and psychic stuff, but I have been in many of the places mentioned and had a great time, no trace of bad feelings whatsoever. I think knowing about bad things that happened in a place can skew your reaction and ruin it. The town square in Prague is a disneyesque historic wonder with a gorgeous clock tower and cool cafes, but reading the Lonely Planet description of what took place there (ugly executions during religious wars) ruined it for me. I felt sunk in misery. If I hadn't read that, though, I'd have been stoked to be in such a nice setting. Same in Rome--the guide told of massacres, murders, executions in every block, practically, and left me disgusted with Italian history. Maybe lay off all the doom lit about a place until you form your own impressions? On the other hand, I know what many posters mean about dead-end places with so many hopeless people. Try Oroville, CA. Really a downer with addicts everywhere. All of Northern Cal is near some prison or other, it seems.

I'll nominate the hot springs oh Arkansas on behalf of 4 separate friends, not normally inclined to such declarations, and not spooked by old buildings: Eureka Springs, French Lick/West Baden, and Hot Springs.

I know 4 people in historic preservation who each, independently, said those places were creepy as fuck, in a way they couldn't explain and hadn't experienced before. These are people comfortable in 19thC insane asylums and prisons.

I found Reykjavik creepy, somehow. Iceland altogether is beautiful and clean and cultured, but also bleak and barren. The lack of noise in the polar winds is so eerie.

R286, I lived there for 4 years, and it is as they've said.

Some of you all seem to have grown up in cities and are terrified of anywhere that's not concrete, overcrowded and full of traffic.

Camping is one of my favorite things to do. Especially in the woods.

Those of you getting creeped out by forests and lakes are probably not used to the way they "feel" so it feels unnerving to you. Yes, they feel different.

The only weird/creepy feeling I had in the woods was near Point Pleasant, West Virginia. I attended a small community college near there for a while and a friend and I would ride his motorcycle out and about exploring.

One evening, we headed over to Point Pleasant. There's a park in town where the Kanawa River meets the Ohio River. I stood there, watching that dark, cold water swirl and had this terrible sense of foreboding. At the time, I didn't realize it had been the site of some serious pre-rev war battles. You can totally feel it. Just a bloody area.

Later, it was getting dark and we decided to take a shortcut on the way back to campus. I don't remember where we ended up but it seemed to be a state park of some sort. Andrew, my friend, was from the area so I trusted that he knew where he was going. He was driving the bike.

Well, we were going along and it was getting darker. Everything was fine until we rounded this one corner (I'm getting chills just remembering this) and I swear, there was the absolute worst feeling of death and doom. I think I actually yelled and I put my head down in Andy's back. He was shaking. He gunned that bike and I swear something was "following" us but nothing you could see or hear. It was like this dark, ominous Presence had been waiting around that corner for a victim. It was terrifying.

When we got back to campus, we took off our helmets and just looked at each other. "You felt that thing, too?" I asked. He just nodded. We never spoke of it again and we NEVER went back to Point Pleasant, either.

Years later, after researching, I think it was a Wendigo (someone up thread mentioned this). That may be what others have felt near old forests.

The World Trade Center WAS bad. I had to travel through it occasionally for work. As a boy I saw it going up and I hated it. But the oculus is truly a dreadful space. I hope I never have to walk through it again. No wonder people end up dead there.

Maybe you encountered the Mothman of Point Pleasant, R291?

I also loved going to New Orleans,but I was never sad to leave it. Underneath all that drunken frivolity is an air of despair. 3-4 days top was my limit for staying there. After that I would be uncomfortable and sad. its truly a haunted place.

r253, I have never been to New Haven. But West Haven seems to be in a permanent depression. Strip malls and an overabundance of second-rate steakhouses. Everyone seemed to be unemployed and there were so many boarded up factories. I have family up there and they were all collecting unemployment. And when they got their checks - to the steakhouse! Even on sunny days, the town just seemed so desolate and soul-deprived.

R290 - I lived and worked there for 6 years. Neither dark nor malevolent energy. Best pizza in the US, some good live music venues, near to beaches.

R295 - You've just described most of Ohio. Poverty is depressing but not dark in the sense the OP is talking about.

Would you live in a house if the street address was 666?

i loved the Pacific NW. i spent my happiest years there.

I guess we just had different experiences, R296. I was there 94-98.

I worked at 666 5th Av for a number of years. Though I discussed the address a couple of times with co-workers never got a dark or creepy vibe about it. Though it is a damn ugly building. Didn't Jared's father give it to him as a laundering present?

R270 The artist Jake Hurley grew up in an English seaside town. He has a series called "Seaside Rubbish" that has parodies of UK seaside travel posters. They're hilarious.

Macon , Ga , Cherry blossom Capital and general Hell hole .

I grew up in PA and lived for a time in NW PA and I really think/feel there's something there. A lot of cuckoo for cocoa puffs crazy people, some of them inbred.

There were/are a lot of Indian burial grounds in the area, and it seems like there's angry or malevolent energy once you get about halfway from the Pittsburgh area to Erie. Just all up to the lake, and a little in NE Ohio, too.

Could be Wendigo, R304. Though it's everywhere across Canada and the US, some areas are very strong with it.

Haven't read the thread yet, but how many Datalounge responses do we have?

R301: We used to go up to "Top of the Sixes" for afterwork cocktails and relaxation, shrugging-off the foreboding street address. Little did we know what lay ahead ...

Another vote for Las Vegas.

Any town in Western Mass named after the losing side of the Scottish civil war.

Let’s talk more about Vienna. My wife and I went about 15 years ago during November. We loved the hotel we stayed at, the food, the architecture, the Christmas markets, the music etc. it was enchanting.

My wife had picked up a cold in Budapest and she was pretty under the weather once we arrived in Austria. Since she was sleeping so much there were some things I would up doing on my own. One of the things on my to do list was the Ferris Wheel at Prater Park. (I got goose bumps reading your post R102.) I left maybe 3:30 - 4 for the park. By the time I got there it was getting dark. I hadn’t realized that the rest of the park was closed for the season. I got this awful feeling of dread as I wandered through the darkening, abandoned park. But I’m a stubborn dyke so I got in the short line at the Ferris Wheel. Now the Ferris Wheel there doesn’t involve open seats, but rather enclosed cabins. I was given a cabin to myself. It also doesn’t (or didn’t at that time of year) go around quickly. It stops for long periods as each cabin is opened. Did I mention I am afraid of heights? The wind started howling and I swear I felt like something out of an Edgar Allen Poe story. I spent most of the ride on the floor of the cabin, forcing myself to stand up and look when it got to the top. I quickly through the park to the subway when the ride ended and the sense of fear clung to me until I got back to the hotel.

is that really dark and malevolent R308? Or you just being a scardy-lez?

r140 is describing the malevolent, decrepit state of modern Datalounge.

When Muriel instated the e-mail registration system about 10 years ago, she gave unlimited freedom to mentally ill trolls and political propagandists to overrun the forum Now, this forum is primarily two or three loonies with dark, Cluster B personality disorders talking to or amplifying themselves through unlimited sock puppet accounts.

I know for a fact that Muriel is one herself and a Charmie Loon, because I had my comments and accounts blocked for challenging her slander of CALL ME BY YOUR NAME as pedophilia and cyberstalking Timothee Chalamet between four "unique" "individuals" over 20 threads.

But the biggest troll or two are Boris the Nazi Incel and/or the Copycat Thread Thief. They're either trolling "the Libs" with right-wing propaganda, bigotry and denigrating minorities on every thread — including gays — or one is stealing ideas for new threads based on nouns mentioned in prior threads in very desperate ploys to sustain engagement.

We see trolls greyed-out and red-tagged all the time, but it's no deterrent. They just pay for a new account and get right back to trolling with their posting histories wiped clean. The sock puppet system actually makes Muriel a lot more money because the loons just pay for the privilege to keep lying and white, straight, male supremacizing.

When all you get is right-wing hate, propaganda and redundant threads about Irrelevant Pop Has-Beens who plagiarize any original contribution you make, it simply drives people away.

Nobody wants to visit a fuckhole of Fake News, bigot masturbation or talking in circles, so the sane and savvy have fled.

I, myself have scaled down my usage and contributions considerably from this toxic waste dump and the no-caliber maniacs it has boiled down to.

Parts of NYC, Long Island, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New Haven, Jersey City, Newark, parts of Virginia at night

The old TB ward on Ellis Island. Super creepy. Felt like the lingering souls of people whose hopes and dreams had been crushed.

R147 = Right-wing propaganda and Fake News.

The narratir says that all political leftists, including “Today’s Left” and Jeremy Corbyn, will behave like Stalin.

DL is just teeming with right-wing bullshit. R147 is Boris’s leisure time viewing.

Never been but Roosevelt Island looks depressing as hell in pics. Can any NYers comment?

Roosevelt Island creeped me out when I visited in the early 2000s, but I went back later in the decade and it had been developed so much by then that it wasn't creepy anymore. It's probably even nicer now.

Has anyone ever stayed here? I’d like to at least for a night it’s rumored to possibly be the place the Black Dahlia was murdered. I’m deeply fascinated with that case.

I lived in a few old houses in New Orleans and never felt afraid in any of them. Then I lived in a 1955 house in suburban Virginia and always felt terrified of the upstairs. One day I inexplicably fell asleep during the day up in one of the bedrooms and woke up in a panic. It was cold as ice and there was a black form in the hallway I had to run through to get down. Other people in the house heard their names called up there and experienced something come into the bathroom when they were showering. I went to the Santeria store and followed instructions and got rid of that thing, whatever it was. Maybe all my latent voodoo energy followed me up north.

Point Pleasant is close to Athens Ohio. It has cemeteries in the shape of a pentagon, a frightening asylum on a hilltop, and other weirdness that you feel there. Having gone to school there, there are some days that feel heavy and connected in a dark way.

The person up thread who mentioned Wisconsin reminded me of Wisconsin Death trip. It’s a book and documentary featuring stories of strange crimes and deaths that happened in Wisconsin in the 19th century near a town called Black River Falls.

Winchester House, San Jose, CA.

They lynched men from those trees in Washington square park. That's a fact

Someone above mentioned Arizona. The Birdcage Theater Museum in Tombstone definitely has an odd vibe. Along the back wall are displays of coffins, and the old town's horse-drawn hearse. I've never been sensitive to anything paranormal...but there is an oppressive feeling in that area of the museum, a sad presence. Even the air feels dense and heavy.

r261 is a dark and malevolent place.

r261 is a sicko justifying warfare, slavery and genocide because he's a sociopath who extols Nazi derangement on every thread.

Of a brand new sock puppet account, his posting history has just three responses. Two of them glorify genocide and one of them denigrates transexuals. You can tell Mr. "Three Atrocities at a Time" has A LOT to hide.

Say what, r323?

EUCLID, damn it - EUCLID and there abouts!!!!!

The entire Adirondacks region is haunted and spooky as hell, even on bright summer days. Driving on 9N along Lake George, you see plenty of abandoned motels and bungalows that only add to the eerie effect.

Being in the presence of bi men.

R261, are you okay with the slave trade because nations aside from the US and Britain engaged in slavery too?

If you don't understand the difference between warfare that occurred pre-contact and the theft of land and genocide that took place after Europeans landed in North America then you're beyond help.

I regret that what I wrote caused you r328 incorrectly to INFER that I condone slavery. Let me state clearly and unambiguously that I oppose slavery in all its forms.

But you're fine with what Europeans did to native americans because they engaged in warfare prior to European contact, R329?

[quote]They lynched men from those trees in Washington square park. That's a fact

People always forget what's under Washington Square Park then every few decades or so someone reminds them. It was a potter's field full of the dead buried from contracting Yellow Fever.

R329, R238 is a troll. I have it blocked and for good cause. Block it.

Agree with Wallace, Idaho although I haven’t been there in years. There is a definite vibe of “you are not from around here, are you?”

I like Vienna and Paris in the to summer when so many people are out of town. I like the big parks in those two cities, and how HOT and sunny it can be! London is lovely in the summer too, especially if the continent gets too hot.

Vanderbilt mansion in NY

R333 Wallace is the birthplace/hometown of DL fave Lana Turner. I actually have visited her childhood huse, which looks like an overgrown two-story shack. She also apparently lived in Burke, ID as a baby, which is a rundown ghost town up in a canyon above Wallace--that place is legitimately creepy.

Ok, that shadow man story got to me. I don't usually spook that easily anymore, but I started thinking about it as I was trying to drift off to sleep. Needless to say, it took me a long time to go under.

Fort McMurray, Alberta.

My panties.

I had the same issue last night, R337 - really spooked myself.

[quote]Pawn shops will give any place a bad vibe.

I always think of that scene in Pulp Fiction.😦

David Belasco is well documented to haunt The Belasco Theater on Broadway but by all accounts his is a very benevolent ghost.

Belasco supposedly never appeared while his theater was hosting the original production of Oh, Calcutta!

It is, btw, one of the most beautiful of all Broadway theaters, with intricate dark woodwork and light fixtures by Louis Tiffany. Just a few years ago it was fully restored to its original appearance.

Highgate in London. The graveyard spooked me.

Sleepy Hollow, New York.

R345 I would actually correct you to two particular locations in Sleepy Hollow, of course The Sleepy Hollow Cemetery with the final resting place of such evilness as Leona and Harry Helmsley (amongst others) and it’s long, long history of interred dead bodies and the pier that juts out in to the Hudson River where the General Motors plant was for most of the 20th century causing untold almost irreversible pollution and unparalleled environmental damage to the Hudson River Valley. It is stripped and desolate and literally quite toxic, but they keep working on cleaning it up and building luxury housing there that will probably become a huge failure because of the bad juju connected to the space.

Going a little further up the River is of course Sing Sing, whose dark energy pervades the town of Ossining, and it has more to do then just the angry spirits of the Rosenberg pervading the landscape.

[quote]Underneath all that drunken frivolity is an air of despair.

Doesn't take much editing to adapt that sentence about New Orleans so that it describes Los Angeles. Perhaps it is the weight of all the unrealized dreams. Nothing about L.A. makes me want to stay more than a few days. So much expectation, so much getting by. At least the east coast equivalent, the transplanted New Yorker, manifests their rage.

The Catskill mountains are eerie. Almost preternaturally so with an ominous mystical quality. Easy to imagine wendigos and assorted demonic creatures haunting them and withcraft going on.

Any bar near financial districts filled with Wall Street types. Seriously. Doesn't really matter which city or country.

That's some bad toxic male energy and ego. It's suffocating.

Camp Brother Sun

Yankee Stadium

What’s Waco like?

The Grand Canyon gave me such dark vibes that I just wanted to run away from it. It wasn't the depth of the canyon, but I definitely felt a weird negative energy.

Sedona, AZ.

Parts of NY and CT. Driving along Route 9 (IIRC) at night, when out of the blue is a grotesque, a bigger than life-size version of Jesus on the cross, all bloody, and lit by very powerful lights. Before that, nothing, and after that, nothing. Then just a gigantic man, all bloody, on the cross, emerging out of the darkness on a lonely road at 2 a.m.

Also, a house just outside of Fishkill, NY which, if I believed in things like that, I thought might be haunted. Strange sounds, like the sound of boots walking along the attic floor at night. Even my dog heard it and was staring at the ceiling. This happened many times in that house.

I'm not religious at all, but that was so spooky.

Any Shen Yun dressing room/green room. I've never been in one, but that cult is some deranged and dark stuff.

“There’s dark forces here…. SHE’S NOT A CHRISTIAN!!!!!” 🤡

The Rimrocks in Billings, Montana have a dark vibe about them. My mom grew up there, and told me that she remembered going to parties up there near caves that had ancient petroglyphs inside from the Crow people. There is a lot of ancient history there, and there were many violent clashes between the native people and imperialist settlers in that whole region in general. There is literally a peak along the Rimrocks called Sacrifice Hill, purportedly named after two Crow people who killed themselves by leaping off the cliff with their horses after finding their encampment had been overrun with smallpox.

There are some neighborhoods along the lower part of the hill that also just give off a weird feeling. My mother lived in a house there that she swears was haunted—they heard disembodied voices, she felt like she was pushed down her staircase, had horrible nightmares, always felt like she was being watched, etc. There is a street somewhere up in the heights where you could apparently put your car in neutral, and it would start rolling what appeared to be uphill. Probably an optical illusion, like what you can witness at places like the Oregon Vortex, but it's still plain odd. Energetically, there is just something weird and otherworldly about it.

R348 I lived in Charlesgate. It had a FUNKY history. Mafia. Flophouse. Tenement housing. Dorm. luxury condos.

It's actually multiple buildings seemingly joined together. Only a few floors are even -meaning on most you have to go up and down stairs - on the same floor.

When I was attending Emerson, there were still 3 ancient people living there as tenants that the college got stuck with when they bought the building. ?one was some nasty broad who smoked cigars and yelled at everyone. Another was some old cooter who got put into assisted living. Viola lived on the first floor next to the public safety campus police. She was a hoarder and she lost her marbles at the end. her last days in the building - she was trying to hail a cab - in the lobby. Poor old thing.

Because the building is near the Charles river and sits on an entire block - it had a lot of wind going through each floor which would open and slam shut doors, windows, and make a shrieking, howling sound. Haunted or not, those things definitely gave the place a creep factor.

Fun fact: a great building to trip your ass on drugs in.

Savannah makes me uncomfortable in a way that no other place ever has. Every time I visit, I feel the hair standing on the back of my neck, almost like I’m being watched—and not in a good way. As a result, I’ve never truly been able to relax and enjoy myself while on vacation there.

Strangely enough, I’ve never felt that same sense of dread in New Orleans. Its history is soaked in blood, and it’s definitely haunted, but the energy there has never felt malevolent (the LaLaurie mansion notwithstanding—that place has some bad juju for sure).

Funny how places can turn on a dime.

My grandparent’s house in northern VA was warm and welcoming as long as my grandmother was alive.

When she passed away in 2002, the general tone of the place became depressing and shabby. My grandfather refused to move and when he stopped driving, the hoarding began.

He began to hallucinate about people being in the house. He saw his mother in the kitchen. A woman with a baby was under his bed. Another woman stood by his bed, moaned as if in pain and rolled underneath it too. My grandfather would show me pieces of paper with his own handwriting on them and swear people were breaking in, writing in code and knocking paintings and pictures crooked. He was hearing music coming from the house’s intercom system.

Even though I was sure none of this was real, the house began to make me feel uneasy. I had a hard time sleeping there.

We finally got him moved to a senior home. I spent a couple nights in the house alone, going through things. It had the unsettled air of a move but also an oppressive quiet that started to bear down on me. Before I left for the last time I went room to room and shouted down whatever that feeling was. But it was that smothering silence answering me back. I packed the rest of the car and got the hell out.

The West Side Club. Gah! The negative energy in that dump was pervasive.

Good riddance to it.

Salem, MA always felt depressed when there even though I was trying to enjoy Halloween

Wilton Manors, Florida. It hisses with malevolence.

So, basically everywhere..?

Rural Michigan gives me the creeps.

Michigan is creepy. The whole damned state. It's a dark turn-off from the highway where bad things happen.

Goldfield, Nevada

This year, Facebook has turned sinister, bitter and ugly. Must be all the pissed-off Trumpers.

[quote]The Catskill mountains are eerie.

The food is terrible. And such small portions!

Meridian, Mississippi. When I went there for my Navy training. Dull, deadwood POS of a town. The only thing that they had going on was the mall, filled with trailer park trash gleefully using the N word and calling each other pussies or f@gs. Disgusting place. A tornado should obliterate it and soon.

Just this year R368?

DL is starting to give off a malevolent energy. I keep "unfollowing" this post (only because it's getting really long)d but ever time I come back to DL, it has it in my saved posts! Hmmmm......

R371, to me it seems worse this year.

R370 I’ve never been there but other people have told me Meridian Mississippi is creepy.

r166 Yes. It was one of the most depressing places I've ever been through. Like, what the fuck even is that?

Ceaucescu's monstrosity in Bucharest. Felt so dizzy and nauseous inside. Very heavy, angry energy. As soon as I stepped outside I was fine!

What are the odds she read the Santa Cruz posts in this thread?

[quote]The woman was sitting in her car at the Lighthouse Point parking lot, which juts into Monterey Bay. Santa Cruz police say an individual walked up to the passenger's side door and opened it, erroneously thinking it was their vehicle.

[quote]According to police, this "spooked" the driver, who accelerated and drove the car off the cliff. Luckily, rescue teams were able to find the woman and bring her to safety.

I made this its own post, but Mexican restaurants are the happiest places on earth

I can believe it, R377, there's a lot of eccentric types to be seen in Santa Cruz and at Lighthouse Point, surfers and hippies and drifters, and a lot of up-front stoners.

They seem harmless enough, but I wouldn't want one getting in my car.

"...an individual walked up to the passenger's side door and opened it, erroneously thinking it was their vehicle.."

That's why you keep your damn doors locked. Too many hijack crime stories begin with "The assailant opened the door and..."

Wasn't there a thread about someplace in California where people came out of the weeds and laid on the road in order to stop an unsuspecting driver?

I think that’s an urban legend about out around Amboy, CA, R381. Not sure if that was the exact town, but the roads in that whole region are creepy and that thing looks like it could easily happen. . That area has dark energy for sure, very interesting place

White Chapel, Jack the Ripper's old stomping grounds in London, has a very heavy, scary vibe, especially at night.

The Tower of London is also full of bad energy. You feel such sadness walking through the part where young Lady Jane Grey was held. You can't help but think about all of those people who suffered and were executed at the Tower of London.

Obama's 60th B'day bash.

What exorcisms did they have to do to the White House to make it inhabitable again and who preformed it?

Late '80s, my mom wouldn't let us get out of the car at the Santa Cruz boardwalk. I was so disappointed at the time, but it is interesting to read other perceptions of the place. She was right, I guess.

If it was the late 80s, your mom had probably just seen "The Lost Boys" too many times.

Barbra’s basement mall.

R381, that's an urban legend that gets told all over the place.

At the same time, I wouldn't be surprised if some thieves really did that in order to rob people.

THE MADGE VADGE VORTEX

The Sleepy Hollow Cemetery with the final resting place of such evilness as Leona and Harry Helmsley (amongst others) and it’s long, long history of interred dead bodies

Who would have thought than a cemetery would have a 'long, long history of interred dead bodies '

Old Trafford 👺

Accurséd ground for an accurséd team.

Chernobyl. No explanation needed.

R368, Facebook has been sinister, bitter, and ugly since 2007.

I attended a Baptist church once. I could feel the hate, as a heavy, evil presence. I got out of there quickly after the service, but not before the pastor asked me, When are you coming back? I said I wasn't, and left.

[quote] Bucharest, Romania

Romania has some beautiful men though.

Casting couch 🛋

I actually did feel an evil energy in Hollywood the first time I went. It was filthy and exciting. I used to go to LA a week a year for work and after a few years, all the excitement and glamour lost its luster.

The Appalachian Trail around Wind Gap. Same sort of vibes you'd expect in that Japanese suicide forest. Don't hike it alone.

Melania's poosy.

The internet

Datalounge

Manon Bridge/Delphi murders (Indiana).

More on the cover-up murders by the local Indiana police department of two girls murdered on Manon Bridge that was actually captured on video by the two victims themselves. And the local PD is deliberately withholding evidence to identify the perpetrator. Makes you sick, the corruption in these small towns.

Not to belabor the point, but yet another haunting remnant of those who lived in this small Indiana town post-killings. (Caution: do NOT live with kids in this Delphi town with crooked, keystone cops! Nothing but ineptitude and CYAs).

Vicksburg , Mississippi , most of the antebellum mansions are haunted by dead slaves and civi war soldiers.

Whittier, Alaska - A town of 300 people; the majority who live in a single apartment building. It felt so insular and isolated.

R404, I think cops know who the Delphi killer is, and it’s one of them.

My thoughts exactly!

I’ve been on a road trip from Oregon for a month so far. Rural Pennsylvania is the only place that has been plastered with Trump/Pence signs. It went on forever and I began to feel that I wasn’t actually moving. The quaint little towns all looked identically quaint, and the strip mall segments did, too. It seemed like I might just be going in some horrible, giant circle. I began to loathe the place and felt like I might never get out.

Then, some time later came Hartford, Connecticut, and to my great surprise it was absolutely the dirtiest, most degraded place I’ve ever seen. There must be an uptown or some gentrification there somewhere but I’d never voluntarily go back.

The World Trade Center, the few times I was in those buildings, I made sure to never spend a lot of time there.

Boleskine House, Loch Ness

A friend's former home in Queens, NY. The home was beautiful, bright and airy, but always had a foreboding eerie vibe and odd unexplained noises.

My friend got married on what used to be a slave plantation once. I didn't know until much later but that place gave me the creeps the entire time I was there, as beautiful as the property was.

Las Vegas, Palm Springs, Biloxi

Santa Cruz, CA

Inside any casino.

I’m really surprised people keep saying Santa cruz. Went to school there and felt nothing but good energy. The ocean and forest are beautiful.

Lol @ the entire country. I get that. America has blood in the soil. But honestly i got that depressing feeling at: ellis island, wtc, tenderloin in sf, downtown la, this underground town in scotland- mary king’s close. Winchester even when i was a little kid.

Ojai

Why Ojai? I love it there.

The entire state of Wyoming. I’ve driven thru it and felt a strange vibe I can’t describe. Just miles and miles of nothing. There only a few gas stations in the entire state. I recommend filling up before entering. Just trailer homes, poverty, and sad people. Most dreadful state ever.

The DL

R410. Can you please elaborate on the vibes from Hartford, CT.?

TIA.

Charleston SC has a low hum of evil to it. Surface pretty but lots of misery can be felt here

The Yorkshire moors.

It's not surprising Conan Doyle set The Hound of the Baskervilles there and not the Sussex Downs or the Cotswolds.

I’m not R410 but Hartford has a stagnant feel to it that’s hard to explain. To me even Detroit has more of a snap and spark.

Anywhere Native Americans were slaughtered or driven off.

I.e. most of the United States.

r425 your trollish attempt at trying to get a dig in fails because you have to include all of Canada, Central and South America along with a good number of other countries.

Think before you troll.

Hudson University

The difference between the U.S. and the rest of North America, and also Central and South America, regarding the Indians, is there was a full-scale genocide in the U.S. Here, people at one time could kill Indians, take their scalps to their courthouse and receive money. The practice was stopped when people it became clear people were collecting the scalps of women and children.

Genocides have happened all over the world. Perhaps our world is a dark and malevolent place R428.

I used to house sit for a woman years ago. She'd stick me in this very creepy room that had been her daughter's. It had a dark, weird energy. I always thought something bad happened in it. My friend came to visit me from England and "Bet" said she could sleep in there and I could have her room. Well, the first night she comes running to me all spooked, claiming something tried to crawl into bed with her. I believe her. I often wonder if someone was molested in that room. Or worse.

Wasn't the Lost Boys filmed in Santa Cruz? Fascinating.

I was R410 and I wish I could describe Hartford better but all I can really say is it was just filthy. More garbage just everywhere beside the road and decaying buildings and godawful road surfaces crammed together than I’ve seen anywhere else. And I’m a sucker for woowoo. I like a little spookiness. Hartford wasn’t like that. It was altogether without spirit. It was just decaying and bleak and charmless. And I’ve seen a LOT of decaying and abandoned places on this trip. Hartford took me completely by surprise.

I thought New Haven was similar. It wasn’t grungy in a good way, just grim.

R419 Seconded.

Interesting about New Mexico. Didn’t someone on another thread like this tell about driving into an alternate reality where everyone already seemed to know them?

Thank you r424 and r432.

-r421.

Gila Bend AZ.

When I was a kid we went to the Catskills. It was eerie and had a dark vibe to me.

I remember that story R435. No way to tell if it was true though.

LOL at finding this thread, because I've had this experience - not with every area of LA, but on several occasions have stayed in the area NW of LA (Thousand Oaks/Agoura Hills area) and have definitely had some weird vibes and bad experiences there. The hotels felt as if they were staffed AND populated by weird pod people. Won't ever stay in that area again.

Fillmore Street in SF after dark. Creepy as shit.

Hmm ... I love Fillmore Street and Japantown in the day. I'm surprised it's creepy after dark.

The Bellagio

I can feel it coming from my toilet now...

The vast majority of Camden, NJ.. It's like the aftermath of a nuclear bomb.

This is going to seem "Mary!" and it may even offend some. But I remember vividly my first trip to Italy. I was on a tour, and it was a mixed group Gay and Straight, Couples, families, Jews Gentiles, Muslims, even a Hindu couple. About 60 of us altogether. We'd enjoyed Milan, the Lake District, Venice (which had a "mysterious" vibe), Sienna, Florence, Perugia, Assisi, etc. We were excited to finally get to Rome. I really enjoyed everything I saw about Ancient Rome. Then, we went to the Vatican. Oy. When we first walked in to the Basilica itself, St. Peter's, I was overwhelmed by the power, and there was a sinister force that almost overwhelmed. Even today, two decades later, I can still remember it. It was like some sonic wave passing through. I didn't it in the Sistine Chapel, or the Vatican Museum, but in the BAsilica itself it was there. Now, I've also visited St. Paul's and Westminster in London, and I didn't get t hat vibe there. Walking in to St. Paul's you knew you were in a church. There was a definite spiritual vibe. But in St. Peter's there was definitely malevolent energy.

We went for a weekend to Charleston, S.C. malevolent energy galore!

I call Savannah a place of "unquiet spirits" but not malevolent. It just seemed spooky. Like the people who had died were still hanging around.

New York Stock Exchange

R103 You aren't kidding. Montgomery County MD is absolutely beautiful, not to mention one of the wealthiest counties in the country.

I'll second or third (because I'm not scrolling back through two years of posts) Dogtown between Rockport (white-collar wealthy, artsy) and (blue-collar poorer, opioids) because - apart from the creepy history - of Marsden Hartley's paintings and Elyssa East's book, "Dogtown: Death and Enchantment in a New England Ghost Town." There're stories of witches, outcasts, deaths (one particularly gruesome murder of a local school teacher in living memory), and then there's the place's strange appeal to get you there that turns into something darker when you do. It's just a creepy place to be. It's also the place where the local kids go to drink/do drugs in the woods at night. Sadly, Gloucester's main industry, fishing, collapsed and there's a lot of unemployment accompanied by despair.

We took an older friend visiting from Australia there a couple of summers ago. She was in her 70's and in good shape, it was a lovely day, not tough trails to walk, and while it turned out she didn't have one, she thought she was having a heart attack. We had to sit for half an hour before she felt well enough to get up and walk slowly back to the car. We took her to the urgent care place in Gloucester, they checked her out and said she was OK but also said other patients came in with similar stories and symptoms - like being punched in the chest, she said, but no bruising later.

Maybe the spirits didn't like someone from so far away?

My parents' last home was built in the 70s. When I was there as an adult, I would always hear very low-decibel old-timey music like Big Band or 30s-era music. There was a radio/intercom in the home but it was not turned on. I don't know if the music was coming from someone else's home or what but it bugged me. The houses were on acre lots so it's not like they were on top of each other. I'm sure there is a rational explanation but it was eerie and Shining-like.

Parts of New Orleans. No surprise there though.

I've told this story before but my niece was renting an apartment in an old converted asylum and she said no matter how many lights they put in the corridors it always felt creepy and had a bad vibe. She did not renew her lease.

Indiana. It gets much darker and more malevolent the further you go north.

R446, I didn't get that feeling in the basilica. I should have, I think the church is a front for a lot of evil, the pedophilia history is diabolical by any measure. However, the general audience hall seems to be proclaiming the truth. It is almost as if they be so blatantant, no one will see the obvious.

R452 again - in the same home I also experienced a phenomenon when sleeping where I would feel like someone was flicking their fingers at my face and it would awake me with short electrical sort of zaps. I thought maybe it was a gnat or some other insect, but I could never find an insect nearby. To be fair, my parents had a tense marriage and I had an experience of being sexually assaulted in a park as a child so I am sure there was a great deal of subconscious anxiety in my psyche and it may be something I manifested myself.

I've never experienced this in any of my own homes/apartments.

"between Rockport (white-collar wealthy, artsy) and Gloucester, MA"

R447-Ever visit that underground prison from the Civil War in Charleston? Goosebumps the whole fucking time.

NY's MoMA has bad mojo.

I taught on two different Native reserves. The first one didn't have a dark energy, it was just different. There were stray dogs running around delapitated houses. The second reserve, though, it had a very dark presence as soon as you started driving in on the main road. The school had an incredibly heavy feeling. It was like a weight on my shoulders every time I walked in. Many people living on reserve had family members who died tragically at young ages. Lots of suicides, overdoses and a few murders. Tons of addiction, poverty and, sadly, a lot of child abuse which people tended to ignore. I heard stories first hand from the kids. I remember a Grade 6 student telling me crystal meth "smells like cat pee". The entire community was wary of outsiders and swept every issue under the rug. It was truly a heartbreaking place to work and I quit after the year was up. My mental health suffered greatly and it truly took me years to get over the experience. I can only imagine living there.

Abilene,Texas. Seriously. On long road trips, Abilene was the logical place to stop for fuel. It has a very hostile ‘enemy territory’ creepy vibe. We could not get out of there fast enough. We now bypass Abilene and get fuel in nearby towns.

I took Amtrak from Denver to California a few years ago. Somewhere in Utah the train went through a town that was a monotone color, dusty, run down, not a car or a person to be seen. I got the feeling everyone was inside doing meth and God knows what other depraved things. The empty lifelessness freaked me out a bit.

Old Shwneetown, IL. A pack of stray dogs surrounded my care and wouldn't let me go anywhere for ten minutes. I was parked in front of a bar that was operating on the first floor even though the second floor had collapsed.

My parents, maternal grandparents and most of my descendants on my mother's side are all buried in Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah. I usually find the cemetery extraordinarily beautiful, but on my last visit to take flowers to my parent's and grandparent's crypt it was heavily overcast and getting ready to storm. As I was coming out of the crypt it had suddenly gotten incredibly dark and for the first time the cemetery actually frightened me. I couldn't get to the car and get out of there fast enough.

I went to college in northwestern PA and there was a strong sense of something happening there. In the years after I was there I was told by several people that it was known to be very active in terms of paranormal activity.

It wasn't always dark or bad energy but those certainly existed at times or I could sense them at times.

I live near Native American land now and I don't feel any "dark" energy but it seems that there's some sense of activity. I did a lovely walk around to sage not long ago and hopefully it set things right.

I've been to Bonaventure Cemetery as a tourist, R464, on late morning visit in the Spring, and it's an eerie, but lovely place. I didn't pick up any bad vibes the day I visited. But I did feel like "something" was going on. I definitely would not go there alone.

Pacifica Graduate Institute

St. Pat's.

I’ve been to a lot of the places mentioned but I can’t remember feeling any were eerie. I’ve felt uncomfortable in casinos; desperation underneath the “fun”.

I get that vibe from casinos too. Not fun.