People Share Stories About The Places That Gave Them The Creeps When Traveling

If you've ever had a feeling like you shouldn't be somewhere, then you're in the same boat as these people.

Daphnie

• Published in Weird
• August 11, 2022

Sometimes when you travel or if you're visiting any sort of new place you can come across areas that just don't seem right. Most of us have a keen sense when it comes to situations, people, or locations that just don't sit right with us.

A Reddit user asked people on an #Askreddit thread about a time when they've visited a place and things just didn't seem right there, or time seemed to have passed differently, or it just plain gave you the creeps. The responses to this are actually quite surprising and it's wild to hear how many creepy stories people have to tell.

If you've ever felt like you were in the twilight zone when traveling or you went to a gas station that just seemed to give you all the negative feelings, then you probably know at least a little bit about what we are talking about. We wanted to share the top comments and stories that were left in response to this question.

Some of them are unbelievable, unexplainable, creepy, and just overall make us want to not stop on our next road trip. Let's dive in and take a look at these crazy stories and encounters that people have had when traveling.

1. Now this is actually real-life scary.

"This is my girlfriends story but is kinda up the alley of what you are asking for. My partner went to Florida with her family when she was younger and they were driving around trying to find some food until they found a Chinese restaurant and they went in and had some food.

There were no other customers, lots of staff, everyone seemed very tense but the food was great. They left and had a lovely rest of their day.

During breakfast the next morning they turned on their tele and the news showed the place they had eaten and they were like ‘wow look we went there’. Then the story started and it turns out no more than 10 minutes after they left there was a massive shoot up and they all killed one another.

Turns out that the ignorant british tourists just sat in-between some kind of asian turf war."

2. I bet they'll listen next time they tell them not to stop somewhere.

"Husband, sister, sister's husband and I were driving from WA to MT to go hunting. I am mixed race and my sister is white. Both of our husbands are white and neither of them are from the PNW, so they are ignorant of the history of the Idaho panhandle.

Sister and I both had a travel plan that involved not stopping in the panhandle. My husband, who was driving, decided he really needed to stretch his legs and we might as well get gas before it gets dark, so he pulls into a gas station in the Idaho panhandle.

Sister and I both tell him this is a terrible idea and we are not comfortable. Husband and sister's husband (from CA and NY, so no appreciation of the ID situation) both tell us we're being silly.

Husband and sister's husband both go inside to use the bathroom and buy energy drinks or whatever. Sister gets out and pumps gas so we can get out of there quicker.

I stay in the back seat out of sight and seriously debate whether it's worth it to try to dig under the stuff in the back to get to my shotgun. Truck of locals pulls up.

Confederate flag stickers. Couple of good ol' boys get out.

They ask my sister if she's all right. Ask her if she's alone. Ask her why she's pumping gas if she has a husband.

She's as charming and disarming to them as possible. One of them has an "88" tattoo on his neck.

Sister wants to get back in the car, but doesn't want to open the car door in case they see me. I am hunkered down in my seat with a hat pulled low on my face, hoping they don't see me.

Husbands come out of the gas station at a quick clip. My husband is a giant ex-military dude with a beard and a bunch of tats (mostly of food because he is a chef but they're intimidating at first glance) and he has his angry face on.

Sister sees them and throws a, "Hi guys! Ready to go?" Husband hands her the keys and gets in the back so he is in between the 88 dudes and me. Sister is now driving. We gtfo.

It is now dark enough to require headlights. Truck headlights come up behind us.

Another truck pulls out of a driveway ahead of us. The trucks set our pace and won't let us pass.

We have to drive in between them for several miles on an otherwise-deserted two-lane road with ditches on either side. I know what they are doing.

They are making it clear that they are running us out of their territory. We are lucky that they didn't decide to run us off the road.

Husband tells me that inside the gas station, there were Confederate flags and Aryan flags all over the place and you could buy Nazi paraphernalia. I am not surprised.

When husband went to pay for energy drinks, the cashier caught a glimpse of the lock screen of his phone -- on which he keeps a pic of our kid -- and asked him who the "c**n baby" on his phone was. That is probably why we got run out of town.

The Idaho panhandle, for anyone who doesn't know, is a stronghold of white supremacy. The headquarters of the Aryan Nation were there until the SLPC sued them into bankruptcy in the 2000's.

There are a lot of white supremacists who still live there and are very mad about it. The Aryan Nation is deeply misogynistic and looks down on women who travel without male chaperones, which is probably why my sister was being interrogated about pumping gas. "88" is Aryan shorthand for "Heil Hitler".

Tldr: White people! When your non-white friends ask you not to stop for gas, *listen to them*.

3. This would definitely creep me out.

"Gary Indiana. I got off the highway to get gas.

Driving through the city was like a post apocalyptic movie complete with burned out cars, crazy guy in underwear walking down the middle of the street with a baseball bat and all the windows were broken or boarded up.

I stopped at a gas station and then guy came out and said ‘Get back on the highway son. It’s not safe here.’ I had enough gas tp get to a safer rest stop to refuel.

This was around 1994-95."

4. You have to be careful with some AirBnb's, but clearly something weird is going on with the town.

"My girlfriend and I went to an AirBnB in a town called Tiger, Georgia to see a bunch of her old college friends. There was one other couple who got there about the same time we did.

By day the cabin looks pleasant enough- 3 stories of rustic comfort with a hot tub overlooking the forest and sunrise. We didn't get there by day.

We got there as the sun was sinking low. Rooms seemed to shrink and tighten.

The stairwells were only as wide as a single body. And at the bottom of the basement stairs, a rug hid a padlocked trapdoor. It felt like the start of a horror movie.

We're trying to ignore the weird vibes and decide to go to dinner. We spent nearly an hour driving around searching for a place to eat.

Steakhouses closed by 7pm, an Italian joint which was now someone's house. A Mexican eatery now abandoned and overgrown with vines... Finally we find something.

It's suitably called "The Last Dive Bar On Earth", and it's sitting on the edge of a retention pond. The parking lot is full of pick up trucks all festooned with old political bumper stickers from the late 90s and early 2000s.

We head in. It's like we've entered another decade.

But the beer is good, they have pizza, and the prices aren't bad. We eat in a hurry and get out of there.

As we get back to the cabin, the other couples are there and talking about how they had such a nice time in town. It was only by daylight at the end of the weekend that as we descended the mountain we found a ton of local shops and restaurants *that I swear to f*****g god were not there the first night*.

On the first night, the electrical outlets in the house fried my phone, leaving me with no way to contact the outside world. The weekend ended up being nice, but the entire time we all felt like we had fallen through a crack into some*when* else."

5. It's sad that places like this still exist.

"I was on a roadtrip to go to Tallahassee with two of my cousins and my mom. Like halfway between A and B, the driver he has to go pee, so we decided to stop in the next no name rest stop settlement.

As soon as we drove in, I immediately felt something was wrong. The cars that were driving were all banged up and looked like they came straight from the 70s, confederate flags in a couple of places, ran down shanty looking houses, lots of Confederate flags, the American flags that were around were pretty banged up and/or torn, the people stared at us as we drove passed by, and everyone just looked "dead" inside.

Honestly, if someone told me that there was a Klan rally right up the street, I would 100% believe them. That's the kind of vibe I got from this place.

So my cousin pulls into this decent looking rest stop/gas station and jogs into the bathroom. While my mom and my other cousin were knocked out, I decide to go in the stop with the intentions of going in, getting a snack, and getting out.

As soon as I walk in, it feels like time stopped and everyone (that I can see) is staring at me. It felt like something out of a horror movie ngl.

Luckily for me, there were a pile of apples near the door, so I move my way there, and then I noticed the few people around me stopped dead in their tracks just to look at me. For example, their like hands were still on the items, and this man even stop reading his little cereal box to stare at me.

Since I'm black, this place wasn't sitting well with me at *all*. I put back the apple I was holding and I casually walked out (no need to cause a scene or anything) without getting anything.

F**k. That. Place.

When my cousin came back, we booked it tf out of there."

6. Some people and places are just weird.

"There was one time I stopped in a gas station in Appalachia, it was like 11pm on a Friday. So this truck pulled in and the woman ran inside to pick up some stuff.

The dude hope out and puts the tailgate down and starts playing the harmonica. Out come like 5 cats who all dance around him like he was a pied piper or something.

After a couple of minutes the woman came back and he told the cats to get back in the bed of the truck and then they drove off."

7. Sounds like a really weird town that I don't want to be a part of.

"Yep, stopped in a no name town in Texas for gas. Bunch of guys wearing nothing but denim hanging out in front of the gas station.

Denim, cow boy hats, cow boy boots. It wasn't just a lot of people, EVERYONE was wearing that. Their drawls were so thick I could barely understand what they were saying to one another, a lot of hooting and hollering.

About 50 yards away, there was a guy sitting under a tree. He was wearing a black and white striped jump suit...and was chained to the tree by a shackle on his leg.

Didn't see any law enforcement around, maybe they dropped him off? A girl with huge tits, one and a half arms, and an eye-patch complimented my car and smiled at me when I was pumping gas.

I saw a cow trotting down the side of the road, no one seemed to be chasing it. The fact it was twilight seemed to make everything surreal.

I unassed myself from that place as quickly as I could."

8. I wouldn't have even went to check wehere the smoke was coming from.

"I used to live in Southern Africa and we did charity work in a lot of very remote, rural areas, and when I say remote, I mean several hours rough driving on roads that can barely be called roads. Many times we would come across settlements that were not on any map, just a collection of cinderblock and mud houses sometimes well off the road.

Usually these were what we called "working villages" as in there is some worksite, maybe a small brickwork, or farm, or something like that nearby (though when I say "near" the workers could be walking an hour or so to where they need to be.) When we would stumble upon places like this, we would stop, find coordinates and landmarks, make some records and pass it along back to our office.

One day, we are working in the area near the borders of South Africa, Namibia, and Botswana, and we see some smoke well off the road. Thinking it may be a village, we decide to go off road to take a look. It was fairly well hidden, behind a small hill, and from the road you would have never known it was there if it were not for the column of smoke on the horizon.

We get to it, and sure enough it looks like one of these unmarked working villages, maybe 10 or so huts, but something seemed very off. It took a second and we realized that there was no one around, and yet it seemed as if whoever lived there was there only moments before.

We head to where the smoke came from, and it was a large bonfire, when we looked closer, we noticed bones in it, goat and cattle bones. Other than the sound of the fire, there was not a peep from anything else.

Once I stepped out of our truck to get a closer look, I had this overwhelming sense that I was being watched from afar, and that I was not welcomed here. The other guys in the truck said they felt the same, and that we needed to go. So we did.

A couple of weeks later when we were driving back, curiosity got the better of me and I decided I wanted to check the site again. This time however, the village was stripped bare.

Anything that could be taken was gone. All that was left was the shells of the huts and a black patch of ash where the fire was.

There was one thing that was still there though, the sense of being watched. We didn't stay any longer and never went back."

9. I just don't understand why there are people still like this.

"I was traveling through Arkansas with my friend in the army. He was a big ol black dude and I was a medium height white dude.

Everyone in McDonalds literally stopped and just stared at us until we ordered food and left. It was super weird and we made sure to bypass the place on the way back to post."

10. Maybe she was just genuinely a little confused about how things worker there.

"I had the reverse sort of experience at my local supermarket. I live in Australia and we have right hand drive cars.

I'm just finishing my shop when a huge American looking SUV pulls awkwardly into the carpark and it's clearly left hand drive and maybe 10 years old. I like cars so I'm curious about it, and that's when I notice it's got US plates on it.

Now these aren't some novelty/limited edition Aussie plates that look American, these seem to be genuine US plates. They had a state on them, can't remember which one but it was like Michigan or something.

Obviously American. Middle aged woman gets out, looking like it's a normal day at the shops.

So far the story is a bit weird, but nothing too unusual. But as I take my trolley back to the trolley bay she's there and having obvious problems working out how to unlock one.

You have to put a coin in them, and she's clearly having troubles so I ask if I can help. She's trying to put what I later find out is a quarter in the trolley, saying she's never seen this sort of thing before.

I show her the dollar coin I've just gotten back from my trolley (it's gold coloured) and she genuinely is weirded out by the colour and is incredulous when I tell her it's a dollar. I feel like I'm an alien showing her a new type of cat or something.

I put my dollar in the trolley lock and open it for her because she's clearly lost and I wanted to be helpful. She then sort of gets into a "oh I know this interaction" and says let me give you some money and opens her purse.

It's all American notes, trust me there's no good old Aussie plastic multicoured monopoly money in this thing. I sort of blurt out "do you not have Australian money yet?" thinking that's gonna slow you down in the Aldi there love.

Her reply "No, why would I?" and she gives me the quarter she was trying to put in the trolley. I tell her it's not necessary but she thanks me in her wonderful American accent and wanders off into the shop.

It was hilarious and weird, if you'd shown me a portal from my shops to Michigan that she'd blundered through it would have made complete sense. I got the impression she had almost no idea she was in another country.

She was acting like I was the weird one, but she also spoke perfectly and was really nice so it's not like she was in any obvious mental health episode. The fact I have the quarter is the only reason I don't think I've hallucinated the whole thing after eating a dodgy pizza.

Friends think her husband had gotten a job in Australia and just got the car and everything etc shipped, and maybe she's never been overseas before? It was super weird and I love that woman so much I wish I could find her again to see what she's doing now.

I've also been into a country town where literally everyone we saw for the half hour we were there looked like they were from the same family, and everyone stared at us like they knew we were from out of town. But that has a very logical but no less creepy explanation ;)

11. Two stories in one.

"I have two stories like this. The first one was an absolutely creepy experience, and the second one was weird but I didn’t feel threatened.

1st story: A friend and I were driving in a thunderstorm of epic proportions. We couldn’t see the road ahead of us so we pulled over to a diner in a tiny town, and decided we’d wait inside for the storm to pass and order some food.

From the outside it looked really lively, people were talking, laughing and eating. As soon as we walked through the door the whole place went silent and every. single. person stopped what they were doing and just stared at us.

Dozens of eyeballs fixated on us. We ordered our food and ate it, and left as soon as the weather had cleared up a bit.

We were there for maybe an hour, and it stayed completely silent the entire time, and customers kept looking our way (not discretely).

2nd story: Another time I was on a road trip, it was the middle of the night and we were getting tired so we decided to stop in the next town. There had been no sign of civilisation for miles and we finally came across a small town with a B&B.

The woman running the place was odd but very kind. The house felt different somehow but so did the whole town.

It kind of felt like I had entered a different dimension, if that makes any sense. Anyway, I go to bed and the next morning I wake up and decide to walk around the town a bit before we hit the road.

Again, the whole place felt like a different world, like it was not part of the earth we normally know. The people living there were tending to their gardens, walking their dogs, etc. And it felt like slow mo.

There were 2 shops in town, and no other businesses. By going into the shops and looking around, and taking with one of the shop owners, I found out the whole town was a pagan town where every single citizen worshiped a goddess of fertility (as in human fertility, but also fertility of their crops).

The stores were packed with items that can be used for rituals, and other various items like statuettes representing the goddess. They seemed to be hardcore worshipers.

Their town wasn’t on the map and I never found it again. It was a really surreal experience."

12. Well that would be scary.

"My friends had a story about visiting Dublin and wandering out of the touristy area looking for a drink. They walked into a little pub, but when they tried to order a round, they noticed the bartender was acting nervous.

They looked across the room to see four of the meanest, toughest Irishmen they'd ever seen giving them the evil eye. After the bartender served them, he quietly suggested they leave once their drinks were finished, and as they sat and chatted, a couple of the men passed back and forth across their booth like sharks.

When they left, they learned from a local that they had just wandered into a very serious IRA pub"

13. This one is a long one.

"When I was 16 I got on a train and travelled across a few provinces for work (summer employment). This being Canada, the train ride took almost 3 days.

Sometimes, they would stop the train at a larger town and allow the passengers time to get off and stretch their legs or get a breath of fresh air. I was sleeping during this one stop, and I woke to find a sleepy little town that looked A LOT like Auschwitz...

I’ve seen a lot of photos of Auschwitz in history books and on TV but I’ve also been there in person, so to look out the window of this comfy passenger train and see what LOOKED like a carbon copy of the place, complete with barbed wire (shorter, probably for the animals) and a metal entry gate with words over it, was a little creepy.

I debated just staying on the train, but some ppl were getting back on the train with ICE CREAM and saying they got it from a little parlour in town. I also overheard some other people joking about the town looking like a concentration camp so I started to feel a little less crazy.

It wasn’t just me. I checked the time on my phone and after making sure the train wouldn’t leave without me, I disembarked to get me some ice cream.

Now, I know some of the smaller/isolated towns in Canada can have some pretty traditional views and ways of life but I really wasn’t expecting to feel so out of place in my modern clothing. It was pretty clear which people were locals because they were wearing a much older style of European clothing (??? Idk how else to describe it).

Most of the kids looked like little dolls straight out of horror films and they didn’t look unhappy they just looked bored out of their minds. It added to the creepiness of this whole situation, and at this point I just wanted to get my ice cream and board the train.

I wanted to hurry so I asked some locals where the ice cream shop was. This older man looked confused and said “we don’t have an ice cream shop anymore”.

I told him I had just seen some other train passengers with ice cream, and that they said they’d gotten it in town. I asked him if there was anywhere that sold ice cream and he mumbled something about “there used to be an ice cream place two streets over”.

I thanked him and walked the two streets down. I assumed he was just really old and perhaps had trouble remembering things.

As I rounded the corner however, I was standing in front of an ABANDONED ice cream parlour. A little sign in the shape of an ice cream cone that said “crème glacé” was hanging in front of the building, and while the windows weren’t boarded up you could see that no one had been in there for awhile, probably years.

I stepped onto the porch and cupped my hands on the windows to look inside and yep, no ice cream equipment either. No freezers, no lights, just some diner-style ice cream paraphernalia and seating.

At this point I was super confused. Maybe the old guy was wrong and this was the OLD ice cream place but there was a new one in town he didn’t know about.

Maybe it was closer to the train platform. I had ventured pretty deep into town so I checked my phone to make sure I wasn’t running late and it showed a time that was EARLIER than when I had first checked it on the train...

I noped the f**k outta there at that point, feeling like I was in an episode of the f*****g twilight zone. I REALLY needed to see the train, see a person I had been traveling with, Hell I just needed to see a modern-dressed person to prove I wasn’t “stuck in time” or some s**t.

Sure enough the train was still at the platform, the people I’d been traveling with were still on or around the train, and we weren’t dressed like we lived in old-Europe. I quickly concluded that we were standing on (or very close to) a timezone border and that’s why my phone had jumped to an earlier hour.

After realizing there was no crazy time-jumping s**t going on, I relaxed. I knew there had to be a logical explanation but in the moment it was just a lot for my 16 year old self travelling alone to deal with. It freaked me out.

I still couldn’t figure out where these ppl had gotten the ice cream tho, and when I asked them, they all gave the exact same directions the old man gave me!

I was pretty frustrated so I kept asking, until one girl said she had TAKEN PHOTOS of the place! I was like “yes please show them to me!” because I was still hoping to get myself some ice cream and I figured if I knew what the place looked like I could find it easily.

She then showed me some photos of the “quaint little ice cream parlour” that she took for her instagram. It looked EXACTLY like the run down ice cream shop that I had found, right down to the little porch, overhang, windows, and signage, but this photo showed a colourful and bustling business on a summer day, not an empty street with faded signs.

All the surrounding scenery was exactly the same, the dining chairs in the window were the same. The next photo was a selfie of her, with her ice cream, in front of the sign that said “crème glacé”.

To this day, I still don’t have a logical explanation for that one. Maybe they moved the parlour to a better spot, but then why leave the old one empty with all the signs?

Maybe they moved it closer to the train platform, but then why did everyone else give me the same directions to the abandoned place I’d just been? Why was everything in the photo the same as what I’d seen, just less derelict?

There’s no way that all those ppl got ice cream from a f*****g ghost parlour, and I wanted SO BADLY to run back into town to solve this mystery but the train was blowing its whistle and I wasn’t about to risk being left in this creepy Auschwitz lookalike just to get some ice cream, so I boarded the train and I’ve never stopped thinking about it.

My biggest regret is not taking photos. I had my iPhone with me, and a few simple photos might have been enough to see any glaring differences.

If nothing else, having both sets of photos could have made for a really cool “apocalypse themed” side-by-side comparaison...

I guess I’ll never know, but it’s a good story to tell around the campfire."

14. Another story with these same terrible experiences.

"Not a roadtrip but my family usually spends time in the one of the forest towns in northern California. It's been a family tradition for over fifty years at this point, usually it'd been lovely up there.

The feeling of nature being all around, actually sleeping in an old-time cabin, being on country roads and seeing more of the actual night sky are all marvelous experiences that I'll always cherish. I used to think the same about the people up there. They seemed nice and down to Earth.

Then one year we came up with some new members of the family, my step-mom and step-brother. Both have dark skin.

You can already see where this is going. We walked into a restaurant one day.

It was filled but when we walked in it was dead quiet. No one said a word to us but plenty were looking our way.

This lasted for about ten to fifteen minutes and then we just left. I'll always love the scenery of that area but the people there can go f**k themselves."

15. Now this is a weird experience.

"I was on a road trip on the south island of New Zealand and one night at around 9pm decided to stop in a small town to get some rest. Already while driving into the town I noticed that there were Christmas decorations everywhere, like decorated trees and plastic santa’s, reindeer etc. Excessive amounts of decorations on the streets and in every window.

This wouldn’t have been too weird if it hadn’t been in the middle of August. But I thought the town was just really dedicated to a specific aesthetic or whatever.

I got to the motel and checked in and the old lady at the front desk was short and rude with me which I thought was weird bc I had experienced people in NZ as really nice and quite chatty (compared to where I come from lol). She also wouldn’t give me the wifi password even though they advertised free wifi. She quite literally told me to p**s off and let her get back to her newspaper.

After that I went out and the whole time I was there I never saw any people on the street. I went to a diner near the motel (both also stuffed with Christmas decorations) and had the same experience with the waitress while ordering.

She told me they are out of almost everything and the only I was able to get was a cheese sandwich. There were other people in the restaurant who were all eating what I suppose were meals from the menu.

They didn’t have to order a plain cheese sandwich. While waiting for my food I noticed that no one in the whole diner was talking even though there were families and other groups of people.

Even the kids ate in silence. Or not really silence, as there was Christmas music blaring.

After I was done eating I just paid and left. I was also the only one leaving.

No one in that diner, the whole time I was there, got up to leave or go to the bathroom or do anything really. They all just sat there.

When I left I felt like they were all starting holes in my back. The whole time I was in that town I got a feeling that everyone wanted me to leave and like they were somehow angry with me.

This was 4 years ago and tbh I don’t remember anything after leaving the diner. I don’t remember going back to the motel or going to sleep and just barely remember being on the road early the next morning.

I told some of my NZ friends this story, bc I thought it was some kind of weird theme town, but none of them ever heard of it and I can’t for the life of me remember the name of that town or how I found it."

16. The fog can hide a lot I guess.

"Wife and I were driving up the blue mountains (big mountain range in Australia) to visit friends who were staying in a holiday place up there. It's crazy foggy in the late afternoon/early evening, so we can't see much as we're going up.

But it's pretty much a straight run up so we take it slow and pull over sometimes when the fog gets too thick to give it a minute to lighten a bit. Super creepy but nothing weird, that's just how it is.

We stayed the night at friends and drove back down the next afternoon - lovely and sunny. We drove through a cute little town that hugged the sides of the main road, so you could drive straight through it without turning or hitting any major intersections.

My wife said "oh are we going home a different way". No, no we were not.

There was basically an entire small town we'd driven through the night before right near the house and we never saw a single indication of it. We hadn't seen any lights/street lights, other cars, "Welcome to Spookyville, popn 1" signs, anything.

We had pulled over to check the map (pre-smartphones) to make sure we hadn't missed the turn off and we would have been practically in the middle of the town. It's amazing how something so big can disappear in the fog so easily. Early evening and not one house light? Mole people I reckon.

I know there's a logical explanation but it's 20 years later and I still think "nah not going back up there"

17. People driving through different timezones and timelines.

"It was a little past midnight, and I offered to drive a friend who was visiting with me to her parents house where she was staying. They live in a smaller town outside of mine about a half hour drive away.

I had been there enough times that I didn't need any type of directions, just a reminder of where to turn off into her neighborhood because it was hard to tell with it being dark outside.

Now allow me to clear up a little information. I was not under the influence of anything: alcohol, drugs, nothing.

I wasn't even that tired. Her neighborhood was just off of a long road in the woods that came straight off a major highway, so it wasn't in the boonies or anything, but out of the city.

To get out of the city I live in to where she lives, you pass under a newly constructed tollroad that is a loop around the city. It's large and can't be missed.

You have to either go under it or over it to get back into the city, and it has those huge highway lights all around it, so it wouldn't be easy to pass without noticing.

So anyways, I've dropped her off and head back the way I came. It's only a couple turns from the long road I mentioned before, so I go back without even thinking about it.

I've driven this way several times. I head back on the long road a little ways and I'm suddenly at a stop sign.

Except the long road doesn't have stop signs if you're traveling on it. And at the stop sign I'm facing a boulevard with cookie-cutter, middle class homes I had never seen before.

There are lots of homes like that in the area, but these had an eeriness to them. They were not lit by any kind of street lights or anything, but were perfectly visible in the night.

And they all seemed empty. There might have been cars in driveways, but not a single light was on in the two rows of dozens of houses.

It was as if all the life that may have lived in this neighborhood had vanished. Obviously I did not go down this boulevard.

I got a little teary eyed from the sheer feeling this place gave me. I turned to my left.

Somehow I made it to a neighborhood that I did recognize. I could also see the lights from a highway nearby, so I headed towards them.

I made it onto the same highway that I took from town, but something strange occurred to me. I never passed over the tollroad.

The series of neighborhoods in that area typically had bridges over the tollroad that connected the residential area and kept the sounds of vehicles down and away from the quiet homes, but I never passed over it. The entire drive home felt off.

Until I got to a certain part of the city, each sign looked a little different. I only saw another car on the road when I did get further into the city.

To this day I've yet to see the boulevard at the stop sign. I don't know how I got there, but I don't ever want to be there alone again."

18. We're loving the creepy stories.

"My boyfriend and I had a stay in Melbourne for a few nights. First Airbnb was practically a small hotel room so, all good.

The second on the other hand... It was advertised as "Flexible check-in " but the owner wouldn't stop pestering us for a time we were going to be there. We told them 8pm and they still kept asking before saying they had to go out and 'Frank' would let us in.

We had no mention of this guy before then but fine, whatever. We ended up missing a few small shows we were eager to go to so we'd get there earlier and despite being promised off the street parking we could only park on the street.

It sucked but no big deal. We'd had a long day and were pretty tired.

Then we get to the house. Frank is this tall, thin, muscley older guy, really intense and absolutely no chill.

Bulging eyes kind of intense. We were both really uncomfortable from the start but my bf makes small talk, jokes about Sydney vs Melbourne.

This guy doesn't like it. To the point where he stopped walking, swung around and got in my bfs face. Bf de-esculated the situation real quick and we got to our room and immediately locked the door.

We both got some bad vibes off the place and the guy but we couldn't work out why. We thought we were just tired but kept debating the pros and cons of staying, and the room wasn't helping!

It was freshly painted and the fumes were so strong I was getting a migraine, there was a door to the backyard that was blocked off with a dresser, so much dust under the bed it was ridiculous.

And then we noticed two things.

One was the wooden plank holding up the curtains. It was big, thick, heavy looking thing - and it was holding onto the wall by a nail on each side.

Half of it had already leant right off the wall, leaving a huge gap. This was right above the head of the bed. That was it for my bf, he wanted out.

This second point was my big thing. The door to the rest of the house had a lock but there was also a gap between it and the floor.

I'm not talking a small space for air. I'm not talking fit a finger underneath. I'm talking big enough for tall, muscley, big guy Frank to fit his entire arm under.

We grabbed our things and snuck out. Went to the nearest grocery store for supplies, shopped around for a place to stay, let the Airbnb know we l left, and ended up driving through the night back to NSW and slept in the car for a few hours.

Nothing exciting happened but we just really didn't feel safe there. My bf hikes a lot overseas, stays in random and/or desolated places. He's not put off easily. We were both pretty glad for a solid reason to leave."

19. Such weird vibes.

"During a road trip with a friend, we decided to follow this road to a compound that had a gate, cameras and a sign that said unauthorized personnel will be shot on site. We turn around as fast as we could and drove and a few miles down the road there was a trunk stop and a Mexican restaurant.

We were shaken by the sign and we're hungry so we go to the restaurant. I'm not kidding when I say it was silent and everyone looked at us as we walked through the door. What made it weirder is literally no one had food.

Anyways the food wasn't bad but we are quickly and got the heck out of their as soon as possible."

20. This is one of the least creepy things we;ve read so far.

"I was driving between Midland and Alma Michigan late one night, and this area has some of the darkest, loneliest country roads I've ever driven on. There are also a bunch of windmills in this area and at the top of every windmill was a blinking red light so that planes could see them, but the lights blinked in sync, so it would be dark, and then all of a sudden, the red lights of the seemingly 100s of windmills would all blink on. Absolutely creepy."

21. Welcome to the South.

"I've been to 43 states. I've seen odd things.

The creepiest thing was getting in gas off of I-95 in NC, and seeing a camo painted Bronco driving around a parking lot of a shopping center that was focused on a Wal-mart.

It had two *gigantic* flags. One Confederate, the other full on Nazi flag - I was never more concerned in my life."

22. Small towns like this alwasy creep me out.

"Coatesville, Pennsylvania. I was with a friend who had come up from Mexico and we were staying a few nights at his grandmother's ranch nearby.

Coatesville was the only town around where we could find Mexican ingredients. This is an old steel town that feels post-apocalyptic, everyone there didn't really seem to be doing anything or going anywhere, it was so creepy.

The store we ended up going to had nearly empty shelves and I think the guys were a bit surprised to see us there. All in all just very strange and eerie."

23. Some things are just quite weird.

"My family was driving through a really rural part of the Philippines when my sister announced she had to go asap. It was very late.

My dad stopped at the first place he could ~ a little shop that sold weird antique stuff, with an old lady at the counter. My dad talked to the old lady while us kids headed for the bathroom (an outhouse separate from the shop/main house).

We didn't think much about it and stayed a few days in our province. On our way back to the city, my dad said he wanted to stop by that shop again to thank the old woman and when we got to the place where my dad swore the store was, there was nothing.

Just the highway and thick forest on both sides. We still bring it up sometimes because thinking about it gives everyone in the family chills."

24. Maybe it was a real movie set.

"I am a skeptical person but this one experience I had in Berlin still confuses me to this day.

Me and my girlfriend were on holiday walking through central Berlin, a weekday morning. The streets were fairly busy, a typical day, when we turned down a long wide street with large buildings on either side.

As we walked down we noticed it was very quiet and that there was no one else on the street at all, which was strange in itself considering it was 10-11am. As we carried on walking, I can’t really describe what happened but I noticed that the buildings we were walking past weren’t actually real, but like movie set buildings?

The windows and doors looked normal from a distance but up close they were waaaay too big to be normal, I just felt really uneasy the whole time but we didn’t say anything until we turned off the street and back into the hustle and bustle of Berlin.

I have absolutely no idea what happened at all but my girlfriend said she felt/seen exactly the same thing. It was like we stepped into a different world for a few minutes. Totally bizarre"

25. Remind me to just not travel.

"On my first trip to Europe, we started in Rome, and drove down to Sicily, and on the way back north, we decided to stay the night in a small town instead of a major city. We ended up at a town called Lauria right on dark, and hadn't booked any accomodation yet (we didn't know where we were going to end up, wanted to get as far as we could).

As we drive around the town looking for a hotel, every local is stopping in their tracks and watching us like we are very out of place. We find and pull up at the only hotel we could find, a multi level building with an empty car park, no guests or staff around.

Went in and booked a room, and the guy who served us took our bags, put us in the elevator and sent us on the way to our room. we get up 3 floors and here he is waiting for us with our bags, not puffed out having out ran an elevator while carrying 3 bags.

It's the classic horror movie hall ways, seemingly too long for the building and only half the lights are working. It's dead quiet inside so we put our stuff in the room and get out to see if the town is really that bad.

We head out for dinner, again every stopping and staring at us as we walked down the streets. The next morning, we wake up early to GTFO and find all the doors are locked and cannot be opened from the inside without a key, no staff anywhere so we left the key on the desk and had to break out of the hotel window to get out.

10/10 was spooked. Rest of the trip was amazing, through Switzerland and France, quick trip around England and Scotland then home."

"Back in 2011, my ex and I took a trip to go visit my dad, who at the time lived in the tiny town of Middleton, Tennessee. I lived at the other end of the state, so it was about an eight hour trip.

Decided to go it at night so I wouldn't have to deal with anyone on the interstate other than truckers and the occasional car.

The trip was fine until we got off the interstate and went through some small town maybe an hour or so before Middleton? My memory's hazy on exactly where it was, but at that point it was about four in the morning.

We were rolling through the town, and it was foggy and dark, minimal streetlights, all the houses were completely dark and still... it was a little creepy looking but nothing really out of the ordinary.

Until we got a little further down the road and there were f*****g newspapers *everywhere*. Scattered all on the road, in the empty fields and the yards of the houses we passed, just loose pages of newspaper everywhere we looked

. I'm sure there was a reasonable explanation, but both of us just suddenly felt like something was off, and it was creepy as hell. One of us cracked a joke about suddenly landing in a horror movie without realising, and I sped up the car a little bit, but for about ten minutes it was just us and the newspapers and the fog in the complete stillness in this dark town, and we both sighed audibly in relief once it fell behind us. We talked about it for years after that trip.

On a second trip to the same town years later, once again in the early am hours, we stopped at a gas station I always stopped at, and though I'd always felt safe at it before, that time I felt a little uneasy, but didn't know why.

We went in the store and this group of guys and a girl came in yelling at this other guy, cashier made them leave and they tore out. Came back not five minutes later and beat the guy they'd been harrassing with some kind of bat.

It was a mess, cops were called, ambulance... I'll never forget how dazed that poor guy looked with blood coming all down the side of his head. So I guess that time I had a legit reason for things feeling off.

tl;dr I should stop making the trip from east TN to west TN."

27. This would totally freak me out.

"I have a few but this one stands out in my mind.

This starts with me, my boyfriend, his brother and the girlfriend all deciding to split off from the rest of his family during vacation and head to the Winchester mystery house... now since this is like 6 or 7 years ago I can't remember if we were headed to or back from there. I was driving and my bf was the navigator, we started our trek a few hours before and expected to be at our destination before nightfall.

Somewhere along the lines we took a wrong turn, although we had a map and both our set to gps. I didn't think about it at first and nobody else mentioned it until what felt like a few hours of me driving, now this wasn't in silence from what I remember it was a normal a*s roadtrip with taking laughing and music... but we get down this particular road and it all feels like we snapped outta a dream everything is dark there's shadows of trees bunched here and there along the road but past that is pitch black...

I'm taking a void of darkness where you feel it goes on for miles on end but you can't see it. One of them said something along the lines of where are we, and joked that we entered the twilight zone.

But I tell you, I got this really uneasy feeling like I shouldn't drive any further than I already have and I think everyone else felt that too cause we got real quiet and just kinda stared out the windows. We hadn't realized that there were literally no cars around us, what was supposed to be a highway was a narrow strip of road and nothing, just this stillness like we entered a place we shouldn't have.

I flip a b***h and start speeding off in the opposite direction but lo and behold the scenery we saw "going back" wasn't the same as we saw coming in... it was still pitch black but none of it was familiar.

You know how you can make out odd shapes from the shadows... but literally nothing looked like it was before. It took me about a good 15 or 20 min. To get out of the void... but to this day every one of us swears we were driving for hours in it.

We can't find that turn although we've taken that route a few more times tbt throughout the year... and it really does seem like it was a dream except for the waking part it was scared me, it's like everyone was stuck on auto pilot and no one remembers what we said or even what sounds we heard during those hours. Gives me the creeps."

28. Okay now this is weird.

"I know it was a Sunday afternoon in January; it must have been either '96 or '97. I know it was on I-30 somewhere between Little Rock and Texarkana, but I can't find it on a a map any more.

But there was a microscopic little "town" at one of the highway interchanges, that consisted almost entirely of a gas station and a Denny's; I think there might have been a couple of other buildings, but I don't remember anything about them. When I saw the Denny's sign on the highway, I decided to stop there for a fill-up and a bite of lunch.

And while I was filling my gas tank, something about the scene just seemed ... off. Uncanny valley territory.

But I couldn't put my finger on it. The place was busy but not slammed, pretty much what you'd expect for right-after-church at the only businesses open within 50 miles.

Everybody going about their business. Nothing obviously weird. Just ... off.

I moved my car, went into the Denny's, waited until the waitress seated me. Again, crowded, but not full, there was no wait for a table but most tables were full.

So there was a delay before the waitress came back to take my order, and, just casually looking around the room, it finally sank in what was weirding me out. The room had me, three obvious truckers, and ... maybe 40 or so copies of the same person.

Both genders, all ages, but exact same skin tone, same brown hair in the same two haircuts, same facial features. The same "person" I'd seen maybe a dozen or so copies of at the gas station.

Hours later, up on the highway and miles away, I figured out what I *think* that I was seeing. (And Reddit being Reddit, someone from there will see this and tell me whether I'm right or not, after all these years.)

I think this was one of those towns whose best high school students have all left for college, married someone from somewhere else, and then moved to that other person's town because that other person's town had jobs.

I think this was a town that nobody new had moved to in over 100 years. Which means no genetic diversity at all; at at most the second-cousin level, everybody's related.

Nothing dangerous, nothing harmful, just ... well, look, I'm from St. Louis, which I think of as a small town, under 3 million population. Also a town that hardly anybody new ever moves to (little or no reason to), so any two random similar-aged strangers who meet have a 50/50 chance of knowing someone in common.

But if you took, say, a random Metrolink train's worth of us, we wouldn't be nearly as homogeneous as that tiny little whistle-stop town in Arkansas. I imagine if they came to my neighborhood, they'd see that all the people look different and they'd be just as creeped out as I was when I went to their neighborhood and everybody looked 100% identical."

29. I wonder what was going on there.

"So that red covered bridge, West Montrose AKA the Kissing Bridge, from the movie IT is about 2 hours away from me. A couple of years ago, me and some girlfriends went there to take some pictures because it was cool that it was so close and it was a perfect day for a road trip (I think the kids nowadays call it a VSCO Hangout).

I drove and when we got there, there was no parking anywhere. I finally pulled over to the side of the road and asked a lady if I could park in her store lot (said no tourist parking) she said since I asked so nicely, *fine*.

We went for a walk and the locals would peek out their windows at us, some of them in plain view. There were signs on the grass that said that so and so were to be contacted for use of property and that use of which was prohibited without permission, no lingering, park closed, etc.

They even had ropes and stakes on their property lines to really take it home. It was also strange because there is a lane way between the properties and the creek that runs under the bridge and other signs had prices for photo sessions.

At one point a couple walked past us and the lady craned her neck to look back at me even as she had already walked past. That was about all the Get Out vibes I could handle till we packed in and headed home.

There was just something strange in the air there, it felt like I had eyes on me at all times. All I wanted was to see the last covered bridge in Ontario!"

30. This isn't exactly creepy.

"Back in the late 80s and early 90s when I was a teenager me and my friends were in a hard core punk band. We mostly played shows in our medium sized city, the surrounding area and occasionally the major city 2 hours away.

A member of one the bands we would play with had set up a punk showcase in their home town about 3 or 4 hours away and asked my band if we could play. It paid and we were able to sell merch so we decided it was worth the trip.

Most of the time we played just for fun since we rarely made any money on shows and we would be lucky if we sold 10 t-shirts and CDs. But playing small towns we could usually sell everything we brought with us.

So we loaded up our gear in 2 cars and convoyed to this town. None of had heard of it and we had to spend an afternoon with a map trying to figure out where it was and how to get there.

We got there hours before the show and all I can say was that we constantly referenced "Footloose". People were looking at us like we were from Mars or something.

According to movies we should've been flattered but the reality is that we were more than a little put off. It's like c'mon; you people have cable TV so it's not like you haven't ever seen a person with a mohawk or blue hair in the 15+ years that style has existed.

The show was cool though. And we did sell everything we brought. But everyone we met smoked really shitty weed so luckily we brought our own."

These creepy experiences and interactions make us really not even want to travel anymore. This just shows that you need to be very careful when you travel and always pay attention to your surroundings.

Do you have any creepy encounters to share?

Daphnie