24 Creepy Unsettling Towns In America

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a day ago

A hot minute ago, Reddit user Bennevada asked the folks over on r/AskReddit to share the little towns across America they've passed through that gave them the creeps. From abandoned ghost towns to cities stuck in the past, here are 24 of the most bone-chilling places they shared:
"Tonopah, NV. It's on the north end of the Tonopha missile range and Area 51. It's the beginning of nowhere and is home to the world's largest Clown Motel. The only reason to stop is for gas, then get TF outta there as quickly as possible."
—littlebitstoned
Whittier, AK: "The entire population lives in a single apartment building, and the only access to the town is by boat or a 2.5-mile tunnel."
—WeOwntheNightXWhittier has about 200 residents, almost all of whom live in the Begich Towers.
Vidor, TX: "We detoured through it due to a road closure. The residents hung white sheets saying, 'Don't stop' and 'Go that way.' They seem to have lots of white sheets..."
—whatyoucallmetoday"I did some engineering co-op assignments in the Golden Triangle area (Beaumont, Orange, Port Arthur) back in the early '90s. Everyone I worked with warned me to never stop in Vidor for any reason. I took their advice to heart. They said the town's claim to fame was being the former national headquarters for the KKK, and that there was a billboard on the stretch of I-10 that passed through Vidor that would occasionally get spray painted with the message '*n-word*, don't let the sun go down on you in Vidor.'"—underpants-gnome
"Los Alamos, NM: Lots of land surrounded by barbed wire. Signs EVERYWHERE indicating 'No drones allowed.' Weirdly quiet. Pretty much everything closed at 3 p.m. We joked that it must be to give people time to get inside before all the radioactive monsters came out. A lot of the labs and facilities are still active for, I assume, reasons."
—knittinator
Colorado City, AZ: "Me and some friends were driving up to Duck Creek, UT from Vegas in winter and had to go in the back way via 89. This route takes you through Colorado City, Arizona, which is Mormon territory and about the creepiest place I've ever been. We had to stop for gas and we were watched like we were being hunted."
—thai-stik-admin"I came here to see if anyone posted about this place. I stopped in there on my way to the north rim of The Grand Canyon back in 1999. This is not just Mormons, but Warren Jeffs's polygamous sect. I went into the grocery store to get supplies. All the young women wore 19th-century style clothes and would not look me in the face when they spoke to me.They tried to establish a compound in Texas several years later and Jess was arrested. Their idea of marriage was 50-year-old men marrying 12-year-old girls."—Troubador222"So many polygamists. You can feel how unwelcome you are as you enter the town. We stopped there once on a family trip to get gas. A police officer immediately parked behind us and wanted to know where we were going and how long we were going to be in his town. He didn't leave until we did and he followed us until we got to the town border. We never stopped there again. It's basically a cult town."—ProfessorBrownie
"The Loneliest Road" (Route 50), NV: "I went on the 'loneliest road' in Nevada, and it truly gave me a sense of scale for America as a place. In Europe, you simply cannot go that distance without encountering multiple massive cities. Where I live, every square cm of land has been apportioned for centuries, and then you go to Nevada, and it's just...OPEN. And you have actual warnings telling you to fill up your car or else."
—Ok-Commercial8968
Mt. St. Helens area, WA: "If you're adventurous and have a truck, you can find the old forest service roads on the side of Mt. St. Helens that got blown out by the eruption. I found them at night driving through there on a whim. Old forest service signs with half of the sign melted or blown off, completely overgrown roads, muddy trails, and absolutely no light. It was a clear sky with a full moon and, I shit you not, I couldn't see more than 50 feet ahead of me with the brights on. Eeriest shit I've explored, and I grew up exploring abandoned asylums and prisons. 14/10, absolute recommend."
—Beautiful-Page3135
"Centralia, PA: An underground coal fire drove out most of the population, so it's essentially an abandoned town. It was the inspiration for how Silent Hill is depicted in the first Silent Hill movie."
—rookhelmAn underground mine fire has been burning beneath the town since at least 1962. While most of the small town's residents have fled since then, a handful have remained.
"Harrison, AR: It has billboards for White Power Radio. I had heard about it on the internet but had forgotten until some friends and I went camping on the Buffalo River. It's 100% legit."
—pickleparty16
Red Haw, OH: "I've driven through it four times. Every single time it's the same story. Cars parked on the sides of the road, but no traffic. Doors wide open, but nobody is visible. No music, no people. Legitimately saw a ball roll across the street once and nobody could have thrown it. It looks like everyone who lives there disappears whenever I drive through, and then spontaneously, they reappear when I leave."
—GNSasakiHaise***
The Salton Sea area, CA: "The area around the Salton Sea in Southern California — particularly the upper half of the western shore, towns like Salton City, Desert Shores, and Oasis. I actually quite enjoyed the people there. Back in the 1960s, a bunch of resort towns popped up along the sea. In the 1980s, agricultural runoff severely polluted the sea. There were also wild variations in the salinity of the sea, and those two factors combined to kill off a ton of the sea's fish. The dead fish washed up on shore, the sight and smell of which pretty well killed the tourism industry. What remains is an ecological disaster and a bunch of not-quite ghost towns.
"It's a really eerie corner of the world, and as someone who's spent a lot of time in tiny back towns across the western states, the Salton Sea area is definitely unique in my memory."—MasteringTheFlames
Trail of Tears Road, GA: "My wife and I drove on it, and it was a beautiful, sunny day when we made the turn. As soon as we were on the road, it started raining, and the weather got worse and worse until it was like driving in a hurricane. Then, as soon as we got to the end of the road and turned onto the highway, the skies cleared up and it was a beautiful, sunny day again. Super weird experience, and now years later, when strange things happen in the world, we joke with each other that it's all a dream and we're still trapped on Trail of Tears Road."
—brickhamilton
Skidmore, MO: "A few years ago, I got lost in rural Missouri. Super lost. Like, back county roads lost. So I got directions from a gas station where the worker was super pissed I wouldn't buy his overpriced map. He gave me directions, and I followed them down this backroad and ended up in Skidmore. It was like 2 p.m. and completely dead. Not a single person around. Mostly older houses, a run-down downtown, a new post office, that kind of thing. I was suddenly filled with dread. Like, Stephen King dread. There's trash blowing everywhere and there's just nobody. I drive by the library, and it's pretty much abandoned. There are oversized books in the window, and they're completely swollen from what I assume was water."
"So I made it out of town and kept heading on my way, finally making it safely to my destination. Later on, I Googled the town, and what I found was wild. For a small town, it was full of gruesome murders, like one woman murdering another pregnant woman to get her baby, a guy terrorizing the entire town to the point where they just all kill him in the street, and murders from the 1800s. That kind of thing. It creeped me out more than any other place on three continents I've been on."—Vio_
Coeur d'Alene, ID: "Stopped at the visitor's center, while passing through Coeur d'Alene. On the way through town, we passed by multiple breweries and interesting places to stop for lunch, but there seemed to be an odd feeling about the place. We chatted with the people at the visitor center while my friend went to use the restroom. When she came back, she changed her mind about staying in town for lunch. She had found out that Coeur d'Alene is home to a major compound for the Aryan Nations. We realized, as we left, that there were not any non-white people walking around downtown."
—Grigio_cervello
Joshua Tree, CA: "As someone who lives in a big city, I thought the desert was creepy as hell. I absolutely loved Joshua Tree, but it was hard for me to fall asleep. It's completely silent out there at night."
—AmericanWasted
Forks, WA: "Creepiest place I've been is Forks, WA, and the areas around it. Almost constant cloud cover, all the locals seem to know something you don't, and knowing you're on the tippy top left of the states feels strange."
—PineTreeGorgon
"Edgefield, SC: A friend and I had to drive through there on a long excursion to the only Gamestop in the area that had a part for his Xbox. We first got there during the day, and there wasn't a soul on the streets. This was a Friday afternoon, and the streets were dead. Grocery store parking lot? Empty. Gas station? No customers. Sidewalks? Barren. Traffic? Non-existent. Add to that a general feeling of spookiness and we were pretty glad to put it behind us. Later, returned from where we'd been going and had to go through Edgefield again, this time at night. The town was fucking jumping. Cars all over the place, the stores full, people walking around. "When I got home, I hit Google out of curiosity, and the first thing to autocomplete was 'Edgefield SC Vampire.' Not going back to Edgefield if I can help it."
—PowerSkunk92
Savannah, GA: "Lots and lots of really creepy places — graveyards, many tight walkways in the historic district with no lights, and lots and lots of swamp land. It is said to be one of the most haunted cities in the USA."
—HunterRoze
"Vineland, NJ: A utopian sober town known as the home of Welch's Grape Juice. NJ's largest city by area but, it only has only 60,000 people. Strange 'planned' city with huge spaces between buildings, ridiculously wide streets, and everything out of normal proportion."
—tpatmaho
Cairo, IL: "Driving through there was like going through a town in the Walking Dead. No people around, all the buildings are decrepit and worn down."
—ArguingPizza
Goldfield, NV: "It's a semi-ghost town and remnants from the old west. Time seems to stand still there in that old mining town."
—g6paulson
The Outer Banks, NC: "They felt surreal to me...way too flat."
—manicpixidreamgirl04"The Outer Banks in the winter feels like they are lost in time and space, it's VERY eerie."—StrangePondWoman
Daggett, CA: "I had to drive through it in the dead of night due to a bad accident closing part of the 15 freeway on the way to Vegas. It looks like something out of a bad '80s horror movie."
—Additional-Software4
And finally, New Orleans, LA: "The entire city has an ethereal vibe and it just feels haunted. Lots of creepy and unexplained events have happened there throughout history and people go a little wild there (in my opinion). I personally love the place, but I couldn't live there because it would make me mental after a while."
—None
Now it's your turn! Have you visited or passed through a town in the US that was so eerie, you won't ever forget it? Tell us about it in the comments or anonymous form below and you just might be featured in an upcoming BuzzFeed Community article.
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.