33 Creepy Places You Should Never Visit After Dark

1. Used to do security work for a company that has stores in malls… Being in a mall late at night by yourself is super creepy… The only noise you hear down the way is the kiddy area rides laughing…

2. I used to work for a state medical examiner’s office.

I worked second shift with some occasional overnights and we relatively often had to take trips two either or the satellite offices which were ~1-1.5 hours away from the HQ office in the state capital. One of which was particularly desolate. Set back in the woods, and pretty remote.

Let me tell you, no matter how often you go there, or how comfortable you are doing that type of job, being in a morgue, ALONE, at 0317 in the morning during a ridiculous thunderstorm is SPOOKY.The wind is knocking trees branches against the autopsy room windows. The primary lights are turned off so the office is dimly lit except for the red glow of the exit signs. You pull up to the garage doors and there is one measly light barely illuminating the end of the driveway. No other lights around, surrounded by woods. Lightning occasionally lighting up the area just enough to get a glimpse of your surroundings before it goes dark again. You can’t tell whether or not the wind is blowing the trees or there is a coyote or something out there. All while you’re trying to keep your shit in your ass while struggling to get a 320lb cadaver out of the back of your truck without the stretcher falling over. Not to mention it’s the summer so the fog gets pretty thick with the cold rain on the warm ground.

3. I live right next to a disused airfield. It’s a square kilometre of completely clear, flat land and is really unnerving. there’s also the control tower in the centre that gets extremely spooky at night. the only way in is to scale the wall and then lower yourself in from the roof through an upstairs window. I should also say that I live in the north of Scotland, where flat land is pretty uncommon edit: a lot of people have asked for pictures and I will try my best to get some. However, there is a very aggressive flock of birds nesting on the control tower so I don’t know how close I can get.

4. A toy store. Rows upon rows of stuffed animals, dolls and action figures… all staring at you in the dark with their dead eyes… right up until the doll you’re looking at turns her head and winks at you.

5. Playgrounds. There’s a playground near me that’s actually built on the foundations of a tuberculosis sanatorium. My son loves it during the day, but at dusk we skedaddle.

6. Antique shops and second hand stores. I was the only kid who would work for extra money at my aunt’s antique shop after hours, dusting and straightening up and refurbishing the items that came in. It didn’t help it was an old building from the 1800’s too. Thumps, whispering, and shadows were normal. Whenever she got in new stock, new things started happening. I was weird and loved it. (All my cousins were chickens.)

7. Might be low hanging fruit here, but theaters. Acting theaters, not movie theaters. For a while I was helping closing up our big local old theater. There’s just no way to not assume that place is absolutely haunted. Cement basement hallways, even if it wasn’t dark outside yet, I just knew there were ghosts all around me. Pretty sure no one was ever murdered there, but somehow that place is definitely haunted.

8. A zoo. A lot of them are nocturnal, and you’re sometimes unfamiliar with the sounds an animal makes. Not being able to see the cute fluffys, your brain starts to give you misinformation. The reflective eyes of some animals can be creepy, too, as you’ve never seen them in the dark.

Also depending on where the zoo is, the local wildlife are out and about and equally as creepy under cover of darkness. Cranes and herons make it sound like Jurassic Park. And you can’t see them. Squirrels and armadillos in the bushes, or falling out of trash cans. Snakes that blend in with the cracks and lines of sidewalks.

First few weeks can be creepy, and you question the safety of your job. But you get used to it.

A personal favorite: I had never heard goats before. At night their sounds are fucking terrifying. I was less afraid of the jaguar.

9. Service stations/rest stops. Fine in the day, but I’ve been in a few 24 hour ones way out in the middle of nowhere at night where I’m literally the only car in the lot, and all the lowlights are on and the staff is a skeleton crew mostly in the back doing stock. I remember standing in one huge rest stop once and it was just me and this creepy arcade music playing. It felt like I was the only person left alive after some apocalypse.

10. Dirt roads. I grew up on one and would walk it to get to the main road to catch the bus for school. I’d have to walk it at night to babysit my neighbors kids and the difference was crazy. During the day it’s bright, there are flowers and the worst you’ll see is a snake or a deer. At night the roar of the frogs is deafening. The trees seem to encroach on the road and you catch glowing eyes in the woods around you.

11. My apartment…. after the lights go out the roaches get to have their fun.

Turns out getting used to falling asleep to the sounds of constant skittering and the weird noises they make when they rub against shit is tough.

12. When I was really little.. maybe 7 yrs old, we were at the museum, and there was an Egyptian mummy exhibit on. We’d wandered around and then we were back on the main floor, and people were dawdling, so I asked if I could go back up to the mummy exhibit (on an upper floor), and my parents said OK (this was a looooong time ago, so no worries at that time about my safety being alone and young) and I went back up to the exhibit, and there were no (living) people on the entire floor. Just mummys in cases. It wasn’t night time, but holy crap it was the creepiest place I’ve ever been!

13. The YMCA. Night shift cleaner here. It would be a great place to film horror movies. The one I work at hasn’t been remodeled since the 70s. Except for tiles and porcelain. It’s like an 80s horror movie. The Deep black Pool in a completely silent huge room. The child day care center filled with all the toys and bright colors but devoid of life and light gives you the creeps in a way that I can’t be explain in words. The strangely lit, seemingly endless corridors that twist and turn under the building that give access to the plumbing, boiler room, etc. The strange sounds you here. It’s always lit like a horror movie no matter what room I go except for the lobby which is too bright yet doesn’t pierce the darkness of the locker rooms it connected with. The atmosphere just gives me the creeps, but it gets more terrifying when strange stuff happens. One time the speakers in the pool started playing music out of no where. When I opened the door to the room to investigate the speakers stopped and went static. I walked towards the control room to turn the speakers off. When I was in the center or the room it just stopped. Then I heard a sploosh like something just quietly got into the pool. I noped the fuck out of there and locked the door.

14. I work closing shifts at a golf course, and one of my jobs is to lock up the pavilion before I clock out. The pavilion is used to host banquets such as weddings, proms, etc. but at night it’s the most unsettling building I’ve ever been in. Stacked onto the fact that the golf course is in the middle of nowhere, and I’m usually the last person there, it gets my blood pumping pretty hard. There have been nights where I literally just won’t lock it up because of the unparalleled fear that I get from walking into that dimly lit building. There’s also countless stories from multiple coworkers of weird shit happening while they were there alone (the sound of general commotion being heard through walls, someone whispering directly into their ear, doors and padlocks swinging for no reason, lights having a mind of their own, etc.) and I wouldn’t say I’m that spiritual of a person, but when I’m in that building at night all common sense goes out the window. Shit’s whack.

15. Being on a cruise ship… hanging out in your balcony at 2 am with the wind howling, sound of waves crashes against the ship while just staring out into the black, it’s pretty wild how it makes you feel.

16. Landfills. Fucking landfills man. I do a lot of work in landfills, one day I wanted to finish up all my work so plan was to work until I was done, I was doing some gas monitoring and drilling about 10-12 feet down to collect suma canisters to see the gas content.

Right as it was getting too dark to really work I decided to call it and started packing the ATV up to drive back to my work truck. This specific landfill in Weatherford, TX is fucking huge so I’m a far ways away, probably like an hour or two walk to my truck. The fucking ATV battery died, so here I am middle of the night in a fucking landfill. I had to walk back to my truck and leave the ATV until the next day. That walk back was eerie as fuck, noises everywhere and was pitch black. The only thing keeping me from freaking out was I could see the gas flare at the collection system where I had parked the truck so I just followed that.

I have been in landfills across the country numerous times at night but that one freaked me out because it was so big, such a long walk and had no one with me. 1/10 wouldn’t do again.

17. Indoor self-storage facilities can be a little weird at night, especially the ones with motion lights. Dark hallways that all look the same and the light follows you. You can almost picture the fermented decapitated head behind one of the doors.

18. Schools. They’re horrifying at night. To be more specific, my high school. The funny thing is there’s no difference between night and day in the place because there’s no windows or outside doors in many of the hallways. It was built a long time ago and a lot of areas are huge rooms and smaller but very tall areas that connect hallways. During the day people gather around the water fountains during class changes and the commons (huge room I mentioned earlier) is always packed. At night there are emergency lights that dimly light some hallways, but many of them are only lit by the small windows at the tops of the few tall intersections. A lot of hallways have no windows and even more are completely isolated. My whole school is in the middle of no where surrounded by citrus trees and grass. It feels like what hell looks like. If you’re wondering why I’ve been at the school after hours, there’s a few things. Club meetings, the yearly play was at 7:00, and I’ve been there on a Saturday morning which was very surreal. It’s insane.

19. Any body of water I cant see the bottom of. Fuck, going in my childhood pool at night always got me on edge. Its not that big, I’m a fall adult, I can touch the floor easy, but fucking hell, do I have to focus on my breathing.

20. My basement growing up was creepy. There was a weird storage are that you couldn’t access unless you had a ladder or something. The door was about 3ft wide. by 1.5ft high. the are itself was pretty deep. Like easy could fit a few people in there. I never found out what it was used for.

21. A children’s rehab facility. My son had an 80 stay and I would stay there with him overnight. I was not allowed to use the restroom in his room (it was shared with another patient via connected rooms.) So I had to make my way down the hall to use the public one. The lights were dimmed at night and everyone’s room had beeping machines. The creepy part was the noises that would float out of some of the other patient’s rooms. This was a facility that rehabilitated children up to 19 y/o with various health problems. Sick kids can be creepy AF sometimes, it’s heartbreaking.

22. Open fields. Staring into that dark abyss.

23. Restaurants. They are always buzzing with activity but being the only one there hearing machines kick on and off is spooky.

24. Bridges. Theres a bridge about 5-minutes from my house, just past down town, perfectly fine during the day. But at night it’s creepy as fuck, the town crackheads congregate there and yell at each other.

25. Disneyland at 4 am. The haunted mansion actually starts to look haunted as fuck, especially when there’s not a single person in sight.

26. Any kind of dock by the water, beautiful during the day, nightmare at night.

27. A cemetery. Going to mourn your loved ones during the day, going to desecrate a grave at night.

28. A church doesn’t even have to be abandoned. There’s something about being in a building that your used to only being at when there are a lot of people around that’s weird. I definitely heard some weird shit in the church I used to play in a band with back in the day, and heard stories from other people.

29. Nursing home. I didn’t believe in ghosts until I worked at one.

30. The beach. A lot of things come alive in the sand and the shallows become very active.

31. Usually any summer camp. Having worked at one and been to a couple for youth retreats, it’s always very lovely during the day, but when it gets late, it can be quite scary to walk around alone.

32. Surprised I haven’t seen this, but the Holocaust museum in Berlin. During the day or gives off this very somber vibe (on purpose) but their are people around and you just take it all in. At night, I wouldn’t even walk past the columns that are ankle high.

33. I find the opposite effect in night clubs. At night they are exciting, loud, music blaring, lights flashing, packed with happy people.

But during the day, when the lights are on, the walls are beat up black painted plywood, the floors are just black concrete with sticky drink stains everywhere, exposed lights, etc. They look really sketchy, and they do not make you want to come back at night.