Exploring abandoned spaces can lead to discovering historical artifacts and fascinating keepsakes, but it can also lead to some deeply terrifying stories. Most abandoned buildings are simply no longer in use because the company shut down or the homeowners passed on, but there are abandoned spaces with stories of ghosts, violent squatters and disconcerting objects.
While most scary stories have a logical explanation, sometimes the logic is even less comforting. For example, knowing a set of daunted dolls or tarnished weapons belong to a real person hiding out in a space isn't any less creepy than a ghost. Some questionable circumstances only
In a recent Reddit thread people shared the scariest things they've experienced while exploring abandoned spaces, and it'll make you feel better about staying away from the abandoned warehouse.
1.Redheadeddanger and their friend never returned to the abandoned asylum.
"There used to be this abandoned asylum in the woods by the park near the house where I grew up. The main building above ground had been torn down but the basement was still there and you could enter it through a small window that was just big enough to crawl through. The furniture and some medical stuff was all still down there. I was too afraid to go through the window but my friend wasn’t."
"He was down there for about five minutes before he screamed and jumped out of the window. He said something was chasing him. We could hear it down there scurrying around but none of us wanted to get close enough to the window to look with the flashlight. A few years later a woman got attacked near there by a gaze of aggressive raccoons."
"Owner threatening to beat the shit out of us because he thought we were after copper. Dude was actually pretty chill when he realized we were dumb teens and not meth heads, but he did force us to give over our backpacks to make sure we didn't have spray paint or tools."
3. holla_at_cho_boi69 got chased by men with hunting rifles.
"This was when I was a kid, maybe 12/13 back when me and my 4 cousins were little hellions. They lived out on a ranch and we would ride four wheelers to a bunch of abandoned buildings in the country all the time."
"One time we came across a bridge and decided to stop and enjoy the view. It was a beautiful day I should mention. Sun, was shining, birds were singing, and the water in the river looked amazing rushing under the bridge. Then we noticed something strange. There is a metal wire tied to the rail of the bridge and hanging down into the water. Of course curiosity got the best of us, so we decide to pull it up and see what it was all about."
"We pull up a deer skull. A huge one too, with large antlers and everything. Mind you, this is not within the time line of hunting season at all. Then my cousin says, "look over there!" We see what looks like an ax stuck in the middle of a tree stump down by the river. We walk to the end of the bridge and hike our way down to the river and low and behold, this is not an ax, it was a deer's leg that had been chopped off and stuck in the dead center of the tree stump, pointing straight up at the sky. We rushed back to the top of the bridge and decided there was no way a deer died by itself and put it's leg in a tree stump and tied it's skull to a metal wire. We come to the realization that someone is hunting out of season."
"Suddenly, as two of my cousins are discussing whether to take the head with them or not (they thought it was super cool but it smelled absolutely horrible), we see some hillbilly looking men step out onto the porch of a house up on the hill. They are holding rifles. They see that we've pulled up the wire with the deer skull and start running down the hill at us. We never rode our four wheelers so fast! We booked it out of there! We made it back to the ranch and told our parents about it."
4. AustynCunningham was startled by their own reflection.
"As I've shared before in this comment, I look at abandoned/foreclosed homes for part of my job (Walked through about 2,500 in the past 4-years). The time I got scared the most was in an abandoned home, all windows and doors boarded up and the house was very rough, ransacked and had lots of debris."
"I got in and was taking photos of all the rooms. I made my way to the basement (very dimly lit from gaps in the boards covering the windows) and upon turning the corner I see a man standing in the back corner of the room looking back at me, I yelled in fear and jumped back only to realize it was a floor to ceiling mirror and a reflection of myself. TLDR: Myself in a large mirror."
"About 10 years ago I was exploring an old run down hotel in my city with some friends at about 3am. The property owners were having serious troubles with squatters so they had put razor wire everywhere. I was wearing thin jeans (I was 18 and stupid). I tripped on some steps and thought some of the razor wire had just caught on my jeans. We keep going and get inside."
"Soon I realize my leg is wet. And I don't just mean wet, it is soaked from the knee down. It's dark as hell, so my buddy shines his flashlight on my leg and it turns out it's blood. I have to drop my pants in front of everyone to see where it's coming from. Right above my knee is this little cut, squirting blood. We all start cursing, one of the girls pukes and has to turn away. Fortunately my buddy (incidentally the one with the flashlight) takes off his belt and sweatshirt and makes a pressure pack for it and gets me to lay down with my leg above my head for a bit."
"After awhile we decide we have to hike outta there and quick before security comes back for their rounds. So we tighten the belt and we hike outta there. I had to take my pants all the way off because I didn't want to rip them over the sweatshirt. So here I am walking out of this hotel and into the subsequent neighborhood to where out car was parked in my boxer briefs holding my leg, soaked in blood from the knee down."
"Ended up going okay, sewed it up at home with help from dude with the flashlight. He was a nifty friend to have around. Tl;Dr break into a hotel, trip over razor wire, don't realize it's bad until we're all the way in, have to hike out in no pants. Have good friends."
6. Automatic_Treat lost their sense of smell at the toxic waste plant.
"Finding ~150 barrels of toxic waste illegally dumped in the Packard Plant in Detroit. I stayed there too long without a respirator. I had a bad headache and felt spacey for the rest of the day. I also lost about 70% of my sense of smell permanently."
7. bonersaladbar found an orb in the cookie factory.
"This was a few years ago but there was an abandoned cookie factory in my city. We found out if we walked down some train tracks you could get in through an unlocked side door. So me and two other guys went exploring, we entered the basement and wandered through, it was obvious people had been there before by the shitty "Hail Satan" graffiti tags all over what was a locker/shower room."
"Anyway, we come to a ladder going up to the next floor and I proceed to go up it and realize when the company left the building they had sectioned this portion of the building off. The ladder went up and had a curved rung on it, so they had take a large piece of plywood and cut holes in it to fit in through the rungs and laid it on the floor to block it off. I get to the top, lock my legs on the ladder and push hard on the plywood and it comes up."
"There on the floor about 6 inches in front of my face was a glass orb. It was reflecting, there in the darkness. I'm looking at my own face and what I can make out with my light. I just stayed there for a minute expecting something to come out of the darkness and tear my fucking face off and pull me up the ladder. So I took a breath, lifted the plywood, slid underneath onto the floor and assumed the fucking Wolverine stance, like that was going to save me from the deranged murder ghost of the abandoned cookie factory."
"The two guys I was with get up the ladder and we look around, we found a 6 foot tall t-rex and toys and all kinds of stuff. Old children's museum exhibits. By this point if you live in my city, you most likely know where I was. The cookie factory had a nearby children's museum and they held old exhibits for the museum in one of the empty wings in the factory, maybe for a tax break or something. I guess since the factory shut down, they blocked that part off and hoped they'd forget about it."
"Bonus story: We went back with a larger group, which isn't a smart idea because you make more noise obviously and we heard someone shouting at us. With us was a friend of mine who was about 6"3 and 300 pounds. Another guy had a gun on him just in case as well. So we're not really worried but this is also not somewhere that you want to draw attention to yourselves. So we decided we'd better leave as we hear this person banging shit and cursing at us. We get out and keep walking and we finally see the person in question. Little crack head in a purple vikings jersey with a squeaky voice who was probably just trying to ride a high in peace.
Edit: It was the interbake cookie factory in Richmond, va. It's now fancy new apartments."
8. Rhyssayy still doesn't know who the voice belonged to.
"Me and two of my friends were exploring some woods on the outskirts of my city when we were around 12/13 years old. These woods had old Barracks in them that were used during WWII but are completely abandoned overgrown and rundown now."
"To actually get to any explorable barracks you had to go quite deep into the forest and up some very steep hills in which you use the trees roots that grow down them to climb up. This was the first time me and my friends had ventured this deep before so all were pretty excited at seeing how far we could go and how big the place actually was."
"Eventually, we came to a crosspath and we choose to go down the right side. We had to squeeze our way through some tight stinging nettle bushes but luckily we all had long clothes on to protect us. We stumbled out into this huge clearing area where right in front of us was a huge building that had a massive entrance in the side. We were all astounded as we didn't realize any buildings this big were in this forest and we hadn't seen any real abandoned places before."
"Of course we decided to go in and check it out and inside it stretched quite deep and was very dark. Being young we were all pretty nervous to actually set foot any further than where the natural light from the opening spread to. We hung around the entrance for a bit messing around echoing our voices and such. Eventually one of my friends is looking off into the darkness with a very frightened expression on his face. Me and my other friend turn to him to ask him what's the matter and he says "guys I swear I just saw a face or something in the dark over there." Me and my friend thinking he is trying to just spook us out tell him to stop messing with us we aren't falling for his tricks. That's when it happened..."
"The loud scream of an adult male fills the entire building amplified by the echo. With that me and my friends look at each other absolutely terrified and let out shrieks ourselves. We bolt it towards the bushes in which we came and start making a break straight back the way we came without looking back. We must have run for a solid ten minutes straight without even stopping. Those huge steep hills I spoke about earlier we literally jumped down and just slid down them getting covered in dirt."
"We finally reached the edge of the forest and stopped running. We never did find out who was in there or why but considering how young I was it was definitely one of my most terrifying experiences."
"Edit: That event stopped me from going back there for a very long time. However, as I got older I eventually plucked up the courage to go back. I had told all my friends about this experience and so we decided to go there with a much larger group 10+. It took us a while to actually find the place again as the forest is kinda like one straight path where you gotta chose your location to move down off the hills to find the abandoned bunkers/barracks. When we found the place we were more equipped with flashlights and stuff. We went in and took a look around and didn't see anything out of the usual. My guess is like people said probably a squatter scaring us off the ManBearPig."
9. Manners_BRO found a family cemetery in the woods.
"I have posted this to a couple other AskReddit questions, but anytime this type of question comes up I always go back to growing up in a small rural New England town and as a kid would always venture into the woods and find neat old things. My dad noticed that I was really interested in exploring and finding old things near our land so one day asked if I wanted to go see something that no one else he knew had known about. I jumped at the chance and we drove off into the mountains and parked on the side of the road."
"We got out and walked into the woods for what felt like 45 mins and we came across this really small cemetery. There had to be 10 or so stones and you couldn't really make out anything on them, but a couple of them that read something like 1802-1803 and 1803-1805. My dad said he stumbled on it as a kid and it must have been a small family cemetery. It just kind of broke my heart thinking about how many of those stones were probably infant/toddler."
10. kilroy94 heard screams inside the lighthouse.
"Traveled to this lighthouse on one of the only undeveloped stretches of California coast (aptly and scarily named the Lost Coast): https://www.lighthousefriends.com/puntagorda1_2006.jpg
It was the middle of winter, the opposite of tourist season. I drove by myself to hike the lost coast alone. Hadn’t had cell service in an hour at least while driving to the trailhead over bumpy and partially flooded roads."
"Hike down the coastline through the mist and eventually come across a house on the coast that looks empty, but while walking near it, I start hearing noises that sound like doors opening and closing. I start running and realize that there is a large creek outlet into the ocean between myself and getting away from the house. I wade through, get soaked, and then about a hundred yards down the beach I look back to see an older man looking down the beach towards me. I’m already extremely creeped out and realizing that if someone wanted to kill me out here, I’m dead basically."
"Further down the beach, I can see the lighthouse through the fog and I keep heading towards it. The building to the left in the picture is what I came to first, but It was getting dark and the building creeped me out. I braced myself walking past it and noticed that covering the far wall were many, many white hand prints. I’m sweating bullets now, absolutely terrified and scurry past the building towards the lighthouse. I peered into the windows of the lighthouse from a distance, but I couldn’t make myself go into the building because in my mind, anything could be in there. Eventually, my terror subsides a bit and I continue down the beach."
"The lighthouse is out of sight if I turn around and it’s getting late, so I’m thinking about where to set up camp. While I’m turned towards the ocean, I heard what sounded like a man’s loud scream come from back towards the lighthouse. Didn’t sleep a wink that night."
11. madsmoiselle saw the writing on the wall.
"A few months ago I was cruising around Chattanooga with my sister and a friend. We were on the side of town with this factory some people had told us was a pretty cool old place to check out, so we decided what the fuck let’s kill some time there. Anyone from the area might be familiar with it, it’s the old Central Soya factory off of Amnicola, and there are several videos online of people exploring it."
"Our first mistake was going through the gate. It was the obvious way in, so we merrily traipse down the road and onto the property. It’s the middle of the afternoon, so it’s bright and sunny, and the wind is blowing so we can hear loose metal banging around up ahead. We pass the silos and end up in the loading dock kind of area. Pretty much every square inch is covered in graffiti, so we wander around there for a minute. Once we enter the building, there’s a pitch black hallway to our right."
"Fuck that, we stay in the loading area and go up to the second floor. My friend is walking ahead of us, and he stops at the top of the stairs to look around before rushing us back down. Apparently the entire upstairs was trashed, littered in papers and blankets and empty cans. What spooked him was the room at the far end - the half open door started to swing wider when he looked at it, and he couldn’t see anything farther than that."
"We got back to the main floor, creeped out and ready to leave, when we hear a voice whisper, “Hey.” Nothing else, but at that moment the wind stopped and the whole place went dead still, demon possession horror movie style. We noped the fuck out of there, and as we were heading back to the gate we found a message. “I can see you,” was painted on the asphalt, and when my friend and sister looked back they both saw a man walk past one of the windows. Apparently he turned to stare at us for a moment before gliding out of sight again, and even though I didn’t see him we all still had chills hours later."
"We’ve talked about going back with more people and better flashlights, but so far no one is that enthusiastic about it."
12. BeanSoupBoi knows the physical danger of exploring old construction sites.
"When I was younger my niece (we're the same age) and I were out exploring an abandoned construction site at night, and didn't notice the huge hole in the ground leading to what I imagine was going to be a tank or basement for one of the houses. She managed to jump over it, but I fell in and ended up with a rebar rod going through the front of my right shin. I was stuck down there for a while before she could grab my hand and help pull me out. We staggered home and packed the wound with tampons and peroxide for fear of getting in trouble."
"Of course our parents found out when I came down with a terrible infection and other injuries showed up (also permanently fucked my left shoulder smashing it on the way down). I walk with a kinda inward limp to this day, but a large circular scar is all that's really left from the accident."
"We were so lucky we hadn't both fallen in, or gotten more seriously injured so far from home. A few years later a kid I went to school with died falling out of a half-built house, and that made it sink in all the way. Mind the caution tape, kids. It's not worth the risk."
13. DyingLion still doesn't know what happened to the mysterious VW bug.
"I came across a very old, very smashed up VW Bug in a ravine in the woods. It had been there a long time since it was half buried in the mud. I started poking around the site and found dozens of old school style lady’s stockings, many tied together and disintegrating, scattered around. I found old Kodak film developing canisters. I found a bag of cement completely hardened among other things."
"Plus a year before I had found a very old ice pick close to the site. I got the chills and became a bit concerned. I had posted about this on Reddit years ago, but the general consensus was that the chassis was missing and it was just someone’s garbage dump. But I still wonder about it, so much of the Bug was scattered about and buried in mud. It was just so weird."=
Edit: To add a few more details, the Bug is in North Carolina. Late 50’s early 60’s orange convertible I think. The icepick says Middletown Ice & Coal(?) Co. Phone 2-5453"
14. lordpoee lived next to a haunted abandoned house.
"There use to be a house just behind our property when I was a kid. It was abandoned, the lady who lived there died some 30 years ago and no one ever bothered with the house. It was seriously run down. All the windows were broken by vandals, storms had blown stuff all over the place, the floors were water damaged and warped., the paint was flaking off everywhere and it smelled strange. The back area had a shed with what I presumed were jars of canned vegetables that were so old they had begun to molt. The creepy vibe was very strong and when me and my siblings went to explore it, we all had a strong feeling we were being watched. Now, my brother and sister had their own unexplained experiences but I'll share mine."
"In the upstairs room and the top of the stairs, there was an old hospital bed with a stained mattress. There were also shelves full of books, interesting books that were going to wasting. A few of them had very neat covers and the pages were ruined, so I thought I would salvage the covers for a journal or something."
"Anyway, I gathered up a few books I felt could be salvaged and laid them on the bed. Bear in mind my brother and sister were in the very next room, I could see them the whole time while they were trying to make their way out onto a balcony. One of them called for me to help move an old TV, so I went and helped. Again, I could see them the whole time, they never left that room."
"Now, I shit thee not. When I got back to the book room...those books were back on the shelf. To this day, I have no rational explanation. I never went back to that house."
15. unpopularvoid doesn't know if the "firemen" were ghosts or just mysteriously vanished.
"My friends and I went to this abandoned prison by our town one night. As we got there 4 of them ran straight in while a girl and I stood out front because the gate wouldn’t open anymore. So as we stand there wondering how were gonna get in a truck suddenly pulls up. Now you must remember this is an abandoned prison. There is only one road that leads in and out, with a connected road that circles the prison. As the truck pulls in closer they turn their high-beams on us and pull over to the side. Shotgun rolls down his window and starts asking us if it was just the two of us."
"Since she was freaking out, I decided to take control and (really dumb on my part) say “Yeah its just us two. Were here on a date.” The man looks me up and down and goes “Alright well were stationed up at the fire station right behind the prison we were just checking to see if you guys were vandals but if its just you two please be safe” and they drove off on the road that circled the prison. A little while later police show up. They question us intensely and i tell them “wait the firefighters who patrol this place gave us permission to be here!” Those cops asked me wtf i was talking about and if they went into the prison. The only reason i comment this is because the “firefighters” never exited down that one road. They just disappeared into the circular road around the prison."
16. SDRabidBear knows the importance of backup lights.
"I was exploring an abandoned mine in the Mojave. I was pretty far in, climbing down ladders and exploring old rooms. I saw old news papers, break rooms, clothes and unexploded dynamite in the walls. Something spooked me and I turned around fast to run. I hit my head on the rock, broke my headlamp and knocked myself out. I came too I was wet cold and it was pitch black. Like no light at all black. I tried my headlamp, didn't work, tried my back up, didn't work, flashlight was also dead."
"I was seriously beginning to get really scared. I continued searching my backpack, I found several odd shapes not usually in it. It was Halloween chem-lights, that my kids had put into to my backpack. I tore the first one open and cracked it. Beautiful green light everywhere! I recognized where I was and made my way out. I surveyed myself I had a gash in my head about 3" long, I was covered in blood and mud. I drove to urgent care down in Victorville. I ended up with 13 staples in my head. I never went back into a mine alone after that."
"I did go into Cave of the Winds here in CO on a candlelight tour years later. I was fine until they had us blow out the candles...that trapped fear in that mine came right back. It was all I could do not to panic and GTFO of there. Don't explore old abandoned mines by yourself. Tell people where you are. Have backups of backups of backups and don't rely on freaking batteries."
17. TheDevilIsBlue caught a squatter in the act of self-love.
"Place looked totally abandoned, run down shit and trash everywhere. Opened this one door and there was some huge guy masturbating to his big ass tv.. you cant unsee something like that."
18. SyntirVirus doesn't know what the ghost wants.
"Spent the day at my then gf's house. Her grandmother (Margaret) lives in a secondary home on the same property located in the backyard. We were casually watching baseball on the couch when her gma came over with a terrified look on her face. The only 2 people occupying her house is herself and my wife's cousin (Kyle). When you open the door to her home you immediately enter the kitchen. From her front door you see her kitchen, her bedroom, and finally her bathroom all in the same field of view (all separated by walls and door ways). She began to explain how she had just gotten home and announced herself to Kyle since she saw the bathroom door closed, the light on and the shower running upon entry to the kitchen. Kyle didn't respond as he usually would, so she announced herself a second time."
"She described an eerie silence which led her to call Kyle on her phone. Kyle answers the phone and and tells her he's currently out of the house with friends. We then all came over to Margaret's house equipped with a baseball bat, 4 adult males, 4 adult women and the police en route. Father in law (skilled boxer) went up to the bathroom door tried to open it, but notices the door knob is being held stiff on the other side. We all know the door is locked, show is running, light is on, and the sink was also running. Unable to open the door he steps outside still waiting for the cops."
"Kyle now gets home extremely enraged about the situation. He takes off his shirt as he stops towards the bathroom door and starts to threaten whoever was in there, but still no response. Two Police finally arrive and also notice the light is on, shower and sink running. They announce themselves outside the bathroom door as loud as possible with guns drawn. Officer one tests the door knob and violently opens the door to clear this TINY bathroom. No one is found inside the bathroom. The bathroom window is 4" height x 12" length. A leprechaun wouldn't be able to clear that."
"The officers noticed the light was turned off, shower was off, door wasn't locked anymore, but the sink was still running. They were as terrified as we were and told us we experienced something supernatural and there wasn't anything they could do. Clearly. Extended family came down the next day curious about the situation. My wife's brother recreated the situation to his aunt at Margarets house to let her know how it all went down. He turned on the shower, turned on the sink, the light, and left the door unlocked for dramatic reasons. He announced himself like the police officers did and opened the door. Both shower and light turned off."
19. smokefrog2 never takes dates to the woods anymore.
"I've posted this on some other thread before. Not a building but when I was 15 my friends took me to this place in my hometown. It was about a 30-40 minute hike on a very poorly marked path through the woods and you could come out at the top of this giant hill overlooking a few towns. It was a pretty cool spot and after going two times with my friends (both times at night) I felt like "I can totally navigate this" The next weekend I brought my girlfriend just me and her."
"I got us up on the rock and we hung out for a while and decided to go back down and call my family for a ride (I'm 15 still). So we start walking down through the woods aaaaaand we get lost. Really lost. I had never really paid attention to going down as much as I had going up. So we're pretty much wandering through the woods at this point with a cell phone flashlight and aiming in a general direction."
"Then out of nowhere about 100 yards away from us a flash light just turns on. We both froze. It didn't move. I knew that there was a guy employed by the county who lived and worked in those woods. I had met him a handfull of times and he was a nice guy. I assumed it was him and he could direct us so I called out "Hey!" loud. No movement on the flashlight. I called out louder "Hey" flash light turn on us."
"Then it turned off. Then we heard a rustling like leaves heading in our direction. My girlfriend whispered "run" in my ear and we both booked it as fast as we could. After maybe 10 minutes or so I recognized the beginning of the paths and got us back to the road where we called my parents and got home. Was a very weird experience and I still get a bit freaked out in the woods if I can't see like a road or house or anything."
"My dad and i were exploring an abandoned mine in Arizona, and we weren't really prepared for it. While my dad was walking, he wasn't really paying attention to where he was going, and at the last second, i saw he was about to step in to a vertical shaft. I grabbed him, pulled him back, and then we looked to see how far he would have fallen. It was about a 400ft drop."
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Either way, I think we can all agree that these need to be featured in Britney's next holiday shoes vid. For the people.
