CREEPY: 11 People Describe Why They Never Should Have Entered That Abandoned Building
1. A music box was playing inside an abandoned lunatic asylum.
“Went exploring with a bunch of friends at the Trans Allegheny Lunatic Asylum. While this is not underground in its entirety, portions of it are. The buildings were left with hospital equipment, beds, books, patient files… literally everything. It’s eerie as if a zombie apocalypse occurred and everyone left. It operated from 1864 to 1994. The facility was self-sustaining, (i.e., the ‘patients’ farmed the land and had all resources on campus. The years this was open a lot of horror stories came out of this place, this wasn’t the modern-day psychiatric ward. More like a prison, where families paid a lot of money to hide their mentally ill, or the state put undesirables. There’s an underground network that was heavily blocked off with chains. However, the main buildings were easily accessible. But, the access ways to the underground were blocked off inside as well. Every time we got near one of the underground tunnel systems we could hear faint music playing, sounded like a music box playing. We found a bent wired gate and attempted to file in, the music got louder and we were all pretty freaked out. We were all promptly arrested before attempting to go into the tunnels. There’s a lot of speculation about the tunnels still to this day. The new owner said he was afraid of asbestos, and was fearing for our safety. He was very grim, he agreed to drop charges if we never went back. We obliged happily. Still, I sometimes think of my interactions there, all of the remnants left behind and get severely creeped out.”
2. We see a bunch of dead cats that have been dragged around and left blood stains on the ground.
“At a hotel in my hometown that everyone breaks into—it’s the most famous building in our town and our downtown is super run-down. Anyway, me and my two friends crawl through the basement from a side entrance and initially, all we see is spray paint graffiti, but as we make our way up some really steep steps, we see a bunch of dead cats that have been dragged around and left blood stains on the ground. We pretty much booked it the fuck out of there after that. We’re probably going back in a couple of weeks, and that shit better still be there.”
3. I SWEAR ON MY LIFE I heard whistling and footsteps coming around the corner.
“After the Community Care Act in Scotland in the early 90s, a lot of the big sprawling long stay mental hospitals were closed down and all the patients moved into smaller houses and homes etc. spread out through the community. A lot of these old sites are still standing though! In Dundee we have Strathmartine Hospital, the core of which was constructed in the 1800 and expanded. Back in the day it was kind of place you’d be sent if you were an unwed mother or a ‘bad’ child. The place was bought over to develop into flats, but the owner went bankrupt in the recession, so the whole site is standing there unprotected by security, albeit surrounded by fences and kinda difficult to get to. Me and a few friends have broken in a few times and it’s HELLA creepy. Wards with beds and furniture perfectly preserved, old mass communal bathrooms, open loft shafts, meds rooms with health posters and medication still there, children’s ward with child’s pictures still on the wall decades later, mental health wards with seclusion areas, old crematorium, gym and swimming pool. People don’t realize these hospitals were entirely self-contained communities! If there’s interest, I can upload some pics.
A couple of stories though. On the children’s ward, my friend who was filming, who’s a bit of a spiritualist, said she felt a ‘presence’ and got really anxious. I laughed it off, but when you play the video back, when she expresses that she feels something, the clip is all freakily distorted. Other story is when we were in an L shaped building, I SWEAR ON MY LIFE I heard whistling and footsteps coming around the corner. We quickly scrambled and hid, thinking security had found us, but no one was there.
Here’s a few pictures.
4. Halfway down the hall, we hear someone SPRINTING toward us from behind.
“There used to be an old abandoned school in a town by my house. It was heavily boarded up, and super hard to get into. Well, a friend and I managed to get inside, by climbing up the side of the school via a pipe/fire escape combo and slipping through a window on the roof. We explored the basement, which was flooded. It was kinda creepy seeing stairs disappear into water. We had just left the gym, when we heard footsteps coming from the doors on the other side of the gym. Scary, especially considering it sounded like it was one person (not another group of explorers like us) and blocking our exit back up to the roof (the only way out otherwise was behind us, through boarded up doors). They sounded like someone who was walking around, and stopping periodically. There was no light coming from that direction, and we couldn’t fathom why someone would come into a creepy place like this alone. We waited for the footsteps to stop, then snuck across the gym, peered down the hallways, saw no one, and continued towards the stairs which would lead us back to the roof. Halfway down the hall, we hear someone SPRINTING toward us from behind. Probably 50 meters away or so, down a typical high school hallway. Now, it is mostly dark in here, but there was a small amount of light coming in through cracks in the window boards. Still, we didn’t see anything behind us as we quickly ran up the stairs. We didn’t stop until we got back to the fourth floor. We listened for noise; nothing. Hopped out the window and climbed back down the pipe.”
5. Couple of days later I hear about how the police pulled a corpse out of there.
“As a teen, I was into urban exploration. There was an old ice plant near my house that had burned (I know- ironic) around 25-30 years prior. Anyway, it wasn’t really underground, but was so overgrown that it felt more-or-less like it. I go climbing around over and under mangled concrete and rebar and graffiti for a while and finally decide I’m done. Couple of days later I hear about how the police pulled a corpse out of there. Pretty sure I walked right by it and didn’t even notice…”
6. Heard footsteps coming from the top floor of a long abandoned insane asylum about 50 ft. away from us.
“A little late to the party but here’s my story.
There’s an abandoned insane asylum in Northville Michigan that my friends and I explored three times. This is the story of the third, and final time we ever broke in. I still get chills every time I remember this night.
The first two times we went, the asylum was actually more interesting than creepy to explore. Both times we happened to run into very friendly people there (the first time we ran into another group of high school kids, scared the shit outta them at first, the second time we met a couple stoner Vietnam vets that gave us a tour of the place.) It’s an entire complex complete with underground tunnels, morgue, and lots of files and things from the 50s. This time, however, we were alone, and only had 2 flashlights between 3 people. Much like the guy with the story about the WWII base, the echoing footsteps sound like they’re coming from behind you, and always seem to take one more step after you stop.
So, after exploring much of the asylum like this and being considerably creeped out already, we decide to head to the main building. It’s about 18 stories tall and the view from the top is pretty cool, because it’s by far the tallest building anywhere remotely close, and you can see Detroit from up there. Anyway, we’re nearing the top of the seemingly endless stair corridor, when the girl that’s with us freezes, and whispers for us to stop. “I heard footsteps” she whispers. I tried to tell her it was just or footsteps echoing, but when both of them made me shut up and listen I could hear it clear as day – the unmistakable sound of footsteps coming from the top floor. Now the building is tall, but very small area-wise, so we were very close to the sounds. Still standing on the stairs, we whisper amongst us about what we’re going to do. My very stupid friend insists that it’s probably just another friendly person and we should go up and say hi. I try to explain to him that you don’t want to meet the kind of people that pace the top floor of an old asylum in the middle of the night. We couldn’t convince him and he goes to head up the stairs, but I was like “fuck this” and just started running down the stairs. Fortunately, he followed us, and we got out of there without ever finding out who—or what—was walking around up there that night.
To top it all off, a cop passing by on the road spotted us after coming out of the building and we had to run into the asylum complex to get away. I still think back to that night some times and wonder who was up there. There were definitely no guards, so it was probably either a gang (there’s gang graffiti all over the asylum, for the “guppies”), or the tortured soul of a crazy person. Either way, that was waaay too close.
Tl;dr: heard footsteps coming from the top floor of a long abandoned insane asylum about 50 ft. away from us and noped right out.”
7. A cassette was playing The Beatles inside an abandoned rubbery factory.
“There used to be an abandoned rubber factory on the edge of my town before it was torn down a couple years back. I went there once and tried all the doors but they were barred, but I did find a crack in the concrete wall around the back that was just big enough to slip through.
The inside was really neat. There were abandoned boats that must have been in storage for decades there, a bunch of old conveyor belts and factory equipment, all kinds of drug paraphernalia. I found a random painting of Jesus in a makeshift shrine. But that’s not the creepy part.
I was walking around this abandoned factory at about 8pm, just after dark. I look around for an hour or so, and aside from some old shit there’s really nothing out of the ordinary. Then I hear music start playing, something sort of blues-ey somewhere in the factory. I’m not easily scared, and I kind of wanted to figure out what sort of freak was listening to old records in an abandoned factory because that’s something I would do. I track down the noise after about 5-10 minutes and it’s in this room in the basement that has the doorway covered with a tarp. I go inside and the room is a huge contrast from the rest of the dingy, dull old factory. The walls were bright purple, and the room was warm like there was a space heater in it whereas the rest of the factory was freezing. There’s a cassette player on the floor playing a song (which I later tracked down to be called ‘Eleanor Rigby’ by the Beatles, but I never found out what the other songs were) and a bunch of papers taped to the walls that all say ‘She gotta run. She gotta run. She gotta run.’ If I were to guess, there were at least 100 sheets that said the exact same phrase just plastered on the walls and laying on the floor. There was a chair that looked like it had been detached from a school desk in the corner and a statue of an animal that was really badly chipped and burned, like someone was trying to destroy it. There was also a stack of VHS tapes that had the names of women on the sides (I only remember seeing ‘Jessica’ on multiple but there were a few other names).
I left shortly after because I got worried whoever owned all this shit would come back and find me there, and I figured they were in the building with me. I couldn’t stop thinking about it for a few weeks (I was convinced it was either a serial killer or some guy with a porn collection that he couldn’t risk having at home – or something worse on the tapes) and went back with a friend, but when we got there they had already started demolishing the place and it was inaccessible. I’ll always wonder what was on those tapes, but part of me is glad I don’t know.”
8. Decapitated animals in an abandoned factory.
“Explored an abandoned factory? I think I’m not sure what it was. Extremely sketchy. In the middle of the floor there was a square cutout and just a dark room below it with no light source, around an 8-10-foot drop. Woulda been fucked if someone fell down. Also, many children toys and random musty books. Tons of bat and pigeon shit and it went up about 4-5 stories. Stairs were very sketchy. Worst part about it was the decapitated animals there but oh well.”
9. Footsteps inside the old mill building.
“So not exactly unexplained, but I grew up in a New England town littered with old mill buildings. One night in high school a friend and I decided to go explore an abandoned mill. Once there, we explored what was a completely run-down mill attached an apartment building, both of which had been condemned due to a fire years earlier. We stopped in a small room in the mill part to find a case of makeup and a book about Kurt Cobain, weird. We then thought we heard footsteps outside the room and immediately turned our flashlights off. I’ll never forget the feeling of thinking I was going to die. I don’t know what it was I was just sure that my life was about to end. Anyway, the sound was just drops of water from inside the building but I will never forget that feeling.”
10. This house looked like a serial killer/meth den from the outside.
“I live in a small town and a few miles south of town is an abandoned house. My cousin and I decided to check it out. This house looked like a serial killer/meth den from the outside. It had tons of overgrowth and was dilapidated as all hell. Inside there was a kitchen directly to the left with really nasty dishes inside. To the right was a living space with the first floor crashing into. A bit in front were stairs. We climbed them and at the top there were tons of stuffed animals and a sleeping bag with some amenities scattered around. That freaked us out and we dipped out accordingly.”
11. Next time I went the blood was gone, but the ‘hi’ was still there.
“An abandoned mental hospital that I went to first time the freezer which at one point they put their dead when they first opened up like in the 1800s was full of mold. Next time I went it was spotless. Then in one hallway blood (that I tested) was written really big and had hi written in spray-paint small under it. Next time I went the blood was gone but the ‘hi’ was still there and looked same as before.”
