No trespassing signs at creepy places normally keep people out for good reason. But when daredevils and explorers challenge these rules, they uncovered some unbelievable and horrifying experiences hiding behind locked doors.
“WARNING: Extremely high levels of…”
“I was exploring this really awesome abandoned Victorian-era mansion-turned-mental-asylum. It had everything; a stone ballroom, indoor fountain, huge staircase at the entrance that looked straight out of Resident Evil, a tower, patient rooms, the works. What made it even cooler was that I had stumbled into the place totally by accident. I had been exploring a nearby building on a whim and as it turned out it connected to the mansion. I had been in there for at least an hour, maybe more, and I only had a few rooms left to explore. I walk into a big one on the top floor of the place and the first thing I see is a sign that says something along the lines of ‘WARNING: Extremely high levels of asbestos in this area. Respirators must be worn. If you have been exposed go to [nearby hospital’s ER] immediately.’ I immediately sprinted the f**k out of there, threw my clothes in the wash first thing when I got home, and took a really long shower. I also never went exploring again without having a P100 respirator on first.”
“He had cut his leg pretty bad on something in the…”
“In this complex are missile silos that go 10 stories into the ground. Most of them are filled up with water and other nasty sh*t. Around the sides of these silos are all the old pipes and air ducts hanging off the walls. Being the dumb guys we are, we like to climb on them to get to otherwise inaccessible rooms. My buddy held the light for myself and one other. As we climbed, my friend lost his footing and fell about 30 feet into the water below. He didn’t surface for about 15 seconds, the 15 longest seconds of our life. He was able to grab some pipes and climb up to us and we helped him out. He left everything he had besides his pants and shirt there because we didn’t know what all could be in that water. He had cut his leg pretty bad on something in the water and we rushed to a hospital. We got there in time to get the cut cleaned and luckily it did not get infected (we did not tell them we were exploring the silos, we told them he fell at a construction site. I know this’ was probably stupid but we did not want to get in trouble). He got a really bad cold for the next few weeks.”
“I have no idea what they’d need to keep locked up…”
“On Angel Island in San Francisco Bay, there’s an abandoned WWII military base including an old hospital. You can explore the buildings, but the lower floor staircases have been removed so you can’t go up onto the upper floors and potentially get hurt. Well, being reckless 15 year olds, my friends and I decided to boost the most nimble guy up to the second floor so he could see what it was like up there. Apparently it was mostly like the rest of the hospital, except there was a room on the third floor that was padlocked shut and had ‘keep out’ painted on the door. Yes there was photographic evidence so he wasn’t just messing with us. I have no idea what they’d need to keep locked up on the theoretically inaccessible third floor of an abandoned hospital, and I’m not sure I want to know.”
“Not wanting to die in an abandoned silo, we…”
“We were held up at gunpoint. While at the end of a really long dark tunnel we saw a light at the other end. As to not scare the sh*t out of anyone, we try to make our presence known when we see other explorers. We yelled down the tunnel and they yelled back telling us they were coming to us. When they got there, they all had guns. 3 in total, one had a shotgun and the other two small pistols. They told us to drop all of our gear (including lights and phones) and to step away. Not wanting to die in an abandoned silo, we complied. They took everything we had and slowly backed away, guns still drawn. I know the place pretty well because I go down there a lot but getting out in the pitch black was VERY nerve wracking and dangerous. If it was anyone else but us (since we knew this place inside and out) they most likely would have seriously injured themselves or even died.”
“Broke into an abandoned mansion in my hometown…”
“Broke into an abandoned mansion in my hometown. Place has been empty for as long as I can remember. It stands on a massive property on the side of a busy road, and there is a big lake behind the house. I went in broad daylight, the property and hedges are large enough that I wasn’t immediately visible from the road. Broke in through a back window. The majority of the house was dark, most of the windows and French doors had been boarded up. House was really creaky, like an old ship. There was a lot of really ugly late 60s/early 70s furniture, everything was gold or brown or orange. Found some mail in a front room, all dated around August 1995, so I figured that’s when the former owners must’ve left, for whatever reason. In another room I found a kid’s toys- but they didn’t look old, they looked like someone had just been playing with them recently. In the kitchen, I found some empty cans of beans that also looked relatively new, and in the pantry, there were urine soaked sofa cushions someone had been using as a bed. This is when I started to get freaked out, because obviously someone had been there somewhat recently, but they didn’t seem to be there.”
“I went down to this abandoned silo alone once…”
“I went down to this abandoned silo alone once, and only once. Adjacent to the circular silos are these circular rooms that are three stories with each floor connected by a ladder. Outside of one of the rooms was a bunch of water filling a tunnel. Something about this water was off. It was much darker and seemed to be more still than any of the other water there. You would drop things in it and though a greenish haze see them ever so slowly sink to the bottom, sometimes just staying suspended above the ground by whatever the f**k nasty chemicals are in the water. Inside the room on the top floor was this huge demonic painting. It depicted a girl with her rib cage exposed and her organs falling out, forming the head of another girl below with arrows going through it. There were goat skulls and all sorts of creepy sh*t. I went there alone just once. I sat in that room in the pitch black for about an hour and just listened to the silence. The vibes I got were f**king crazy. Nothing really happened but i had never felt more hopeless, alone or scared in my entire life. I left after about an hour.”
“There was a hatch door that had…”
“We like to take people down this old silo who have never seen it and give them tours. We even mapped it out and studied the history of it to give them a real cool experience. We were taking a few girls down there. In total there were 6 of us. We get down into one of the main rooms from which there are multiple tunnels branching off. Right at the entrance to the tunnel that led to the silos, there was a hatch door that had broken off the wall and was laying on the ground. There was a decent size puddle of blood on it. We touched the blood (with gloves on) and it could not have been more than a few hours old. There were splotches of blood leading away from the puddle. The most unnerving part was that it led DEEPER into the complex, not out of it. We (being the idiots we were) decided to follow it. It led to one of the silos that did not have much water in it. It dropped about 50 feet into the ground before being too dark to see. The blood was covering the ledge right next to the drop, the rope that chained the drop off, and a bunch of the pipes on the walls. We looked all over for the source hoping that no one was injured. We couldn’t find anything so we noped the f**k out of there real quick.”
“The hallway was so warped I had to…”
“I went up to the second floor of this crazy old building. The floor of the upstairs hallway was so warped that it was curved in a rainbow shape, and was hard to walk down. In the last bedroom at the end of the hall, I found a room full of birthday cards. I mean hundreds of birthday cards. They all, in some way or another, were wishing someone named Eric a happy birthday, only that they were all written by the same hand. Most seemed to have been written with the same pen, even. Then, I went up to the third floor. The hallway was so warped I had to brace myself against the wall. I had barely started when I heard movement from a bedroom a little ways down- it sounded like slapping and dragging. I stood as quietly as possible until a pair of filthy hands came out of the doorway and a man began to pull himself across the threshold into the hall. He wasn’t groaning- I can’t think of a word, but it was far more aggressive than groaning. I bolted, ran all the way down the stairs and back out the window I came in. I looked back but didn’t see anyone following me. This happened in Suffolk County, Long Island back in June 2009, and no, not in Amityville. The mansion has since been torn down and the lot remains empty.”
“I look down and see a dudes head sticking out of…”
“My friend and I are under this old train bridge out in the middle of nowhere checking out the graffiti under it. I’m checking out this piece next to a pile of rolled up old carpet. Suddenly I hear ‘can I help you?’ I look down and see a dudes head sticking out of one of the carpet rolls, about gave me a heart attack. Turns out its some homeless guy that lived under there, he was wrapped up to stay warm. Dude ended up being chill, we explained we were just looking at graffiti, he said he was just worried we were gonna hurt him. After chatting with him he went back to sleep and we went on our way.”
“My friends and I went into an old WW2 bomb shelter in some woods…”
“My friends and I went into an old WW2 bomb shelter in some woods when we were about 10 years old. In them we found very explicit drawings in pencil of cartoon characters naked doing sexual acts. Like Kim Possible, every Simpsons character and some Family guy ones too.”
“We sat there cowering while at least six people speaking and yelling…”
“We were poking around the master bedroom when we heard cars or trucks coming down the gravel driveway, one friend dived into the closet and the other followed him, there was an open window leading to the back deck that we could have used but panic set in and I didn’t want to abandon my friends. We sat there cowering while at least six people speaking and yelling in Spanish tore apart the trailer for the copper and sh_t in the walls. We don’t know how long we were in there, the time estimates ranged from an hour to 3 hours, but it was long enough for them to take most of the metal siding from the trailers exterior and bust up all the walls we ran passed afterwards. One friend knew Spanish and would whisper translations, it was just them screaming to tear down this or that along with instructions to duck down when a car passed on the street, sprinkled in between were laughter and curses. One said something and they all laughed really hard, she told us he said he’d f**k up any cops that showed and translated all the banter of specifically how they’d kill the cop, we told her to shut up after that. They weren’t dumb teenagers, these were grown men who joked about rape and murder while tearing apart someones home for scrap metal. The three of us hiding in a nasty closet while a bunch people scavenged the house was the most terrifying abandon building experience I’ve ever had.”
“The whole room was filled with hundreds of…”
“This wasn’t strictly an abandoned building, but my old college campus had a odd building that was shaped like an authentic Scottish castle, down to towers, parapets, walls, etc. The first time I explored there, I had found a small door that was (mostly) rusted shut on the bottom of one of the rear towers. It was unused, but I could still open it enough to get through, so I came back that night to explore. It led to a small, circular room on the inside of the tower with a bunch of detritus on the floor, like pallets, some old chairs, and a big metal plate (more on that later.) However, above me, there was an open square hole which clearly led to another room inside what would be the top of the tower, where a ladder probably had been at one point. I forget how I got up there, (probably piled up the aforementioned detritus) but once I got up there, I couldn’t believe what I saw. The whole room was filled with hundreds of broken mirror shards, chained together by string and hanging from the ceiling, as well as all over the floor and the window sills. Also scattered on the floor were what at first looked like… dozens of big coins, but on closer inspection turned out to be the metal rims of those cheap little tea candles, stomped flat by people walking on them. Finally, in the center of the room, there was a tiny little table, on top of which was a metal bowl filled with more mirror shards, surrounded by more empty candles. I have no idea what the f**k that room had been used for, but I swear to god it looked like some ritual sh*t was going down there.“
“She proceeded to hang herself in the…”
“There is this small town in the mountains on the way to a ski resort I used to work at and a lot of people go to. It’s probably the weirdest town ever. One way in and way out by a bridge over a river that basically surrounds the town. Basically you go there during the day and the place is a ghost town. No one out. Once night falls, you start to see ladies pushing strollers walking their dogs, etc. There is this old bed and breakfast there that has been abandoned for years. it was built in like 1890 or something like that. It was an Inn for families to stay that had husbands that were loggers back 100 years ago. Story goes that there was this girl Alice, that had a husband who died logging. She got word that he had been killed in an accident. She proceeded to hang herself in the attic of the Inn. (was able to find old newspaper articles and archives that proved this true). A lot of people used to say they saw her walking the halls some time after she died. Employees that worked the bed and breakfast before it closed in the ’90’s reported lots of weird things happening. We used to go there and try and scare ourselves. I kid you not, one time we were shining flashlights in the top window, and slowly one of the curtains opened and stayed open for a few seconds then slowly closed. Note that the top floor no longer existed because it collapsed years earlier. There was no way anyone could be on the top floor. Pretty creepy. We got older and then started going there and breaking in and drinking and whatnot. Experienced many weird noises but nothing that weird.”
“As we descended we came across a dark room…”
“I went into the old hospital in my city which has been demolished now, it was huge! Here it is when it was running. Anyway we went down some stairs, like service stairs which were metal and obviously the public didn’t use when it was open. As we descended we came across a dark room, we used our torches and looked around we noticed a small bedding area, and above that on the wall there was spray paint which said ‘WE ARE THE THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT’ and we heard this almighty crash, I’ve never noped the f**k out of somewhere so quickly.”
“Sometimes my flashlight or phone would bug out…”
“I used to guard inside abandoned buildings. One building pretty much ran every guard out at some point. Even big burly ex military dudes. People got pictures of figures, videos of voices or strange sounds like scraping or giggling. This building was an abandoned workshop, and it hadn’t been tended to in years so it was already very creepy inside. It looked like something out of fallout. I got the odd feeling of being watched in there most nights but I chalked it up to paranoia. Sometimes my flashlight or phone would bug out, some nights the door alarms would go off for no particular reason. The outside motion sensor light would trip randomly as well. Well, one night I was patrolling inside the building when I felt something watching me intensely. To the point that I got chills and I got nauseous, and a burning sensation on my back. I can’t describe it as any other feeling but pure terror washing over me. As soon as I turned around, I hear three distinct knocks on a nearby tank. At this point I’m ready to bolt, and I yell ‘Is there anyone there?’ and then something whispers RIGHT IN MY EAR. Hello. I noped right the f**k outta that building so fast. Whenever I was stationed there, I would only poke my head in to make sure the damn place wasn’t on fire.”
“One bad step and we could fall all the way down…”
“Years ago, me and my friends tried to enter a very old, abandoned psychiatric hospital. It was on a crisp winter morning, everything was silent. We didn’t even heard the birds sing, only the soft sound of our shoes on the mud. We looked up at the massive building. All the windows were broken, the dead ivy almost covered the entire facade. There was only one way in: we had to climb the stairs outside of the building, then, on the third floor level, we were supposed to go through a hole in the wall. One bad step and we could fall all the way down. But we didn’t enter. Through that hole, I saw the clear silhouette of a man, with an axe in his hand. I couldn’t see his face, but he was definitely looking at me. I told my friend to run, as I saw him coming towards us. We ran away for some time, until we reached the town. Then, after a shaky cup of coffee, we decided to go back. Why ? We were stupid teens. But we stayed outside, on the ground floor. I looked through the side of a massive, metal door, and I saw the man again. I could see that he had put some bags on the ground, with metal tools inside. It was pretty obvious, now: He was looking for copper. We decided to circle around the building one last time, frustrated that we lost our time. But before we even started to leave, we heard the man running towards us, inside the building, and he hit the metal door with his axe several times with all of his force. We ran away a second time. When we came back for the third time, we finally saw him, and I’m glad that he was inside the building – so he couldn’t catch us- , because if I hadn’t seen the bags he had beforehand I would have thought he was some king of axe-murderer. I have so many stories about this one building, good ones, scary ones. There was some kind of bond with it, i’m sure many people on this thread understand.”
“County police and property security were circling…”
“Broke into Building 7 a year ago with a few friends. It’s an 11 story building and we went all the way to the top where there’s a bunch of mechanical equipment. My friends assured me we were fine and no one saw us as there was basically just grass for as far as the eye could see out those windows. We weren’t even there to vandalize stuff, we just wanted to explore. Lo and behold, we finish up, try to go back through the same hole we came in, and all of a sudden my friend motions us to get back in. County police and property security were circling the entire building. My friend had a crowbar which did not help our situation at all (ups it to felony status), so we had to hide out in an isolated room in the middle of the building for an extra 45 minutes, which felt like an eternity. One friend scouted the rest of the building looking for birds eye views of the cops, I was scouting the first floor windows, and my other two friends were essentially cowering on the floor. After cops finally seemed to have left, we made a mad dash for the hole and left our dust masks behind. Barely made it out of there. We were on edge the entire way back to the car though. On the way back we run into another explorer who told us ‘hey you guys, I saw police going around so you can’t really get in.’ One of my friends goes ‘that’s okay, we just got out.'”
“We sat there cowering while at least six people speaking and yelling…”
“We sat there cowering while at least six people speaking and yelling my friends and I used to go exploring in. One day during midday we where wondering around the upstairs when we heard people on the main floor talking. Kind of spooked we quieted down and looked for some cracks in the very old floor boards to try and spy on the people downstairs. What we saw were three older guys (older than us, still in high school), they where smoking pot of a pipe and after they finished they entered one of the rooms near the back of the plant leaving the door ajar. We slowly made our way down the stairs moving as quietly and as fast as we could. After making it to the main floor I decided I wanted to see what they where doing so I slipped away from my friends heading to the car to try and get a peek. I moved 15 or 20 yards down from the front of the door and hid behind a stack of old planks and gravel. I looked in and could see that they where smoking again, and where fooling with a bunch of containers (some boiling) and with tubes. Holy sh*t I thought to myself, we got some real life meth heads here. Then I realized that they probably wouldn’t take kindly to my prying eyes and began moving out and back to the car. As I’m moving and trying to keep an eye on them, I knocked over some stuff (I honestly can’t remember what). I remember scurrying to try and catch the stuff before it hit the ground. I failed. There was a loud crash and a ‘THE F**K WAS THAT?’. I bolted as fast as I could to the car screaming ‘START THE F**KING CAR!’, I jumped in the car and we peeled out. As the dust from the gravel road cleared I could see them standing by the door.”
“On the small window of the elevator door we all could see…”
“This story isn’t about an abandoned building but the Masonic Temple in Detroit is such an enormous place that are tons of floors and mezzanines that haven’t been used with regularity and have been left to decay. The temple was a place that I spent a great deal of my childhood because the Scottish Rite Masons were nice enough to let us use their space rent free to do organized youth theater as long as we kept our nose clean and respected the space. We did, but we also had free reign to be kids and explore a bit. We were usually the only group there besides security so it was always dark and quiet. My favorite place was floor 6m, where we kept most of our theatre props, sets and costumes. It was also filled with lots of cool ancient Masonic props, furniture and books. One day three of us kids were sent to 6m to fetch some things and we took the old freight elevator behind the main stage. Firstly, the old elevator had a operator pull lever and it barely worked most of the time. On that day it was malfunctioning by stopping at every level and then descending back to the level below it before going to the next floor in succession (1,1m,1, 1m, 2, etc) I at first we thought that it was someone calling it from the ground level, which happened sometimes so you had to keep the gate and doors open while you were out on your level, if you wanted to take it back down. It was taking forever and we heard what sounded like someone screaming over the already loud elevator and started to get really uneasy. Around 5m we chickened out and got out, hoping to make our way through the floor to the other elevators and up to 6m. No such luck, with so many doors and passageways, most were locked that day and we couldn’t make our way to the normal elevators so we made our way back to the freight elevator, which we had left open, just in case. As soon as we got back we all stopped. On the small window of the elevator door we all could see what was clearly an impression of a screaming face that wasn’t there when we had exited the doors earlier. After we scraped the poop out of our pants we all agreed that we would go back down to the ground level and make some other kids go get the things we were asked to get.”
“I pulled out my phone and used the flashlight…”
“One morning, my brother and I went to this locally famous breakfast diner downtown for the first time. Because of its immense popularity, we were given a wait of about 40 minutes so we decided to just walk a bit downtown to kill time. We stumbled upon this boarded up, and adorned, decaying 2-story house not to far from the diner and we walked around to the back where we found a fire escape. Naturally being the dumba I am, I got up onto the fire escape while my brother waited for me at the bottom. At the top there was a door that was ajar so being the bigger dumba I am, I walked inside. There were clear signs that people had been residing in the house as there were alcoholic bottles, needles, and confusingly a butt-ton of cereal boxes inside. I pulled out my phone and used the flashlight on my iPhone to guide my way through the second story to the stairs leading down to the first floor. I peered around the corner of the stairs and to my horror I saw two dudes and a girl, clearly homeless and on something, totally F’ed up on what seemed to be crack or heroine or some mind-numbing drug. I slowly ease myself step-by-step back down the hall to the fire escape and trip in the process. Next thing I know I hear one of the dudes yell from downstairs and me bolting the h*ll outside to the fire escape and out of sight of the building.”
“It’s got a pretty depressing history…”
“There’s an old abandoned mental asylum near where I live which is pretty creepy. It’s got a pretty depressing history (history meaning the stories other kids told me). Anyway the asylum is huge and because it’s pitch black, it’s so easy to get lost, it’s like a labyrinth inside, making it very confusing and disorientating. It smells weird, and is filled with relics from the past, like hospital beds machines etc. But the scariest thing that happened to me personally was the last time I went. Me and my friends walked into a dark room, and the entire floor was missing, apart from a small patch directly in front of the door. As I was walking in, I almost fell completely down the hole, which was like a 2 story drop, I was probably like half an inch from f**king myself up.”
