Beneath the bustling city streets lies a silent world. One of sprawling networks of tunnels, forgotten stations, and echoing darkness. While most of us just pass through, some people call this subterranean labyrinth their office. An online community asked these subway workers and explorers a chilling question: What’s the scariest unexplained thing you’ve ever witnessed down there?
The stories that emerged are not for the faint of heart. These are true accounts of strange sounds, fleeting shadows, and the profound, unsettling feeling of not being alone in the pitch black. Be warned, this is your last chance to scroll away…
More info: Reddit
#1
I work for the MTA in NYC. The underground train system is the perfect place for homeless people to escape the elements. I walked into a fully [bare] man bathing under a leaking hot water pipe. That was pretty terrifying.
Image source: TSCHWEITZ, Pixabay
#2
Me and a few friends explored this abandoned quarry once. There was one main tunnel going back into a mountain with tons of straight offshoot tunnels and clearings intersecting it. We came to one of the cleared out areas far back into the mine (the entrance to the tunnel was out of sight with no light other than our spotlights).
Laying on some rocks at the bottom of the flooded, partially caved in clearing was one of those old T.Vs that sit like a cabinet on the floor. At first we thought it was some kind of chest or crate but when we put a spotlight on it and realized it was an old T.V. It was definitely unsettling. The whole quarry had a creepy vibe to it but the T.V. was just really out of place. I guess some of the miners had it running off a generator or something back in the day. Creepy nonetheless.
Here is a pic for anyone interested. And no, the creepy silhouette in the top corner is not a monster, its just my friends spotlight.
P.S. I know one of the friends I was with browses Reddit so shout outs if you see this.
Image source: HaxtonSale, HaxtonSale
#3
Was playing in the woods and tripped over something solid. Fund it was a cement circle, and realized it was an underground door. The next day I come back with a crowbar (to open, and like hell im going in unarmed). Pull it up, and it’s a cold war era personal b*mb shelter… that failed? There was a giant crack in the roof, the floor was covered in slime. But what was worse is the walls are covered in writings. “this is the end” “we must die” “everyone is gone”… Till I find the back wall, and a giant red scrawl “GET THE F**K OUT OF MY HOME”. That’s it, f**k this. Im f*****g out. I sprint up the door, and close it. I dont want to know what the hell that was. But I come back the next day… it’s burned out. I didn’t set a fire intentionally, and I didn’t smell smoke leaving.
Image source: Secretly_psycho, Kelly
#4
Many years ago i worked as a technical assistant at a coal mining company. this was basically doing the grunt work for those with degrees, taking samples of things, doing data entry, driving the surveyors around etc etc
one of my duties was to go into the underground mines and take coal, dirt, and air samples on a regular basis. often this’d be a little away from other workers.
one place i’d hate going because every time it’d feel and sound like there was someone standing just behind me to my left and whispering in my ear, even when the nearest other person was 30 yards away or so.
probably just weird acoustics but f**k i hated those days.
Image source: renegade_donut, I Love Pixel
#5
So I’ve done a lot of things like this and there is usually an explanation for anything that seems untoward. Disused mental hospitals, train tunnels, sewers, abandoned stations, utility tunnels, military installations, the lot – it’s usually just your mind if you think something is wierd. One story that springs to mind was being in a storm drain in London. The storm drains are generally dry but there might be water elsewhere – the tunnels can stretch for miles at a time. We would always listen out for moving water and any changes in air pressure or temperature, just to know whether there was going to be any change in water level or something dumped into the tunnel further up the line. I was in this sewer and there was a massive gust of wind. No idea what caused it but the chap I was with looked at me and we both just said ‘we’re leaving, right now’. We stomped up the tunnel and made our way out into a dry night. Something in that change of air pressure and temperature told us something and I’m not sure what it was, but we both knew that leaving there and then was the right thing to do.
Image source: winch25, Willian Justen de Vasconcellos
#6
A abandonded mental hospital that i went to first time the freezer which at one point they put there 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 spraypaint small under it. Next time i went the blood was gone but the hi was still there and looked samd as before.
Image source: slothcopta, Zanyar Ibrahim
#7
[This sketchy a*s tunnel] I found when I was working for a fire inspection company the past few summers. We inspect all the schools in our district.
I discovered during an inspection at my old public school (one of the oldest in Canada) in the basement, a tunnel. A tunnel that went on for at least 100 metres, and it very well may have gone on longer but I had this horrible vibe about being where I was, I couldn’t bring myself to walk further.
Finally turned back to where I came from and it was at least 75 metres away, I immediately booked it the f**k back. Never to return again.
Image source: mygeorgeiscurious, mygeorgeiscurious
#8
Do crawlspaces under houses count? Because if they do I once went into one that had asbestos everywhere. Terrifying.
Image source: drone42, freepik
#9
Ive popped hundreds of manhole covers in Boston working for dig safe. The only thing I can think of is surprise bee nests.. Of when the noxious gas meter starts beeping which means “stay f**k out of this hole or you’ll pass out and die”.
Image source: My6thRedditusername, Aumy L Sitepu
#10
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 [body] out of there. Pretty sure I walked right by it and didn’t even notice…
Image source: digitalis303, Yakup Polat
#11
I was walking through the woods with some of my friends at about midnight, having fun and messing around. It was pretty much pitch black in some areas, usually taking about a minute to get to the next light section, and at some point I felt somebody hold my hand, it was very clearly a small, and definitely female hand.
After about a minute we finally got close to the light again and I asked if she was alright, only to look over and notice that everybody else was about two metres behind me, and the only female was at the very back of the group. Almost immediately I felt the pressure leave my hand. I never brought it up with them, because they’d probably just tell me I was imagining things.
Image source: anon, Sebastian Unrau
#12
Not me and not a subway but it was under. Dad worked in the military in a submarine during the gulf war. He used to send me pics of him in the engine room which was a really cramped space and often leaky or greasy due to the machines. He said cabin fever gets to a lot of the new recruits. He did tell me on days they surface him and a few select crew can go up and fish, which was pretty cool. Too bad he only did 2 tours of this.
Image source: Sweetragnarok, Darren Halstead
#13
Another more relevant story for the subways
The amount of shoes and pants you see on the tracks is astounding to me. Who is losing these article of clothing on the train. There are enough shoes and pieces of clothing i use as a personal survey marker to determine locations of flagging lamps by the single mocasin or leather boot, the pair of jeans or sparkly wallet on the ground or bench wall.
Image source: Plays_On_TrainTracks, Daniel Akselrod
#14
At a hotel in my hometown that everyone breaks into, (its 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 f**k out of there after that. We’re probably going back in a couple of weeks, and that s**t better still be there.
Image source: JetStreamWolf12, wirestock
#15
Went with my family to a used book store in Utah, like, a real legit used bookstore with a vault for priceless manuscripts. Anyway, there were stairs down to a basement floor with more of the old nonfiction stuff and recordbooks and stuff like that. The creepy part was that half of the basement floor was unlit.
So me and my brother are snooping around the bottom floor, and we find an open door over on the unlit half of the floor. It’s just bright enough to see some empty shelves on the opposite wall through the door. We poke our heads in, and it is so dark we can’t see either end of the room; it looks like an endless hallway. Some distance away, we see a blinking red light, and we nope the hell out of there and dash back upstairs.
It was probably a security camera or fire alarm or some s**t, but it was still scary because I get the feeling it only started blinking once we poked our heads in…
Image source: SolongStarbird, Nigar Azizli
#16
There’s an abandoned and boarded up WWII fort in the southern part of belgium, that we often sneak into with the scouts. Getting in there requires scaling a sheer wall (where we’ve placed anchoring points for ropes and climbing gear) next to a relatively busy road. So you’re being super quiet, making no light and cowering every time a car passes by so he doesn’t spot you in his lights. The atmosphere is set.
The moment you enter it, it’s like diving into water. Sound stops and the entire place is at a constant 14 degrees Celsius, with a slight breeze passing through. The tunnel is barely large enough for me (slightly broader than the average person) to pass without turning my body sideways. The tunnel is just high enough to work up a decent gait while hunched over. If someone ahead of you blocks a passage for a moment, the breeze stops and it feels like the entire tunnel network takes a breath. Because of the way the tunnels are constructed, they echo in such a way that your own footsteps seem to be coming from behind you. They also seem to take one more step than you do when you stop.
Ofcourse we don’t allow the guys and gals to take any source of light in there, so it’s pretty scary overall.
So I’m in there, posted at a side passage to ensure everyone takes the same path and doesn’t get lost. I go in first, before any of the climbers arrive, so they don’t know there are friendly faces in there to help them. I’m in there for a while, just waiting for the first to come by, when I see a dancing little light coming down the long hallway. I quietly settle back in my nook and wait for whoever was smart enough to hide some matches and take them away.
The light quietly bobs closer when I realise there aren’t any footsteps accompanying it. I poke my head around the corner just in time to see it disappear. I hear no footsteps still.
I settle back and wait some more, when I realise I do hear some scuffling. Very faint. Breathing noises, but still very faint. I become aware of a wet heat coming from right in front of me, with a faint smell of… person, sweat, dirt? Suddenly I realise, there’s someone there. Right in front of me. Inches from my face.
The breathing stops suddenly, whatever it is is aware of me aswell. Whatever or whoever it is, we’re both holding our breath, both acutely aware of each other. It takes ages. I’m sitting there, unable to move, speak or breathe properly.
The wet heat passes and some minutes later I become aware of very faint light coming from my right side, which soon dissipates and leaves.
Some time later still, I hear the familiar stomping of combat boots coming down the hallway from my left. I stop the person, tell them to keep following the passageway and take the first right they come to. Out of curiosity, I ask who went in first. No one, he went in first…
it was explained much later. the first guy got lost down a dead end side passage and the second girl passed him by. She got nervous from the footsteps and removed her shoes. She saw me poke my head from around the corner and dropped the match. She passed me very slowly. One of the later checkpoints said she was crying her eyes out..
Image source: SoreWristed, Martha López
#17
Freshman year of highschool I noticed this large panel under an old staircase in the basement of a school building. For years my buddies and I talked about opening it, but it was across the hall from the office of the lady in charge of misdemeanors and suspensions.
Fast forward to the last day of senior year after most everyone had left. My two buddies and I, in formal attire from the day’s events, unscrewed the panel from the wall. Sure enough, there was a tunnel about 5 feet below the floor. Luckily there was a [sturdy stool] for us to climb down.
There was a system of tunnels down there but our exploration was limited since we were in good clothes and there was standing water down some of the tunnels. The unexplained part is that, while there were pipes where we went, there were tunnels without pipes that went out from the buildings footprint and not towards any other building. These tunnels had inches deep standing, nasty water so we couldn’t go in them in rented dress shoes. But we could make out that they connected to other tunnels which seemed to serve no purpose. I doubt there was anything sinister going on, but we thought it was pretty creepy at the time.
Image source: hubble-oh_seven, hubble-oh_seven
#18
My grandpa got lost in Mammoth Cave after he got back from WWII. Apparently before he was drafted it was not a National Park and the rules around exploring it were very loose, the property it was on was privately owned and locals were known to trespass to explore the cave. (or that’s what my grandpa used to tell me, he and his friends vary well may of been the only people trespassing..)
While my Grandpa was serving in the Pacific Theater the cave became a National Park. After arriving home my grandpa and his friends that survived the war went back to explore for old time sakes. They were wandering around with flashlights when they heard a tour group, considering they weren’t in their ‘legally’ and had bypassed many Federal trespassing signs, they cut the lights and slowly but surely tried to walk unnoticed back to the entrance. Unfortunately they went deeper and spent 17 hours in there before getting out. He didn’t have many stories because apparently you inch along in complete darkness without being able to see your hand infront of your face. But he said one of his friends kept saying “we didn’t survive that s**t to die in here”.
Image source: beechknoll, NPS
#19
A repost from me:
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 behind us. 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.
Image source: anon, Strange Happenings
#20
There’s an old half torn down school on the airbase outside of my home town. The supposedly haunted old grain silos about a quarter mile away get more attention, but the school is what me and my friends were obsessed with. We had gone in during the day and poked around, finding the typical b******t graffiti teenagers make in places like that, like ‘f**k god’ with the anarchy symbol and ‘all hail the zodiac killer’, stupid s**t like that. We wanted to go in at night but didn’t want to break our necks doing it, which ended up being a smart choice, since there were holes in the floor that went all the way down to the basement, which seemed to have about just above ankle deep standing water at the time.
We didn’t get really freaked out until later, when we went back at night, and as we’re psyching ourselves up to go in, some kind of early nineties blue Ford and a gun rack pulls into the empty parking lot. It’s lights cut right through the car and made it hard to see much, but it spooked the hell out of us. We got the hell out of there, but the truck followed us around the airbase for the better part of half an hour, turning on it’s high beams and tailgating us, and then turning their lights off completely and acting like they were tailing us…in spite of it only being the two cars on the road at that hour, plus the airbase being, y’know, abandoned. We’re just glad we were still in the car and not inside when they got there.
Image source: pumpkinguydancing, Strange Happenings
#21
Well, not unexplained as the explanation is “I am an idiot” but definitely scary.
Houston is criss-crossed with bayous because it a swamp that needs to be drained a lot. There are these gigantic tunnels that lead to the bayous and collect water from the storm drains. When we were kids, these were great to explore. We’d make maps about how to get from one area to another using these tunnels.
Well, we set aside one Saturday to try to make all the way to a mall a couple miles away from the starting point. Our hand drawn map was about halfway done. We got lost. And then, as it is wont to do in Houston in the Summer, it started pouring down rain. This happened before but we were usually close to an exit. Not this time. It kept raining. The water got high enough that the current knocked us over. Eventually we got spit out into a bayou from a tunnel we had never even explored.
After finally getting out of the bayou and getting back to safety we realized we were almost a mile from where we started.
Image source: anon, Henrique Jakobi Moreira
#22
I found a gigantic cement vault under the Arlington national cemetery. It was super spooky and not on any map.
#23
My buddy and me spent many years crawling through sewer pipes. One day we were out in the woods. Me him and another friend. We were deep in the woods. We found some pipe sticking out of a hillside and agreed to explore it.
Well we crawl down this thing a good 600 feet or so, on our hands and knees. At times it gets smaller and we are on our stomachs. Finally it comes to one of those big manhole rooms, and we get the impression were under a house.
Of course webalso know that in some places manholes will exist in the middle of nowhere for future developments.
Anyways the room has 3 other suoer small pipes heading off into different directions. Like slither on your stomach size. We choose one and make our friend Z go first.
We go down about 300 feet and he shouts back that theres something in the way. He thinks its a dead animal. But since we are using weak headlamos he cant tell. We coerce him to climb over it. Then comes me. Hes freaking out saying s**t is all over his clothes and he didnt know what it was. I climb over this dark lump of refuse. Feels like a body but not human. Not even animal. Just alien. Smells bad. Smells horrible. I slide over this nasty s**t almost puking. My buddy behind me comes next. Same story.
We keep going. Asking ourselves why we even do this s**t in the first place. Exploration. Etc. Into the unknown. The forbidden.
We crawl another few hundres feet. Z starts complaining about a horrible god awful stench ahead. We cant for the life of him get him to continue. He ends up throwing up. We start throwing the idea around of gas of some sort. He says with his headlamp theres something big up ahead. Looks like a honest to god body. Human maybe. We slide backwards quickly until we get to the manhole room. We crawl out quickly.
We get into the daylight and investigate the s**t stuck to our clothes from the thing we slid over. Its dark. Bloody dark. Refuse dark. Looks like fur. We agree that it was probably a trapped animal.
Never go back ever again.
Image source: anon, Alan Martínez Brito
#24
I currently attend a state university full time. By the description you might be able to figure out which one. I’m currently a senior living in private housing downtown, but sophomore year I lived in the university’s only downtown quad. It was built in the early 1920’s and definitely looked it compared to the uptown campus and housing quads. I was in the basement lounge area grabbing my mail when I noticed a nearby door that wasn’t usually open and a nearby maintenance worker. I casually asked the guy what was down there. He said, “Dunno, we just store our materials on the stairs.” My curiosity got the better of me and I asked him if I could take a look to see what was all the way at the bottom of the flight of stairs. He said, “I don’t see why not, just don’t get hurt on anything down there, and try to be back before my supervisor gets back in 15”.
This guy should definitely have not let me down there because he clearly hadn’t seen it. There was friable asbestos literally everywhere, particularly the decomposing ceiling tiles. I turned on my phone flashlight to find that it was some kind of sealed off research area. The stairs led to a hallway which looks like it may have been hospital-like at one time, but it had since experienced some heavy water damage. There were approximately 7 rooms on either side with one way glass pane in each, with some kind of 90’s intercom panel to the right. Inside each room were heavily rusted bed frames, a sink, and a toilet. All the way at the end of the hall were a series of file cabinets. I would have looked to see what they contained but figured it would only be a cloud of black mold spores, so I decided against it. Nothing inherently creepy about the area I suppose but definitely interesting.
Image source: martinmlaw, Sandy Millar
#25
Recently, I was visiting NYC and stayed in a hotel inside the city. It was a fairly nice place, but it was also a pretty old building that was not built with the intention of it getting so much use. For example, there were only two tiny elevators available for guests (and the hotel was at least 15-20 floors). The wait for elevators took so long that I decided I’d use the stairs. For some reason, there were 4-5 stairwells in the building, accessible from each floor and most wound up in different parts of the lobby. I remembered using one of them the day before, and I thought it was stairwell D, so I took it. After descending for a while, I passed level two. The next exit wasn’t marked, but I thought it had to be level one. I went through the exit door and found myself in an unfamiliar hallway with a very low ceiling (it could only have been about 7 feet) and sparse lighting. It wasn’t eerie, but it definitely didn’t look like it was intended for guests. Still, a little curious, I decided to check it out and see if I could find the lobby.
I walked for a minute down a long hallway with a kind of dirty stone floor and some [industrial double doors]. There didn’t seem to be anyone around and it was pretty quiet. I rounded a corner and to my immediate right was this big window set into the wall. Through it was a clean white room that reminded me a little of my high school’s cafeteria (I remember thinking that, but I’m not sure exactly why). There was also a man, sitting and looking at his phone. He must have been about 5 feet away from me and only the window separated us. He saw me and looked a little startled. I waved and was about to ask where the lobby was but he quickly pointed for me to turn back. Neither of us ever said a word. It was just the weirdest experience being in such a silent, dirty place and then seeing a modern room with a person. I speed walked out and took the elevator.
In retrospect, I probably just stumbled into some storage area under the lobby (it definitely wasn’t the same level), but it was the strangest discovery, and I like to imagine what could have gone on down there and why I wasn’t aloud to be there.
Edit: I definitely agree that there is a rational, boring explanation for this. I just thought it was an interesting story.
Image source: dtsrd2, Michal Balog
#26
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 a 8-10 foot drop. Woulda been f****d if someone fell down. Also many children toys and random musty books. Tons of bat and pigeon s**t and it went up about 4-5 stories. Stairs were very sketchy. Worst part about it was the decapitated animals there but oh well.
Image source: anon, Michał Franczak
#27
I once found the basement door (door on the unused but open basement level) at university open and followed the hallway for maybe a mile or so.
Near the end I felt a sudden cold. Was spooked until I remembered the stream that runs across the grounds.
Image source: Rexel-Dervent, Kerin Gedge
#28
Where I grew up there were a few storm drains that all went to the same pond. My friend A and I were messing around in the woods near one of the openings and we could hear this really sharp echoing cry that made us both nervous. We thought it was the wind at first and then A threw a rock into the opening and it stopped for a minute so at this point we figured it must be something alive.
We climbed back out of the woods and went to the next pipe and could hear it there too. Now I’m scared and A is trying to prove how he’s not afraid of anything so on we go to the next one. This one is quieter so we go back in the other direction. Now I’m being a baby because its raining a little and I’m not supposed to get my clothes wet (I was around 9) so I’m begging A to go home.
As he stops to assure me we are safe we hear this horrible, deep, wailing noise and I start to panic. I can feel my pulse in my neck and I’m sweating and A puts his face into the opening for the drain. The noise happens again and A takes off down the hill and into the pipe opening.
I am now crying because A abandoned me in the rain and there’s a monster in the pipes. A starts yelling my name and I have to put my face to the opening to hear him so now I’m really crying and he tells me to call the fire department so I run to the nearest neighbor and tell them to. I explain I don’t know why we need to call but that A is in the pipe outside their house. They get all snotty because A is the heaviest kid in the neighborhood so they assume he got stuck. They call the non emergency number and a truck comes to remove the cover.
Turns out A recognized the sound of an angry cat and ran into the pipe. It was a mama cat and her kittens but the kittens were stuck beneath the wire grate inside the drain so the rain was drowning them and they were crying. Thanks to A they got all but one kitten out and the mama cat in time before the rain got worse. He got to keep one of the kittens and no one believed us even though we were both there and there were firemen. No one believed he could fit into the pipe.
Image source: PluralofSloop, Zoshua Colah
#29
I’m not sure I qualify, since the explanation seems rather straightforward to me – another group of explorers. Still, I have a pretty good story. I attended the University of Huddersfield, and one of the accommodation facilities for students is called Storthes Hall. Storthes Hall was previously a psychiatric hospital, an asylum. Most of the buildings were demolished, I believed two are currently in use to house students, and then off site there’s the main building and the mortuary. The main building was off limits and I believe security guards were in place, but when you have several hundred drunk students living nearby you’re basically just grabbing sand. I went with a group of people and we intended to have some kind of DIY seance (Derren Brown had done his not long before), so we toddled off with tarot cards and a Ouija board. It was all pretty funny to be honest, none of us really took it seriously, and having seen the Derren Brown seance I was really sceptical. Then the torch died, and we heard several loud knocks. We f****d off sharpish. But again, it likely was somebody f*****g with us after hearing the panic caused by the torch going out. Might have even been the security guards, I wouldn’t blame them.
Image source: anon, Mark Anderson
#30
I was in a house that the police confiscated from a biker gang. My job was to assess the damage for an insurance company. The walls were all painted white and the floor was sheets of plywood painted dark red. I was going around measuring each room, opening doors, no problem. I then open the linen closet and it had deep scratch marks on the inside and dents on the back of the door like someone was trying to escape, the freaky part was straight ahead at my head level was a round red splatter pattern on the back wall that had been painted over with a coat of white paint. Freaked me the f**k out, like someone was trapped in there and then someone opened the door and shot them in the head.
Image source: YaSeeTheThingIs, rawpixel.com
#31
I feel like i should contribute. Walking along the track one evening doing an inspection. It was in a station, kinda crowded and lots of people watching me work because people are naturally nosey especially when some one is walking on the track that their train is coming on. So im walking along and i see a rat run across the track about 10 feet in front of me. I know a rats in the area, now i know to not be startled when i see it again in a minute. I keep walking and go to step over a pile of garbage, see the first rat out the corner of my eye plus a bonus dead rat in the garbage pile. As im stepping over the
garbage, the what i thought was a dead rat ran in-between my feets and scared the f**k out of me.
This story isnt what your looking for in terms of scary or creepy, but it f****n hate rats.
Image source: Plays_On_TrainTracks
#32
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.
Image source: jake502120
#33
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 d**g 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 s**t 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 s**t 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 p**n 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.
Image source: queerissues
#34
Goddammit, I know it’s late, but I’ll put my s**t in with the rest of the pile. It wasn’t really exploring, but One time the librarian at my old high school, literally old because the place was about 100 years old, asked me and two other friends if we could stack some boxes at the library attic so they wouldn’t be a fire hazard. We went up and it was a treasure trove or cool stuff like rare antique books and 100 year old newspapers. I thought it was really cool. Also, even though the library is only one floor, there was a rumor that it had a basement level where they kept all the rarer antique books. I never asked her if it was true because I ended getting on her bad side a while later.
Image source: tempest_wing
#35
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 3 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 s**t 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 consierably 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. Any way, 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 here it clear as day – the unmistakable sound of foot steps 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 insist 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 “f**k 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 to 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.
Image source: NecessaryMushrooms
#36
As a kid, a friend’s sister fell down a storm drain while trying to retrieve a ball and when she got fished out by her dad it looked like she’d been bitten by a rat. She had to get the infamous rabies shots rumored to be twenty directly into the stomach with a long needle (not sure if that was true at this point). However, a Saturday of ‘going down to the creek to play’ would often involve exploring drainage pipes. We’d watch for storms to make sure we wouldn’t get flooded out and die, so it was a bit scary and a bit fun and sometimes we’d find little ‘rooms’ that were outlets with metal ladders embedded in the side. But it was super easy to get scratched up on the concrete, and just as easy on Monday morning to imagine you’d been bitten by a rabid rat and had days to live before the symptoms manifested and you’d go insane and die horribly.
But you couldn’t tell your parents you’d been somewhere off limits. Oh, no.
e: I guess I should include something unexplained. Any toy or rock or anything we left in the drains seemed to move, even if it hadn’t rained lately. I’d like to think some raccoons were having fun down there at night just like we were in the day.
Image source: everover
#37
I remeber having an experiance once while not in “break rules take pics” mode I was just riding on my local … subway? underground slow train basically. It got even slower because of a bend in the tracks. I always loved this area to look out of the windows because it was super old and super big spanning out into like an insustrial cave if you knew the angles to look (they tried to make it look all posh and hidden) and its almost impossible to get down into there without tripping one of the 15+ security systems (I suppose homeless could probably figure it out) usually the most exciting thing I saw was a construction vehicle. This day I saw a person hopefully just sleeping in a little cubby I thought I was the only one to know about. Threw me off balance a little bit. I almost reported it but decided if I was in that situation and alive I wouldn’t want someone to report me and if I was dead I wouldn’t care so decided not too.
Image source: anon
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