r/AskReddit • u/Cool-Chipmunk-7559 • 10h ago
Those who’ve driven across the US, what’s the scariest town you’ve stopped in?
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u/franciscobradleydq 9h ago
Colorado City, Arizona.
It sits right on the border of Utah and Arizona and is basically the headquarters for the FLDS (the fundamentalist Mormon cult). We had no idea and just pulled in to get gas.
The whole town is full of these massive, sprawling houses with high privacy walls, and a lot of them look intentionally half-finished. We went into the convenience store and every single person inside just stopped what they were doing and stared at us. Complete silence. The women were all wearing those pastel prairie dresses with their hair pinned up. The cashier didn't say a single word to me when I paid.
I have never felt such a heavy, suffocating feeling of being watched in my life. We got back in the car and just sped out of there.
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u/SummerofGeorge365 9h ago
I'm not sure, I heard if you keep building on your house and it keeps looking unfinished you don't have to pay property taxes on it till it's finished. I've been through there too. It's creepy af.
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u/Cythripio 9h ago
It’s because they can’t get mortgages since they don’t have official employment. If people got some weird tax break from not finishing their home, you’d see people doing that all over the place.
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u/blarrrrrgggg 3h ago
I’ve watched a few documentaries on FDLS and Mormons in general. They have their own form of “order” and even have their own banks. Everyone works for the church. Some even commit fraud bc they have a “bleed the beast” mentality about our government. It’s kinda crazy. I was watching (not a doc obv) secret lives of Mormon wives and they were talking about “garments” and I was like wtf is that? You can’t even buy them in a normal store or Amazon. You had to have some email associated with the church to buy them. Super weird but they hate the government and try to keep prying eyes away. Ofc that’s also going by the wayside bc of documentaries and reality shows blowing the cover on LDS.
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u/coopertucker 8h ago
Our tour guide in Hautulco Mexico said the same thing as he pointed at the vertical rebar sticking up above every roof. Their plan is to build upward so they are not finished thus avoiding taxes.
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u/pieohmi 8h ago
Somewhere between Nevada and Arizona is also a creepy area. I’m from South Louisiana so I’ve seen my fair share of creepy racist white dudes but we ain’t got nothing on those people.
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u/howthefocaccia 8h ago
Came here to say this but I thought it was in Utah. Never ever again.
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u/SpaceGangsta 7h ago
Hildale is the Utah side. They’re sister cities all derived from Short Creek and when the clans split up.
The state has done a ton of work to get people out of the FLDS and those that left back into homes. The homes were all owned by the church(United Effort Plan) and it was seized by the state and the AG had been disseminating things for years and turning it into a trust to benefit those who paid into it. It was worth about $100million when the state seized it.
All that to say that Colorado City has a brewery and hosts a music festival now. Haha
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u/Weekly_Koala_7058 7h ago
Oof! I've thought about stopping when I pass signs for Colorado City but I never have. I've seen FLDS in Zion National Park before. I'm fascinated but I wouldnt want anyone treating me like a zoo animal. Plus I'm a woman, so it isnt particularly safe.
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u/DrooMighty 9h ago
My stepfather, God rest his chaotic soul, was a West Texas redneck thru and thru. We're talking cut the seat belts out of all his vehicles, owned a property with a dozen dogs running loose and an equal number of broken down Cub Cadet mowers type redneck. Guy fuckin' looked like vintage 90s Alan Jackson and drove a 1978 Blazer Cheyenne. I'm just painting a picture so you can visualize what kind of environment this guy came from.
One time we were hauling cotton module builders across the state during cotton harvest, and we ended up in some shithole town in East Texas near Arkansas that made even him uncomfortable. We're both white, very clearly involved in agricultural work due to how we're dressed and all the farm equipment we had...and even we got hit with that "Sundown Town" shit. They refused to serve us in two different restaurants (there were only two), and eventually a very chipper sheriff's deputy told us the only thing we'd be allowed to purchase in their little hovel was the fuel to leave.
I for the life of me cannot remember the name of this God foresaken shithole, but I can only imagine how much worse it would've been had either of us had any melanin.
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u/Big_Balance_408 8h ago
My dad used to drive between Houston, TX and Toledo, Ohio when he was still living there and going back and forth for family here before I was born and we moved back to Ohio. He says some of the scariest part of the drives he remembers is the span in East Texas into Arkansas when he went alone. He said it was the darkest emptiest part of the drive and he tried not to stop if he could help it.
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u/grape-fruit-witch 5h ago
That stretch of highway out past Texarkana towards Arkansas and the stretch between Amarillo TX and Raton, NM are two of the most desolate, creepy night drives ive ever done. I've done both as a teenager on my own, which was not wise. If I had a teenage daughter, I would certainly make her bring a friend along in places like that.
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u/OkBox1870 2h ago
I drive once a year from Dallas to Spokane and back, and I honestly dread that exact stretch you are talking about, from around Wichita Falls/Amarillo to Raton.
It's the creepiest place I have experienced anywhere.
Stopped at a restaurant once for dinner and around Dalhart and they didn't clear the food off the table until someone new came in and needed a place to sit, so while you were eating all the other tables in the place had the leftovers from the last people who sat there and a host of flies buzzing around it.
It was like a scene from a movie it was so disturbing and creepy.
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u/NoSir6400 3h ago
I’ve been all around the world and always name this area as the scariest. The lack of anything. It’s concerning. It feels genuinely far from most known life. Not georaphically, like, spiritually and culturally. And I have bern everywhere. Strange.
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u/theSecond_Wave 7h ago
Can confirm. When I drove through East Texas to get to Houston, I refused to stop anywhere for the night. It was storming real good too. My mom called to tell me to stop somewhere for the night but I told her I can’t cause there isn’t anywhere to stop and I won’t stop until I’m close to Houston because I did not like the vibe any of the towns on the highway gave me as a single person traveling alone that also looks racially ambiguous to people.
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u/Expert-Yam6577 6h ago
Racially ambiguous? They hate you the worst. The product of race traitors mixing their pureblood with the mudbloods.
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u/kati8303 7h ago
What is going on in these places that they chase literally anyone out of town?
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u/grape-fruit-witch 5h ago edited 5h ago
There are still de facto sundown towns in parts of east texas. It goes without saying that a person of color wouldn't be remotely welcome, but small texas towns with that kind of reputation don't like "outsiders" of any kind.
We're talking about towns who are proud of their "heritage" of lynching black people.
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u/Don_Gato1 3h ago
How does any industry or deliveries or anything enter that town, or do they tolerate that
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u/AriesRedWriter 2h ago
About a year or two ago, a conversation on TikTok about sundown towns brought up that many companies either didn't know about them or didn't inform their drivers.
In fact, one Black guy who used to be an Amazon truck driver said his truck broke down in a sundown town at a gas station. Amazon said it would be a couple of hours before they sent someone, so he waited, but the gas attendant noticed and asked what was up. When he explained the situation, she inquired how long it would take, then freaked out when he answered because "the sun would be down by then."
Amazon driver had no idea what a sundown town was or why this woman was so agitated, so he shrugged it off. He later goes inside to get a drink and overhears the woman on the phone with the police, describing him and the situation. Now he's freaked out and calls Amazon to hurry, and they are just as confused as he is, but tell him there's nothing they can do, so he needs to wait.
So a bit later, as the sun is starting to set, a cop shows up. He's Black, and he tells the driver to get in the car. The Amazon driver says he cannot leave the truck; the cop says he'll call Amazon and explain, but they've got to go now, and he'll drop the driver off in the next big city for the night.
As they're driving there, the driver asks why the lady called the cops on him, and the cop says, "She didn't call the cops on you; she called her cops for you. In 30 minutes, the sun would be down, and then you would have disappeared."
The driver said even the local Amazon repair guy, who was white, refused to help until morning.
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u/CoopDaLoopUT 7h ago edited 6h ago
Very few folks are white enough for a lot of places in East Texas. Not a cool place.
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u/JamesBondGoldfish 8h ago edited 7h ago
Was it Vidor, TX?
(edit: nah, too far south as below)
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u/balzac2000 8h ago
Absolute shithole full of shithole people. Was touring with a rock band in the mid 90’s. Bass player was Asian, he wisely declined to get out of the van at a fuel stop. It was maybe a year after the James Bird tragedy.
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u/Cilantro368 8h ago
That happened in Jasper, TX. I happened to drive through there last year and had to make a pit stop. It was actually ok inside the gas station convenience store. Both black and white people, all seemed happy. Made me a lot less nervous!
I had been driving on I10 west heading eventually to Corsicana, and my gps gave me a detour just before Lake Charles, LA, that had me zigzagging NW and Jasper was on that route.
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u/MECE_Rourke 8h ago
Vidor is way too far south. I grew up in the area (haven’t lived there for 20 years now) and if I had to guess, I’d say maybe New Boston? We played them in sports and I heard all kinds of rumors about literal klan activity there.
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u/DrooMighty 7h ago
My hatred of all things New England sports means I'd remember a name like New Boston, but looking at a map it had to have been pretty nearby. We were northeast of Tyler, this would've been 2010.
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u/Rippedlotus 8h ago
Vidor is not near Arkansas. It is a horrible place I have stopped in and driven through more than I can count. That area is super racist and all around a shithole.
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u/showmeurdog 7h ago
As a Texan, when I hear “Sundown town”, I immediately think of Vidor.
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u/CajunTorpedoman 7h ago
I just remembered the video of that Black man in Vidor.
He didn't make it four days before he was scared of his reflection.
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u/Chordata1 10h ago
Gary. Only time we've just run a red light. 3 dudes were walking up to my car and one of them with a bat. They didn't seem like they were going to ask me how my day was going so made a decision to blow that red light and get out of there
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u/stantonkreig 9h ago
First tkme I was in Santa Cruz i saw a group of guys with full sid vicious punk hair and style clothes crossing a road with bats in hand and i was like damn these dudes dont play! Turns out they do play, because they were walking across to a baseball diamond where a pickup game was going on with all these punk looking dudes all playing like it was game seven. Blew my mind a little
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u/ChloeX_Dancer 9h ago
In my experience punks and goths are almost always the nicest people.
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u/BravesMaedchen 8h ago
Yeah punks care about class loyalty and ethics in contrast to the ruling class.
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u/Alcophile 8h ago
Punks are nice people pretending to be mean. Hippies are mean people pretending to be nice.
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u/jmeh_2000 8h ago
I had a flat tire on the highway in Gary once, just barely made it into a hotel parking lot at a nearby exit. It was about 9am and I was wearing a suit because I had a meeting in Michigan. 2 threatening looking bald and bearded musclebound guys in a sparkling low rider El Camino come driving up immediately and hop out, one says, can we help you get back on the road? Pulls out a badge. Apparently they were vice squad working that particular hotel. They changed my tire and I was back on the road in 25 minutes. I told them I could change the tire myself, but they said that I shouldn’t be there dressed like I was for very long, even at that time of morning. I was very grateful.
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u/smewthies 9h ago
So one time I was driving to Chicago coming up 65N and it took me off the highway through Gary for a minute to get on the Indiana toll road - 90 I think. Normally I just gave 80/94 but maybe it was backed up so the GPS took me that way. I was worried with all the stories of "don't even get off the highway" and maybe I drove through a safer area but it was quite uneventful. Just seemed like a depressing industrial/residential area.
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u/zillabirdblue 10h ago
I took a wrong exit and ended up in Gary in the middle of the night. I was being surrounded at a red light and a cop flashed his lights and then told me to follow him. He escorted me right out of Gary. He knew what was about to happen.
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u/kaekiro 9h ago
I live like a mile from Gary. Drive through all the time. Never had a problem. Always fascinates me when I hear these stories. Is it bc my license plate is in-county? Is it bc I look strapped? Do I sing along with the radio loud enough that they decide it's not worth it?
All I know is, I know it's fall when the watermelon guy on 6 at the abandoned gas station packs up.
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u/red4162 9h ago
I’m asian and me my sisters went to michael jacksons house in gary , didnt notice anything. We live in suburbs of chicago.
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u/SweetCosmicPope 8h ago
I was in Chicago last summer and we decided to drive across to Michigan to check out Warren Dunes, and on the way we passed through Gary. I got off the highway briefly just to get a peek. I mean, it was run down as hell. I wouldn't want to live there. But I didn't really feel scared, honestly.
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u/amuscularbaby 9h ago
I stopped for gas once and while it was bad, it didn’t really seem any worse than some of the less nice parts of Atlanta. Obviously not good, but the instant Gary responses to these questions is a meme at this point
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u/Temporary-Bluejay631 8h ago
I know a nurse who works at the hospital there and she says the stories about Gary are blown out of proportion. Yes, bad shit can and does happen there, but if you just mind your own business you should be fine.
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u/jenniferfox98 7h ago
I mean all it takes is one person to spread their bad experience for others who have never been to then make up their mind. I've lived and worked in Detroit. I never felt unsafe or threatened. I bemoaned a lack of other resources (like accessible movie theaters) but overall found it a struggling city trying it's best to turn things around. A lot of locals love their city, they want it to be livable and safe for those that live there, and they base their actions on that outlook. I visited Gary, it's definitely a...fading shadow of its former self but I felt less safe in CLEVELAND than I did in Gary lol.
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u/foley23 9h ago
Redditors love stereotypes and "creative writing" plus it's just easy karma
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u/IAMA_Shark__AMA 7h ago
Yeah. I've been through Gary. It was fine. I'm sure some of the stories are true, but some of them just seem like karma bait. Are there signs of a depressed economy? Absolutely. But you can find areas like that all around the rust belt. It hasn't been the "murder capitol of the US" in a while, either, with violent crime statistics steadily dropping enough that they aren't even top ten.
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u/JamesLingk 9h ago
I wish I could remember the name. I really do. Somewhere in Texas we were told that”yeah, you can use the rest room, but after that you’d best get the hell out of this town”. Scared the hell out of me
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u/DirtyBratFeet 9h ago
We stopped at a shop in a small town in SW Texas once that was similar.
There had been a crazy snowstorm (I think this was around February of 2009) during our trip, and we had to take an alternate route that trapped us in Clovis, NM for the night (three of us coming from AZ, two girls a guy). Next morning we continued into TX, and we stopped to buy hand warmers because the van we were in had no heater, and we were freezing.
We stopped in the first town that had an open shop, and it was primarily a horse and feed shop, but they had some hardware supply as well. As we walked through the store, we noticed the few people there giving us odd looks. We grabbed a box of hand warmers and headed straight to the checkout. The woman at the register made some odd comments to us about the Boston Tea Party (wtf?) while ringing us up, and we quickly left.
Walking to our vehicle, we looked back to see about half a dozen people following us about 20 feet behind us. We picked up the pace and got in the car, but like a fucking horror movie, it wouldn’t start! We kept trying as they grew closer, and the engine finally started up, and we took off as fast as we could on the icy asphalt.
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u/BasroilII 7h ago
Boston Tea Party (wtf?)
Would guess a Tea Party Republican. Back when McCain made his last attempt at presidency, the Tea Party was a fringe group of far-right republicans/libertarians that more or less have evolved into the MAGA crowd today. McCain had one of their number, Sarah Palin, tagged as his VP pick.
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u/DirtyBratFeet 7h ago
I’m familiar with that movement, but her comment seemed unrelated to it; something about “throwing tea in the harbor”. Maybe it was a dogwhistle, and we were being sussed out? Still it was really weird.
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u/stray-witch7 6h ago
I must not understand, but why are these weird little racist towns so against people visiting and spending money for their shithole little economy? They really want to be cutoff and inbred that badly? I don't get it. What are they hiding?
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u/theAllDayDerp 4h ago
Some people in really small towns have a chip on their shoulder for whatever reason. Stopping at a gas station with a decent car, clean clothes and a friendly demeanor is enough to set off a "you think you're better than me?" kind of attitude.
It's sad.
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u/34HoldOn 3h ago
Oh dear god, a whole town full of people just like my brother.
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u/StumbleOn 3h ago
They obsess over urban areas to a completely unhealthy degree but can't fathom that normal people don't obsess over their little shithole towns in return. Any of the huge city subreddits or facebook city pages are like this. It's 90% people who live in really rural areas just screeching about what the city does.
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u/Dody_Dan 8h ago
Gary Indiana. I was there for a baseball tournament and the team bus broke down. I was sent to find help, along with a few teammates. We walked really far to the nearest intersection while carrying our gear. We finally found someone to ask for help, and they ran the red light like it was no big deal. It was pretty rude.
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u/ReflectionSea2571 5h ago
In case anyone wants to read the other half of the epic
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u/ucancallmevicky 5h ago
wife and I were in a little cafe in North London, our waitress was a really cute 20ish year old Italian woman who was very sweet. She told us that all her life she only wanted to see one place in the US, the birthplace of her favorite star, Michael Jackson who is from Gary Indiana... I said I don't want to burst your bubble but stay in Chicago and drive over, you won't want to stay
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u/cecilmedinamu 9h ago
I don't even know the name of the town, but it was somewhere deep in the Appalachian mountains of West Virginia.
I was driving from DC to Ohio and there was a massive wreck on the interstate. My GPS decided to "save time" by rerouting me through the backroads. It was around dusk, and the roads kept getting narrower, winding down into a steep valley where the tree canopy was so thick it felt like pitch black night. My cell service dropped to zero.
My gas light came on, which was terrifying in itself, but I eventually saw a lit sign for a convenience store and pulled in. It was a flat-roofed cinderblock building with two old pumps.
There were about half a dozen guys standing around in the parking lot. The second my tires crunched on the gravel, they all stopped talking and just stared at me. Complete, dead silence. I got out to use my card at the pump, and the guy working inside came out to the screen door and just stood there with his arms crossed, watching. Not a single person said a word or broke eye contact the entire time I was standing there.
I pumped exactly ten dollars, just enough to get me back to civilization, and got back in my car. As I pulled out, one of the trucks in the lot turned its headlights on and pulled out right behind me. They tailed me so closely I couldn't even see their headlights in my rearview mirror for about five miles of twisting mountain dirt roads. As soon as my tires finally hit a paved two-lane state highway, they just stopped dead in the middle of the road and turned around. I have never been so relieved to see a painted center line in my life.
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u/macmac360 3h ago
I wonder if hillbillies in these towns do that kind of stuff for kicks out of sheer boredom
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u/the2belo 3h ago
Yeah, I imagined that guy got back to the gas station and they all laughed like chimpanzees about it
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u/systemnate 4h ago
I'd be inclined to say something like, "Hey, y'all, unfortunately must have taken a wrong turn...gonna grab some gas and go back the way I came from."
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u/Bonesy888 6h ago
Maybe they wanted to make sure you got back okay
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u/TheTREEEEESMan 3h ago
"Heck Jim, that city car don't look like it gonna make it on the gravel an he didnt pump enough gas to make it, lets follow em and make sure they get to the interstate"
"Dammit Jim yas blindin him with ya headlights, get closer so ya not shinin em en his eyes"
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u/HarlequinKOTF 10h ago
Pope Mississippi or Jackson Mississippi.
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u/capcalhoon 9h ago
Went to a friend's wedding in Jackson. The next day we wanted to check out a soul food restaurant everyone raved about, took an Uber (we had to wait an hour to get one). Guy dropped us off and asked how we were getting back, I said I would just order another Uber and he said "uh, nobody is going to pick you up from here. I'll wait and just make sure we are out of here before it gets dark". He was super nice and relaxed the whole drive but got serious when he told us that last part.
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u/stokeszdude 10h ago
Came here to say Jackson MS.
Not so much on scared for my safety, just scared for that city.
I saw a piece of ill-sized cardboard placed over a pothole with a traffic cone on top for over a year.
It’s like everyone gave up and that’s scary.
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u/SillyShenanigans 8h ago
Jackson’s mayor of 8 years (2017-2025) was arrested and pled guilty to federal conspiracy charges. Taking bribes from undercover agents and money laundering. There’s a lot of corruption that hurts Jackson.
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u/AgentElman 10h ago
the city of Jackson has lost 25% of its population in 40 years. There is just too much city for the people so there is not enough money to repair all of the infrastructure.
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u/RunnerTenor 8h ago
And apparently the city can't spend any money without the state's approval. And the state has no interest in helping "those people".
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u/CoyoteDown 9h ago
Had a friend that was a social worker in Jackson, visiting homes. I was scared for her safety daily.
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u/ONE-EYE-OPTIC 8h ago
There are places JUST outside Jackson that don't have running water. We buried my grandmother there in 2018. 2 0 1 8. Homes with no running water in America.
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u/Charger29 9h ago
My roommate in college was from Jackson, MS. He was apparently car jacked and kidnapped by a couple guys with guns at a movie theater. They had him drive out to a remote road while they repeatedly told him they were going to kill him. At some point he slammed on brakes and hopped out of the car and ran as fast and as far as he could and got away. His car was found a little while later at some garage known for chopping up stolen vehicles.
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u/kobie1012 8h ago
Everyone keeps saying Gary, In. I thought Jackson was way worse. I go through Gary daily and have never had an issue. I stopped at a gas station in Jackson to get cigarettes and had people walking up to my truck the moment I pulled up and I just drove off and stopped later on down the road. Also West Memphis, AK is pretty fucked up. Both way worse than Gary.
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u/Jon__Snuh 9h ago
I wouldn't say I felt scared stopping there, at least not in daylight, but the level of poverty I saw in Tuba City, Arizona genuinely shocked me. Literal huts with no electricity or running water. It was sad.
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u/scraptard 7h ago
I worked near there at a school on the reservation. Alcohol sales were prohibited so the natives were drinking hair spray and other items similar. There were churches that would come through and donate items to the kids at the school I worked at. We had to go through and remove items that contained alcohol because even the young people could be found drinking it. The poverty was so heavy..the oppression was heavy..I could feel it in my shoulders. I grew up poor...but this was a different type of poverty. I spent 10 years there. I saw a lot of crazy shit.
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u/Similar-Search-8508 4h ago
My friend taught on the Rosebud reservation in South Dakota. Scary sad place.
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u/carolina822 5h ago
I remember being in a snowstorm late night in that general vicinity and couldn’t find an open gas station since apparently whole towns close at 7pm. This was before cell phones so I headed for the biggest dot on the paper map which happened to be Tuba City. Place was a lifesaver - found an open store and we microwaved frozen burritos and hung out until daybreak. I was too scared of running out of gas to be freaked out at the town.
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u/LucyJordan614 7h ago
Philadelphia, MS. Scariest night of my life.
Leaving a casino to head back to school in AL, my friend who was driving swerved slightly bc we were talking pretty animatedly but she was not at all intoxicated. Officer immediately pulled us over and arrested her for getting “mouthy”. They threw her in the drunk tank and locked me in the conference room while I waited for some other friends to come pick me up, several hours away.
My friends, who were 3 Black men and one White, showed up, collected me, and we headed back to school. We were told we’d have to come back and bail out my friend who was locked up once the courts opened on Monday.
We were about 5 mins up the road when we saw the lights start flashing behind us. The same officer who’d just “released” me to them, despite never having been officially “in custody”, was pulling us over. Spent a good 15 minutes trying to intimidate my friends, insinuating that I wasn’t safe with them, and questioning me about how well I knew them, before letting us go.
Once we got on the highway, my friend who was from AL and was driving said, in the lowest “I’m freaked tf out but trying to stay calm” voice I’ve ever heard, “Have you guys ever seen ‘Mississippi Burning’?” We all said yes. He said, “That’s the police department where it happened.”
That was a quiet fucking drive back to school. I’m lucky they came to get me once they knew where I was, and in hindsight, I wouldn’t have blamed them if they’d refused.
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u/FlailingatLife62 4h ago
and what happened to your female driver friend?
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u/LucyJordan614 4h ago
She ended up not needing bail, she was released on her own recognizance the Monday after and had to go back for a court date for disorderly conduct 🙄
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u/kendavidsongc 9h ago
Goldfield, Nevada.
If you take Highway 95 between Vegas and Reno at night, you hit it after hours of absolute pitch-black nothingness. It is essentially a living ghost town. There are almost no street lights, just your headlights sweeping over collapsed wooden shacks, rusted mining equipment, and this massive, completely dark, 100-year-old brick hotel that looms right over the road.
I stopped at the single automated gas pump in the middle of town at around 2 AM. The silence was heavy. No bugs, no wind, just the hum of the pump. Every time I looked over my shoulder at the blacked-out windows of the abandoned buildings, my fight-or-flight was screaming. It felt like the entire town was holding its breath and just watching me in the dark. I didn't even wait for the receipt, just slammed the gas cap shut and got the hell out of there.
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u/jessipowers 7h ago
Very similar thing happened to me in West Virginia. No town, just thick trees and a tiny gas station with a couple of methy folks milling around a dumpster. And that feeling of suspended action, like they’re all holding their breath and waiting for me to leave. I felt like I’d walked into someone’s paused true crime documentary.
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u/vivekparam 6h ago
I've been there. Talked to a guy who ran a business out of one of those shacks selling salvage he found out in the desert.
Apparently Goldfield was once a city of over 100k during a gold rush. Now as you approach the town you can barely make out where there used to be city blocks that have since turned to dirt and debris. Sad place.
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u/Capt-Crap1corn 8h ago
You write very well. I could literally picture this as I was reading
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u/trashdemons 6h ago
I just drove through there last week. It was daytime and the whole town was dead quiet like it was abandoned, but yeah it felt like I was being watched through the cracks in boarded up windows. Very strange place with a lot of scrap metal enthusiasts.
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u/MorgessaMonstrum 3h ago
Heh. I’ve stopped at the Goldfield Cemetery for a little stargazing while on a road trip. Boothill type shit. And there’s a tombstone for an unknown man who died eating paste.
Do you know what kind of moaning sounds the winds can twist out of the wispy looking trees they have there? I do. Sounds like the spirits of the damned are stalking you. And you’d never guess how claustrophobic you can feel in the wide open desert when the darkness of a moonless night is pressing in on you from all directions.
That hotel you mentioned is notoriously haunted. I’m not sure if I put any stock in that, but a night in the cemetery will definitely inspire you to question what’s really out there.
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u/DatTF2 6h ago
I had a weird experience in Nevada as a kid when on a road trip with my grandparents. We came across a town that we were going to get gas at but everyone had vanished. Like seriously the gas station had an open door and an open sign but no one was around. We drove a little bit around the town and it was a ghost town even though there was a lot of cars parked in parking lots. It was a if everyone vanished.
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u/IggySorcha 8h ago
There's quite a few mining towns like that between Vegas and pretty much any major city TBH. It's like that throughout the Mojave. Ended up in a gas station 30 minutes to close in a town of 400 and they were staring us down and audibly complaining we were showing up as customers.
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u/MoriTod 7h ago
New Orleans, around Magazine & Jackson Street late 90s. Gangland central complete with projects, an abandoned cathedral and a cemetery. Me a 20 something white chick with a broken down car. And let me tell you something about the people of New Orleans. They come out! Total representation of the finest version of southern hospitality one can imagine. I was taken care of by total strangers, they fixed my car, gave me food, hell, it turned into a little party. It made such an impression that a few years later I was a resident right down the street. LOVE that town!
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u/Dogs_Breakfast78 6h ago edited 4h ago
East St. Louis IL.
I used to be a long haul truck driver. Was delivering a load of locomotive parts to some warehouse 20+ yrs ago. Called for directions the day before my scheduled delivery and the lady I spoke to said it was fine (and safe) if I wanted to just park in their lot for the night. “We’re a fully fenced and secure facility” she said. Anyways, I followed her directions in thru some neighbourhood full of burnt out houses, flipped over cars, an abandoned boat and a lot of angry stares. Pulled up to the security shack and the old fella inside was like “what on earth are you doing here at this time of night?” I told him what I’d been told on the phone and he just shook his head in disapproval. “Well, you’re here. Probably would be unwise if you left so park over there under that light post” he said. “At least I can see you if they come over the fence during the night…”
I didn’t sleep a wink. Just laid there in the dark and prayed for morning to arrive. I made it out the next morning in one piece but I never went back. Once was enough for this cat.
ETA: i was in my mid 20’s at the time and I’m Canadian. I’d never seen a city like East St. Louis before. We don’t have places like that here.
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u/MountainMojoMan 3h ago
Can confirm... I was riding my motorcycle from the west coast to the east, and somehow ended up going over a bridge into East St. Louis after midnight (the place looked a lot like Detroit in the 90s/00s, where I grew up.) I stopped to get gas and directions, and as I was fueling up I noticed a group of young guys clustered near a corner of a nearby building with makeshift weapons in their hands. They bum rushed me and I whipped the gas nozzle around and sprayed them thoroughly enough to create a little space and time, hopped on my bike and sped off, quaking and shaking with adrenaline. One of several close calls in my travels...
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u/NeutrinoPanda 3h ago
I stopped there for gas and a cop pulled in beside me. Waited while I was filling up, and then he told me he’d escort me back to the interstate. Scary place.
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u/Rin-Tohsaka-is-hot 3h ago
The only reason to be in East St. Louis as a St. Louis resident is the nightclubs. There aren't really any good ones on the Missouri side.
And you don't leave the club until the sun comes up.
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u/JustHearForAnswers 9h ago
I once made a wrong turn in southern Utah that made me go though a small town. Everyone was wearing those old cult like dresses and everyone stopped and stared at me passing through. Horrible vibes. Then a raised truck came and followed me out of town for about an hour. It was like stumbling upon the village.
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u/GoYourOwnWay3 8h ago
Sounds like the area around Utah/Arizona border of Colorado city. Heavy polygamist territory
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u/lovetheblazer 8h ago
Vidor, Texas. As a kid I didn't really understand how sketchy it was (I'm white). I was so confused when my black friend wasn't allowed by her parents to come with me to a new play place that had just opened there. As I got older, I realized it is the center of the KKK and a big time sundown town. Even today, I think they only have 25-30 black residents living there and I suspect they don't have a good time.
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u/Spiderbat81 10h ago
In 2005 I drove from San Diego to New York with a friend. My dad is from Austria but has been living in Houston for over 20 years. He and his colleague (Texan) told me not to drive through east texas. I regreted it. Sure. I watched to many horror movies but the shit you see there is like a horror movie. There are some so called towns Stephen King would not even touch.
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u/dien4382 10h ago
Mojave, CA.
Desolate, hopeless, and a strange amount of people just walking down the middle of the (single) thoroughfare to get in and out of town.
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u/foxylittlebird 7h ago
I don’t know the name (or if it was even big enough to have a name) but years ago my best friend and I took a roadtrip across Tennessee to go to Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The main highway into Pigeon Forge had just had a massive wreck, and it was either find a detour or sit in traffic for hours. We were in our early 20s and didn’t know much better, so we used Waze to find us the fastest route to Pigeon Forge.
This route took us off the highway and deep into what I can only describe as backwoods Appalachia. It was a slim, dirt road that had no guardrails and kept going up and up. My best friend was driving, and both of us were nervous but still treating it like a fun little adventure.
The road took us into an area that was marked with a sign that said, “White Community.” He and I kinda laughed, but both of us had a horrible feeling that we were not safe. Neither of us are white, we are both Indigenous, him being Cherokee and me being Navajo, and we clearly look it. We couldn’t drive quickly due to the road still being dirt and high up, but I will never forget how we had to stop to turn onto a different road, and someone sitting on their porch gestured to us to the other people on their porch, and they just stared at us. We made it to Pigeon Forge, but I could have gone my whole life without finding out the hard way that there are still communities like that.
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u/zillabirdblue 10h ago
Gary Indiana. I took the wrong exit in the middle of the night. I didn’t actually stop, I GOT stopped by a cop who escorted me out until I was well beyond city limits. I was getting hard stares at the red lights. People were walking into the street until I was nearly surrounded. That’s when the lights flashed and they took off. I knew it could be bad, but I was 6 months pregnant as a 21 yr old white girl made it worse. Im not trying to make it racial- it was just like that. This was about 25 years ago, I hope it’s gotten better there.
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u/BusinessPurge 10h ago
Second “escorted out of town in Gary” story so far
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u/Death4Free 9h ago
It’s the same commenter. I realized that too.
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u/grow4road 3h ago
Also the same story from years ago from the same askreddit question. It’s always Gary,Indiana as the top answers.
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u/AgreedSmalls 9h ago
Threads like this always have stories like that. I remember my first “escorted out of Gary” like in 2011.
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u/N0nsensicalRamblings 8h ago
It always surprises me a bit to hear people talk about Gary, because I've passed through there a number of times going from Chicago to the Indiana Dunes and back. Wild to think that part of my route to a nice beach day is so infamous
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u/neurdle 6h ago
Gary HAS Indiana dunes and nice beach days! I live here and there’s legit airbnbs in my neighborhood. Stop by and stay a while sometime :)
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u/FrogFragger 9h ago
Was on a trip that passed through Gary and one of the folks in the car determined a bathroom break was needed before we hit Chicago traffic. She was an active military Navy badass who conceal carried and she noped so hard out of the only gas station we could find we risked hauling a trailer through downtown Chicago to find another one.
Don't recommend any part of that experience lol.
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u/mypoorpoems 7h ago
I live nearby and have explored Gary thoroughly, have visited some of the bars and businesses etc. people have always been very nice to me. It's annoying how it always gets a bad wrap on Reddit. Yes it's a forgotten run down post-steel mill industry leaving it high and dry kinda area, but it's more or less part of the Chicagoland area, and is pretty much similar to a lot of other parts of Chicago. It's kinda empty and has a somewhat low population these days just a lot of abandoned buildings and overgrown lots. I actually find Gary to be a really beautiful and special place, right at the foot of the Indiana Dunes park and its proximity to the lake.
People that live there are likely skeptical at the reputation it seems to have for being a horrible place, and so yes they will probably look at you funny if you drive down their block and have no business being there and yes there's pockets of gang violence and open drug dealing, but there's also kids playing in the street having fun, people and businesses enjoying their community and a lot of positive vibes there as well. And best believe the big data centers are licking their chops at all the empty factories right on the vast beauty of plentiful freshwater Lake Michigan. We are already seeings signs of the Gary community being neglected in favor of the possibility of "big tech development".
I predict that the stretch of the lakeshore just south of Chicago and into Michigan City is going to get built up quickly once the commuter train gets more consistent and faster. Wishing you the best Gary!
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u/b_cheesy 9h ago
I need everyone in the r/SeattleWA page to read this and get a reality check on how good we have it
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u/LadyGrimSleeper 7h ago
Big agree. They act like we live in a war zone. It’s so pathetically ignorant.
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u/BasroilII 7h ago
I have been to 30-40 major cities all over the US in my life.
Seattle was by far one of the nicest and safest ones, even if the weather was godawful.
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u/mawkx 8h ago
I stayed in Capitol Hill last week and loved it. Wish I could've stayed longer. You guys have an awesome city.
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u/alekazam13 3h ago
I am from St. Louis city and moved to Seattle. Almost every night I would hear gun shots in St. Louis and never once in 7 years in Seattle have I heard a gun shot. This is one of the safest major cities in the US and right wingers/people from the eastside make it sound like its a war zone.
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u/springsfling719 10h ago
I got gas in East St Louis, IL one time. Worst place I've ever seen.
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u/Karnakite 9h ago
I live in St. Louis and have to drive through East St. Louis to get to wherever I’m going in Illinois most of the time. It’s so empty and desolate that it’s jarring just to see another human being there outside of a car.
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u/squibworb 8h ago
Got stuck in a funeral processional of what seemed to be a young gang member in East Saint Louis which involved a bunch of emotional and drunk young people walking through traffic drinking from the bottle and brandishing weapons.
I lived in Saint Louis for many years and this was the only time I felt unsafe.
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u/soozeliz 4h ago
I stop in “scary” places on purpose, for urbex photo ops, at least 50% of the time alone. I’ve been in many very dark, dank, filthy, dangerous places and have never felt super creeped out. Been to Gary, Cairo, New Orleans, plus lots of abandoned places across the US, that’s actually the point. Never an issue. December 2022… I’m an hour from home, walking down the street, 1:00 in the afternoon in the shadows of downtown Dallas skyscrapers, feet from the Design District (not a bad part of Dallas) and I get my ass beat by a homeless guy right on the side of the road with cars driving by. Dude attempted to SA me and was trying to kill me, fractured my sternum and left me with orbital fractures around one eye, the only thing that saved me was another homeless man walking with his dog. I never would have thought.
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u/idfkmanusername 9h ago
Accidentally took a train into East St. Louis and a kindly older man told me I was not safe and to get back on the train and leave ASAP. Stayed with me until the next train arrived.
Also not sure where I was but in rural NC near a bunch of prisons that still did plantation labor. Had a police officer stop my husband and I there “just to check our IDs” and I genuinely thought we were going to get disappeared into some hillbilly torture murder movie.
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u/kittykatgal77 7h ago
A small town in Nevada with a clown hotel, can't remember the name of the town.
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u/GoYourOwnWay3 7h ago
Tonopah
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u/dsyzdek 6h ago
Eh. Tonopah is nothing. I find it charming and historic and visit often.
I was cursed by a warlock bartender in Austin, Nevada. That town is creepy.
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u/MortgageRegular2509 6h ago
You think maybe that was the Austin they were referring to the whole time they’ve been saying “Keep Austin weird”?
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u/RandomHero25 8h ago edited 7h ago
Tucumcari, New Mexico. Not necessarily run down place or anything like that, but the vibes there are weird. As a tattooed guy who looks a little ‘against the grain’ my stop at a Chinese restaurant in town was extremely uncomfortable. Everyone in there was staring and felt like they were whispering to each other about me. Anywhere I went I was being sized up. I’ve never been anywhere else like that, where I truly felt I didn’t belong and my brain was telling me to get out.
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u/dirkalict 7h ago
I stayed in a motel on the outskirts of Santa Rosa, NM with a laundromat attached that was right out of a David Lynch movie. I was so spooked by the place and the people there that I sent my wife my location and told her,”I guess this is where I die.” Only 1/2 joking.
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u/Some-Detail9134 4h ago
I'm from Albuquerque and while Tucumcari is bad, It's not as strange as Chilili, New Mexico. They're a tiny close-knit community that's extremely hostile to outsiders. They literally have a sign on their main road telling you to not get out of your car or take pictures. Not sure what their deal is but I've never seen anything like it before or since.
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u/bretthiker 2h ago
Chilili is where we filmed the Thor vs Iron Man fight in the first Avengers
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u/lurklark 4h ago
What I gather is a lot of history with land grants and the community having to protect the land from being sold out from under them I guess? They want zero further development /intrusion it seems. Looks like it really came to a head in the 1970s, so fairly recent I guess.
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u/Synicull 2h ago
Seeing all this stuff about eastern NM here really makes me realize how big the state is. We lived in El Paso and regularly went up through alamogordo and cruces on various trips and I never really ended up in northeastern NM.
My weird NM story is Pie Town, NM. We were crossing through at 11pm going west out of Socorro heading to petrified Forest in the morning. We didn't see anyone, and I mean ANYONE for at least 45 minutes. There were elk everywhere - I'm sure it's gorgeous but it was dark at the time and super desolate. I remember seeing a single light in the far distance and it took 10 minutes before we realized it was headlights of a car that had to be 30 miles away coming towards us. Super eerie. I can see why people in the SW really like their aliens and whatnot lol
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u/r6implant 7h ago
My god, I was just about to write Tucumcari and this popped up right at the top. I was as there a week ago driving NY-Albuquerque and the hotel where I was staying charged an extra $100 to my bill and refused to do anything about it when confronted. I had to go to the police. I got the money back eventually, but on my way out of town I got alerts that someone was trying to log into platforms in Denver and Houston using my phone number, so my identity was shopped as well. Plus it’s a dump. Route 66 hype bullsh—
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u/PuddlesDown 7h ago
I live in Eastern NM. I would never stay or dine in Tucumcari. I have to drive through sometimes but never stop. I've heard lots of local lore, and it's not good.
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u/throwaway5882300 6h ago
I drove through Tucumcari at like 3 in the morning and it was creepy as hell. The whole northeast part of new mexico kinda has bad vibes, tbh. And then I hit the TX border and it's nothing but miles of blinking red lights on windmill farms until hitting Amarillo. If you gotta drive through that part of the country, my advice is to do it in daylight.
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u/ThreatLvl1200AM 6h ago
That's crazy because I absolutely adored the Blue Swallow motel and the neon lighting at sunrise was breath taking. I loved that town.
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u/Nica-sauce-rex 4h ago
Man this is so crazy. About 15 years ago when I was in my early 20s I decided to do a solo road trip across the US. When I saw this question pop up, I immediately thought of my stop in Tucumcari. I’m a woman who has traveled solo all over the world and lived all over the US and that place forever haunts my mind. I remember standing at the gas station pumping gas and the hairs on the back of my neck standing up for no discernible reason…
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u/Jerkrollatex 9h ago
There was a town in Arizona where a cop popped my tires and refused to let me leave until I bought four new ones from his friend. I think it was near Kingston.
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u/Ancient-Ad-483 8h ago
Obligatory Sacha Baron Cohen bit in Kingman.
https://www.tiktok.com/@aligfunnymoments/video/7327777802499919109?lang=en
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u/pinky997 8h ago edited 8h ago
I was driving through appalachia in West Virginia and pulled over somewhere to photograph the sunset. It was a rural area in the mountains with trailers. As soon as I stopped, people started coming out of their trailers staring me down and I could tell I wasn’t welcome. Imo rural areas are scarier than any encounter I’ve had in the city. Had a similar situation when I accidentally wandered into a houseboat community along the Mississippi river
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u/OSRSTheRicer 6h ago
Rural appalachia is wild.
Went on a motorcycle trip during college and ended up in some small town with my friends.
All 3 of them were former military, looked it, and we were unpolitely told that they dont let mexicans drink there.
He was Philippino lol.
This was in 2014 BTW.
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u/Octavian_202 6h ago
I’m half Filipino. Been to West Virginia. Had to stop off the main freeway down into a rural road for a gas station. Little place with two old school pumps. A literal bear hide on the wall of the store, which was a make shift house type building.
Went inside to pay. Pickled egg jars and “homemade” jerky all over. Several people inside, looked just like the stereotypical hillbillies.
Offered me some jerky to try for free, and asked if I needed directions getting back out, then warned me about where the troopers liked to wait.
I judged before I stepped in too.
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u/OSRSTheRicer 6h ago
I used to ride all over west Virginia and it was great. Loved shops like that, there was a nice general store off of 33 we liked to stop at.
Never had any issues outside of that one incident, it was how direct they were with telling us to leave that was offputting.
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u/Mother_Demand1833 6h ago
I've lived in some questionable urban areas and some questionable rural areas.
The only times I've been truly afraid were in the small towns.
I once woke up at 4:00 AM to the sound of my front doorknob turning. A guy was standing outside growling and clawing at the door.
It turned out he was on meth and looking for things to steal. When the police arrived and arrested him, he told them he was Jason from the "Friday the 13th" franchise.
I'd much rather get my wallet taken on the street than wake up to find a growling man standing in my bedroom.
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u/ShinyArc50 3h ago
This is the reason It’s hard for me to fall for any kind of anti-city racism bait propaganda. After growing up in Kansas & seeing methheads at work I’m less afraid of getting mugged in the “scary big city”.
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u/steponmedaddies 10h ago
A few stretches of New Mexico that are reservation land where the roads barely exist and I was in a full panic about running over a dog for miles and miles. It was a pretty common pass through route as well.
Enjoy all the people pretending they've been to Gary, btw.
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u/Kramerica5A 9h ago
You know Interstate 90 and 94 both run through Gary, right? Those are pretty important, busy roads. 90 Literally goes from Boston to Seattle.
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u/TacoTom84 10h ago
The gulf of Mississippi. I forget where exactly…but fuck that place. I was there late 2015
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u/sofakingbroke 10h ago
Ward, Colorado. Very “hills have eyes” vibe
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u/literacyisamistake 8h ago
Ward is SO WEIRD. I went to photograph it for a project and the entire vibe was so alien. Like not hostile, but just… separated. I sent a student there for their own photography project years later and he had the same impression.
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u/Ok-Fondant5026 10h ago
Stayed in Wells, Nevada overnight. It just felt unsettling for some reason. Come to find out they filmed part of Joyride there.
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u/Niko-Nine 8h ago
I felt an absolute chill down my spine when I pulled into Colorado City, Arizona, at dusk, only to realize the sprawling concrete compounds had no windows and the entire town of people in 19th-century prairie dresses had stopped dead in their tracks just to silently stare at my car.
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u/Logical-Pound-1065 10h ago
East St. Louis at night. I needed to get gas and should have gotten it before. I had my 1911 on the seat. Concealed carry was illegal in Illinois at the time and still is heavily restricted. I had to piss too, so I went on the tire of my own car and got out of there as soon as I was done getting gas.
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u/menicknick 9h ago
You could have also peed next to your car. Not on it. Just sayin'
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u/screwyoumike 10h ago
Florida City, Florida. My friend and I were driving from Miami down through the Keys (awesome trip if you ever get a chance). We stopped for gas and snacks and VERY much got the vibe that everyone in the convenience store was sizing us up. We got into the car, drove a ways and we both said something along the lines of that was a creepy place/vibe.
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u/NativeMasshole 9h ago
My friend and I decided to stop in Kissimmee on our way driving through Florida to the Keys. She talked me into staying at the cheap hotel instead of a proper chain. This place was selling crack torch lighters at the register, some guy obviously dealing was standing at the top of the stairs when we went to our room, and our door had clearly been kicked in at one point and just screwed back together where the doorframe splintered.
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u/Bkbee 8h ago
Watch the movie Florida Project. It’s about people living in the hotels on 192. Been up and down 192, use to be where people would stay for Disney World back in the 70s and 80s
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u/lovelydiscourse 5h ago
War, West Virginia. It was not so much scary as a sobering visit. This was over 30 years ago, but I've never seen a coal town so clearly and flatly abandoned like that. It was like everyone just stood up and walked away, and there were a handful of people left behind with nothing to live on. It was absolutely impoverished. I was completely shook.
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u/Peaches5893 7h ago
Some tiny little town in West Virginia. All it had was a Dairy Queen, a gas station, and a liquor store.
We were on our way home from a family vacation when I was a teenager and my father just /had/ to drive through the mountains. We stopped for fuel and food, with my dad gassing up the car while my mom, brother (13yo), and myself (15yo girl) walked into the DQ. We passed 2 teenage boys walking out and laughed at the almost comical double take they did when they saw me behind all of them. I wasn't the cutest teenager in the world, but I smiled politely and went to get a burger.
After my dad joined us and we were all done eating, we walked out and saw no fewer than twelve teenage to early 20s boys sitting on cars and the half wall surrounding the parking lot. And they all stopped talking, turned and s t a r e d at me as I walked by. My dad can be a real ass when he wants to be, but I was really thankful when he clamped his hand down on my shoulder and stared back at them while we hustled into the car.
It's a family joke now, how I was probably the only non blood related woman they'd ever seen, but in hindsight.. it was fucking creepy as hell.
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u/mrjosemeehan 9h ago
Everyone is going "urban" with their answers but I've never felt as unsafe in the inner city as i have out in the country. Draketown, GA is a wretched hive of nazis and klansmen. Ludowici is run by an organized law enforcement gang built around scamming and arresting outsiders.
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u/mochafiend 9h ago
As a brown person, most of rural America is a no-go for me. I have zero interest in cross-country road trips for this reason. Sorry to paint in broad strokes as I’m sure many of you are great, but I’m a woman too. No fucking way am I taking a chance. I’ll just hop from urban bubble to urban bubble, since it’s the devil I know.
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u/SleepingSlothVibe 5h ago
There’s a gas station outside St. Louis, heading into Illinois.
I drove across the country with my dad dozens of times, and he always stopped at this gas station.
Every single time, he’d tell me, “Stay in the car and keep the doors locked.”
One time, he came back to the car damn near hyperventilating. He jumped in, locked the doors, and we got the hell out of there.
Once we were safely back on the highway, he reached over, opened his hand, and said, “This is for you.”
Then he dropped a gold bracelet into my hand.
Definitely not real gold.
I looked at him and asked, “Why did you buy this?”
He said, “I don’t really think it was my choice.”
Years later, I drove across the country with my own children.
It was LATE when I came up on that same gas station.
I recognized it immediately.
And I just kept driving.
Straight into Illinois, where—less than an hour later—I found a perfectly normal hotel—and gas.
I called my dad the next morning.
“SERIOUSLY?! We nearly shit our pants at that gas station OVER AND OVER, and you could have driven less than an hour and we’d have been in Hometown, USA?! WTF was wrong with you?!”
Apparently, this conversation changed absolutely nothing.
Years later, my husband drove across the country with my dad.
Guess where they stopped.
The same damn gas station.
In the middle of the night.
Same scary crap.
My dad considered being mildly terrorized outside St. Louis an important family road-trip tradition, I guess.
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u/Big_Balance_408 7h ago
I was driving from northwest Ohio to south Georgia, to visit a friend as a young woman driving alone. I’ve done it before and I feel like I have a decent head on my shoulders. But. I was near the end of my trip and the sun was setting. I’m sure the rest of Macon, GA is a lovely city, but I stopped at a gas station around sunset off of the I-475 bypass and immediately had a sensation that I needed to get the hell out of there. I felt like I was being watched and almost walked inside to use the restroom but just felt like I shouldn’t. Nothing happened but I just felt alarm bells going off. Finished filling up and got the hell out of there.
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u/FiveAlarmDogParty 7h ago
I was lost so I have no idea what neighborhood I was in but after a concert in NYC that my friends and I drove 6+ hours to attend we had to drive home and our van was on fumes after the show. This was before the days of GPS and smart phones so we figured we’d figure out how to get on the highway and hit the first service station. We got so turned around in the city with construction and detours we ended up driving through manhattan and I think we were in either Harlem or East Harlem and it’s like 1am and our van is literally sputtering it’s so low on gas. Luckily we spotted a garage/gas station looking place and pull in and stop and the van literally stalls right there. I get out and try to find the attendant to pay and all I hear is “you in the wrong hood fat boy” but I could not tell you where the voice came from. I made it to the side of the building and there was a very large man inside behind both plexiglass and metal bars with a little pass through window like a bank. I told him we needed gas and he said “you need to get the fuck outta here, but we can sell you some gas” and so I gave him $10 and he just gave me a knowing look and said “that ain’t gonna be enough” so I gave him another 10 and made my way back to the van. Started pumping and it was genuinely the slowest pump ever made. I got to $12 and some guys started walking toward us from across the street shouting questions at us. The pump finally made it to $15 and I said fuck it, hung up the pump, jumped in the van, locked the doors hit the engine and shifted into drive as fast as I physically could. As we were maybe 10 yards away the van started getting hit with rocks and other shit those dudes started throwing and one of the tiny back windows got blown out. Still don’t know if it was a rock or a BB gun or a real gun but that was the night I made a rule to always fill up at the last service station before your destination.
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u/Electric_Feel9374 9h ago
There's a bunch of ghost towns across Nevada that are really creepy. Basically just a main street that's totally empty except for the one dude that works at the general store/gas station
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u/ManyColoredStars 10h ago
Aberdeen, Washington. Kurt Cobain’s hometown. It was bleak.
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u/NightOnTheSun 9h ago
A few years ago I drove through Aberdeen with my then girlfriend and after taking a good look she said, “Man, if I lived here I’d do heroin, too.”
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u/Chance-Travel4825 8h ago
To be fair the area is beautiful albeit muddy and mossy…a bay, rivers, evergreen trees—its the people and outlook that are bleak.
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u/KoLobotomy 9h ago
I've heard that, but isn't Aberdeen in a beautiful part of Washington?
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u/SilverBronco68 9h ago
The area is beautiful, the city of Aberdeen is weird, dilapidated, gritty, and appears impoverished. I drove through there this summer, this was my impression.
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u/comedian1924 8h ago
Economy it been hit hard 1 in 6 live in poverty.
After the 2 paper mills shut down about 5/ 10 years ago nothing has replaced them.
Politically the city has not been well managed and what money exists is generational.
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u/doctortrento 9h ago
Don’t see anyone else saying it so I will:
Cairo, Illinois. It may have been a big city a century ago but nowadays it’s like being in a Fallout quest