21 People Describe The Scariest Places On Earth

From Redditor /u/Roflmoo:

"I was driving through Georgia. As I live in Florida, there aren't many out-of-state trips that don't involve Georgia at some point. Unfortunately, I made a bad decision to wait just one more exit and entered a long strip of highway with no streetlights, no civilization, and no other cars. Usually, I like having the road to myself, but with all the deer crossing signs, I was worried about getting help if I had an accident. I waited a while until I had service on my cell phone and sent a text to my girlfriend at the time, 'So now I'm in the middle of Georgia, surrounded by dense forest, going 45 mph in a deer crossing zone. If you don't hear from me, send a search party.'

I finally reached the next exit and pulled off to find a hotel. The road wasn't paved well, but that's not uncommon in the south. What was uncommon what when it turned to a narrow dirt road. At this point I wanted to turn back. I would have if the road were wide enough, but with the trees growing so close on either side, the fat ass on my old 2000 Ford Taurus didn't have the turning ability. I turned the radio on just so I wouldn't imagine hearing 'dueling banjos' coming from the trees and kept driving until the inevitable driveway or parking lot where I could turn. I didn't get anything but static on the radio but I kept flipping stations to give myself something else to focus on. Eventually I found a grainy talk radio AM station. It was static-y but I could tell it was some kind of comedy. There was laughing and music so it made me feel better. I stopped my car for a second to read the reply from my text earlier, a simple 'k. be careful.' I replied and kept driving.

The road opened up eventually, and I had the room to turn around. As I did I nearly crapped myself. I couldn't see the surrounding area before turning and I assumed it was all trees. As I turned my headlights lit up the area around me. An entire town, full of people, men women and children, in the middle of the night, with no lights on, all just standing there, staring at me.

I actually screamed, and floored it, making it back to the main road in what seemed like seconds. I have no idea what happened, I have not been able to figure out where I was on a map, and I know I didn't dream the whole thing because I checked my phone messages and the times add up. That place, wherever it was, is the scariest place I have ever been."

From Redditor /u/LittlePe0ple:

"My town has an entire campus of abandoned mental asylums and schools for the mentally disabled. They shut them down due to the absolutely awful mistreatment and quality of life for the patients. There are underground tunnels connecting a lot of the buildings (I think a few people actually disappeared down there.) I've been inside the theater, and its basement. Never thought I'd see blood on the walls of a basement of a theater. When you get near the asylum, your gut literally tells you not to get closer. The grounds are dead silent too. Went there once, into a few buildings. Never doing it again."

From Redditor /u/Sterling_-_Archer:

"Aokigahara, Japan. Terrifying.

At first, it's beautiful. It's at the base of Mt. Fuji, so you would be correct in guessing that the initial view is gorgeous. However, as you stumble in, you quickly repent for your silly, silly thoughts.

First, it's dolls. Dolls pinned to trees, dolls hanging from branches, dolls in bushes. I don't know why the dolls were there, and maybe it was just the area I was in, but there were lots of dolls.

As you move deeper, it very quickly becomes lost articles of clothing, shoes, and personal items. You see full campsites just simply abandoned. Yet, that is not the worst. No, the worst is that some campsites weren't abandoned.

There's corpses in tents, corpses against trees, and even some corpses hanging from them. It's commonly referred to as the Suicide Forest, and for good reason. People go in, and they don't come out.

Possibly the worst thing there was, though, was this parking lot. It had abandoned cars in it, just left there by an owner who was fed up. Some were rinky-dink and broken down, but others were chillingly recent. It's a huge reality check to see the earthly belongings of someone who ended their life simply sitting there, seemingly waiting for their master's return. It reminds me of the Futurama episode where Fry's dog waits for him to return, even to his death.

The entire thing is soul crushing, the sentiment of finality palpable. I highly recommend it. It's beautiful and horrendous.

Also, some of the caves are pretty."

From Redditor /u/BrawndoTTM:

"Realistically, I can't think of a place I'd be more scared of than North Korea. It boggles my mind that Westerners voluntarily tour that evil place. I know it's pretty safe as tourism is a source of income for them, but still, I would be terrified of saying the wrong thing or talking to the wrong person and ending up in a labor/death camp."

From Redditor /u/Mother-Is-A-Ghoti:

"My dad is a virologist and used to work in a BSL-4 at the CDC with various smallpox and Ebola virus strains. Most people don't realize how freaky they are - the scenes of entering and exiting labs described in 'The Hot Zone' and shown in 'Contagion' don't do it justice, apparently. The fans keeping your suit pressurized and steady hands while using lots of sharp and fragile lab equipment are pretty much the only boundary between you and a room full of death."

From Redditor /u/Manadox:

"The scariest place I've ever been to is just outside the Red Forest near Chernobyl. It's actually a beautiful place, the leaves in the fall turn a near blood red and the ground is cloaked in a thin veil of snow. However, when I visited the site about three years ago, the guide left me there alone and told me to stay put. The other person I was with had run off somewhere and he had to go find him. So I stood there and waited for him to return.

At the edge of the forest there was absolute silence. Not a bit of wind or any animals. The most frightening part was knowing that just beyond the tree line, lay an invisible force with the power to kill you twenty times over. A force that will rot your insides and burn your skin. Even scarier, was the stories I had heard the night before. There are no mutations at Chernobyl, the animals just 'changed,' or at least that's how the locals put it. It was like being five-years-old and not knowing what was in your closet at night. It was an oppressive choking cold fear, almost paralyzing.

After awhile a paranoia began to set in and my mind began to race. 'Was I too close to the forest? Am I being irradiated? What was that shadow? What was that rustling?' I stood there, alone, freezing, scared, knowing that a 100-foot walk into the forest would kill me. When the guide returned with my friend, I almost cried with relief."