33 Horrifying Relics Hidden Inside Forgotten Mansions That Defy All Logical Explanation
Many years ago, when I was young, my friends and I loved exploring abandoned buildings. On one of those nighttime excursions, one of my friends ducked into a corridor of an abandoned sanatorium, and when she returned a few minutes later, she was literally shocked by what she saw.
All she said was, “Let’s get out of here, quickly!” But for almost twenty years, she hasn’t told anyone what she actually saw there. However, you can find plenty of stories online where urban explorers share their experiences and the weirdest, even eeriest, finds. So here’s a selection of such tales for you.
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I went into an abandoned bulging that was halfway underground in the city I lived in. And there was seriously a barber shop under ground run by a homeless man. And in all seriousness, dude was kinda a hero. He gave homeless people free haircuts and nobody ever ask where he came from or why he did it and I think he’s still there.
Technically not creepy, but another group of explorers.
Me and my cousin went to check out a former U.S. Army Base in my hometown. First we saw a couple making out/having intimate time (not sure which one really) and tried to politely notify them that they weren't alone to which they didn't respond.
Later when it got darker, though, we kept hearing footsteps that stopped whenever we stopped to listen for them. When we started walking faster they did too, so we went full sprint and somehow ended up on the roof of that complex. When we looked into courtyard area we saw a group of younger kids emerge from a building and realized we were just scaring ourselves really.
We had a nice chat, both parties trying act as if they weren't scared shitless just a few minutes ago, and we showed them how to get onto the roof.
Oh also: There was a Burger King there and the kitchen was basically still fully intact, just no power. There were still burgers on the grill and they didn't really look much different from how they look when you eat them. I didn't eat at BK for a while after that...
Good to know that the chemicals in fast food will preserve it through the Zombie Apocalypse.
Well, as someone whose a firm believer of the paranormal I've explored many locations as I thought would be haunted. One that sticks out the most was when me and my buddies were seniors in high school we caught wind of a location not to far from us so we decided to head out to it. It was an old burnt down mansion off the base of a mountain in California. We got there and all there really is, is the foundation and some of the walls up that could've been a room. What got us was not the house itself but what was in the backyard. I'm sure there was some rituals held there because of the pentagrams and unalived animals. When we found that everything from the atmosphere and our health started to change. I got sick to the point I threw up my buddy that drove us kept feeling like someone was after him and my other friend felt drained and wanted to lay down. We decided it was time to leave cuz we didnt want to stick around to find whomever was behind the rituals. As we were leaving his car wouldn't start so he popped it in neutral and rolled down the hill from where we were parked. We got back to the main road and his car started right on up but the creepy stuff still followed us. His radio kept going static with an occasional woman voice coming over asking for us to come back. We got to a local skate park and everything calmed down and we never went back to that location.
If you think the Urban Explorers movement (often shortened to simply Urbex) is something new, born of the entertainment-saturated 21st century, you’re definitely mistaken. Firstly, people have always enjoyed exploring ancient abandoned buildings, houses, and dungeons. True, the original purpose of such expeditions was solely for enrichment.
For example, tomb raiding was trendy long before Lara Croft and Indiana Jones. Here’s further proof: literally all the tombs of the pharaohs of ancient Egypt, both in the pyramids and underground, were plundered long before the advent of modern archaeology.
Incidentally, this is precisely why the discovery of the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun at the beginning of the last century caused such a sensation in the scientific world. The fact is that this tomb has remained untouched since ancient times.
Well, this is largely because Tutankhamun, by historical standards, was a rather insignificant figure compared to other pharaohs. But now he is famous worldwide, over 3K years after leaving for the Hereafter.
My aunt lives in a open field , with a very large wooded area , I was exploring with my Cousin and we found a old rotten Barney doll when we pushed on the doll to make it talk it’s voice box was broken making a muffled scream , if was very terrifying
Edit : thanks for all the upvotes, I’m new to Reddit and this is a great start for me.
A morgue in the basement of a sanitarium.
I wasn't actually creeped out until the girl i was with tried talking me into having intimate relations there.
When I was thirteen I would explore this abandoned farm. Once I went there and saw piles of clothing on the floor with red stains as well as white stains.
One of the first reliably known “urban explorers” is the Frenchman Philibert Asper. In 1793, while serving as a porter at a Parisian hospital, he ventured into the catacombs beneath the city and never returned. His skeleton was discovered only eleven years ago, and was identified only by a set of keys.
Despite cynics believing that Asper’s true destination was merely the wine cellars, he is now considered a legend of sorts. About a hundred years ago, representatives of the French Dadaist art movement, aiming to combat “bourgeois” art and lifestyle, organized tours of the Paris catacombs.
The purpose of these tours was not so much to make money as to fray their nerves and create a kind of cynical parody of traditional tourism. However, the concept caught on and remains quite popular today.
I was exploring an abandoned school with my friends, and in one of the science rooms we found a box of mummified pig fetuses just sitting in the middle of the room. I’m guessing they were going to be dissected before the school closed, and they didn’t decompose because of all the chemicals in them.
The creepiest thing is when we went back 2 years later, the box was gone.
I was exploring an old vinly factory as im a huge fan of vinly, was hoping to score some free vinly laying about somewhere. The place was a very tall white building, run down now as it had been shut down for years. Still had all the large presses there though which was cool but no moulds so that was sad. Walked into a room where the roof had given in and i looked up to see the rafters full of birds, thats not what was creepy. I took a few steps into the room to hear a loud crunch, i looked down to realise the floor was layered with unalived birds and their bodily fluids. Like must of been 100 plus birds , just layer after layer, no where else in the whole building but this room. Noped out of there.
Me and my gf have a habit of going around to really old abandoned houses to explore. I have a bag dedicated for this. With respirator masks, flash lights. First aid kits etc. I have 2 stories. One weird and one scary.
1: we pull up to this really old looking place. In the middle of nowhere, door is unlocked but something is blocking it. So we go around to the back and I kick the door in. First thing I do is go move the dresser in front of the front door so we can get out easier. Then take stock of the place. It's a trashed out mess. Animal droppings cover about 40% of the floor. And about 20% of what's left of the floor has caved in to the basement. So we start to look around, and at this point we put the masks on because the air is foul and dusty. We walk into what used to be a living room and we both begin to laugh for a long time. Because in the living room, smack dab in the middle, is a toilet, with a fake flower next to it, sticking out of an old coffee tin. And its facing an old dinosaur of a tv sitting on top of a 5 gallon bucket. It was such a weirdly peaceful set up. TV didnt work or anything, but it was the quaint little scene and it was funny.
2: this is the scary one. Different day, different house. Pull up and theres a small gate. But we dont even hop it, because just the look of this place is freaky af. I dont normally freak out if something looks scary but this is different. The front yard was full of garbage, stacked about 5 feet high. The house was this disgusting old orange color. But just looked freaky asf. I cant really describe it, but I promise you, just the sight of this house had me sweating. And I've seen and been in some scary houses. I take out my little mini 10 dollar drone with a gopro duck taped to it. Fly it around a bit around the house and bring it back. Return to the laptop in my car and watch the footage. House is freaky. But then I realized the garbage and old furniture in the front yard is arranged into a giant cross which was so large you could only see from above. We noped out of there real quick. As the feeling of being watched was eating away at our nerves. We got back in the car, deleted every picture we took and the gopro video and havent even gone within 10 miles of it since.
In the 1990s, Canadian Jeff Chapman, known as “Ninjalicious,” founded what is now known as Urbex. His journal, “Infiltration,” in which Chapman chronicled his travels through Toronto’s “shadowy side,” including forays into hotels, abandoned factories, and tunnels, also became legendary.
Incidentally, it was Chapman who formulated the unspoken code of the Urban Explorers movement, the core principle of which is: “Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints.” After all, beyond aesthetic considerations, the various strange things you might find in abandoned places can prove dangerous.
My friends and I went in to an abandoned house once. It was like the whole family had just got up and left one day. There was a creepy family portrait that looked straight out of the 80s but I'm pretty sure it was the family that had lived there. The kids toys were scattered every where and there were literally thousand of check stubs. They were everywhere, we thought they were actual checks and took a bunch. We thought we were rich, I have no idea why, since actual checks would of been worthless too.
I was walking through an abandoned military fort that's kinda near where I live. My two friends were with me, but they're both really short, so they made me walk in front of them when we decided to explore the old tunnels.
We were walking into them and I get about 3 steps from the first corner when I hear movement that couldn't have been an animal. It sounded like a person standing up or walking or something. I turned around and just walked out, so my friends followed me.
Side note: I usually carry a knife on me just to be safe, but I had forgotten it that night, so I had no way to protect myself.
I went into an old abandoned hospital not too long ago, like around two months ago. I climbed in through a broken window off of some scaffolding and looked around. At first I found a bunch of graffiti, old garbage everywhere, usual abandoned building stuff. When I went to the second floor though, there was a snuffed out campfire, red pentagrams on the wall, and a bunch of cinderblocks arranged in some kind of ritual formation. For some reason I decided to continue, and in the next room there was a plastic animal skull on a pile of rocks. My stupid self decided to keep looking around. When I got up to the third floor though, I was still on the staircase when a bunch of dudes in black cloaks and plauge doctor masks ran down the hallway with a bare woman carrying plastic nerf rifles screaming a wierd language. I noped out of there so quick. Glad they knocked that place down last week.
For example, consider the forays into the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant exclusion zone, which became quite popular in Europe at the beginning of this century. To be honest, I visited there once myself, and I only have a couple dozen rather creepy film photographs to prove it.
There, in the abandoned houses in the villages around Chornobyl, there were many different “souvenirs,” but it’s best not to take them with you, as they could still contain traces of radioactive contamination. Even though more than a quarter-century had passed since the disaster at the time… So all that remains of these trips are photos and, of course, stories.
Last year, my friend and I were exploring this old abandoned farm. It was night time so it was super creepy, not to mention it was in the middle of the woods. So we go upstairs and we find a wooden chair in the middle of the room and a porcelain doll hanging from a noose above it. I nearly wet my pants.
I was exploring an upper floor of a Joiners shop with my Father. He led me to a side room, where, sitting on a shelf, was a tiny, fully formed baby in a jar of preservative.
Even the owner of the joiners shop, in his 80's, had no idea as to its history ... He did say that the businesses was once also a funeral directors.
It gave me quite a shock, as I was around 8 years old. Regards. H.
There are very few mix-ups at funerals,but they do happen. My guess it this baby k****d it's mother, they were supposed to put it in the coffin with the mother, and they couldn't find it.
Last summer i explored an abandoned sanatorium at night with a group of friends. The buildind was in bad condition but it was still possible to explore the whole building. Most of the things have been stolen at that point, so you could only see the empty rooms and the series of coridors and hallways. We found an indoor pool, a winding coridor that led to a small basement and possibly the weirdest thing, the old archives (rummaged but still in "good" condition). We found thousands of patients records. Reading a few sent chills down my spine.
Report that to the local health department, that's a violation of HIPPA. Do NOT give them your name, you were trespassing. They might not be nice about it.
The development of modern civilization, especially the trend toward deindustrialization, which sometimes leaves huge factory buildings abandoned, has created a vast field for urban explorers. Simply search the internet and find something truly exciting and bone-chilling.
“I search the internet and try to make a nice list of possible locations, because when you do urban exploring, you never know if you [can] get in, get inside,” National Geographic quotes veteran urban explorer Bob Thissen. “It may already be demolished, it may be reconverted, or secured so you can’t get in.”
Every urban explorer has a wealth of stories to tell, but some of them would rather stay secret. Because, to paraphrase Forrest Gump’s mom, any abandoned object is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.
Going to be a bit vague here, bc reasons... A few years ago, came across a full, articulated human skeleton in a casket on the upper floor of this abandoned building we were exploring. We knew it was there and why, just had to see for ourselves.
There's an old office building which got kinda popular nearby where I live.
For me the creepiest or scariest moment must be when I found a little room full of candles, cellophane paper, cigarettes, needles, spoons etc.
It made me kinda KNEW I shouldn't be there.
Luckily, i was with my boyfriend so we bolted out of the place, but we weren't alone in the building.
As we were heading for the stairs, I see to my right a bunch of people in a room just sitting, (chilling i guess? thinking afterwards, that was probably what they were doing)
but after what kind of room we just saw we just ran off the stairs out of the building.
We kinda got followed with screams and yells but thank god nobody got actually near.
edit: another story:
also, in the basement of that building was one (1) room full of kids toys.
which was definitely creepy.
The basement also flooded one time, (floor to ceiling was like 4-5 meters high, literally the whole floor to ceiling was under water, it even got to the stairs to the ground/first floor)
so every toy that was in that room eventually got over the whole basement floor because of the water. it looked kinda unsettling.
I was exploring this area with a few old dilapidated houses, inside one of them I found probably around 5,000-10,000 old political signs for my city...I mean this house was absolutely overflowing with them.
I looked up some info on the name that was on the signs, and found out that one of the people running had accused the other candidate of having someone pull up all her signs...but they never had any proof.
I looked up who owned the land that the house was on, and it was the other candidates brother.
Basically...I solved a nearly two decade old case of election fraud ( or whatever it was, it was a huge deal in the news back then) and couldn't tell anyone because I was a dumb kid that was trespassing.
An anonymous tip to a local reporter might have gotten things going.
I can’t call myself an avid urban explorer – after all, I’ve only dedicated a couple of years of my life to this pursuit, and only made a few dozen different forays. But reading this collection of stories, I was reminded of long-forgotten sensations, the sound of my footsteps echoing through the vaults of empty buildings, and the anticipation of something unexpected around the corner.
So now, our dear readers, please feel free to read these stories as well, and maybe share your own in the comments below this list. After all, great stories are what make our lives more interesting and exciting.
My cousin was an Air Force brat. Born and raised all over the world. He was in High School in Okinawa Japan, the military every year would come in with a demo of live ordinance that was all over the island. There was also warnings about going into caves. He and his buddies found a cave. Inside was a rifle and the dismantled skeleton of a soldier who apparently unalived himself . They discreetly reported it and the Japanese military took over from there.
Me and my friend went into an old abandoned mansion we were walking around for a while and when we got upstairs we found a room with a bunch of sleeping bags, dirty needles and used rubbers. Then in a different section of the house we found a room with a mattress, blanket, pillows and three bottles of alchol. In the garage we found an old juke box with all the music ripped out and finally the strangest thing was an old microwave with a jacket on top of it covered in brown stains just sitting in the middle of a hallway.
In the 80s, in south east Texas, my brother and I were walking down a creek and fishing when we saw an old abandoned house in the woods. Since we weren’t catching anything worth keeping, we decided to explore it. Half the doors were locked but we ended up through the living room area when we saw a mattress and stuff was piled up in front of the stairs. We decided to climb over it and go upstairs.
As I walked up the stairs, I turned to make sure my brother made it over and when I turned back around, I almost went face first into a skeleton of a large bird hanging by a string in the stairway. It startled me but mostly I thought it was odd. When I reached the top of the stairs, I looked around the large dark empty room only to realize it wasn't empty; the floor was completely covered with small bones. We heard something downstairs so we went to the only window of the room and looked down onto the garage roof. We didn't want to go back the way we came so we jumped out the window, grabbed our rod/reels and ran off.
To this day my brother swears he looked back and saw an old woman in that window watching us run away.
This wasn't really exploring as such. But back in the late 80's when Germany was still a divided country I went to Berlin. When Berlin got divided, part of the West Berlin subway ended up under East Berlin territory. There were only two lines and a handful of stations affected, but when you took the subway on those two lines, you went via a few East-Berlin stations before ending up back in West Berlin.
The stations in the east weren't operating, they had just been boarded up to stop people from using them as an escape to the west. The trains didn't stop there, they just slowed down. There was barely any lighting in the stations, most of it really was just lit up from the train. Those stations basically had been abandoned, so the architecture and everything was unchanged from WWII times. It looked really eerie and creepy. Like stepping back in time.
I'm not a professional urban explorer (god, I wish), but something happened to me when I was exploring a house at the age of 11.
So there's this old house in the middle of a field, near a nice town. My best friend at the time said that she had seen "weird things happen in there", and she made it sound as if it was a ghost. I was pretty surprised, she had never had interest on creepy stuff and now she was encouraging me to go with her so we could explore the house. I agreed, not because I wanted to go (it was kinda hard to get there, and I was feeling pretty lazy), but because I didn't want a 9-10 year old girl go by herself to an abandoned house. I grabbed a light and headed to the house with her.
There was tall grass, rocks and trash on our way there. I was getting nervous because if we had to run away it'd be impossible for us to get out faster than a grown person.
We finally get to the house and walk in. We find nothing but trash and dusty furniture, until my friend walks into a seemingly locked room and starts crying/screaming. I bolt down the hallway to her and find 3 to 5 unalived dogs. Like, large to medium sized dogs.
Needless to say I was so scared and shocked I peed myself. We ran away crying hard.
And that's why, kids, you always keep an eye on your children, so they don't do stupid stuff like we did.
Saw somebody had writ their name (I assume) in bodily fluids in a ruined bakery once
when me and my father did some building work on an old barn thats attached to his house we found a glass bottle , heel of a shoe and an unalived bird skeleton in the wall . apparently this is to keep witches away , there are historic tales of witches in the area , we still have the bird skeleton
EDIT the post is getting quite a few replies so I thought i'd add more info .
I was chipping the old cement away in between the stones and adding new more up to date cement , the old stuff looked like it was a mixture of lime and yellow clay so I was using a hammer and chisel . The barn had not been updated on those walls since it was normal to rebuild walls like that . it all just fell out of a gap . it wasnt sticking out of the walls or by the base of the wall
When I first saw the pieces I did not think of witches , I thought it was just builders leaving random stuff in the walls for future builders to find . like when I worked for a guy who did property rentals I stripped some old wallpaper and found some graffiti from 1981 under it . That was in 2007, when I did block paving me and a friend left a plastic envelope with some doodles under the bricks and sand for people to find in future . I thought it was something similar but my Dad saw a documentary a few months later and it mentioned this tradition . At that house where him and my Mother still live , its pretty close to a place thats called the witches final resting place in Welsh but I had grown up in that area and never quite thought of the name like that until we found out about keeping witches away by putting things in walls , it just seemed like a place name and we get mad names in Wales all to do with saints and folklore so it seemed normal . its pretty interesting , there's a Devils bridge , a hell's mouth , a grave of the giantess and St Patrick's church (patron saint of Ireland) all within 50 miles of where I live
I was 12 and some “bad kid” who left us recently, convinced me to go into a building with him because i had a light and it was dark, we went in all was well. Half way through an apartment we hear glass break and a scream. I got the hell out of there faster than getting out of my moms womb at birth. I left that jerk in there with no way to see his surroundings.
A doll with both its eyes torn out and one leg torn in half with the other half on the opposite side of the room
That building got demolished last year but I will never forget what I saw
Someone tell me if this is normal.
2 years ago with some friends, we found an old abandoned house and decided to go visit it during the night, it was around 11 P.M, everyone was slightly drunk and we were making jokes and laughing while getting into the house, so we weren’t very quiet... We got into the house, nothing unusual, judging by the house furnitures, the owners left at least 10 years ago. We couldn’t get into the basement because the door was locked, we heard noises coming from the other side of the door but we thought it was animals or something, we were used to explore abandoned buildings and meeting wild animals was frequent. A few minutes in, we got into a bedroom and find an undone bed without any dust on it, the room smelled like someone slept here and didn’t opened the windows to ventilate (you know that smell), I walked to the other side of the bed and nearly stepped on a ton of empty painkillers/heavy medication boxes ( there was approximately 20 boxes here), plus, some needles were on the ground.... No one was laughing now, and we decided to leave, we all got scared. Later we found out that some sort of guy dependend on substances was living here. We probably scared him and he decided to hide in the basement, I prefer to don’t imagine what would have happened if we had broken the basement door and felt face to face with him...
I was looking around in the attic of a 1940s house I was renting in Dallas. Found a large box full of unlabeled cassette tapes sitting next to another box full of newspapers from Pennsylvania. Someone had circled articles about grisly crimes in red marker. I went back downstairs.
A den of rattlesnakes :-) They were residing under a very old abandoned house. I've also stumbled upon old abandoned graveyards. Those always give me an eerie feeling.
I was exploring a like 100 year old house or something with my cousins and we spotted the creepiest doll I have ever seen, looked like it was straight from a horror movie, then I think the house creaked and the doll moved its head a little and we started to wet ourselves. We see it still all the time at my nans house after she retrieved it. It’s eye ended up getting broken and her wig wouldn’t stay on and the paint was chipping away. Hands down that was the creepiest thing I have seen.
We had a white and blue pickup following us on the way there, when we pulled up into the road to the mine they sped up and passed us. I’m pretty sure they were cartels but fortunately they let us go.
I'm 14 and recently my friends and i. I will call them mason and david for now. We were riding our bikes around trying to find somewhere to do illegal substances and we live in this old town, so it's not uncommon to find abandon buildings but anyways we found this old hunting cabin so we do the usual walk around the parimiter. But mason said he saw something in the window of the house but david and I brush it off. We soon get inside and find an unworldly smell of rotting flesh. Mason left to go throw up somewhere and David said he will wait outside so I went fourth and looked around. And what I'm about to tell you is so unnerving... I open a door and see a rotting body hung around a noose and another on the bed next to it with a .357 cal in its hand. I bolted out of there and when I got to the bottom of the stairs I heard a woman's voice call out saying "Danny noo not him please not him" I turn around and the voice stopped I turn back around and run out of the house. We ended up never going back to that God forsaken place again and to this day I still get chills when ever I look in the woods.
(Not something I found but a freaky experience) A few years ago me and a few friends climbed through the top window of a 2 story abandoned OAP (old aged pensioners) centre, it had been abandoned for a long time so we had no concerns of anyone being in there. This top window was smashed so you could easily squeeze in and the glass wasn't sharp. We explored the whole building to see what was to offer. We had fun playing around with some fire extinguishers blasting water and foam everywhere. The building wasn't creepy tbf all the lights worked, we found tonnes of keys and all different things which we thought were amazing. However there was one creepy section of the building which was always dark and warm, we went in one room to find a bunch of chairs in a circle (like an intervention) and a whiteboard with pictures drawn on, like that of a child. We quickly realised that was the mentally challenged section, anyway for a few weeks we went in day in day out always finding new things to do in there. One day I was just about to leave to go there, but my dad told me to get in the shower first before I go out, so I did, I was in there for about 20 - 30 mins just chilling. I then set off to this building, which all my friends were in. I noticed three police cars surrounding the building, I walk around the building to the back where several police officers were. I rung my friends to see if they were OK and they said "yeah why what's wrong" I told them that the police are outside, they had no idea even though the police had been shouting them for about 45 mins. They claimed out and the police escorted them home.
I was so lucky that I wasn't there its one of my weirdest personal experiences I hope you enjoyed reading it.
Back around the late 90s when mobile phones weren't bricks, but they were chunky Motorolas and analogue. Was walking in some woods alongside a road near Farnborough. And I saw smoke. Following the smoke, I saw fire. In the forest. So I dialled 999 and... nothing. Walking around like a wally holding the phone in the air, finally got through and reported it. Told them where. Dead silence. Hello? Hello? The person was still there, said my report had been noted, suggested I (quote) "run like hell" (unquote). Mere minutes later, loads of things turned up. Loads of military things. One of them picked me up and took me away from there. Being just a little freaked out I was like "so, what, your reaction is like it's a Roswell incident but what kind of alien would come *here*?". He looked at me a moment, and then calmly said that the response was quite appropriate for a forest fire in the proximity of an ammunitions storage facility. Oh, oops. Anyway, the fire was rapidly dealt with.
Back around the late 90s when mobile phones weren't bricks, but they were chunky Motorolas and analogue. Was walking in some woods alongside a road near Farnborough. And I saw smoke. Following the smoke, I saw fire. In the forest. So I dialled 999 and... nothing. Walking around like a wally holding the phone in the air, finally got through and reported it. Told them where. Dead silence. Hello? Hello? The person was still there, said my report had been noted, suggested I (quote) "run like hell" (unquote). Mere minutes later, loads of things turned up. Loads of military things. One of them picked me up and took me away from there. Being just a little freaked out I was like "so, what, your reaction is like it's a Roswell incident but what kind of alien would come *here*?". He looked at me a moment, and then calmly said that the response was quite appropriate for a forest fire in the proximity of an ammunitions storage facility. Oh, oops. Anyway, the fire was rapidly dealt with.
