15+ Shocking Things Found in Places Everyone Forgot

Exploring abandoned places has a mysterious charm that attracts the curious. However, it’s not all adventure and cobwebs. Sometimes, you may find something so strange or disturbing that you never forget it. In this article, we compile some of the most chilling stories shared by people who encountered the inexplicable by choice or accident.

“We found an original Gismonda poster in an abandoned house that we purchased.”

• Growing up, I lived in a semi-rural area. Once I had a car, I would drive on back roads all day, exploring the eastern half of my state.
  One time, while driving down an old dirt and gravel road, I saw what I thought was a deep black hole in the road. As I got closer, I realized it was actually a huge pile of AA batteries, probably six feet in diameter. They looked as if a magician had brought them there that morning. I never saw another person on that road.
  I took a few dozen home, and they worked fine. The next day, I came back with a huge plastic container, drove the three hours again, and picked up probably a thousand batteries. Unfortunately, they must have gotten wet because they only lasted a year, then started to corrode and lose their charge.
  A few years later, however, I decided to look up the area on Google Earth. That’s when I realized there was a recycling plant about half a mile away. My theory is that someone wanted to recycle the batteries, but the plant refused due to chemicals or something and just dumped them there. © napleonblwnaprt / Reddit
• I remember taking a shortcut through the woods as a kid to get to my friends’ house. Usually, there was nothing there except the occasional squirrel or deer, if you were lucky.
  But that time, I went through a wall of branches and leaves, and when I got to the other side, I saw more cats than I had ever seen in my life. They were all different colors, and their little eyes stared at me. And suddenly, they all stood up and started hissing at me. I quickly took the long way around and got the hell out of there. © Unknown author / Reddit
• We walked into what appeared to be a storage room in an old school that had been closed for years. There were at least 50 identical cardboard boxes, neatly stacked and unlabeled.
  We opened one. Inside was just a white sheet folded in four. We opened another box and found the same sheet folded the same way. We checked ten more boxes, and they were all the same. All the same.
  There was no text and no markings. They were just white papers, perfectly folded, as if waiting for instructions that never came.

“I found this beautiful room in an abandoned Hungarian hotel.”

• I once explored a burned-down house. It was fine during the day, but when I stood at the top of the basement stairs, it was pitch black and a bit creepy. I thought, “It’s just a house. Someone lived here. It’s not that bad,” so I turned on the flashlight on my phone.
  I started down the stairs, almost falling, but I kept going. I wish I hadn’t. As I rounded the corner, I saw a creepy, about-a-foot-tall doll sitting in the corner, looking right into my soul. I ran up the stairs three at a time, broke one of the steps, and didn’t look back. © Daxyz / Reddit
• Some friends and I were exploring an abandoned hospital in the county where I grew up. It was about 30 minutes from my house. We walked in and looked around.
  We saw an overturned filing cabinet and papers scattered everywhere. I picked up a piece of paper and started reading the first words I saw. When I did, I felt my blood run cold.
  It was the name and address of my childhood neighbor, who lived about four houses away from my parents. The letter was about his deteriorating health. I didn’t want to read any further. © AtlUtdGold / Reddit
• This is my cousin’s grandmother’s old house. She lived 100 meters from where we live. She died when I was one or two years old. Since we are the closest building to her house, I went to explore it. When I tried the door, it was locked.
  I climbed up on a broken window and climbed in. I didn’t expect much since the house was pretty small. It had an attic, but no basement—or I just couldn’t find it. I started looking around, checking out her bedroom and living room. I found a closet of some kind.
  It was pretty big for a closet. I opened the door, and I got really scared. There was a mannequin inside. It had a dress on. It was black, like something you would wear to a funeral. I just left after that. © axuboih / Reddit

“I found an abandoned house filled with thousands of stuffed animals.”

• My wife and I explored an abandoned farmhouse. There were open letters scattered about. The one I picked up and read went something like this: “Did your wife find out about us?” It went on to say how much she missed him. It wasn’t creepy, just sad. © Unknown author / Reddit
• There was a huge pile of buttons and zippers by a giant pipe outside of what used to be a psychiatric hospital and, later, a tuberculosis sanitarium. Apparently, the patients were dressed in disposable clothing that they would flush down oversized sewer pipes when it wasn’t needed anymore. The cotton rotted away, leaving the fasteners in a big pile. © MrSnappyPants / Reddit
• There’s an abandoned old cabin in the middle of the woods near my house. One day I decided to explore and climbed up the rotting deck. As I walked around, a chill ran down my spine.
  To my horror, I found a table set for dinner. Plates, cups, and silverware were still there. Everything was covered in dust except the chairs, like someone had moved them recently.
  In one of the bedrooms, I found a suitcase sitting on the bed. It was full of clothes from the 70s or 80s, and there was a Polaroid photo tucked inside.
  It showed a family standing in front of the cabin, but their faces were weirdly blurry, like the photo had been damaged right where their heads were. The whole place felt weird, like someone was watching me. I got out of there as fast as I could.

“An abandoned Chuck E. Cheese animatronic was found in a landfill.”

• Back in high school, we explored an abandoned tuberculosis hospital and found an iron lung. Actually, we found two. © Moots_point / Reddit
• I found a secret room in the administration building at my school. It wasn’t hidden, but it was a long-forgotten hatch in the basement ceiling. My friends and I were trying to find a way to get to the bell tower when we found this storage space instead. Except it was an open room.
  The lights didn’t work, so we came back with flashlights. Inside, there was an old couch, a coffee table, some old paintings on slabs of wood, and a bunch of old bottles from the 1970s with candles melted over the tops. It definitely looked like someone’s chill spot from 40 years ago. © JayPetey / Reddit
• While driving along the road to Makena on Maui, I came across an abandoned... Something. I couldn’t tell exactly what it was. It looked like a U-shaped house.
  There was a veranda inside the U and several rooms in the wings. Each room had a door that opened onto the veranda, and all the rooms were pretty much the same. At the base of the U was a large kitchen and dining area. In the courtyard inside the U, there was a large, smooth concrete area with a flagpole, which made me think it wasn’t a house.
  What was really strange was out back. About 50 feet behind the house, there was a lava rock wall with a wooden gate in the middle. On each side of the gate, outside the wall, there were piles of old bottles and jars. On the left, there was a pile of hundreds of old Clorox bottles—the brown glass kind with a narrow neck stopped by a cork.
  On the other side of the gate was an enormous pile of hundreds of cold cream jars. Just cold cream jars. Miscellaneous trash was scattered around the other side of the wall, mostly rusted cans and glass items. To this day, I’m puzzled by why all those Clorox bottles were in one pile and all those cold cream jars were in the other. © Unknown user / Reddit

Each story reminds us that there are places whose secrets are best left buried under layers of dust and silence. It’s not always wise to open an old door just “to see what’s inside.”

Still feel like getting the chills? Read this article, where we’ve compiled the most unusual discoveries people have made without leaving home. Sometimes, the truly disturbing is closer than we think.