I will never understand why anyone would want to go into an abandoned building by themselves. I've seen enough scary movies to know how that night ends. Unfortunately, there are some people who have to patrol these buildings as their job. I don't know why you'd want to do that, but god bless them for it. A Reddit thread asked those brave souls to share the scariest things they've experienced. Here are some of the best ones:
1. Ghost Tour
I was working security at a "ghost tour" at night at the old Missouri state penitentiary. Nothing happened to us, but in the gas chamber this girl in our group had a full on asthma attack and said she felt like she couldn't breathe. We walked out of there and she had these awful red scratch marks all over her arms. I don't know if she was faking it all or what happened but definitely was creepy.
2. The Nun
My dad worked at a mental hospital that used to be connected to an abandoned nun's home by underground passage. He says that one night he was walking down there when he saw a praying nun. He walked by her and said hello. She did not acknowledge him.
My dad does not believe in ghosts, but he says there was a nun down there that night.
3. The Funeral Home
I used to pick up dead bodies for a funeral home. One stormy night, I was in one of the coolers, putting a guy on the shelf. In a matter of a couple seconds, the following happened:
- The guy on the next shelf up shifted and his hand fell down in my face.
- The doorstop slipped and the cooler door closed behind me.
- The power went out and the lights went off.
4. The Watchman
I was the night watchman at an abandoned mental hospital turned state park for a summer in college.
One night, we saw flashlights moving around so we called an officer out and went in. The officer pulled her gun and flashlight and in we went. We could hear footsteps on the floor above us and we slowly and quietly went upstairs. We checked every room and found nothing. Then we heard footsteps above us again. This happened for a few floors until we were on the top floor below the roof. We heard footsteps up on the roof so we went up there. Still nothing. We never found anyone or any indication that anyone had been there. It was friggin' creepy.
5. The Room
I worked at an asylum in southeastern Michigan. The worst thing wasn't the dirty patient records scattered on the floor, the broken furniture, the torn up walls, the leaking water pipes or the huge fungal bloom from the leaking water.
The worst part was finding a tunnel and following it to a place inside where power was still on. There was a light, ominous-looking double doors and an active security camera. It was like ... why is this here? What's going on?
6. The Hospital
I did security for an old abandoned hospital. There was always a bad feeling in that place, almost like we were intruding. One time, when the feeling was particularly strong, we decided to get the hell out, but the door slammed shut and refused to open. It wasn't just stuck either-the doorknob was FROZEN in place.
7. The Clock
I work security for a government building that isn't even abandoned. One day, I'm staring at the security camera screen and this clock on the wall that the camera is facing starts spinning like crazy. Suddenly, it lifts off the hook on the wall and goes flying across the room into the wall. I ran into the stairwell where the camera was filming and there was no one there. I showed all my co-workers and we were all freaked out. There was no rational explanation for it.
8. The Alien Farm
I did security at this abandoned building nicknamed "the alien farm." People call it the alien farm because they claimed it's used to study and communicate with aliens.
So we get past the alien farm and are near the entrance to where we think the abandoned house is when we realize that since the ground is wet (snow), it might not be safe to drive out to the house. We sat in my friend's car discussing whether or not we wanted to attempt the drive when all of a sudden there's a huge flash of blue light off in the distance.
We all saw it and tried to think of what it could possibly have been but came up with nothing. I still have no idea what it was but it scared the piss out of me.
9. On Patrol
I was driving along one of the building's trails through the woods with one of my friends. There are no lights at all on the trail. Only light source was my headlights. About 20 or 30 yards down the road I saw a big branch down. I slowed down to drive around it and my friend screams, "Holy s**t!! That tree branch just looked at me!!!" I jammed on the brakes, we both jumped out and someone took off into the trees. It was some dude in full head-to-toe camo!
10. The Mental Hospital
I broke into an abandoned mental hospital to film a movie with some of my friends. It wasn't a ghostly presence that made it creepy, just the atmosphere. Old rusted-out cribs. Stains on the wall. Asbestos falling down like snow. The place had a documented history of patient abuse and overcrowding. In the Sixties, you could get thrown in a state facility relatively easily. Many of my friends are being treated for mental health conditions, and it really freaked me out that had some of them been born forty years previously, they may have been subjected to the same conditions.
11. The Women's Jail
I didn't work there, but my two friends and I visited an old jail (a local company did regular tours.) The jail used to regularly keep women and children there, and there were a lot of deaths, especially in the winter. During our tour, my friends and I went inside one of the cells just as the tour group moved along to the next section of the jail. We finally decided to catch up ... except we were locked in. Nobody was there to do it and the doors were NOT self-locking. Someone would have had to push the bolt across from the outside. We couldn't get out. We ended up having to shout for help to have someone come and set us free.
Almost ten years later, none of us have an idea what happened.
12. The Figure
I was inspecting an abandoned manufacturing plant years ago. The first floor was aisles with large shelves on either side.
At the end of the aisles, there was a staircase that went up to a second floor. The floor was mostly rotted through, so moving around up there was dangerous.
We were up there probably 20 minutes when my buddy yelled over to me that he saw something move downstairs. We assumed we were busted, so we snuck back to the staircase. We didn't see anything moving around downstairs after a couple minutes, so we went down.
When we reached the bottom, we saw someone/something sprint at the other end of the aisles to the northernmost aisle, where the window we broke in through was. We moved towards the south end slowly, watching for movement. Eventually we saw something move on the stair side of the northernmost aisle and we bolted for it, got out, got in the car and drove away.
13. Unexplained
There is this abandoned mental hospital in my town called Prudhoe hospital.
My mom worked at an auxiliary nurse there for years and she said at night, the crippled kids who couldn't move due to severe diseases and birth defects would somehow get out of their cribs and into the middle of the floor on the wards. Whatever was [enabling] this would also go around and remove blankets from all the patients and again pile them in the center of the room.
Eventually security was hired, believing it was someone getting into the hospital at night and doing all these things to scare people or to just be trouble.
However, even with security, they never found out who was doing these things at night.
