Following GP's thread (the likable one, not the former great player), what is the eeriest place you have been? I have been in Alcatraz and I have seen ground zero where the Twin Towers were, but in an odd kind of way the strangest eerie feeling I had was walking on the Place de la Concorde. I am a fairly rational person and not one to usually have moments like this but even before reading the memorial to figure out where I was and what it signified it something didn't feel right there. After reading it I had a very instinctive weighty feeling to just leave, rather quckly. My wife had a similar experience when we talked about it later. For those that don't know it is the square where about 3000 people were executed in the French Revolution. I have never been to Auschwitz, I could imagine it just being overpowering.
Gettysburg. I'm a big Civil War buff (a great deal of my ancestors on my father's side of the family fought on opposite sides of the war) and walking that hallowed ground where the high water mark of the Confederacy left a mark of blood on that peaceful field in Pennsylvania. Just seeing the fog roll over the field sent the hairs up on the back of my neck.
It was a room at my parent's second house in Chicago. The previous owners had obviously used it as a nursery, and my two sisters and I always had this weird feeling that the baby had died in there whenever we were in the room. One Christmas, we were all putting our luggage in that room when I decided to open some of the built-in drawers. The only thing in them was a copy of Rosemary's Baby. We freaked out. Of course, it was just a present my Mom had bought for me for Christmas, but I'm not sure I ever stepped foot back in that room.
In the hospital room of a man who had explosive bowel movement. Woo damn. I just looked inside to check his IV - needless to say I checked it from afar. In the hospital of a guy that testicles the size of canteloupes. I wasn't looking for them, but when they're that huge, damn, they're just everywhere. In the hospital room of a patient who had her brains blown out by her husband because she was in pain. He shot her at the hospital. In the Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit of a hospital where everybody was so drugged up, they looked like zombies - especially when they tried to grab you. Hospitals are eerie places...
In Baltimore, Edgar Allen Poe's empty basement is pretty eerie. You can imagine him walling someone up in there. I posted some ghost pictures I took in Gettsburgh. And yes, that place really does make you feel as though you stepped back in time.
Have you heard Iced Earth's Glorious Buden? The singer of Iced Earth is a Civil War buff as well, that record has 3 epic songs dedicated to Gettysburg. One of the songs is call High Water Mark, GREAT epic, you should give it a listen even if you aren't a heavy metal fan.
Going to Poland this winter. Part of me really wants to go there, but I'm not sure. For me, visiting a friend in a psychiatric hospital.
Mauthausen Concentration Camp, about 45 minutes outside of Vienna Austria. The eeriest, spookiest place I have ever been.
Driving from a low-elevation part of Switzerland up to St. Moritz, Switzerland last November. We filled up our rental CLK at the gas station before driving to the top and asked the lady working there how the weather was in St. Moritz (about a 40 minute drive from the gas station, but the elevation is A LOT higher)...she said the weather was fine (keep in mind the temperature in the town the gas station is in was about 55-60 Fahrenheit). So we started driving up the mountain and about 20 minutes in it starts snowing...25 minutes in its snowing HARD...our car didn't have snow tires (we rented it from Munich, Germany). If any of you have ever been to the Swiss Alps, you know there aren't many rails to keep cars from falling over on the mountain roads. Well...our car was skidding backwards on the ice and we were about two feet from the edge when somehow we came to a stop...all four of us in the car thought we were gonna fall off the mountain for sure...it was pretty bad...
LMFAO!!!! It's true, I live in Albuquerque now and drivng here I stopped at a couple of rest areas. They're deserted, (like this whole state), and once the sun goes down, wind picks up, and coyotes start howling... it's pretty spooky.
In college, I went to visit a mental hospital. It was alternately sad and terroriizing. What a dismal, creepy place.
I drove through a native american village in arizonia a number of years ago. Hot, dusty, desolate. And there weren't any children. The locals were old, wrinkled people who still lived the only way they have ever known how to. It smelled like the whole town was rotting. Saddest most haunting place ive ever been. as for more locally. The robinson house on hampton ave. in quail valley. Demented in design. Where I believe the father murdered his family. Its a 1 story construct above ground, painted pure white. Boxy and one dimensional. The man portion of the house I have been told, is rested beneath the ground. Its totally isolated on about 2/3 acre of land, and tall trees surrounding the property. freaky.
When I lived in Bellaire as a kid there was an abandoned convent in our neighborhood. We used to sneak in there at night and it was very creepy. On a couple of occasions I snuck in first with a chain saw and as my friends brought in a couple of unsuspecting girls, I would crank up the chainsaw. Hilarity ensued.
Elementry school, well the first week of kindegarden. IT WAS scarry, all those wierd library and cafetaria women staring at you, and all those long empty hallways...
when i was at baylor, you could drive by and see the davidian compound while the whole world was watching it on tv. i saw it burn. very eerie...surreal, almost.
Auschwitz, hands down. If you haven't been there, you simply cannot fathom the sense of overbearing sadness and evil that pervades that place. The only sense of peace I felt there was the gallows where the Allies hung the commandant of Auschwitz. FWIW, I've been to other concentration camps as well, and while I certainly don't mean to take anything away from the horrors of all of those camps, Auschwitz is just overwhelming....the hall of hair, the luggage, eye-glasses....wow. The sense of sadness there is more powerful than anything I've ever felt in my entire life.
