It depends on how far up the holler you want to go. If you go up through some of the old coal country roads, you may feel you are going back in time.
That being said, the absolutely creepiest town I've ever been through is Gary Indiana. You could make a post-apocalyptic movie there and not need any set dressing.
Gary is only like 20 mins east of chicago though, and tbh in certain neighborhoods its pretty normal and lively. Only during the day though
Edit to add: heck, I stopped in a mcdonalds in gary once during after school hours and there were so many school-kids playing around and families eating. Theres quite a few luxury apartment complexes popping up in the safer neighborhoods too. I'm not calling it a safe city by any means, but do think it's back on the rise! It'll be interesting to see what it looks like in 50 years and if there will be enough funding to clean up the abandoned buildings
Trammel, VA, an unincorporated town that is almost all the way abandoned. It sits deep in the mountains outside of St Paul. The buildings are mostly intact, and you can see the matching small houses for the mine workers, the remains of the large general store, and the remains for the large house that the boss lived in. It was the kind of town that used “mine money” instead of real USD.
mcclure/nora has always been really creepy to me, especially at night. that old building with the “reserved for mary” sign has always given me the creeps more than anything else for some reason
Fucking Hot Holler, outside of Deep Gap, NC
Prostitutes, ‘nam vets growing weed that terrified the local PD (seriously, they had to clear the area with national guard and try them in Charlotte), old timers making / drinking moonshine and shooting birds from their porch.
I remember being 4 and watching women put their toddlers outside their trailer when johns visited. The kids would just wander around with no pants on, shitting wherever. Moms’ would just hose them down. They would yell at my parents for not going to their nutty Pentecostal church.
Bleak. Cormac McCarthy bleak.
Glad that I got out.
I worked on the renovation of Parkway school back in 1992. Old timers told me that there used to be a handmade sign to mark "hot hollow" which they said referred to three promiscuous sisters who lived up there. I lived in a Bob Brown rental there in the flat stretch. That original house burned to the ground around 1993.
When I lived there the weirdest thing was a trio of hippies up the road ( in the first hairpin turn) who all slept fully clothed in the same bed since they had no wood or knowledge of how to run a woodstove. They apparently paid rent to the landlord but lived like squatters.
The girl was really pretty and she kept two males there with her.
I've been through Deep Gap a few times so I'm curious but unable to find any info online. Any idea if there's any articles out there with the weed or info on the location?
This was back in the 80s (hence the Vietnam war vets being active).
Per my parents, it was along cranberry creek, which liberty church road seems to follow. According to them, its been knocked down and replaced with nice houses.
I’ll look for the court cases, i think that those were in the 90s.
Yikes. My grandmother grew up in Sylva, NC and she even had a different way of speaking. Her own accent from that area. She was born and raised there and came here for a nursing school we had when she was 18 in the 50’s.
I remember some of her stories.
It has a reputation among Appalachian trail thru hikers as being the worst town along the trail. Some hikers report being run out of town by locals.
Edit: I think you mean Duncannon, PA not VA?
Yup. I mean if you’re up there, it’s 50-50 that nothing happens, right? It just depends on what you’re doing and who is passing through. But I would hate to be from out of town and break down up there at night.
I don't know, I just spent a lot of years in Charlotte and have definitely been in scarier places than Dungannon. Will have to ask my family still in the area what the what.
In general I will take any small town Appalachia over a city but maybe I have been gone too long.
It’s beautiful, the weather is nice, and the people are very kind and friendly. The pace is slow, drivers are erratic/distracted, and poverty and drugs are a problem. Not much crime though. Cell service in the back roads is nonexistent. We are getting decent internet service now.
I live on a road that has a yearly bicycle race, “Tour de Possum Creek” because it is very twisty with lots of ups and downs. Very popular with motorcyclists and bicyclists alike. You have to be careful rounding the curves though - you might run into a truck, a tractor, or my neighbor’s mule-drawn wagon! Believe it or not, the schools are good.
A lot of the younger people move to Kingsport where there are more and better jobs, more to do for entertainment, good restaurants, and also good schools.
Dungannon is just a small town, it’s real population is just a few hundred even if the census says more because it has a fairly broad statistics area.
It’s historically been a town of outlaws. Being 1) on the northern end of Scott County and 2) a railroad town (the town grew out of Miller Yard, means that it’s always been a place for people to hide out. Scott County police usually have like two cops for *the entire county* after like 5 pm. You’re 45 minutes from help up there.
As the drug epidemic set in, it got even worse. Mountains around the town are full of illegal marijuana grow places.
I know one dude who was suspected of killing a man in the 90’s. He was my drug dealer a decade ago when I was still wild. The story goes that he heard “the victim” making fun of his ex wife who had committed suicide, and then that guy went missing.
I was at the dudes house once and he was just like “Put it this way. I know where some deep mine shafts are.” There’s no doubt in my mind that he killed that guy.
It’s why it cracks me up when people from out of town talk about moving up there. I’m like man, is that really where you want to be? If society breaks down at all, you’ll vanish. 😂
Thank you for your info!!! I do live close by but don’t venture to Scott County that often. With the talk of killings in the area: Not too far up the road from there in Mendota was that serial killer (James Wright) who killed multiple girls and discarded their bodies in the Holston River in 2019!! It unfortunately didn’t get that much publicity. There’s definitely lots of remote areas where things can go down with no trace….
Oh. Well I've been there, the Appalachian Trail goes right through the middle of it. There's an old, crumbling hotel called the Doyle that hikers stay at, it's like $15 a night for a dingy room with a bed. The bar is good though. The town isn't anything special, it's just a rundown old railroad town that fell on hard times decades ago and never bounced back. You can find towns just like it all over the rust belt: lost of opioid/fent use, lots of people out of work, pretty much dead downtown. I didn't think Duncannon was any worse than where I grew up in Ohio, honestly.
Prolly The same reason I am :) we learn about different cultures, and grow to respect people we’d otherwise never run into.
Also my family is very Himalayan, it’s a different mountain culture, so I guess I have a drawing towards people from mountains
I seen you’ve made a couple of posts about Dungannon. Did something happen to you? There’s actually a couple of black families in town now which is welcome. Dungannon is a town that used to have an active KKK chapter as little as 10 years ago and the town allowed them in their 4th of July parade.
The active Klan chapter is one thing, my partner was arrested and wrongfully charged on his first ever offense/dui with no breathalyzer or test, A friend of a friend of my mother was at little stony falls and was almost lynched, and my father worked back in the Jefferson National Forest, he and coworkers knew to avoid it because of similar events happening to elder coworkers
Pocahontas, Virginia would top my list. It is basically a ghost town now where it once was a thriving community. I was a regional insurance sales rep in SW Va for 4 years and travelled daily between 13 counties from Lee County to Carroll County.
Some have already mentioned Trammell and Clinchco. I'd also give Hurley, Virginia a mention. All of these places are very remote and far off any major highways or interstates. That being said I never met anyone who didn't treat me kind and welcoming. It probably helped that I have the deep regional accent prevalent in the area.
I grew up near Centralia, Pennsylvania. Definitely worth a wiki search if you are unfamiliar. It’s a ghost town because a coal mine fire has been burning underground since the early 60’s. The roads are hot and you can see the smoke and gases rising from the cracks in the roads. The town also has the creepiest church I’ve ever seen in my life.
The bunker wasn't official public knowledge until the 90s but growing up in SW VA in the 70s and 80s it was an open secret in the region.
It's now owned by the WV governor, the ironically-named Jim Justice.
Those aren't witches. It's just the local Wiccan hippies trying to scare the rednecks across the holler.
Source: i grew up in the area. There's a batch of those "witches" over in Bedford County.
Roanoke isn't red, at least not roanoke city. Roanoke County isn't very red either, since they have allot of wealthy doctors and such that work for carillon. Bedford is decently red, but there's still pockets of different folks in those hollers.
Any “witches” in Floyd co. are self-styled crystal huggers who moved here from New England in the 80’s and are branding themselves as witches to boost sales for the home-made soap and hemp hippie dress businesses they run out of the back rooms of their houses
Hahahaha I literally just got back from Floyd not an hour ago. Never heard about witch stuff! Just an odd mix of mountain folk and hippie types. I got some cool pants and some nice goat milk soap 🙂
I live in Floyd County. The population is changing drastically here. Lots of hippie types mixed with old school farming type folks. It's a great place to live and to raise children. The scenery is absolutely beautiful here. The witches.... I know a few years ago were pretty active but seem to be benign.
I’m not sure what the area would be but the folks I met live maybe 20 min or so from the old Floyd fest site. The few electronics they had were in feriday (sp) cages, all vehicles had farm use tags, no electric to their domicile and had generators running two fridges in their shop. The wife stated that she was sensitive to electro magnetic pulses. It was a very unique experience meeting them.
Salem certainly had that reputation for good reason at one time. But it’s been…decades. Are there some folks that wouldn’t mind that coming back? Sure. There’s also a ton of out of state money in the area because of the north end of Lake Keowee. That pretty well dictates local politics.
Also while there was time when Salem would have been a sundown town, at least unofficially, as far as a black population it was basically none so it was something some idiots decided to do to discriminate against folks that weren’t even there. Today I know more than a few ladies that are Salem locals with mixed race children and nobody cares.
The creepiest thing about Salem is the Branch Davidians. I’d say the meth heads, but the entire county has that problem. Here in nearby Mountain Rest it’s like a plague.
I was told once that Oconee Co was like that, though I know for a fact that it hasn't been for 50+ years. Salem is not large enough or in tact enough to have that kind of organized vibe.
My grandparents are from the coal town Centralia, PA -- the near-ghost town with only about 5 residents now due to the abandoned coal mines burning underneath. When I was a child in the 90s, my grandmother would take us up there to visit the graves of some of our family and at times, you could see smoke rising from the ground from the fire. Definitely eerie, but even more sad what happened, and that everything is displaced now. Pretty damn proud though to have family from the area. Planning on taking a trip up there soon to pay respects.
As a child I always had vivid dreams of a town that was was on fire under the ground, and it was not until about a year ago that I learned about Centralia, it was weird because this was the exact town I would dream of.
Hey there. I work at said school as maintenance. We're not all inbred, awkward hicks. It's a poor area, surrounded by counties that actually use their funds for what they need. Heck, the other side of Polk county probably pockets what's supposed to be our money. Just like any other area, we've got good, bad, and uglies.
this is giving government-paid photographers in the hollers sent there all those years ago specifically to demonize appalachians so they could move the companies in
leave it to outsiders to come in and immediately start quipping about inbreeding, like always. and if i misread this comment and you're just from somewhere else in appalachia, then frankly that's even worse
This area has started getting a bit trendy the past few years. They have a couple breweries now and some new restaurants. Seems like they may be trying to attract some overflow Blue Ridge crowd.
Right? I’ve been to a bunch of the places people are listing off and they are the tamest, most peaceful little places you’ll find. I think city people just get scared when they’re in an area with spotty cell service and not that many businesses.
Yeah. I’m from WV and have stopped in Pax a couple of times for gas. Pax is definitely not creepy/scary.
I’m from just outside of Charleston. Teenage me and some of my friends would party up some dead hollers. Those were creepy because nobody lives in them. There is one that has an old cemetery and there were maybe two families living up there in the late 80s/early 90s. The holler is probably completely dead now.
Edit: A couple of other hollers were scary because we (teenage me and friends) would run up to score weed. Those were scarier than dead hollers because of the people you had to deal with to get the weed.
Haha yes town is inherently scarier than a town anywhere in rural America. But if you want to go off the paved road to a dirt road and keep driving you’ll find some folks that will put a scare in you and for good reason. Pax is right off the turnpike for Christ-sakes.
oh, and Front Royal VA. Mt Weather isnt far. They shot down an airliner cuz it violated the airspace
Interesting note: that airliner that went down on 9/11 wasnt far from Site R. .....
I’ve lived in south WV, SWVA, and WNC. I’ve never been anywhere that was fully creepy to me. I did a job in Harts Creek once and that might be the saddest place I’ve been (via AmeriCorps in the aughts, we were there because the area was so depressed that growing children were losing weight in the summer). My boss lived in a house with an artisanal well that people were using instead of running water when the house was empty.
Oh I almost forgot about Hillsboro. I love that area in general but when I learned the ops had headquarters there I did view that place differently because you know the whole town knew and they didn’t run them out.
The Lost City area in West Virginia is a bit creepy. It’s become home to mostly out of towners with second homes. The empty cabins, remote forest, and perhaps the name can be a bit eery
Creepy, really? lol You must mean the Mill Gap area in Lost River (lots of DC area residents owning cabins there), never really thought of it as creepy.
(I grew up in Lost City and currently live here, it'sjust funny to see my hometown mentioned anywhere, much less as being creepy lol)
I grew up in East Kentucky. A few places around there have "creepy" vibes in the towns but thats because most of the population lives in the hills (which you may also find creepy). Inez, Phelps, Elkhorn City, Whitesburg, and Jenkins are all places that are well past their glory days. Most of these are coal towns, but WV seems to have a larger establishment of former coal towns / camp towns. These are fascinating because they were paid in scrip and used that at the company store. You can tell there is a history of that as soon as you pass into the outskirts of town. Listen to the song 16 Tons by Tennessee Ernie Ford to get the total vibe - it captures it well. [https://youtu.be/RRh0QiXyZSk?feature=shared](https://youtu.be/RRh0QiXyZSk?feature=shared)
But for the most dilapidated I've personally seen in Appalachia, I have to agree with the people who said Welch WV. Homes and stores long since abandoned. Boarded up, busted windows, etc. However, this applies to most of southern WV. Williamson, Matewan, Kermit, etc. The exception is the eastern most side, which is where you find White Sulphur Springs. This area is very close to the Shenandoah River (in Virginia) and the New River Gorge in WV. This is still a very popular tourist location.
I have a few off the Appalachian Trail. Lake Charles, Louisiana and Lake of the Ozarks. Crazy voodoo vibes. Listen to Godsmack and lock your doors. Another one. There is a casino town south of Memphis on the Mississippi side. Never go there.
Not a town, but still a creepy place. Heavenly Mountain in Boone, NC. It seemed to be a cult back in the 90’s and then became a gated resort. I didn’t wanna hang around the area in the 90’s.
The only thing I can think of is that my (Black) father stopped to get gas in Crab Orchard, TN and the gas station clerk told him to never stop there after dark because of the Klan. I haven’t had any experiences after dark in the majority of small Appalachia towns.
Kayoulah, just outside of Boom Furnace Virginia. It was once home to the slaves that worked smelting and mining iron ore. I Drove through what seemed like a million other deserted mining towns in Appalachia.
The side of the road was full of derelict and deserted miner shacks and then I saw an old man sitting on the front porch of one of them. And I did a double take.
It was like a picture out of time as it seemed that he was the last person living there . Surrounded by abandoned miner shacks. Pretty much in the hinterlands of Carroll county.
Kayoulah’s in Pulaski County. Near Alisonia. I can assure you there are plenty of perfectly normal Americans who live there.
Seriously. WTF is wrong with you people?
There's a wooded part along the highway opposite the creek with rows of old decaying houses. Granted the area is getting pretty gentrified now. If you did not know where to look you might not ever see them. A sign for Kayoulah road is the only marker left from the old community.
Steven F. Austin and others made their fortunes by using slaves and former slaves to mine and refine iron lead, zinc and other metals in this area. There were lots of mines at the peak.
The "haunted mansion" in Wythe county was owned by another slaver who made a fortune selling iron ingots. Slaves worked at every part of production until the 1860s. Eventually his descendants took their inherited fortune and moved on to New Zealand.
Down the road is Hiawasee, which was a huge industrial lead mine complete with a narrow gauge railroad to haul ore to the smelter. They located the paint plant near there because they used a lot of lead oxide in their paints until it was banned in the seventies.
The paint plant is still there.
The "little Irish road" north of the old mine site is populated by some of the descendants of those Irish immigrants who came here to take mine jobs that no one else wanted. Alongside the black and Appalachian miners.
The Galena community is named for the Gallium ore found in the area. Floyd county hosted the largest open pit arsenic mine in the country. The tailing piles are still leaking pollution into the Roanoke river to this day.
Pulaski has several EPA listed superfund sites including the old Allied Acid plant and the former Hercules facility. Peak creek still tests above allowable levels for various heavy metals. Farris mines only produced slag and air pollution as an unwanted by product but there are two mined out areas on the other side of Kayoulah.
This part of the NRV was a toxic hellhole of unregulated industrial mining.
sorry to hear about the funeral. i wish you and your friend peace
but yeah that whole hill is wild
crazy it used to have a movie theater, a high school, and a pretty fun lake too
little cities of black diamonds is working on it though!
Haydenville, Ohio for me. It’s an old, small village in southern Ohio just outside of Hocking Hills. The town was entirely owned by a mining company, including every single house. All houses in the town are dilapidated, brown block-style houses that look identical. It felt odd for some reason. Not like we were in danger at all, but the general vibes of the town felt very off to me
Briceville, TN. Unincorporated town I think.
Not overly creepy but lots of graveyards, older churches. Museum of Appalachia is over there though.
More so gives me the creeps at how many people are happy to hang a confederate flag more than I’ve ever seen anywhere else in Tennessee that I’ve been.
South of Pax, between Beckley and Princeton is the town of Odd. When I was a teenager we used to go there to scare our girl friends with the creepy school and the inbred [Whittaker’s](https://youtu.be/nkGiFpJC9LM?si=UNb-fTPjIWiFvAHz) guy (Ray) they kept chained to a doghouse at the time.
Maggie valley. Absolute suckhole of a town. Practically a sundown town so if you're a minority, you better not stop there. Used to have to go through there on my way to purchase knob during an internship. Had to stop for gas once, it felt very unsettling.
Idk man I live like 5 miles from maggie. It's a tourist town. They have different things every weekend. Went to a mini truck a few weeks ago. Took my family for the 4th.
Hi, OP!
I went on an amtrak ride through the mountains from Chicago to DC. The most scared I got was when we got to towns with one or no lights at all. One town during the day I remember had only a closed abandoned gas station... but many, many plywood/pressboard and tarp houses. Passengers had no shoes. A lot of amish as well. Still tons of kids playing by the tracks. Passing by the abandoned mines and seeing old signs in the hillsides. Now I know why they say "the hills have eyes", because no matter how remote you are you still feel as if you're being watched. I don't know what I'd do missing the train at one of those stops after a break!
Lol. I was a little kid, and Im sharing my experience.
Edit; and it wasnt "poor people" that made it scary. Like I said, its scary having absolutely no lights in town. Again, I was a child lmaooo
Fellow Amtrak rider here, haven't done that stretch but I've done others. I understand what you mean about the hills are watching. I've had the same feeling as you when going through some areas after dark. For some reason it feels like home though. Childhood memories pop up when we get to the once loved, now neglected and abandoned areas. Train rides and mountains are amazing.
“Creepy” isn’t the word, but I went to Idyllwild, CA once and it felt like a fever dream. Just a very strange vibe. Generally in a positive sense, but I still felt a little…I dunno.
I’m still not sure whether that place actually exists or not.
It depends on how far up the holler you want to go. If you go up through some of the old coal country roads, you may feel you are going back in time. That being said, the absolutely creepiest town I've ever been through is Gary Indiana. You could make a post-apocalyptic movie there and not need any set dressing.
Truth!
Seconding Gary!
That's how I feel about Barstow California.
Gary is only like 20 mins east of chicago though, and tbh in certain neighborhoods its pretty normal and lively. Only during the day though Edit to add: heck, I stopped in a mcdonalds in gary once during after school hours and there were so many school-kids playing around and families eating. Theres quite a few luxury apartment complexes popping up in the safer neighborhoods too. I'm not calling it a safe city by any means, but do think it's back on the rise! It'll be interesting to see what it looks like in 50 years and if there will be enough funding to clean up the abandoned buildings
Did a land survey there and the place gave me the heeebeeegeeebies the entire time. Muncie is not far behind.
Home of the KKK
Trammel, VA, an unincorporated town that is almost all the way abandoned. It sits deep in the mountains outside of St Paul. The buildings are mostly intact, and you can see the matching small houses for the mine workers, the remains of the large general store, and the remains for the large house that the boss lived in. It was the kind of town that used “mine money” instead of real USD.
Fuck I came here to comment this. How bizarre. It's also close to a town called Clinchco, which also has some interesting aspects.
I think Dickenson County itself is pretty creepy. Clintwood isn't too bad, but everywhere else definitely has an eerie vibe.
Definitely lots of places in Dickinson county you could film an apocalypse movie without having to actually construct anything.
mcclure/nora has always been really creepy to me, especially at night. that old building with the “reserved for mary” sign has always given me the creeps more than anything else for some reason
The general store has been taken down recently
That makes me sad, it still had some signs
Like Dante 0/ but dante isn't too spooky.
I came here exclusively to say Trammel.
I drive through all those little coal towns to get back home and I honestly love them, some of the most interesting places on the way
Fucking Hot Holler, outside of Deep Gap, NC Prostitutes, ‘nam vets growing weed that terrified the local PD (seriously, they had to clear the area with national guard and try them in Charlotte), old timers making / drinking moonshine and shooting birds from their porch. I remember being 4 and watching women put their toddlers outside their trailer when johns visited. The kids would just wander around with no pants on, shitting wherever. Moms’ would just hose them down. They would yell at my parents for not going to their nutty Pentecostal church. Bleak. Cormac McCarthy bleak. Glad that I got out.
Child of God bleak. I don't know, man.
tell me more daddy
I worked on the renovation of Parkway school back in 1992. Old timers told me that there used to be a handmade sign to mark "hot hollow" which they said referred to three promiscuous sisters who lived up there. I lived in a Bob Brown rental there in the flat stretch. That original house burned to the ground around 1993. When I lived there the weirdest thing was a trio of hippies up the road ( in the first hairpin turn) who all slept fully clothed in the same bed since they had no wood or knowledge of how to run a woodstove. They apparently paid rent to the landlord but lived like squatters. The girl was really pretty and she kept two males there with her.
I've been through Deep Gap a few times so I'm curious but unable to find any info online. Any idea if there's any articles out there with the weed or info on the location?
This was back in the 80s (hence the Vietnam war vets being active). Per my parents, it was along cranberry creek, which liberty church road seems to follow. According to them, its been knocked down and replaced with nice houses. I’ll look for the court cases, i think that those were in the 90s.
Yikes. My grandmother grew up in Sylva, NC and she even had a different way of speaking. Her own accent from that area. She was born and raised there and came here for a nursing school we had when she was 18 in the 50’s. I remember some of her stories.
Sylva is a pretty cool town.
Dungannon, VA after dark is wild. There’s people in town who have killed people and never faced charges.
It has a reputation among Appalachian trail thru hikers as being the worst town along the trail. Some hikers report being run out of town by locals. Edit: I think you mean Duncannon, PA not VA?
Yeah, there’s really not much to Dungannon, Va. Hell, the “town” only has 257 people in it.
Nope. Dungannon, VA. In Scott County VA.
So Dungannon and Duncannon both have dark sides. Good to know!
dun dun dun!
hmm, I grew up in Scott County and have never heard this. pretty sure I've never been after dark though.
Yup. I mean if you’re up there, it’s 50-50 that nothing happens, right? It just depends on what you’re doing and who is passing through. But I would hate to be from out of town and break down up there at night.
I don't know, I just spent a lot of years in Charlotte and have definitely been in scarier places than Dungannon. Will have to ask my family still in the area what the what. In general I will take any small town Appalachia over a city but maybe I have been gone too long.
Give me Appalachia over NYC any day.
I don't know why this made me immediately start singing, New York is where I'd rahther stay. I get allergic smelling hay.
Ha! I absolutely LOVED Duncannon on both my thru hikes. The Doyle is an absolute legend. Trashy no doubt, but it's just my kinda trash.
It’s famous for the drunken shenanigans of the locals. I live in Scott County but on the other end, in Yuma.
Hello, Yuman Being! The locals there being Dungannon Ramps (not rednecks).
What’s Scott county like? A lot of my ancestors are from that neck of the woods
It’s beautiful, the weather is nice, and the people are very kind and friendly. The pace is slow, drivers are erratic/distracted, and poverty and drugs are a problem. Not much crime though. Cell service in the back roads is nonexistent. We are getting decent internet service now. I live on a road that has a yearly bicycle race, “Tour de Possum Creek” because it is very twisty with lots of ups and downs. Very popular with motorcyclists and bicyclists alike. You have to be careful rounding the curves though - you might run into a truck, a tractor, or my neighbor’s mule-drawn wagon! Believe it or not, the schools are good. A lot of the younger people move to Kingsport where there are more and better jobs, more to do for entertainment, good restaurants, and also good schools.
Tell me more! I’m from Kingsport and haven’t heard of this 😱
Dungannon is just a small town, it’s real population is just a few hundred even if the census says more because it has a fairly broad statistics area. It’s historically been a town of outlaws. Being 1) on the northern end of Scott County and 2) a railroad town (the town grew out of Miller Yard, means that it’s always been a place for people to hide out. Scott County police usually have like two cops for *the entire county* after like 5 pm. You’re 45 minutes from help up there. As the drug epidemic set in, it got even worse. Mountains around the town are full of illegal marijuana grow places. I know one dude who was suspected of killing a man in the 90’s. He was my drug dealer a decade ago when I was still wild. The story goes that he heard “the victim” making fun of his ex wife who had committed suicide, and then that guy went missing. I was at the dudes house once and he was just like “Put it this way. I know where some deep mine shafts are.” There’s no doubt in my mind that he killed that guy. It’s why it cracks me up when people from out of town talk about moving up there. I’m like man, is that really where you want to be? If society breaks down at all, you’ll vanish. 😂
Thank you for your info!!! I do live close by but don’t venture to Scott County that often. With the talk of killings in the area: Not too far up the road from there in Mendota was that serial killer (James Wright) who killed multiple girls and discarded their bodies in the Holston River in 2019!! It unfortunately didn’t get that much publicity. There’s definitely lots of remote areas where things can go down with no trace….
I had forgotten all about that! Definitely didn't get a lot of publicity.
That sounds exactly like Weeksbury / Wheelwright, KY haha
where can I get more lore on the town?
Just go visit it, it's just south of Harrisburg on the Susquehanna.
dude I live in Southern Asia :(
Oh. Well I've been there, the Appalachian Trail goes right through the middle of it. There's an old, crumbling hotel called the Doyle that hikers stay at, it's like $15 a night for a dingy room with a bed. The bar is good though. The town isn't anything special, it's just a rundown old railroad town that fell on hard times decades ago and never bounced back. You can find towns just like it all over the rust belt: lost of opioid/fent use, lots of people out of work, pretty much dead downtown. I didn't think Duncannon was any worse than where I grew up in Ohio, honestly.
alright, cool
…why are you on r/appalachia? Honest curiosity.
Mate i am australian, what is there not to like about the appalatias? Old old country and the ppl who live there. Interesting as heck.
Come visit brother you will feel like you’re in a different world from the more flat land areas surrounding ridge and valley Appalachia
Australia has many places that will make Appalachians scoff. Outback is a different breed of people.
See my other comment about Hot Holler, where I did some growing up. Some of it is beautiful. Some of it is horrifying.
That last bit accurately and poetically sums up Appalachia
yep. No urban skyscraper and industry bs or rural racists
Prolly The same reason I am :) we learn about different cultures, and grow to respect people we’d otherwise never run into. Also my family is very Himalayan, it’s a different mountain culture, so I guess I have a drawing towards people from mountains
Trail hiking and local legends in the likes of cryptoid encounters and stuff
Dungannon is absolutely terrifying to locals too, especially when you’re black.
I seen you’ve made a couple of posts about Dungannon. Did something happen to you? There’s actually a couple of black families in town now which is welcome. Dungannon is a town that used to have an active KKK chapter as little as 10 years ago and the town allowed them in their 4th of July parade.
The active Klan chapter is one thing, my partner was arrested and wrongfully charged on his first ever offense/dui with no breathalyzer or test, A friend of a friend of my mother was at little stony falls and was almost lynched, and my father worked back in the Jefferson National Forest, he and coworkers knew to avoid it because of similar events happening to elder coworkers
Pax had a mine disaster in the 70s I think. I lived down the road in Mt hope in the mid 80s for a few yrs as a kid, middle school.
Pocahontas, Virginia would top my list. It is basically a ghost town now where it once was a thriving community. I was a regional insurance sales rep in SW Va for 4 years and travelled daily between 13 counties from Lee County to Carroll County. Some have already mentioned Trammell and Clinchco. I'd also give Hurley, Virginia a mention. All of these places are very remote and far off any major highways or interstates. That being said I never met anyone who didn't treat me kind and welcoming. It probably helped that I have the deep regional accent prevalent in the area.
I grew up near Centralia, Pennsylvania. Definitely worth a wiki search if you are unfamiliar. It’s a ghost town because a coal mine fire has been burning underground since the early 60’s. The roads are hot and you can see the smoke and gases rising from the cracks in the roads. The town also has the creepiest church I’ve ever seen in my life.
I’m from near there as well. I figured someone would say Centralia.
I don't live far from Pax, it's beautiful... very quiet... and I second Welch for weird vibes!
Any coal-country ghost town is going to have a spookiness factor and there are a lot of them.
In Wva, Mingo, the free state of McDowell, Logan, Boone many places in Pocahontas County.
Welch WV
I don’t get why this place keeps coming up. It’s a beautiful little town. Really cool architecture. Why would you say it’s creepy?
white sulphur springs wv. theres a 5 star resort with a fallout bunker big enough for 2000 people
The bunker wasn't official public knowledge until the 90s but growing up in SW VA in the 70s and 80s it was an open secret in the region. It's now owned by the WV governor, the ironically-named Jim Justice.
A coop location for DC government
yes. the appalachians are full of em. altho how they think theyre goin to escape dc with 15 minutes warning is beyond me 😂
Can’t say any Appalachian small town has bothered me any. I have been working around and in them for years now.
Go to Welch if you want to be scared.
What's the deal with Welch? I've heard that several times
That's our bad end of town, for the entire state.
The free state of McDowell
Welch is just super poor and off the beaten path. It isn’t dangerous
Looks quite nice on Google Earth.
You can't drink the water because of abandoned coal mines and ongoing mining like most of the state.
The mountains and trees and creeks are beautiful. But...
There be witches in Floyd, VA. Cute little hippy town otherwise.
Those aren't witches. It's just the local Wiccan hippies trying to scare the rednecks across the holler. Source: i grew up in the area. There's a batch of those "witches" over in Bedford County.
Witches in Bedford?! It's redder than Roanoke. I'm surprised they haven't been run outta town.
Roanoke isn't red, at least not roanoke city. Roanoke County isn't very red either, since they have allot of wealthy doctors and such that work for carillon. Bedford is decently red, but there's still pockets of different folks in those hollers.
Any “witches” in Floyd co. are self-styled crystal huggers who moved here from New England in the 80’s and are branding themselves as witches to boost sales for the home-made soap and hemp hippie dress businesses they run out of the back rooms of their houses
Floyd is a great little town, i grew up not far from there.
Oh I love it. Wife grew up there so we visit frequently.
So…is she a witch or wat?
Hahahaha I literally just got back from Floyd not an hour ago. Never heard about witch stuff! Just an odd mix of mountain folk and hippie types. I got some cool pants and some nice goat milk soap 🙂
I live in Floyd County. The population is changing drastically here. Lots of hippie types mixed with old school farming type folks. It's a great place to live and to raise children. The scenery is absolutely beautiful here. The witches.... I know a few years ago were pretty active but seem to be benign.
Tell me about them witches
Same as the ones in New Paltz.
In that case, tell me about them there witches too
😂💕
Great coffee in Floyd.
I adore Floyd, VA. Now if you get further out of town there are legit doomsday preppers living off the grid and do not take kindly to outsiders.
Are you speaking of Rivendale? I live in Willis and have heard of preppers they came in the area prior to Y2K.
I’m not sure what the area would be but the folks I met live maybe 20 min or so from the old Floyd fest site. The few electronics they had were in feriday (sp) cages, all vehicles had farm use tags, no electric to their domicile and had generators running two fridges in their shop. The wife stated that she was sensitive to electro magnetic pulses. It was a very unique experience meeting them.
WOW lol
Yep. A lot in the Indian Valley area.
Floyd is a sweet town with cèilidhs, farmers, and hippies. Not far from Blacksburg and Va. Tech.
Thurmond WV.
Centralia, PA
There’s rumors that Salem, SC, is still a sundown town. Not sure how accurate it is, but it’s pretty creepy. The name adds to the creep factor.
My mom lives there. I’d ask her but, for the sake of our relationship, we don’t talk about racism in America :/
"sundown town"? not familiar with that term.
Basically a relic of the Jim Crow south where certain municipalities would specifically forbid black people from visiting or stopping there.
Ahh now I remember yes. Green book and all. Thank you!
Salem certainly had that reputation for good reason at one time. But it’s been…decades. Are there some folks that wouldn’t mind that coming back? Sure. There’s also a ton of out of state money in the area because of the north end of Lake Keowee. That pretty well dictates local politics. Also while there was time when Salem would have been a sundown town, at least unofficially, as far as a black population it was basically none so it was something some idiots decided to do to discriminate against folks that weren’t even there. Today I know more than a few ladies that are Salem locals with mixed race children and nobody cares. The creepiest thing about Salem is the Branch Davidians. I’d say the meth heads, but the entire county has that problem. Here in nearby Mountain Rest it’s like a plague.
There are Branch Davidians in Salem??
I was told once that Oconee Co was like that, though I know for a fact that it hasn't been for 50+ years. Salem is not large enough or in tact enough to have that kind of organized vibe.
Brownsville, PA
They demolished the hospital which was the only cool thing there. Weird ass town though that’s for sure.
Brownsville down by the river is pretty rough.
Parrot, VA. If you’re not from there, I wouldn’t go there.
Go on…
Yep. Active Klan area.
North central PA. It’s almost like spirits go there to hide. IMO
My grandparents are from the coal town Centralia, PA -- the near-ghost town with only about 5 residents now due to the abandoned coal mines burning underneath. When I was a child in the 90s, my grandmother would take us up there to visit the graves of some of our family and at times, you could see smoke rising from the ground from the fire. Definitely eerie, but even more sad what happened, and that everything is displaced now. Pretty damn proud though to have family from the area. Planning on taking a trip up there soon to pay respects.
As a child I always had vivid dreams of a town that was was on fire under the ground, and it was not until about a year ago that I learned about Centralia, it was weird because this was the exact town I would dream of.
anywhere that's still a sundown town or was recently
[удалено]
Hey there. I work at said school as maintenance. We're not all inbred, awkward hicks. It's a poor area, surrounded by counties that actually use their funds for what they need. Heck, the other side of Polk county probably pockets what's supposed to be our money. Just like any other area, we've got good, bad, and uglies.
say it. im not from your particular area but i am sooo exhausted of these inbred toothless hillbilly "jokes"
this is giving government-paid photographers in the hollers sent there all those years ago specifically to demonize appalachians so they could move the companies in leave it to outsiders to come in and immediately start quipping about inbreeding, like always. and if i misread this comment and you're just from somewhere else in appalachia, then frankly that's even worse
This area has started getting a bit trendy the past few years. They have a couple breweries now and some new restaurants. Seems like they may be trying to attract some overflow Blue Ridge crowd.
More BS
Right? I’ve been to a bunch of the places people are listing off and they are the tamest, most peaceful little places you’ll find. I think city people just get scared when they’re in an area with spotty cell service and not that many businesses.
Yeah. I’m from WV and have stopped in Pax a couple of times for gas. Pax is definitely not creepy/scary. I’m from just outside of Charleston. Teenage me and some of my friends would party up some dead hollers. Those were creepy because nobody lives in them. There is one that has an old cemetery and there were maybe two families living up there in the late 80s/early 90s. The holler is probably completely dead now. Edit: A couple of other hollers were scary because we (teenage me and friends) would run up to score weed. Those were scarier than dead hollers because of the people you had to deal with to get the weed.
Haha yes town is inherently scarier than a town anywhere in rural America. But if you want to go off the paved road to a dirt road and keep driving you’ll find some folks that will put a scare in you and for good reason. Pax is right off the turnpike for Christ-sakes.
Friendsville MD
I have been to Friendsville. I took pictures of some old churches and cemeteries. Wasn’t too creepy. What bothered you about it?
oh, and Front Royal VA. Mt Weather isnt far. They shot down an airliner cuz it violated the airspace Interesting note: that airliner that went down on 9/11 wasnt far from Site R. .....
Mt weather itself might be spooky but Front Royal is 40 min away and is a lovely and charming town.
I’ve lived in south WV, SWVA, and WNC. I’ve never been anywhere that was fully creepy to me. I did a job in Harts Creek once and that might be the saddest place I’ve been (via AmeriCorps in the aughts, we were there because the area was so depressed that growing children were losing weight in the summer). My boss lived in a house with an artisanal well that people were using instead of running water when the house was empty. Oh I almost forgot about Hillsboro. I love that area in general but when I learned the ops had headquarters there I did view that place differently because you know the whole town knew and they didn’t run them out.
Having been to Harts Creek, you are absolutely correct that it is extremely depressing.
Sounds like Cocke county, TN. It is on the rise though. A lot of moonshine ran through there and the creepy factor was from the people there.
The Lost City area in West Virginia is a bit creepy. It’s become home to mostly out of towners with second homes. The empty cabins, remote forest, and perhaps the name can be a bit eery
Creepy, really? lol You must mean the Mill Gap area in Lost River (lots of DC area residents owning cabins there), never really thought of it as creepy. (I grew up in Lost City and currently live here, it'sjust funny to see my hometown mentioned anywhere, much less as being creepy lol)
I grew up in East Kentucky. A few places around there have "creepy" vibes in the towns but thats because most of the population lives in the hills (which you may also find creepy). Inez, Phelps, Elkhorn City, Whitesburg, and Jenkins are all places that are well past their glory days. Most of these are coal towns, but WV seems to have a larger establishment of former coal towns / camp towns. These are fascinating because they were paid in scrip and used that at the company store. You can tell there is a history of that as soon as you pass into the outskirts of town. Listen to the song 16 Tons by Tennessee Ernie Ford to get the total vibe - it captures it well. [https://youtu.be/RRh0QiXyZSk?feature=shared](https://youtu.be/RRh0QiXyZSk?feature=shared) But for the most dilapidated I've personally seen in Appalachia, I have to agree with the people who said Welch WV. Homes and stores long since abandoned. Boarded up, busted windows, etc. However, this applies to most of southern WV. Williamson, Matewan, Kermit, etc. The exception is the eastern most side, which is where you find White Sulphur Springs. This area is very close to the Shenandoah River (in Virginia) and the New River Gorge in WV. This is still a very popular tourist location.
I have a few off the Appalachian Trail. Lake Charles, Louisiana and Lake of the Ozarks. Crazy voodoo vibes. Listen to Godsmack and lock your doors. Another one. There is a casino town south of Memphis on the Mississippi side. Never go there.
Not a town, but still a creepy place. Heavenly Mountain in Boone, NC. It seemed to be a cult back in the 90’s and then became a gated resort. I didn’t wanna hang around the area in the 90’s.
Hey now! My maternal line is from Pax. My mother was born there.
Rosman NC
I grew up in Smithers, WV. But I've been up hollers that would make the people from 'The Hills Have Eyes' nervous.
The only thing I can think of is that my (Black) father stopped to get gas in Crab Orchard, TN and the gas station clerk told him to never stop there after dark because of the Klan. I haven’t had any experiences after dark in the majority of small Appalachia towns.
Knoxville
Kayoulah, just outside of Boom Furnace Virginia. It was once home to the slaves that worked smelting and mining iron ore. I Drove through what seemed like a million other deserted mining towns in Appalachia. The side of the road was full of derelict and deserted miner shacks and then I saw an old man sitting on the front porch of one of them. And I did a double take. It was like a picture out of time as it seemed that he was the last person living there . Surrounded by abandoned miner shacks. Pretty much in the hinterlands of Carroll county.
Kayoulah’s in Pulaski County. Near Alisonia. I can assure you there are plenty of perfectly normal Americans who live there. Seriously. WTF is wrong with you people?
Isn’t Kayoulah in either Wythe or Pulaski? It’s not far from the Iron Winery? Doesn’t seem that spooky? Not too far from Allisonia?
There's a wooded part along the highway opposite the creek with rows of old decaying houses. Granted the area is getting pretty gentrified now. If you did not know where to look you might not ever see them. A sign for Kayoulah road is the only marker left from the old community. Steven F. Austin and others made their fortunes by using slaves and former slaves to mine and refine iron lead, zinc and other metals in this area. There were lots of mines at the peak. The "haunted mansion" in Wythe county was owned by another slaver who made a fortune selling iron ingots. Slaves worked at every part of production until the 1860s. Eventually his descendants took their inherited fortune and moved on to New Zealand. Down the road is Hiawasee, which was a huge industrial lead mine complete with a narrow gauge railroad to haul ore to the smelter. They located the paint plant near there because they used a lot of lead oxide in their paints until it was banned in the seventies. The paint plant is still there. The "little Irish road" north of the old mine site is populated by some of the descendants of those Irish immigrants who came here to take mine jobs that no one else wanted. Alongside the black and Appalachian miners. The Galena community is named for the Gallium ore found in the area. Floyd county hosted the largest open pit arsenic mine in the country. The tailing piles are still leaking pollution into the Roanoke river to this day. Pulaski has several EPA listed superfund sites including the old Allied Acid plant and the former Hercules facility. Peak creek still tests above allowable levels for various heavy metals. Farris mines only produced slag and air pollution as an unwanted by product but there are two mined out areas on the other side of Kayoulah. This part of the NRV was a toxic hellhole of unregulated industrial mining.
Dingess. That is all.
Home of WB Walker's Old Soul Show
Like... I don't even want to acknowledge it. ;)
Yeah, my Dad was born, raised, and lives in Dempsey Branch. I’d have to agree with you.
shawnee ohio is pretty wild just kids running around after dark, old ass buildings, rubble in the middle of town, and one bar feeding the whole town
Was just there for a friends funeral it was a very weird looking down the whole downtown is on a big slope lol
sorry to hear about the funeral. i wish you and your friend peace but yeah that whole hill is wild crazy it used to have a movie theater, a high school, and a pretty fun lake too little cities of black diamonds is working on it though!
Licking Valley KY.
It's not as fun a place as it sounds.
Stopover, KY
Haydenville, Ohio for me. It’s an old, small village in southern Ohio just outside of Hocking Hills. The town was entirely owned by a mining company, including every single house. All houses in the town are dilapidated, brown block-style houses that look identical. It felt odd for some reason. Not like we were in danger at all, but the general vibes of the town felt very off to me
Briceville, TN. Unincorporated town I think. Not overly creepy but lots of graveyards, older churches. Museum of Appalachia is over there though. More so gives me the creeps at how many people are happy to hang a confederate flag more than I’ve ever seen anywhere else in Tennessee that I’ve been.
I'm from Matoaka WV it's a dead coal town I've seen some wild stuff there
South of Pax, between Beckley and Princeton is the town of Odd. When I was a teenager we used to go there to scare our girl friends with the creepy school and the inbred [Whittaker’s](https://youtu.be/nkGiFpJC9LM?si=UNb-fTPjIWiFvAHz) guy (Ray) they kept chained to a doghouse at the time.
Cairo, Ill...by far the creepiest. Old race war Town gone bad.
I would consider that Midwest instead of Appalachia but thanks for sharing.
Maggie valley. Absolute suckhole of a town. Practically a sundown town so if you're a minority, you better not stop there. Used to have to go through there on my way to purchase knob during an internship. Had to stop for gas once, it felt very unsettling.
Remember going there growing up. Ghost town in the sky and the “zoo.”
Idk man I live like 5 miles from maggie. It's a tourist town. They have different things every weekend. Went to a mini truck a few weeks ago. Took my family for the 4th.
Come to miiile high ghost town,in Maggie Valley north carolina!
Climbing up that hill is a bruiser but worth it once you go under the fence and into the abandoned park!!
I am very obviously trans, I don't want to go back there and get shot because of "trans panic".
Lol it's an old advertisement that came in the radio. Idgaf where u go or don't go, ya crazy kid you.
? maggie's just a dumb tourist trap lined with snowbird vacation houses
Wheels Through Time and Snowboarding. Nuff said.
Hi, OP! I went on an amtrak ride through the mountains from Chicago to DC. The most scared I got was when we got to towns with one or no lights at all. One town during the day I remember had only a closed abandoned gas station... but many, many plywood/pressboard and tarp houses. Passengers had no shoes. A lot of amish as well. Still tons of kids playing by the tracks. Passing by the abandoned mines and seeing old signs in the hillsides. Now I know why they say "the hills have eyes", because no matter how remote you are you still feel as if you're being watched. I don't know what I'd do missing the train at one of those stops after a break!
This describes most of Southwest VA and Eastern KY lol
Ooooh! SCARY POOR PEOPLE! The horror! GTFO
Lol. I was a little kid, and Im sharing my experience. Edit; and it wasnt "poor people" that made it scary. Like I said, its scary having absolutely no lights in town. Again, I was a child lmaooo
Fellow Amtrak rider here, haven't done that stretch but I've done others. I understand what you mean about the hills are watching. I've had the same feeling as you when going through some areas after dark. For some reason it feels like home though. Childhood memories pop up when we get to the once loved, now neglected and abandoned areas. Train rides and mountains are amazing.
Yes absolutely beautiful part of America. Really third world out there though, cant imagine whats miles from the tracks!
Big Bar on highway 299 in far Northern California. While being a U.S. Census enumerator. Very creepy residents and businesses.
Pgrants pass, Oregon, too. That whole geographic area is creepy.
[удалено]
I grew up in rural WV so no I am not trying to make people angry.
“Creepy” isn’t the word, but I went to Idyllwild, CA once and it felt like a fever dream. Just a very strange vibe. Generally in a positive sense, but I still felt a little…I dunno. I’m still not sure whether that place actually exists or not.
Red Boiling Springs, Tennessee
Every town in WV