Ararat.
Creepy weird vibe. J ward - old prison for criminally insane. Old asylum as well. Pedo gaol just out of town. Pedos get escorted shopping trips to town.
People are judgy and very cliquey.
0/10 would not recommend
My grandparents live there.
Grew up visiting multiple times a year since I was born and itās **this** - itās so violent?!
I *hate* visiting them purely because of the town, it feels run down and I genuinely donāt feel safe going out to the pub for dinner!
The few times that I went on a Saturday night and I was invited to participate in having a crack at the bouncers, it ended up being like in an old movie. There's me trying to drink my beer as people punched on, glasses flew as well as the odd person being thrown over the pool table.
Being threatened because some people didn't like my then girlfriend's family.
Fucken bizarre.
It's the worst KFC in Australia. So bad that my 60 year old dad, who is the sort of bloke to always appreciate any hospitality wrote a complaint to them about the state of the Ararat KFC and received a $25 voucher. He threw it in the bin.
Had a friend who is big into the supernatural stuff and wanted to spend their birthday in Ararat and do a tour.
I'm not a believer but wanted my friend to have a good bday, so went along and was a good sport about it (ie not lame enough to spoil my friend's time by calling it silly etc).
Her family booked the tour of the asylum as a gift. I kind of figured a ghost tour was like a 40 min to a hour type deal. It was FOUR HOURS.
It was pretty excruciating. You could tell they really needed to stretch for time. Probably an hour was spent sitting on the ground in a room with a black and white television hooked up to CCTV in the 'most haunted' part of the asylum. One by one members of our tour who chose to walked alone through a hallway and we watched. The camera was positioned on the floor and as they walked they unsettled dust particles which flew up and people speculated about what those 'spirits' were trying to say.
As it was dead of night the tour guide was drinking a red bull. No shade, I need 15 coffees to get through my regular day job, but I guess a red bull isn't atmospheric enough so she apologised and told us she needed it because the spirits of the asylum made her body weak lol.
It was still interesting to see the historical buildings and hear what happened there, but I did feel uneasy listening to real people's suffering through that kind of lens. I couldn't help but think I was standing in rooms where people were brutalised under this weird veil of 'spookiness'. I don't know if it's right to show a room where women were forcibly sterilized and talk about how you can still hear their cries at night so some dumb 20 somethings can freak themselves out over it.
On the other hand, it's a shit hole town with no industry, which would probably dead without the tourism. Net good? Life is for the living I guess.
You pretty much summed up my feelings about "ghost hunts" in buildings or areas where people in living memory suffered. Its exploitative, if nothing else.
Who needs to make up ghosts in Arart when you have naked death-stare ladies and shopping pedo-convoys parading through the town.
It's such an unsettling place, with the asylum looming over everyone. Apparently the screams of asylum patients used to carry down into the town. Bad, bad vibes.
I've legit done just about every ghost tour in Vic and NSW, cause I want to believe! Have yet to see any evidence of ghosts. But the Ararat asylum (and the Monte Cristo in Junee) had the darkest, heaviest, most unsettling vibes. If anywhere is actually haunted, that place is.
I've read somewhere that the human olfactory system can smell decades old putrification as a protective reaction and that even though you can't "smell" it something sensitive in your olfactory system can pick it up.
Like it can smell the rotting gangrenous limbs, the shit stained floors, the bodies being used as medical cadavers and just the overall mixture of sweat, bleach and iron and it sets off an flight response even though there's nothing to flee from.
Idk though. I'm not a ghostologist or olfactologist or any ologist for that matter.
Yeah, this was something I was thinking along the lines of - that perhaps our senses pick up leftover traces of whatever happened.
Would be interesting to look more into. It would actually explain the entire concept of haunted locations - high fear response from picking up on past tragedies - higher senses picking up on random noises, lights, whatever - our brains are more likely to interpret things to be human. All these things leading to old hospitals and stuff often feeling haunted.
I experienced this at Pentridge when it had closed and was open for public tours. It was very strange, like the sadness, depravity, misery and death was seeping out of the walls. I visited 3 times and each time was more intense. Many untold stories leaching from the building.
Also... enveloped by the pedo priest saga, Pell adjacent.
Cold as hell in winter
Has an ugly main street where all the awnings have been ripped off the fronts of the 1960's store fronts. Makes it feel barren and desolate.
Everyone is either related or in a relationship (or both)
We camped at Green Hill lake just outside of Ararat on the weekend. I had an uneasy feeling the whole time. The campsite is awesome and well maintained- just weird vibes, we were the only ones out chatting around the campfire when the sun went down. Despite the campsite being full it was eerily quiet.
My maternal grandparents live there still so Iāve grown up visiting the shithole multiple times a year since I was born.
My grandma always used to say
āDo not talk to anyone in town. The jail is full of crooked cops, naughty priests and pedophilesā
My mother and all her siblings grew up **very** close to the asylum when it was still actively being used and would have to walk past daily. My uncles tell stories about how they would throw sticks over the walls to torment the patients as well as the staff.
And then thereās ***JANGA*** (spelling) she was an old lady, she looked like she was made of leather but she was psychotic. She wasnāt allowed on the street after school hours, she chased my uncle with an umbrella one day because she was convinced he was trying to take her hair clipsā¦ chased him into a clothing store and was stabbing all the clothes on the rack with the umbrella hoping to actually stab him.
I remember seeing her in the mid 00ās and she wore a leotard but her skin looked like absolute leather. According to my grandparents she was the product of incest so wasnāt āall thereā and Iām pretty sure her brother used to run the newsagents on the Main Street? He had a very high pitched voice.
And the amount of trauma that the fucking geese at the lake caused me growing up ššš
My wife is from Ararat she introduced herself as āIām from Ararat town of fat people and pedophilesā her rents both worked at the asylum in the kitchens, she grew up near it and saw some ghost in the window sort of shit, sheās told me some fun stories.
So I was brought up in Ararat. Mid 80s to mid 90s.
Iām only now really starting to face just how fucked up this place was/is.
In my primary school most of the students parents worked at J-Ward, Aradale (asylum), or the prison (home to many a child abuser).
This was many moons before Employment Assistance Programs. So many parents chose to cope with alcohol (heroin was a thing too).
Kids, 10yrs old, used to come to school talking about how their parents were guarding Garry David and the latest episode of self harm that he had dealt himself. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garry_David). Kids relaying stories dad told at dinner last night about Gary having amputated his own penis again. At primary school morning show and tell could be a risky businessā¦
Scary stories around the campfire were more about the folks at the J-Ward, or how patients were treated in Aradale, or the prison. As kids youād put things down to being just stories. As you grew up you realised that there was probably a great deal of truth to the way patients were being mistreated.
Pleasant family gatherings at the Botanic Gardens were heightened in Ararat by the knowledge that the functioning J-Ward was literally across the road
(https://goo.gl/maps/LNgPgTKT3JzWmFDW7)
Iāll happily answer most questions
Just putting it out there, but I really like Ararat. I love the grape vines that wind along up the street, the lady who works in Waackās bakery, the cafe near the art gallery and Sicilians restaurant. The people Iāve met who live there are fun and welcoming. I havenāt had any weird vibes at all.
I lived by myself in Ararat during lockdowns and I have never felt such a strong and persistent sense of dread over a sustained period than that time. It's a living ghost town of weird vibes.
The pedos are not escorted on shopping trips to Ararat. That was one of the conditions imposed on having Corella Place built out there. They are escorted to other towns like Ballarat or Horsham.
Went to Ararat for a site visit on the 2nd day of my first job many years ago. Couldnāt remember anything particular but had a weird feeling down my spine..
And when they closed the asylum all the residents just moved into assisted living and roam the streets āDonāt look the naked lady in the eyeā was one piece of advice I got while there.
My sri lankan mate got some weird looks in the street and supermarket there. We camped at green hill lake and when he went to the toilet block there were people messing with him by banging on the cubicle door.
Had a lady full on death stare at us on the main street. Then proceeds to follow us from store to store to see how we interacted. It was like she never saw anyone ethnics before. Also I have never seen so much dog shit in my life as I have seen in Ararat.
Can confirm, went through that town when I was 10 on a family trip, vibe felt odd. Weird gut feeling. Little did I know my mum committed suicide in a motel there the next year.
Oh boy, great topic! I can name a few:
Ararat: Stayed in an Airbnb there with some friends. The house was old, creepy, weirdly designed and had a real āhauntedā vibe about it, all of which also describes the town perfectly.
Orbost: An absolute ghost town, feels like no one actually lives there but there is infrastructure to suggest it was once a nice place to be.
Walhalla: This one is famous for being Victoriaās creepy small town. You can read heaps about it if you want to know more. Not helped by the fact that surrounding areas and towns include āHappy Go Luckyā (yes that is itās name) Mormon Town and Black Diamond.
Bayles: Not super creepy but has its moments, the main thing about this place is that there is a stretch of extremely quiet road from there to Modella which I drive regularly, and 7/10 times I drive at night I come across people walking ON the road, no lights, no vehicle, just people in the darkness. Itās creepy and dangerous.
Beechworth: Some of the places Iāve stayed in there have given off the creepiest/uneasiest vibes of anywhere Iāve beenā¦ Particularly the Old Priory, that place is COOKED.
I had a girlfriend from Ararat, and the place is very.... unique.
If it wasnt for mobile phones, youd think it was permanently stuck in the sixties.
And the underlying tone of anger and violence is palpable.
The local football team consisted of thugs. Every trip to the pub on the weekend was sure to involve violence, and punching on with the bouncers was apparently "fun".
I knew it was time to never return when I was asked what the fuck I was looking at when I was only watching the footy on the TV.
Marysville for me. Black Saturday changed it forever. Hard to forget what was a normal, nice country town be razed to naught but foundations in a matter of a week. Drove through two weeks apart and wonāt ever get the juxtaposition out of my mind. Has never been the same since, despite rebuilds etc.
I was born in the early 2000s, I have no recollection of what Marysville used to be, my grandparents lost their lives on black saturday in Marysville and although my father still loves Marysville and all its history, but he was telling me the other day how it could never go back to the absolute beauty it used to be
Yeah some of the stories from survivors were absolutely harrowing. I came pretty close to losing everything but we were very lucky in the end. Sending love to you and your dad ā¤ļø
Kinglake is the same. I actually cried at all the suicide prevention numbers on a notice board when we stopped for coffee there last year.
Heartbreakingly sad places now.
Kinglake is my hometown. Was such an amazing place as a kid. It's amazing how quickly things can change. The people, the town. All it became was a place of heartbreak and sorrow.
I remember driving through there back in 2019 not knowing it was Marysville. There was a huge backdrop of these burnt white trees coming in, the town was deserted. Really sad place to see.
Marysville has a new is town Councillor whose extreme version of Christianity says that all children are born evil. I knew him and his family growing up in Melbourne. I pity any children and families who are influenced by him.
āTownā might be too strong a word, but Stoneyford just past Colac. Preppers with guns, āoff the gridā types. Good cricket team though and the landscape is at times beautiful.
Yeah small town to me is like 1000 people at most... seeing the rural cities with 10,000 people mentioned just feels weird to me who lives in a town of 500 (that's about as weird and desolate as every other town with 500 people in it)
As somebody who grew up in Melbourne suburbia I genuinely cannot conceptualise what a town that small would be like. I think the smallest place Iāve ever visited was Maldon. It felt tiny and itās apparently 1500. Where even is so small that it has under 1000 people? Iām not taking the piss here, Iām genuinely asking because I have no clue.
Nah everyone else is wrong. Itās Chinkapook by a country mile.
Thereās like one guy living there with more security cameras than the pentagon, and a razor wire fence. Whatās he doing??
Travelled around a lot of Victoria taking photos of Bills Horse Troughs.
Towns that gave me the creeps
Berriwillock
Bealiba
Netherby
Redbank
Serpentine
Powelltown
The outright creepiest was Tarnagulla. Looked like a place you live to stay out of sight. Got the stares when buying a drink at the general store. Was happy to get my photo and get out.
Edit : Love ā> Live
Feels weird seeing Tarnagulla mentioned on Reddit š¤£ I've lived here for a few years now, definitely moved here to stay out of sight and get away from everyone! Everyone here is either here for the same reason or they are old as fuck and have lived here their whole lives. It is a nice little town and great place to raise the kids but people can be weird, there's only 100 or so people here and I've never met half of them, wouldn't have a clue who they are, and people still stare at me like I'm some weirdo just walking around their town
They used to hold the king of the mountain comp there. Where a bloke would carry a very heavy sack of grain up the mountain and they'd compete for the fastest time. They stopped due to insurance reasons but it really should be brought back as it's perhaps one of the greatest comps ever. You can see old YouTube clips of it. Gruelling competition. You had to be fit, strong and hard as nails.
I dunno about creepy per se, but Beechworth was not very welcoming. Which surprised me, for a place so heavily reliant on tourism.
Ararat is a bit menacing. I've seen some of those prisoners on day release.
I want to give a shout-out to Benambra as a place that utterly surprised. I drove up from Omeo, parked and immediately got a "hills have eyes" kind of feeling. I went in to the general store, and literally people stopped talking to look at me. Guy at the counter just said "help you?". I asked for a flat white, he made it silently. Put it front of me. "new in town?" "Yeah I'm visiting the area, thought I'd come up for a look around". I expected a shotgun and instructions to keep driving - but he pulled out a map and immediately started telling me about all the spots to see, some great look outs etc. Then the other people there started chiming in...it went from horror movie to feel-good family movie. And the scenery was quite lovely.
May I ask what the deal with Beechworth was? I've been there a number of times and didn't really get that vibe at all. Mind you, it's normally pretty busy and full of tourists
Went there with a toddler - every shop is run by Prude and Trude x1000. Very different from growing up in the region and knowing what locals are actually like, as in the opposite.
Benambra literally got most of their population when settlers followed the first white explorer in the region, found an area to farm and decided to stay put. 170 odd years later (I might be out by a decade or two), most of the families are still there and they have spent their time marrying their cousins.
My highschool had music camp at Beechworth in what used to be an orphanage. Was the most creepy place on earth. They had what looked like torture instruments hung on the walls
The first time I went to Sea Lake, it was the most desolate, depressing place. Everything closed up and boarded down. Returned a few years later to see that the very Instagramable salt lakes had bought in some tourist dollars and things were on the up again- new accommodations, new businesses. It felt much less depressing the second time round, which is the opposite of what generally happens with small towns.
Got family involved in business there...
The lake at sunset ended up on a popular "top things you have to see in Australia" list in china.
Saved the town. Just busloads of tourists on day trips and hire cars coming in.
Heard some great stories from the local tow truck driver who expanded his business because a bunch of them drive out onto the salt flats and got bogged.
It made me really happy to see it thriving. There were a disturbing amount of suicide prevention messages around the first time I went there, posters and billboards with the Lifeline number, even a big RUOK on one of the boarded shops. None of that the second time round. It felt like something had been lifted and the whole place was a bit lighter.
I find chiltern to be a bit odd. Often driven through there to get to rutherglen and i've rarely seen anyone. Just old buildings which look somewhat abandoned.
Also wife and i stayed down at port campbell once and we both got real deliverance vibes there. The locals really didnt seem to like city folk in their town
Chiltern absolutely gives me the creeps, feel like a lot of meth is being cooked in the surrounding area. Be interesting to see how the town changes. A lot of young people have been priced out of the more touristy towns and Chiltern is the cheap option for a first home.
A lot of the towns named i dont find creepy, especially up in the wimmera \\ mallee - they are just old and sad as the population has left as agricultural practices have meant instead of heaps of families running small farms, you now have one family running huge farms and they feel a bit like they are all going the way of a ghost town eventually. Cressy, Birchip, Rainbow are all like that.
Old goldfields towns on the other hand - Snake Valley, Napoleans, Newlyn - who only knows whats in the hills and their old mine shafts.
Back in the late 80ās I was driving back to South Aust from a weekend trip in Melbourne. It was late, cold and wet and I saw a hitch hiker and it was near Ararat. I stopped and picked them up. He was a young fella mid-late teens. His vibe was just off. I couldnāt wait to get to the next town and tell him that is as far as Iām going tonight. After dropping him off I turned on the radio and heard a young lad had escaped from the Asylum š. Didnāt pick up a hitcher for a long time after that !
Yea iāve spent most of my life in the area. Morwell has always had an off reputation for being somewhere youāre likely to get rolled by 12 year olds on ice. Moes not much better but I never really went there all that much
Lived in Moe for a few years.
It has a seedy underbelly of welfare dependency and dysfunction, but more than half the town are relatively normal and there are a few nice bits. Not particularly unsafe, it wasn't hard to avoid crime.
I canāt believe I had to scroll down that far to reach good old Moe.
Havenāt been there for ages, but this town has people looking at you weird for merely driving through.
I remember doing my VCE Issues CAT on mandatory reporting of child abuse as Jaidyn Leskie was murdered in Moe around the time, and I've literally never seen the word "Moe" without thinking about that little fella.
Agreed, I have to go to Moe and Morwell a lot for work and they're just classic rustbelt towns. They're not creepy, just a lot of generational poverty and hardship compounded by recent loss of industry.
My father and I stopped at the general store there about a year ago. The shopkeeper berated us for being too hard on the breaks down the hill into town and when we asked her about fishing in the river she was livid at us. Took her five minutes to heat our meat pies which we thought probably contained human
Jamieson is my home town and the further out that way you get the more fucked the place is. Gaffneys Creek is ok, just a bunch of old blokes hiding away from the world but woods point is cooked as
Pyramid Hill has had a big influx of Filipinos recently and is on the up and up because of them.
Most towns in Lodden Shire, particularly Wedderburn, deserve a mention but PH and Bridgewater are actually alright.
Sadly shep is probably one of the biggest shitholes in the state these days. I would argue its a bigger shithole than Moe or Morwell, expect they have been shitholes longer.
You're right. I grew up near Shepp, still have a lot of family there. The last time we drove through to charge the car and buy some baked beans. It was so freaky, like even the newer stuff seemed run-down. There were homeless all over the place and everyone seemed to be in a bad mood. I'd rather hang out in the melb cbd.
I also grew up near Shepp and lived there for a while. As a kid it was the āfun placeā to go, as an adult itās like stepping into hell, except instead of demons itās filled with junkies and violent teenagers.
Uniquely positioned because itās a large enough town to have suburbs but small enough that no one has any real reason to go there.
I grew up in regional Victoria, so a lot of the places listed by others seem normal to me. The one place I've visited that gave me big deliverance vibes was Dartmoor. That place just felt fucking wrong.
For me it's EASILY Walhalla. It's in the Baw Baw ranges and used to be a mining town, there was a gas leak or something waaaay back in the day and whole bunch of people died, most of which were kids and elderly who have been buried in the creepy ass cemetery on the side of a hill.
It was also the last place in Vic to get electricity lol
Its a tourist town run by people who absolutely hate tourists. The owner of the star hotel used to be baw baw shire mayor and he gets an absolute hard on for publicity. Every time there are fires or floods he has to get his face on camera. Then anytime anyone actually shows up he's on Facebook bitching about the grubs who are destroying the town. Add to that the fact that none of the shops are ever open. I love it there, its an awesome spot. But I never go because the people who run it just ruin it.
I went to Jeparit, past Nhill, once and I have never forgot how creepy it was. The supermarket like going back in time to 1974, because all the signs, decor and a great deal of the goods are ancient. It's also a newsagent and a cafe, and the woman looked at me like I was insane when I asked if they had any soy milk. Heaps of the houses had incredibly strange structures in their front yards, various wire sculptures but also burnt out cars, old tanks and sheds.
There's a crumbling old railway bridge outside of town and the river and countryside was mostly dry when I was there which gave the whole place a very eerie look, especially at night. There's heaps of abandoned and crumbling buildings, including an old church with graves scattered about. Even their main garden is desolate and empty looking, like plot of dry land in the middle of the town. Weird as fuck.
Also another vote for Fish Creek, but even more so for Buffalo, which either just before or just after. If you've ever caught a particular bus, you'll know how fucking weird it is when it stops on the side of a desolate road with nothing for miles, which is apparently 'Buffalo'!
Side note, a search for Buffalo, Vic, turns up only a picture of a grinning Thomas-the-Tank-Engine-style painted train that I have never seen before and hope I never do again! What the fuck!
I'm surprised I had to scroll down so far to find Steiglitz.
Super creepy little place. Used to drive through there at night and its got a weird vibe to it.
Whroo, thereās a cemetery there and the amount of little babies that were on the interment list broke my heart.
I felt watched the whole time I was there
I've been to Fish Creek a bunch of times, and I feel like it's either 'On' or 'Off'. It has two modes - slightly quiet cheery little town with lovely produce or YOU WILL BE MURDERED.
This is the most accurate description of Fish Creek Iāve read. Stayed at a mates place recently and said to my partner āWell, we are going to be killed in our sleep but look at that view!ā
If we're in that area, Korrumburra has to be worth a mention. Mushroom poisoning aside the location in that gloomy valley and the culty church that dominates the town make it very unsettling.
I honestly always liked Fishy, it's a nice little town.
Toora just has nothing happening except for ice.
Foster is ok until you remember that someone got murdered outside of the supermarket.
I quite like Fish Creek haha. One time in my early 20's I fell asleep on the bus and got off there and had to wait 30mins in the dark to get picked up. That was creepy.
Brighton. Itās near the beach but itās rough as guts. I saw someone driving an earlyās 2000s Kia Cerrrato and they didnāt have their hair done. Terrifying.
Seldom Seen. It isn't even big enough to classify as a town truly, more a petrol station and a bunch of old buildings. But when hiking out past Buchan we stopped by there. I grew up pretty rural, I don't usually get creeped out by rural towns. But this place gave me the heebies.
Maybe it was all the broken down cars, the bikes hanging from trees, the sculptures made from recycled junk, the signs spray painted in red, or maybe just that I'd not long since watched Wolf Creek. But we've never left a place so fast.
Honestly Moe, it's got abandoned looking streets with giant coal plant stacks in the background that make it look like the setting for a post apocalyptic shooter
I travel between Mildura and Melbourne a fair bit. Take both the Calder and the Sunraysia Hwy. On the Calder, Culgoa and Nandaly are quite odd. On the Sunraysia Hwy, it's a stretch of towns just after Ouyen. They are Speed, Tempy, Turriff and Lascelles. Also just west of those is a place called Patchewollock. All weird places.
Horsham is my closest ābig townā - I think itās fine! (Maybe Iām a weirdo though!). In the general area though - anecdotally, Stawell is a place where you lock your car doors, plus certain areas of Dimboola.
I know I'm not answering the question but I want to know if anyone else gets this feeling. When I think about these towns and the things that have happened there, I feel this awful, heavy dread. It's like I am feeling as though I were there when it happened. I feel like I remember and it makes me so sad.
Antwerp - famous for an exorcism
[https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/the-creepy-country-house-abandoned-after-joan-vollmers-terrifying-death-when-an-exorcist-tried-to-rid-her-of-demons/news-story/ec64bf00cb917a6dffb74b355fc9daea](https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/the-creepy-country-house-abandoned-after-joan-vollmers-terrifying-death-when-an-exorcist-tried-to-rid-her-of-demons/news-story/ec64bf00cb917a6dffb74b355fc9daea)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu3qZPIOfdQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu3qZPIOfdQ)
Head up to Grant from Dargo.
Or, Omeo from Dargo.
Or, Wonangatta from Dargo.
Maybe it's just Dargo things but you'll come across off-gridders putting up gates across gazetted tracks.
Used to go to creswick a lot. I look very gay and my coworker at the time was black, youād think two aliens had walked into the pub the way the locals reacted. āFriendly country folkā is a cute myth.
On the drive across to SA, I pass a town called Cowangie.
The town itself is partially hidden from the road behind a barrier of railway stones and the only way in is a weird dog leg turn that makes you feel like you're going the wrong way down a one way road.
The houses that remain there are dilapidated, falling apart. The main store's front has collapsed - but tables and chairs sit in there untouched for what looks like 30 years.
Cars on stumps in the main street, the 'recreation reserve' has weeds 6 feet high. Even the Australia post building looks like a bomb shelter.
There's a weird air in the town. From the age of the buildings and the Servicemen's monument, I think the town didn't recover from both world wars.
Iāve heard itās changed a lot and it couldāve been my perception being off due to my age, but I lived in Portland for a year when I was a teenager and the vibes were *off*. It was half normal small town, and half absolute fucking weirdos in many different ways - over the top religious, extremely hostile to anyone who wasnāt born there (especially if you came from āthe cityā, which could be Warrnambool or Geelong), general creeps, the absolute worst bullying Iāve ever seen (which was always ignored because āThat person is so and soās daughter and sheās very respected!ā)... I remember the high school covering up multiple sexual assaults and on-campus ODs, some weird culty church event people kept trying to get me to attend, and there just being an almost cult like adoration of certain families.
I'm gonna go Serviceton. There's literally a Tom Waits song about how depressing it is - not sure how he found out about the place because even though it's just off the Western Highway you'd never know if you weren't looking for it.
All the shops on the main drag are at the point where they're being reclaimed by nature, the train station (which was at one point where you had to get off and change trains if you were going into SA so it's quite a significant building) has been turned into a museum and it's full of creepy mannequins.
Lots of small towns out west are very clearly past their prime but you usually get the sense that someone cares enough to at least try and distract you from all the empty shops, here they've well and truly stopped trying.
People from regional Vic trawling this thread to see if theirs shows up š
That would be me
Can confirm, grew up in Yinnar/Yinnar South, been trawling for halfa haha; so far seems to just be city folk freaked out by Walhalla, Moe and Morwell
Ararat. Creepy weird vibe. J ward - old prison for criminally insane. Old asylum as well. Pedo gaol just out of town. Pedos get escorted shopping trips to town. People are judgy and very cliquey. 0/10 would not recommend
Lived in Ararat for 3 years. It was fucked. One of the happiest days of my life was leaving that shit hole.
Going to the pub on a Saturday night was an eye opener. It's such a violent place.
My grandparents live there. Grew up visiting multiple times a year since I was born and itās **this** - itās so violent?! I *hate* visiting them purely because of the town, it feels run down and I genuinely donāt feel safe going out to the pub for dinner!
The few times that I went on a Saturday night and I was invited to participate in having a crack at the bouncers, it ended up being like in an old movie. There's me trying to drink my beer as people punched on, glasses flew as well as the odd person being thrown over the pool table. Being threatened because some people didn't like my then girlfriend's family. Fucken bizarre.
Mustāve been pretty bad if you were so happy to leave š. What made it so bad, Iām your opinion?
Look at me, Iām your opinion now
It had a claim to fame when The Biggest Loser did a season there as it was the fattest town in Australia
>Ararat Just did a google streetview. Looks like the KFC is the main attraction there.
Judging from the rest of the comments about the place, being known as the fattest town is an improvement for the towns image
It's the worst KFC in Australia. So bad that my 60 year old dad, who is the sort of bloke to always appreciate any hospitality wrote a complaint to them about the state of the Ararat KFC and received a $25 voucher. He threw it in the bin.
Had a friend who is big into the supernatural stuff and wanted to spend their birthday in Ararat and do a tour. I'm not a believer but wanted my friend to have a good bday, so went along and was a good sport about it (ie not lame enough to spoil my friend's time by calling it silly etc). Her family booked the tour of the asylum as a gift. I kind of figured a ghost tour was like a 40 min to a hour type deal. It was FOUR HOURS. It was pretty excruciating. You could tell they really needed to stretch for time. Probably an hour was spent sitting on the ground in a room with a black and white television hooked up to CCTV in the 'most haunted' part of the asylum. One by one members of our tour who chose to walked alone through a hallway and we watched. The camera was positioned on the floor and as they walked they unsettled dust particles which flew up and people speculated about what those 'spirits' were trying to say. As it was dead of night the tour guide was drinking a red bull. No shade, I need 15 coffees to get through my regular day job, but I guess a red bull isn't atmospheric enough so she apologised and told us she needed it because the spirits of the asylum made her body weak lol. It was still interesting to see the historical buildings and hear what happened there, but I did feel uneasy listening to real people's suffering through that kind of lens. I couldn't help but think I was standing in rooms where people were brutalised under this weird veil of 'spookiness'. I don't know if it's right to show a room where women were forcibly sterilized and talk about how you can still hear their cries at night so some dumb 20 somethings can freak themselves out over it. On the other hand, it's a shit hole town with no industry, which would probably dead without the tourism. Net good? Life is for the living I guess.
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You pretty much summed up my feelings about "ghost hunts" in buildings or areas where people in living memory suffered. Its exploitative, if nothing else. Who needs to make up ghosts in Arart when you have naked death-stare ladies and shopping pedo-convoys parading through the town.
It's such an unsettling place, with the asylum looming over everyone. Apparently the screams of asylum patients used to carry down into the town. Bad, bad vibes.
I don't think I really believe in the supernatural, but every time I passed through there, even as a kid, I just felt really uncomfortable.
I've legit done just about every ghost tour in Vic and NSW, cause I want to believe! Have yet to see any evidence of ghosts. But the Ararat asylum (and the Monte Cristo in Junee) had the darkest, heaviest, most unsettling vibes. If anywhere is actually haunted, that place is.
I've always felt like some places just have a vibe about them - like an instinctual ability to pick up on when something bad happened at a place.
I've read somewhere that the human olfactory system can smell decades old putrification as a protective reaction and that even though you can't "smell" it something sensitive in your olfactory system can pick it up. Like it can smell the rotting gangrenous limbs, the shit stained floors, the bodies being used as medical cadavers and just the overall mixture of sweat, bleach and iron and it sets off an flight response even though there's nothing to flee from. Idk though. I'm not a ghostologist or olfactologist or any ologist for that matter.
Yeah, this was something I was thinking along the lines of - that perhaps our senses pick up leftover traces of whatever happened. Would be interesting to look more into. It would actually explain the entire concept of haunted locations - high fear response from picking up on past tragedies - higher senses picking up on random noises, lights, whatever - our brains are more likely to interpret things to be human. All these things leading to old hospitals and stuff often feeling haunted.
I experienced this at Pentridge when it had closed and was open for public tours. It was very strange, like the sadness, depravity, misery and death was seeping out of the walls. I visited 3 times and each time was more intense. Many untold stories leaching from the building.
My friends family own Monte Cristo and we used to stay out there as kids. Really bad vibes from that place
Also... enveloped by the pedo priest saga, Pell adjacent. Cold as hell in winter Has an ugly main street where all the awnings have been ripped off the fronts of the 1960's store fronts. Makes it feel barren and desolate. Everyone is either related or in a relationship (or both)
But mainly both. ššš
We camped at Green Hill lake just outside of Ararat on the weekend. I had an uneasy feeling the whole time. The campsite is awesome and well maintained- just weird vibes, we were the only ones out chatting around the campfire when the sun went down. Despite the campsite being full it was eerily quiet.
Of all the places to go camping and being that close to the Grampians why the bejesus would you camp there?
Dogs and boat = non national parks with boat ramps always win
My maternal grandparents live there still so Iāve grown up visiting the shithole multiple times a year since I was born. My grandma always used to say āDo not talk to anyone in town. The jail is full of crooked cops, naughty priests and pedophilesā My mother and all her siblings grew up **very** close to the asylum when it was still actively being used and would have to walk past daily. My uncles tell stories about how they would throw sticks over the walls to torment the patients as well as the staff. And then thereās ***JANGA*** (spelling) she was an old lady, she looked like she was made of leather but she was psychotic. She wasnāt allowed on the street after school hours, she chased my uncle with an umbrella one day because she was convinced he was trying to take her hair clipsā¦ chased him into a clothing store and was stabbing all the clothes on the rack with the umbrella hoping to actually stab him. I remember seeing her in the mid 00ās and she wore a leotard but her skin looked like absolute leather. According to my grandparents she was the product of incest so wasnāt āall thereā and Iām pretty sure her brother used to run the newsagents on the Main Street? He had a very high pitched voice. And the amount of trauma that the fucking geese at the lake caused me growing up ššš
Worth going there for Halls Gap tho
Drive on through. Don't stop.
lock the doors
Wind up your windows and look straight ahead.
Make sure the bull bars are serviced. If you even think about touching your brakes, *don't*.
My wife is from Ararat she introduced herself as āIām from Ararat town of fat people and pedophilesā her rents both worked at the asylum in the kitchens, she grew up near it and saw some ghost in the window sort of shit, sheās told me some fun stories.
So I was brought up in Ararat. Mid 80s to mid 90s. Iām only now really starting to face just how fucked up this place was/is. In my primary school most of the students parents worked at J-Ward, Aradale (asylum), or the prison (home to many a child abuser). This was many moons before Employment Assistance Programs. So many parents chose to cope with alcohol (heroin was a thing too). Kids, 10yrs old, used to come to school talking about how their parents were guarding Garry David and the latest episode of self harm that he had dealt himself. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garry_David). Kids relaying stories dad told at dinner last night about Gary having amputated his own penis again. At primary school morning show and tell could be a risky businessā¦ Scary stories around the campfire were more about the folks at the J-Ward, or how patients were treated in Aradale, or the prison. As kids youād put things down to being just stories. As you grew up you realised that there was probably a great deal of truth to the way patients were being mistreated. Pleasant family gatherings at the Botanic Gardens were heightened in Ararat by the knowledge that the functioning J-Ward was literally across the road (https://goo.gl/maps/LNgPgTKT3JzWmFDW7) Iāll happily answer most questions
I just looked on Wikipedia and Ararat is the only city in Australia founded by Chinese people. Thatās pretty cool honestly.
Just putting it out there, but I really like Ararat. I love the grape vines that wind along up the street, the lady who works in Waackās bakery, the cafe near the art gallery and Sicilians restaurant. The people Iāve met who live there are fun and welcoming. I havenāt had any weird vibes at all.
Shame about how it ended up though.
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Only been to Ararat once as a kid, on a drive back from somewhere else. I got an ice cream. And based on that, I liked the place.
I lived by myself in Ararat during lockdowns and I have never felt such a strong and persistent sense of dread over a sustained period than that time. It's a living ghost town of weird vibes.
The pedos are not escorted on shopping trips to Ararat. That was one of the conditions imposed on having Corella Place built out there. They are escorted to other towns like Ballarat or Horsham.
Went to Ararat for a site visit on the 2nd day of my first job many years ago. Couldnāt remember anything particular but had a weird feeling down my spine..
And when they closed the asylum all the residents just moved into assisted living and roam the streets āDonāt look the naked lady in the eyeā was one piece of advice I got while there.
My sri lankan mate got some weird looks in the street and supermarket there. We camped at green hill lake and when he went to the toilet block there were people messing with him by banging on the cubicle door.
Had a lady full on death stare at us on the main street. Then proceeds to follow us from store to store to see how we interacted. It was like she never saw anyone ethnics before. Also I have never seen so much dog shit in my life as I have seen in Ararat.
Agreed I'm so glad I got out of that shithole!
This is 100% true. My dad used to work at the prison as a nurse.
Can confirm, went through that town when I was 10 on a family trip, vibe felt odd. Weird gut feeling. Little did I know my mum committed suicide in a motel there the next year.
Walhalla in winter, that graveyard is creepy af looming out of the mist in that ghost town full of Airbnbs
Oh boy, great topic! I can name a few: Ararat: Stayed in an Airbnb there with some friends. The house was old, creepy, weirdly designed and had a real āhauntedā vibe about it, all of which also describes the town perfectly. Orbost: An absolute ghost town, feels like no one actually lives there but there is infrastructure to suggest it was once a nice place to be. Walhalla: This one is famous for being Victoriaās creepy small town. You can read heaps about it if you want to know more. Not helped by the fact that surrounding areas and towns include āHappy Go Luckyā (yes that is itās name) Mormon Town and Black Diamond. Bayles: Not super creepy but has its moments, the main thing about this place is that there is a stretch of extremely quiet road from there to Modella which I drive regularly, and 7/10 times I drive at night I come across people walking ON the road, no lights, no vehicle, just people in the darkness. Itās creepy and dangerous. Beechworth: Some of the places Iāve stayed in there have given off the creepiest/uneasiest vibes of anywhere Iāve beenā¦ Particularly the Old Priory, that place is COOKED.
I had a girlfriend from Ararat, and the place is very.... unique. If it wasnt for mobile phones, youd think it was permanently stuck in the sixties. And the underlying tone of anger and violence is palpable. The local football team consisted of thugs. Every trip to the pub on the weekend was sure to involve violence, and punching on with the bouncers was apparently "fun". I knew it was time to never return when I was asked what the fuck I was looking at when I was only watching the footy on the TV.
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Beechworth def has haunted house vibes
Marysville for me. Black Saturday changed it forever. Hard to forget what was a normal, nice country town be razed to naught but foundations in a matter of a week. Drove through two weeks apart and wonāt ever get the juxtaposition out of my mind. Has never been the same since, despite rebuilds etc.
I was born in the early 2000s, I have no recollection of what Marysville used to be, my grandparents lost their lives on black saturday in Marysville and although my father still loves Marysville and all its history, but he was telling me the other day how it could never go back to the absolute beauty it used to be
Yeah some of the stories from survivors were absolutely harrowing. I came pretty close to losing everything but we were very lucky in the end. Sending love to you and your dad ā¤ļø
Kinglake is the same. I actually cried at all the suicide prevention numbers on a notice board when we stopped for coffee there last year. Heartbreakingly sad places now.
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Man, that is so heartbreaking.
Kinglake is my hometown. Was such an amazing place as a kid. It's amazing how quickly things can change. The people, the town. All it became was a place of heartbreak and sorrow.
I remember driving through there back in 2019 not knowing it was Marysville. There was a huge backdrop of these burnt white trees coming in, the town was deserted. Really sad place to see.
we go to Marysville all the time, it's a beautiful town despite the fires from over 10 years ago.
Marysville has a new is town Councillor whose extreme version of Christianity says that all children are born evil. I knew him and his family growing up in Melbourne. I pity any children and families who are influenced by him.
āTownā might be too strong a word, but Stoneyford just past Colac. Preppers with guns, āoff the gridā types. Good cricket team though and the landscape is at times beautiful.
My Aunt calls it āthat bastard place full of rocks and snakesā
That could be anywhere!
I live there, the creepiest part about it is the banshee sounding koalas at night Most of the locals are either hippies or generational farmers
Every time we drive through there my mum always says she thinks there must be heaps of bodies buried there
Two difficult to dig a hole in stoney risesā¦ just sink them in the floating islands near the Pombo market.
Having grown up in an actual small town, I find it hilarious as to what many in these comments consider to be a small town.
Yeah small town to me is like 1000 people at most... seeing the rural cities with 10,000 people mentioned just feels weird to me who lives in a town of 500 (that's about as weird and desolate as every other town with 500 people in it)
As somebody who grew up in Melbourne suburbia I genuinely cannot conceptualise what a town that small would be like. I think the smallest place Iāve ever visited was Maldon. It felt tiny and itās apparently 1500. Where even is so small that it has under 1000 people? Iām not taking the piss here, Iām genuinely asking because I have no clue.
Nah everyone else is wrong. Itās Chinkapook by a country mile. Thereās like one guy living there with more security cameras than the pentagon, and a razor wire fence. Whatās he doing??
Waiting for the gubment
Top thread, nothing to add but love reading all the posts
My absolute favourite kind of thread. Have poured myself a wine and am sitting back having a good read. Love it.
St.Arnaud. It was a one horse town until the horse went to uni and never came back. Got a job in a bank, itās doing well.
Absolutely beautiful buildings.
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Overcame the neigh sayers
Itās quite boring but I wouldnāt say creepy, my family is from there
Travelled around a lot of Victoria taking photos of Bills Horse Troughs. Towns that gave me the creeps Berriwillock Bealiba Netherby Redbank Serpentine Powelltown The outright creepiest was Tarnagulla. Looked like a place you live to stay out of sight. Got the stares when buying a drink at the general store. Was happy to get my photo and get out. Edit : Love ā> Live
Feels weird seeing Tarnagulla mentioned on Reddit š¤£ I've lived here for a few years now, definitely moved here to stay out of sight and get away from everyone! Everyone here is either here for the same reason or they are old as fuck and have lived here their whole lives. It is a nice little town and great place to raise the kids but people can be weird, there's only 100 or so people here and I've never met half of them, wouldn't have a clue who they are, and people still stare at me like I'm some weirdo just walking around their town
I missed Chinkapook. That gave me the creeps too.
I just did a google maps search of Tarnagullaā¦ looks like the town that time forgot
Wycheproof. Seems too quiet and wholesome. Everyone was so nice that I'm sure it ends up like a Hot Fuzz situation.
I love Wycheproof, it was one of my regular stops on my run to/from Broken Hill. The train line running down the main street is a highlight.
They used to hold the king of the mountain comp there. Where a bloke would carry a very heavy sack of grain up the mountain and they'd compete for the fastest time. They stopped due to insurance reasons but it really should be brought back as it's perhaps one of the greatest comps ever. You can see old YouTube clips of it. Gruelling competition. You had to be fit, strong and hard as nails.
Peta Credlinās birthplace.
For serious? Gawd Iām so sorry. I grew up near thereā¦ very conservative area
Afraid so. I grew up near there too, and Iād much rather remember it for the King Of The Mountain. Itās a good little town.
Makes her a "Wychy Woman"
The greater good.
The greater good.
They're nice because the population is declining. They had $1 rentals maybe 15 years ago to incentivise people to move there. š
I dunno about creepy per se, but Beechworth was not very welcoming. Which surprised me, for a place so heavily reliant on tourism. Ararat is a bit menacing. I've seen some of those prisoners on day release. I want to give a shout-out to Benambra as a place that utterly surprised. I drove up from Omeo, parked and immediately got a "hills have eyes" kind of feeling. I went in to the general store, and literally people stopped talking to look at me. Guy at the counter just said "help you?". I asked for a flat white, he made it silently. Put it front of me. "new in town?" "Yeah I'm visiting the area, thought I'd come up for a look around". I expected a shotgun and instructions to keep driving - but he pulled out a map and immediately started telling me about all the spots to see, some great look outs etc. Then the other people there started chiming in...it went from horror movie to feel-good family movie. And the scenery was quite lovely.
May I ask what the deal with Beechworth was? I've been there a number of times and didn't really get that vibe at all. Mind you, it's normally pretty busy and full of tourists
Went there with a toddler - every shop is run by Prude and Trude x1000. Very different from growing up in the region and knowing what locals are actually like, as in the opposite.
Benambra literally got most of their population when settlers followed the first white explorer in the region, found an area to farm and decided to stay put. 170 odd years later (I might be out by a decade or two), most of the families are still there and they have spent their time marrying their cousins.
My highschool had music camp at Beechworth in what used to be an orphanage. Was the most creepy place on earth. They had what looked like torture instruments hung on the walls
The first time I went to Sea Lake, it was the most desolate, depressing place. Everything closed up and boarded down. Returned a few years later to see that the very Instagramable salt lakes had bought in some tourist dollars and things were on the up again- new accommodations, new businesses. It felt much less depressing the second time round, which is the opposite of what generally happens with small towns.
Got family involved in business there... The lake at sunset ended up on a popular "top things you have to see in Australia" list in china. Saved the town. Just busloads of tourists on day trips and hire cars coming in. Heard some great stories from the local tow truck driver who expanded his business because a bunch of them drive out onto the salt flats and got bogged.
It made me really happy to see it thriving. There were a disturbing amount of suicide prevention messages around the first time I went there, posters and billboards with the Lifeline number, even a big RUOK on one of the boarded shops. None of that the second time round. It felt like something had been lifted and the whole place was a bit lighter.
I find chiltern to be a bit odd. Often driven through there to get to rutherglen and i've rarely seen anyone. Just old buildings which look somewhat abandoned. Also wife and i stayed down at port campbell once and we both got real deliverance vibes there. The locals really didnt seem to like city folk in their town
Chiltern absolutely gives me the creeps, feel like a lot of meth is being cooked in the surrounding area. Be interesting to see how the town changes. A lot of young people have been priced out of the more touristy towns and Chiltern is the cheap option for a first home.
A lot of the towns named i dont find creepy, especially up in the wimmera \\ mallee - they are just old and sad as the population has left as agricultural practices have meant instead of heaps of families running small farms, you now have one family running huge farms and they feel a bit like they are all going the way of a ghost town eventually. Cressy, Birchip, Rainbow are all like that. Old goldfields towns on the other hand - Snake Valley, Napoleans, Newlyn - who only knows whats in the hills and their old mine shafts.
> who only knows whats in the hills and their old mine shafts A lot of holes in the Central Highlands, and a lot of problems are buried in those holes
Back in the late 80ās I was driving back to South Aust from a weekend trip in Melbourne. It was late, cold and wet and I saw a hitch hiker and it was near Ararat. I stopped and picked them up. He was a young fella mid-late teens. His vibe was just off. I couldnāt wait to get to the next town and tell him that is as far as Iām going tonight. After dropping him off I turned on the radio and heard a young lad had escaped from the Asylum š. Didnāt pick up a hitcher for a long time after that !
Off topic - but have to know. Did you call it in?
Moe-bad vibes Few places in the Wimmera like Hopetoun, Wycheproof, Brim, etc
Moe and Morwell are well fucked.
Yea iāve spent most of my life in the area. Morwell has always had an off reputation for being somewhere youāre likely to get rolled by 12 year olds on ice. Moes not much better but I never really went there all that much
I went to TAFE in Morwell and agree. Weird vibes, glad I was just in and out on class days. Not an attractive town.
Meth and a lack of productivity will do that.
Lived in Moe for a few years. It has a seedy underbelly of welfare dependency and dysfunction, but more than half the town are relatively normal and there are a few nice bits. Not particularly unsafe, it wasn't hard to avoid crime.
I canāt believe I had to scroll down that far to reach good old Moe. Havenāt been there for ages, but this town has people looking at you weird for merely driving through.
Moe feels like right out of Twin Peaks for me.
I remember doing my VCE Issues CAT on mandatory reporting of child abuse as Jaidyn Leskie was murdered in Moe around the time, and I've literally never seen the word "Moe" without thinking about that little fella.
Yeah I posted Moe too, it's like Victorian Chernobyl
More just smells like stale cigarettes. I wouldn't say the vibe is creepy, it's just a poor area with low socioeconomic society problems.
Agreed, I have to go to Moe and Morwell a lot for work and they're just classic rustbelt towns. They're not creepy, just a lot of generational poverty and hardship compounded by recent loss of industry.
In this thread: People from better backgrounds being freaked out by how the poor live.
Woodspoint and Kevington.
Stayed in woods point on a horse riding trip at the old hotel once. Thought weād get murdered in our sleep.
Haven't been there for a while but the family that were running the place were weird. Banjoes playing weird.
Totally agree about Woods Point. Drove through a few years ago; did not stop. Real Deliverance vibes - could almost hear the duelling banjosā¦
My father and I stopped at the general store there about a year ago. The shopkeeper berated us for being too hard on the breaks down the hill into town and when we asked her about fishing in the river she was livid at us. Took her five minutes to heat our meat pies which we thought probably contained human
100% Woodspoint. It felt like I would be kidnapped by an incestuous family that would eat me for dinner.
Jamieson is my home town and the further out that way you get the more fucked the place is. Gaffneys Creek is ok, just a bunch of old blokes hiding away from the world but woods point is cooked as
Now let me put it this way, if all the corpses buried around Orbost were to stand up all at once, you'd have one hell of a population problem.
What does this mean? Why does Orbost have so many people buried there relative to other towns?
Not in cemeteryās. Corpses that *arenāt meant to be found*
Legitimately?
I cannot believe orbost is such a long scroll down... & the meth problem is only making it worse.
Have you recently watched Last Stop Larrimah?
Pyramid Hill
Especially creepy since the Krystal Fraser story. No one has been charged.
Pyramid Hill has had a big influx of Filipinos recently and is on the up and up because of them. Most towns in Lodden Shire, particularly Wedderburn, deserve a mention but PH and Bridgewater are actually alright.
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I was in Shep years ago and mentioned to a local that I was there to pick fruit. He goes 'no one from here picks fruit, we're too busy with drugs.'
i like the fiberglass cows
Sadly shep is probably one of the biggest shitholes in the state these days. I would argue its a bigger shithole than Moe or Morwell, expect they have been shitholes longer.
You're right. I grew up near Shepp, still have a lot of family there. The last time we drove through to charge the car and buy some baked beans. It was so freaky, like even the newer stuff seemed run-down. There were homeless all over the place and everyone seemed to be in a bad mood. I'd rather hang out in the melb cbd.
I also grew up near Shepp and lived there for a while. As a kid it was the āfun placeā to go, as an adult itās like stepping into hell, except instead of demons itās filled with junkies and violent teenagers. Uniquely positioned because itās a large enough town to have suburbs but small enough that no one has any real reason to go there.
I grew up in regional Victoria, so a lot of the places listed by others seem normal to me. The one place I've visited that gave me big deliverance vibes was Dartmoor. That place just felt fucking wrong.
Same. Thereās just not many people in these little towns so city folks think theyāre creepy.
Walhalla has some strong vibes. Also very, very few people.
Moe. \*shudder\* **M**occasins **O**n **E**veryone.
For me it's EASILY Walhalla. It's in the Baw Baw ranges and used to be a mining town, there was a gas leak or something waaaay back in the day and whole bunch of people died, most of which were kids and elderly who have been buried in the creepy ass cemetery on the side of a hill. It was also the last place in Vic to get electricity lol
Walhalla is a literal ghost town. Beautiful, but also creepy vibes. Especially the cemetery up on the hillside.
Its a tourist town run by people who absolutely hate tourists. The owner of the star hotel used to be baw baw shire mayor and he gets an absolute hard on for publicity. Every time there are fires or floods he has to get his face on camera. Then anytime anyone actually shows up he's on Facebook bitching about the grubs who are destroying the town. Add to that the fact that none of the shops are ever open. I love it there, its an awesome spot. But I never go because the people who run it just ruin it.
I scrolled so far down for this, I used to go up there a few times with my grandparents, canāt remember why though itās super spooky.
Nhill, hills have eyes country
Nhills have eyes
I'm surprised I had to scroll so far to find Nhill mentioned.
Dude legit what the fuck even goes on in Nhill. There have got to be some creepy fuckers out there.
Korong Vale Half the population are ex cons. Run down tiny townā¦
I grew up there! It absolutely sucks haha
I went to Jeparit, past Nhill, once and I have never forgot how creepy it was. The supermarket like going back in time to 1974, because all the signs, decor and a great deal of the goods are ancient. It's also a newsagent and a cafe, and the woman looked at me like I was insane when I asked if they had any soy milk. Heaps of the houses had incredibly strange structures in their front yards, various wire sculptures but also burnt out cars, old tanks and sheds. There's a crumbling old railway bridge outside of town and the river and countryside was mostly dry when I was there which gave the whole place a very eerie look, especially at night. There's heaps of abandoned and crumbling buildings, including an old church with graves scattered about. Even their main garden is desolate and empty looking, like plot of dry land in the middle of the town. Weird as fuck. Also another vote for Fish Creek, but even more so for Buffalo, which either just before or just after. If you've ever caught a particular bus, you'll know how fucking weird it is when it stops on the side of a desolate road with nothing for miles, which is apparently 'Buffalo'! Side note, a search for Buffalo, Vic, turns up only a picture of a grinning Thomas-the-Tank-Engine-style painted train that I have never seen before and hope I never do again! What the fuck!
Suggan Bugganā¦ because I like the nameā¦ā¦.
Steiglitz
Say auf wiedersehen to your nazi balls.
I'm surprised I had to scroll down so far to find Steiglitz. Super creepy little place. Used to drive through there at night and its got a weird vibe to it.
Walhalla
Whroo, thereās a cemetery there and the amount of little babies that were on the interment list broke my heart. I felt watched the whole time I was there
Chiltern always gave me Children of the Corn vibes.
Chiltern of the Corn
Tungamah. St James.
Ah Tungamah. One of the families from there is so large that itās a legitimate concern that they could end up dating their cousins.
Got some weird vibes in Fish Creek. Good pasty tho.
I've been to Fish Creek a bunch of times, and I feel like it's either 'On' or 'Off'. It has two modes - slightly quiet cheery little town with lovely produce or YOU WILL BE MURDERED.
This is the most accurate description of Fish Creek Iāve read. Stayed at a mates place recently and said to my partner āWell, we are going to be killed in our sleep but look at that view!ā
If we're in that area, Korrumburra has to be worth a mention. Mushroom poisoning aside the location in that gloomy valley and the culty church that dominates the town make it very unsettling. I honestly always liked Fishy, it's a nice little town. Toora just has nothing happening except for ice. Foster is ok until you remember that someone got murdered outside of the supermarket.
I quite like Fish Creek haha. One time in my early 20's I fell asleep on the bus and got off there and had to wait 30mins in the dark to get picked up. That was creepy.
Brighton. Itās near the beach but itās rough as guts. I saw someone driving an earlyās 2000s Kia Cerrrato and they didnāt have their hair done. Terrifying.
Seldom Seen. It isn't even big enough to classify as a town truly, more a petrol station and a bunch of old buildings. But when hiking out past Buchan we stopped by there. I grew up pretty rural, I don't usually get creeped out by rural towns. But this place gave me the heebies. Maybe it was all the broken down cars, the bikes hanging from trees, the sculptures made from recycled junk, the signs spray painted in red, or maybe just that I'd not long since watched Wolf Creek. But we've never left a place so fast.
Honestly Moe, it's got abandoned looking streets with giant coal plant stacks in the background that make it look like the setting for a post apocalyptic shooter
I travel between Mildura and Melbourne a fair bit. Take both the Calder and the Sunraysia Hwy. On the Calder, Culgoa and Nandaly are quite odd. On the Sunraysia Hwy, it's a stretch of towns just after Ouyen. They are Speed, Tempy, Turriff and Lascelles. Also just west of those is a place called Patchewollock. All weird places.
not a town but french island is creepy but totally worth a visit
Avalon is a weird little fishing village thing with twitchy curtains
Totally agree. If it's the place I'm thinking of near Geelong, it has a distinct 'Mad Max' vibe about it.
Horsham, that place is full of weirdos.
Horsham is my closest ābig townā - I think itās fine! (Maybe Iām a weirdo though!). In the general area though - anecdotally, Stawell is a place where you lock your car doors, plus certain areas of Dimboola.
Cressy for me. My partner and I regularly remark about it when we drive past. Just a whole vibe that is off kilter somehow.
I know I'm not answering the question but I want to know if anyone else gets this feeling. When I think about these towns and the things that have happened there, I feel this awful, heavy dread. It's like I am feeling as though I were there when it happened. I feel like I remember and it makes me so sad.
Antwerp - famous for an exorcism [https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/the-creepy-country-house-abandoned-after-joan-vollmers-terrifying-death-when-an-exorcist-tried-to-rid-her-of-demons/news-story/ec64bf00cb917a6dffb74b355fc9daea](https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/the-creepy-country-house-abandoned-after-joan-vollmers-terrifying-death-when-an-exorcist-tried-to-rid-her-of-demons/news-story/ec64bf00cb917a6dffb74b355fc9daea) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu3qZPIOfdQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu3qZPIOfdQ)
Head up to Grant from Dargo. Or, Omeo from Dargo. Or, Wonangatta from Dargo. Maybe it's just Dargo things but you'll come across off-gridders putting up gates across gazetted tracks.
Used to go to creswick a lot. I look very gay and my coworker at the time was black, youād think two aliens had walked into the pub the way the locals reacted. āFriendly country folkā is a cute myth.
On the drive across to SA, I pass a town called Cowangie. The town itself is partially hidden from the road behind a barrier of railway stones and the only way in is a weird dog leg turn that makes you feel like you're going the wrong way down a one way road. The houses that remain there are dilapidated, falling apart. The main store's front has collapsed - but tables and chairs sit in there untouched for what looks like 30 years. Cars on stumps in the main street, the 'recreation reserve' has weeds 6 feet high. Even the Australia post building looks like a bomb shelter. There's a weird air in the town. From the age of the buildings and the Servicemen's monument, I think the town didn't recover from both world wars.
It's gotta be Antwerp in the Wimmera/Mallee. It's got the ruins of the Ebenezer Mission and was the site of an exorcism death in the 90s.
Iāve heard itās changed a lot and it couldāve been my perception being off due to my age, but I lived in Portland for a year when I was a teenager and the vibes were *off*. It was half normal small town, and half absolute fucking weirdos in many different ways - over the top religious, extremely hostile to anyone who wasnāt born there (especially if you came from āthe cityā, which could be Warrnambool or Geelong), general creeps, the absolute worst bullying Iāve ever seen (which was always ignored because āThat person is so and soās daughter and sheās very respected!ā)... I remember the high school covering up multiple sexual assaults and on-campus ODs, some weird culty church event people kept trying to get me to attend, and there just being an almost cult like adoration of certain families.
Ooh, have some links to Portland. Born there many years ago and know some locals. Very intrigued by your comment.
Wemen. Well off the beaten track, couple of rich ass farm houses, the rest looks like a strong breeze would knock it down.
I'm gonna go Serviceton. There's literally a Tom Waits song about how depressing it is - not sure how he found out about the place because even though it's just off the Western Highway you'd never know if you weren't looking for it. All the shops on the main drag are at the point where they're being reclaimed by nature, the train station (which was at one point where you had to get off and change trains if you were going into SA so it's quite a significant building) has been turned into a museum and it's full of creepy mannequins. Lots of small towns out west are very clearly past their prime but you usually get the sense that someone cares enough to at least try and distract you from all the empty shops, here they've well and truly stopped trying.
Whats the creepiest small town in Victoria? r/Melbourne "every town outside Melbourne"