“It May Be The Single Worst Thing I’ve Ever Seen”: 50 Urban Explorers Share Their Creepiest Finds

I explored an abandoned women's juvenile prison. I turned a corner, and at the end of a long, dark corridor, there was a person just standing there, looking at me. Scared me. Then, I realised he was a cardboard cutout and I knocked him over.

An abandoned hostel in Singapore that my friends and I managed to gain access via a crumbling wall at the back - front gate had a guard. We were taking extra care going up as the railings for the stairwells were all missing and in one line, so at the fourth floor my friend in front jumps so hard it automatically spooks us all - basically in one of the rooms at the top it is completely strung up with red thread- like some massive bloody spider nest - really thin thread but so much of it it looked like the gaping maw of some bloody hell portal or something. We definitely left that room alone.

Lincoln way, Clariton Pa. It's a neighborhood of about 13 houses that all got mysteriously abandoned simultaneously. Everything in the houses is still there (clothes, furniture, dishes in the sink) like they all just left without packing. Look it up on Google and you can read about the "beast" that supposedly lurks and caused these people to move.

I found a finger in an abandoned morgue.

Old nuclear reactor on LI, couple friends and I were among the first to explore it, it was shut down in the 80s I believe, never fully ran but was completed.

I was the idiot who climbed inside the turbine in the reactor room, whether it was haunted, sleep deprivation, radiation or otherwise, I saw millions of rats.

All running towards me faster and faster yet never getting closer.

Another fun one was what one in our group dubbed the "physics ghost"

A red wheel used to open and close a water pump that spun, indefinitely, without power, and is still spinning today. This was in an old psych center that was closed decades ago.

Wheel just kept spinning..

I was exploring Coco Chanels old mansion now on the market for $3.8 million ! and we found a strange tunnel which went on for ages, it seemed to go right under the house and beyond but cant find any info on it. It's was full of bones as well and we got it all on video too.

I was exploring an abandoned hospital near my house with my buddies. The complex was huge, it had a college, living areas and a massive main treatment center. After several weekends of exploring the area we found lots of cool things: old surgical equipment, rooms blocked off and covered with radiation warnings, and massive machines we could only guess the purpose for.

One weekend we were way lost in the main area and found a back staircase in some random back room that went up to a floor that wasn't marked on the floor plans or main stairways. The floor had no windows at all so we had to rely entirely on our flip phones screens on full brightness as flashlights. We went in the first room and the only thing in it was a human sized cage. It had a locking door and that little sliding thing on the bottom to put food trays in. There was only a small cot in it and a very small toilet.

We were a little spooked out and tried to pretend it was possibly something else, but then we went down the hallway and looked in each room and found only the same large cages in each room.

We quickly dipped out of there and unfortunately they have since torn down the complex.

I tried to do some research into it and the only thing I found was that there was also a mental hospital in the complex so it's possible those cages were for the really far-gone patients.

There was this beautiful, old abandoned house down the street from me when I was a kid, and I always wondered what had happened there. It was this huge farm house right in the middle of an over grown field covered in ivy and weeds. Friend and I walked up one day and went inside - there were obviously squatters there at some point since there was clothes strewn about and boxes of old food containers. There was this staircase that spiraled up 3 stories in the center of the room and clothes were laid across at the top as if to dry. The stairs weren't in good condition, so we stayed on the first floor - it looked to have had a fire at some point but only in a few rooms. They were completely black and destroyed.

All the windows were boarded up so no light was coming in through them, and I was using my camera to flash and take pics. On one flash we thought we saw somebody, quickly looked at the camera and ran out swiftly. On the camera was an outline of a dark person, it was probably a shadow, but it totally creeped us out.

Went to Chernobyl last week, and I mean as you would expect the whole place is pretty messed up. We were looking around an old daycare and a doll had been left rotting on a bed with its head rested on the pillow. Was made creepier by the fact that the rest of my tour group had moved on but I wanted to look around in the room some more, so I was just alone. Gave me the creeps.

Whilst exploring an old hotel/resort kind of place perched at the edge of a cliff I found that someone had filled 3 or 4 of the guest rooms floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall with books and set them all on fire, probably in an attempt to burn the place down. One of the very few surviving books was The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe, which I held onto.

I was exploring a local abandoned mineshaft tunnel, as well as a few houses nearby. A few weeks later I strangely discovered that I was in some of Ted Bundy's favorite Utah locations.

I'm not sure if anyone will see this.

I spent my childhood on an old abandoned farm. The barns there were mostly run down buildings with little to explore. The most interesting thing about them was simply the animals that nested up in them. Except this one barn. It was larger than the rest and had all these little coves and crevices. Yet somehow, the upstairs was the creepiest. It seemed to loom over anything that stood by it and always gave off these dark vibes. It seemed mysterious and untrustworthy, and for some reason my father felt the need to board up it's windows sometime before I was born. The floors were unstable enough to collapse at any moment and I wasn't allowed up there, but I went anyways.

There was a tiny narrow staircase that lead to the upstairs. The steps themselves crackedd with every step. When I reached the top of the stairs there was writing on the wall that said "Home sweet home". There was writing on the door leading to the living quarters with the writing "Finkville". The rest was pitch black with nothing living there with the exception of a large nest which I've never seen occupied. There was writing on the walls of men's names with arrows pointing to the nearest room. There were glass bottles all over the place covered and filled with dirt and dust. I found a few strange artifacts one of which was a weird license plate nailed to the floor for some odd reason. One thing that always perplexed me was a small torn piece of fabric with a flower pattern on it that I can only imagined belonged to either a table cloth or a women's dress.

Fifteen years ago I was in the Air Force and got assigned to provide mobile security to missiles launch facilities located in Wyoming, Colorado, and Nebraska. Riding around in a Humvee for 12 hours a day 4 days a week in the middle of no where go pretty boring so we would often go into the many abandoned houses located within our patrol area. One was unlike the rest. It was a red brick ranch style house that looked like it was built in the 70's and was in decent condition on the outside for it sitting there with no one living in it. I passed the place everyday I worked so I was pretty confident it was abandoned but I still waited a few months before entering.

One night my curiosity got the best of me so I decided to stop by and check the place out with my team. It was 1 am so we had to use our mag lights to light our way. We never went into places that were locked so I was excited to see the back door wide opened and the front unlocked. We also looked in the windows before entering to ensure the place was indeed vacant since we had to carry our weapons on us. Upon entering it was a normal abandoned place. [Stuff] scattered everywhere dusty as hell. We explore some then find out the place has a basement. Open the door and slowly make out way down into the abyss shining our lights around and something catches the eye of one of the guys. He points his light at it freaking out.

It is a human figure standing there with their back towards us wearing a cowboy hat. The is no movement and then I noticed that this person isn't touching the ground so I point my light up to see that a rope is around their neck and they are hanging by the rafters. We start freaking out wondering what to do. So we get closer to ensure it is indeed what we think it is before alerting authorities. I get with in range to knock it's hat with my M4 and and meet with a burlap sack. Someone thought it would be funny to hang a scarecrow on the rafters. Well it did a good job at scaring.

When I was a kid, I lived just down the road from what used to be a small museum. It was on the side of a large university that we used to explore daily.

One day, we noticed a man going into the museum. It was the only building on campus we hadn't found a way into, and we realized this might be our only chance. As the man walked through the door that he had just unlocked, we snuck up and slid a large stick between the door and its frame. When he had vanished from sight, we giddily entered the museum.

The first thing we saw was a large dinosaur skeleton, probably a reproduction, but all ours to view none the less. We started walking down a dark hall way when my friend grabbed my wrist. I tried to swat her hand away before she whispered: "we have to leave, now."

I rolled my eyes and turned to see what she was looking at-A man, probably the man who had just entered the building, was standing in a large, lit bathroom with the door wide open. He was in front of a mirror, with his completely bare back to us. The man was completely naked, not even a sock on him, standing erect in front of the bathroom mirror. I stood in shock for what felt like an eternity, until suddenly, his eyes met mine in the mirror, and he grinned.

Needless to say we hightailed it out of there as fast as our legs could manage. We stopped exploring the university after that, and I never told a soul what we had seen.

Was exploring an abandoned school, and went to the gym to find little angel statues hanging from a chain.

Could make a nice phone wallpaper..

Back in the 70s, a friends dad was about to tear down a building, so we got the keys and went exploring. The building was an abandon radium lab that treated cancer with high dose radiation (probably from the 30s). Everything seemed to be as it was when abandoned. Files and files of patients with images of grossly deformed faces and bodies. I have always wondered if the radiation sources were still there, how exposed we were and if they just threw its all in the dump.

Not urban, per say, but I live on a farm next to a forest with a couple of abandoned cabins in it.

One is more in the middle of the woods by a little pond, and is more recent. I could only tell because somehow the window got broken in and I poked my head in to see what was inside and there was an old stove and refrigerator that looked like they had barely been used, two mattresses stored against the wall, an old little TV set, and an old Cleveland Cavaliers sleeping bag that a raccoon got into and tore up. But I recognized the logo, it was from, like, early 90's. Found out later the cabin is still owned by some dude in Columbus who got sick back in the mid 90's and just was never able to go to his little vacation spot again after that.

Even FURTHER into the woods, as in farther away from my house, but technically closer to the road, is another, older cabin. Not even a cabin, really, it's just an old abandoned house. At some point a tree or something fell on it, and half of it is just gone, but there's still a little picket fence around it. I never went inside because the floor was mostly rotted out and there didn't seem to be anything in the rooms besides old wallpaper. The only creepy part was the basement, which seemed oddly deep. Like, too deep. Couldn't even see the bottom, it was blacker than black down there. I've never gone to the trouble to go there again, but I always fantasized that there's either some sort of buried treasure or a portal to hell down there.

Also there were just tulips growing all over the place. Tulips don't grow wild here, so I'm guessing that whoever lived there had a flowerbed and all of their tulips just stayed and multiplied after they left for whatever reason.

I found an abandoned farmhouse near lake Lowell in Idaho, I was 16 and I probably trespassed but I found a machete next to what looked like a blood-sprayed door. I have pictures on my computer but I'm on mobile, will gladly share if anyone wants to see.

Also found six pack glass Dr Pepper in immaculate condition, took it back home and mom called it trash but sold it for a pretty penny behind my back. More upset about that honestly.

Found an old circular surgical saw in a pathology ward in an abandoned hospital! This place still had a white board with patients names and organs that they had taken from them. Super weird.

Not traditionally creepy.
But me and a few friends were hanging out in the office section of a pretty large abandoned high end clothing factory. Just drinking beer and enjoying the view.

Anyway, suddenly we heard sirens and decided to bail. As we walked down the stairs, we looked down a hallway leading to the workshop area, and we saw a man crossing it heading towards the ground level exits on the other side. We just kept on our way, and werw greeted by firemen and police on our way out.

Turns out that a pyromaniac had started a fire that ended up burning everything but the office section. Thanks to us spotting the guy, he was caught less than 400 m away.