It grossed over 140 million dollars.
There were a couple of nights in Vietnam that were a little scary. I was armed so that helped.
We once booked a stay at a gite in France. Gites are rural rental vacation homes, and online, ours looked like a charming picturesque stone building. In reality it was a scurrilous little place in the middle of BF nowhere. I think it was built in about 1590 and the rooms and doorways were constructed for people about 4’11". It didn’t help that I was reading The Scarlet Pimpernel at the time, and that many of the settings were scary ancient French taverns and castles.
To top it off, we soon came to realize that the place was infested with about 5,000 house centipedes. I had never seen the critters ever before, and my first encounter with one was about 1 a.m. as I sat in the bathroom dazed with jet lag. A big long one suddenly scuttled across the floor almost against my toes and I snatched up my legs and screamed like a nine year old girl.
I did a trip a few years ago that had me changing planes late at night in Rome, Italy to go on to Venice, except that the Venice flight was cancelled. Al Italia put everyone on the flight up at a motel that was very far from the airport and was about the scariest place I had ever been. Aside from the fact it was a flithy and dimly lit mess, at two different points during the night, people tried to enter the room using what I assume was some kind of extra or master key. Thankfully the door was chained, but to wake up in a scary motel to the sound of the chain catching when the door opens will make your heart skip a few beats. And when whoever it was realized they had the wrong room or whatever the problem was, they then slammed the door. WTF?
I suppose I also have to add the story of Sierra Blanca, TX, which is apparently the site of some kind of horrendous nuclear/toxic waste dump that has vacated the town. Moving cross country, my wife and I had shipped most of our stuff ahead of us, but had our car full of stuff as well and were reluctant to spend the night in El Paso, because we had heard such terrible things about Juarez nearby and that there was a huge car theft problem. So we pulled off several miles before we reached El Paso in this town to first get gas, then scope out a motel as the sun was setting. We drove down the main street to see all manner of boarded up buildings that said ‘No Nukes’ on them and other anti-pollution slogans that creeped up the fuck out. Needless to say, we got the hell out of there, so I guess that doesn’t count since we didn’t technically stay the night.
Yeah, fortunately for me I didn’t have to foot that bill. Even though it freaked me out, it was a cool experience. In a way it was like staying in a museum.
Easy one. Right after getting married the first time, we drove across to California from Minnesota, camping along the way. After a few days on the road, we crossed into Wyoming and decided to stay in a small, wooded campground near Sundance. There was one other vehicle in the entire place, but we never saw any people. Later on, the vehicle was gone, but I never heard it start up.
As we set up camp, I kept getting the feeling that I was being watched (keep in mind that I’m not easily spooked), and kept looking around at the wooded areas, trying not to let my wife see my growing nervousness, and trying to dismiss it as nonsense. As dusk began to set in, of course, the feeling of. . .watchfulness. . .grew. I went to the car and very ostentatiously took out my old M1911A Colt .45, sat down at the picnic table and tore it down like I was cleaning it. When finished, I noisily jacked the slide a few times, then loaded the magazine and slid it home. My wife was looking at me like I was a bit out of it.
We bedded down, and I had the pistol at my side. As we lay there, all manner of odd sounds began to be heard. They were probably normal night sounds that animals make, but to my jangled nerves they sounded like human-made noises. I thought my wife was asleep, but after about an hour, out of the dark her voice suddenly asked: “Would you mind if we found a motel tonight?” HELL NO, LET’s GO!! We unassed the tent, stuffed everything in the car and bailed out of there in about five minutes. Turns out that she was feeling even more creeped out than I was, but didn’t want to seem like a ninny.
A few days later, we read about a couple of escaped murderers who passed through there at the time we were there.
But what about the hook? When you got to the motel you found a hook stuck in the door handle of your car right?
Sounds like that sort of story, doesn’t it? All true, however: happened in 1970.
Looking back on this, I find it quite hilarious, but at the time, I was terrified out of my mind.
When I was 17, my friends and I (all 17 year old girls) decided to go camping. The plan was for me and one friend to go out first, and the other two would meet us later. We had all been Girl Scouts and were wistful for the sleep-away camp days of yore and decided we would do so-called “primitive camping”, meaning with no trailer or RV. Friend and I get to the campground and we are the only people in the entire primitive part, except for one family that looked like something out of a John Waters movie- extremely obese older woman with meth addict skinny younger man. You had to post your license by your campsite and it had to have your last name on it- I swear to you the last name they used was “Pinecrone.” It was like the setting of a horror movie. Young teen girls frolicking in the woods until genetically mutated freaks turn their innards into smores.
Anywho, night falls, tent is pitched, and we go to bed. About ten minutes after we got into the tent, someone turns on a flashlight by the Pinecrones and starts walking towards our tent. We couldn’t see very well, but it honest to God looked like someone was walking around our tent, and it sounded that way, too. We were utterly terrified. We kept calling out, “Hello?” and there was no answer. All of the sudden, the flashlight went out, but we didn’t hear footsteps retreating. We sat, still as possible, and then heard smaller footsteps all around the tent. Then, the most horrifying snarl. We were so sure it was a mountain lion or a cougar, though those haven’t existed in Indiana since the Depression. It then continued to prowl and snarl around the tent for another ten minutes. By this point we were sobbing and calling our parents- what they were supposed to do from 100 miles away, I do not know.
Needless to say, we get no sleep, but determined not to be sissies, we stuck it out and camped for another few days. Ended up being fun. But I don’t think I have ever been so scared in my life.
I like to take the occasional getaway trip all by myself. I am totally comfortable being alone, and crave those few days a year when I get “me” time.
So a few years ago I booked a trip to Montana. I rented a cabin, in January, in the mountains. The owner picked me up at the airport, ran me by the grocery store, and dropped me off. Wow - a week in absolute, perfect isolation with nothing to do but read, hike, read, eat, and read some more. Awesome!
Until the first night. First of all, the view outside was breath-taking…so much so that the owners did not see the need to have window coverings. You know how, at night, you can’t see outside but anyone outside can see in? Yeah…once I had that thought, the creepiness factor set in and every “psycho killer on the loose staring in through the window” scenario started running through my mind.
It gets worse. I had saved the books by my favorite authors to read. I had automatically bought the newest (at the time) book by Stephen King, but didn’t know a thing about it. So here I was, in a cabin in the snow in the woods in the mountains, reading Dreamcatchers…which was set in a cabin in the snow in the woods…
The worst part about being freaked out was that I KNEW I was being ridiculous…but that didn’t stop the fear. Luckily it really only lasted that first night, with a twinge of uneasiness for the next couple of nights. But man - that was probably the only time in my whole life that I was hating being completely alone and isolated from the world!
Oh, my! I think I would marry Rush Blowhard if I could go visit that hotel on our honeymoon, it looks that awesome.
Novalyne please tell me you had The Shining and Misery in the stack too. Or Gerald’s Game. The first time I read The Shining I was on my way to a ski trip. Nothing like spending a few days in a mountain hotel, reading a book about a mountain hotel driving people to murderous rages!
While my stories aren’t nearly as gripping as a lot of the ones in this thread, I did once stay in this room, called the “famous corner room”, in a hotel on (I believe it was) Cannery Row. Peeling wallpaper, weird looking paintings, just a general feeling of unease. It was made much more creepy by the fact that I had recently seen Four Rooms, specifically “The Misbehavers”, and it looked just like that room. Or at least it did in my mind. I was too scared to look under the beds.
I guess my dorm is also pretty scary! It’s about a 90 year old neo-Gothic building. We have house centipedes, creaky doors, radiators that make a horrible clanging noise in the middle of the night, cobwebs, bathrooms with mold and cracked paint, a courtyard that looks well eerie in the middle of the night with the huge moon shining on the ivy… My only real complaint is the lack of air conditioning. 
Not this place, that’s for sure…
ruins of a former concentration camp in 1992 in the former Yugoslavia. Creepy beyond belief at the time.
Ye gods. I think you win the thread.
Not creepy in “ghosts-n-haunted-house” type of way, but once I was stranded for a night in a small city somewhere in China and stayed in a cheap “hotel” run out of a small apartment building in a terribly shitty neighborhood. My room had only a bed, door, a window, and four walls…no TV, no toilet, nothing. I went out for a smoke only to have the “manager” come out and tell me to get back inside now because it was dangerous to be outside (wtf?). Shortly before I fell asleep there was a knock at my door. I opened it to find a large gentleman with a shaved head, cigarette dangling from his lip and forearms covered in tattoos, who did not appear to be a member of the hotel staff standing there:
Guy: You understand Chinese?
Me: Yeah
Guy: How long are you staying here?
Me: Just for tonight
Guy: Get the fuck out first thing in the morning!
Me: Um…ok
Needless to say, I did not sleep well that night. And, yes, I got the fuck out first thing in the morning.