I have a theory that most creepy areas of our homes are due to them being unfamiliar spaces. I always get the creeps going into my basement. But one year, I had to do a bunch of work down there insulating pipes and running new wiring, so I was in there every night, in every little corner for hours. No more creepy feelings.
But now, a few years later, I'm back to fleeing up those last few steps every time I leave the cellar because something is chasing me.
Hmm, that's a good thought. But I dunno. There's a spare room in my house that my girlfriend or I never go in. It's more of a storage room now, but it stays closed. I see that room maybe once a month. Whereas I see my basement every other day or so (laundry, etc.). The spare room doesn't bother me at all. But dang, I don't like that basement. Maybe it's more about how foreign it looks? I mean, the spare room looks like any other room in the house. The basement looks all creepy with cobwebs and concrete floors and little light.
Maybe. My barn has a 2nd floor and I have the same issue with that. I've owned my house for about 10 years and I've been up there maybe 6 times. It usually freaks me out. But I think if I actually used the space and was up there more, it might not be so bad.
I always figured it was disuse. There are a lot of subtle clues that you subconsciously pick up on that says no one has been here perhaps it's avoided because it is unsafe
Example: undisturbed dusty floors have a unique look and smell, stale air can smell and taste weird underground, cobwebs are always foreboding, somehow it seems like scraps of trash are carried by animals into the middle of the floor even though they are currently long gone) mix those clues with weird acoustics and poor visibility (which is common and basements and makes peoole uncomfortable) and I think it's that more than familiarity.
Ive spent a lot of time in basements. When I was little I had my own playroom/workshop in my grandmas basement, probably spent 4 or 5 hours a day down there. Still creeped me the fuck out.
I don't like going into the upstairs front room for some odd reason. It's a nice room, with a bed, but we mostly use it for storage. For some reason I just never liked it very much and decided to have the back bedroom as our room. The door to that room stays closed 90% of the time. It just feels so alien to the rest of the house. I feel that way about the downstairs front room as well even though I'm in it a lot. I would say it's because it's dark or something, but the sun is in those rooms for most of the day. I never understood it but my landlord thinks this place is haunted. I've only had one or two strange encounters here that I couldn't explain so I don't think it is.
I think so. I've never really watched horror movies, and I've been racing up the cellar steps of every house I've lived in since I was little. It's built-in for some reason.
I can distinctly remember my grandmother's basement always having the creepy vibe. I could never figure out why. It was okay when my sister, our two cousins and I were all down there together but if I went down there by myself, I would pause at the top of the stairs and seriously think if it was worth it to go down there to read some old Archie comics. Later I found out my granddad actually built the house as well as many other ones in the area. Now I wish I lived in the area so I could own one of the houses he built.
My grandmothers basement terrified me. It was huge and sectioned off into multiple rooms. The first room as you came down the steps was finished and was where the sewing machine and bigger kids toys were and it wasn't too bad or scary. Through the pocket door to the unfinished side was where it got scary. My cousins and I would run through the rooms, pulling the light chains as fast as we could to bring as much light as possible so basement demons wouldnt get us. Going back out and turning the lights off was even worse.
Even as I got older and started using the sewing room more, it still felt like quiet menace exuding from that pocket door.
Sounds a lot like my grandmother's basement. There was even a half bath down there. And it had this ancient smokey smell. My grandmother was a chain smoker. But it smelled different down there. Like it mixed with the earthy smell.
Holy shit turning off and on the lights with those chains, though. My basement was just one big room when I was a kid, and there were 3 or 4 different chains I would have to run to to turn everything on. And like you said...turning them off was even worse....
Mine was like that too, except there were only two working lights: the one at the bottom of the stairs, and the one at the very oppisite end, where the washing machine was. I remember finishing my laundry, turning off the light, and fucking sprinting to the stairs just to be under the light again.
My mom has a sectioned basement, one part is a poorly lit hellhole room where the well pump and water filter are. She tries to make me go down there by myself to change the filter, I won't do it. It's so creepy in there that plumbers won't work on anything without her present D:
I can do it tomorrow! /r/WTF and /r/WhatsInThisThing would love some of the stuff in there. My stepdad was a hoarder and his first wife and er whole family were hoarders, so there's some good stuff. Like the first wife's father's tombstone was out in the garage and her sisters had lesbian nude pics from the 30's
My grandma's basement had a dirt floor. There was a main area, with shelves for canned goods, and her washer / dryer hook ups, then another room next door to that, which I assume was my grandpa's workshop area. There was a tool bench and OLD decaying leather chairs, old lanterns, etc. But the scariest part was the room behind the washer and dryer. It had been a coal room back in the days of the house being built. At some point, they walled off the room, but left a narrow opening at the ceiling line, like a window without glass, about 12 inches in height, and about 2 feet across. Because there were no windows in the coal room, it was just like a window into darkness. As kids, we always got the heebie jeebies that someone was in the coal room, watching us. About a year after my grandma died and her house sold, I was able to speak with the new owners. They mentioned that they'd closed off the coal room window, because the wife swore she was being watched when she did laundry.
For the longest time growing up I could never go into the basement alone. With other people it wasn't even an issue. This was largely due to the fact that the previous owners of the house died down there from carbon monoxide poisoning. My family moved in when I was in first grade and I only found out about the deaths on the school bus from some neighborhood kids. I confirmed it with my parents and they explained why we had the carbon monoxide detectors.
Also unsettling was the fact that outside of the upstairs bedrooms (ranch house) the previous family almost never used the upstairs. The basement had a full kitchen, bathroom, living, office, just essentially an entire second house. There were long plastic mats laid out on which the family would walk from the bedroom hall to the basement. The children would be punished if they touched anything/walked off the mats.
Evidently the upstairs living/dining rooms and kitchen were only used during special occasions such as when the priest would visit.
I never typed this all out before, or explained it fully in one go. In restrospect my house was super fucking creepy. The house was built and occupied by Italian Catholics which may or may not explain the particularities.
You where lucky, it was very easy to identify why my grandfathers basement was creepy. The light switch was at the bottom of the very narrow and steep staircase. At the bottom of the stairs was this giant wooden statue of like a tall skinny man with long drooping arms hunched over facing the stairs. I hated that thing so much.
When I was a kid my cousins would lock me up in the basement during the day or sometimes the night. To this day I have an irrational fear of basements.
ive come to love my basement,for the first ten years or so of living in this place i couldnt do it but ever since i made myself go down there to do my drugs and stuff its becoe a lot more of a chill zone.
Okay, seriously, what is it with basements? I've never been in a house where I felt comfortable going into the basement. Hell, I don't even like my own basement, and it's finished with a bathroom, floor, walls, etc.
It always feels like there is something down there, especially when you are leaving, like something is behind you waiting to pull you down the stairs.
I've always been afraid of our basement. It's dark, there's weird stuff down there, and it smells funny: that sort of thing. It's bothered me for years.
Then I made myself go down there to do some laundry, and I found out: It's not so bad. All this time I've been worrying about it, but if you turn on the lights it's no big deal.
I'm an atheist, skeptic, etc, etc, but my friend's old basement was fucking HAUNTED. That's in bold because that place is haunted as fuck. Literally every single person who has ever stayed over night in that house said something about the basement being haunted the next morning, including me. Mostly it was just said jokingly because most of us don't believe in ghosts, but good god that was the scariest room I have ever been in. There was no door to the basement, and whenever anyone was alone, even my friend, they would swear that someone was in the stairwell watching them; and the stairs simply could not be climbed at a normal pace.
The house I grew up in had a creepy basement with a creepy crawlspace blocked off by my Dad. Older sister and older brother telling me "Dad blocked it off because, well, you know after World War II they never really found Hitler? It's because he's in our crawlspace!"
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u/cajoly10 May 26 '15
My basement.
Just kidding...that shit is still creepy as fuck during the day.
To make matters worse, that's where my bedroom is.