Finding Spooky Modern Settings

Here's a couple of things I might consider.

One would be turning the location "upside down". Rather than using a "spooky, old place" as the setting, how about a place that's just the opposite: a large church, a museum of modern art, the airport terminal (Phantom of the Terminal! ;-), the new high school building, etc. All of these have lots of niches and places for demons and monsters to hide (not to mention algebra teachers).

Another would be any place where it's hard to call for help, or is somewhat isolated: a single resort hotel along the coast, a remote hiking trail, a small town in Kansas (In Cold Blood), a downtown where few people actually live, a western ranch, a cruise ship, etc.

Some of these have been used before, of course, but not as much as the haunted Victorian mansion.

new buildings not yet inhabited: at least not by humans
subway lines: think C.H.U.D.--canibalistic humaniod underground dwellers
bridges: halfway completed and left undone--the admin says it's lack of money, the real truth is what's on the other side

How about under bridges? You get a good-sized bridge, there's a lot of room under there. Many cities have buildings, businesses, homes located beneath the approach of a bridge. I know that the Detroit underside of the Ambassador can put goosebumps on my arms in the middle of the day.

Any kind of sub-basement is also really creepy. Warehouses.

How about that great camping site. You know the one that is waayyy off the beaten path. So far out that the cellphones don't get reception. Great for honeymooners. But, they aren't the only ones out in the woods.

Maybe locked in a mall. The midnight shift security guard is not your friend.

Ponte City

That place is a horror all on its own.

Imagine a giant tube of a seventies architectural monstrosity, topped off with a blinking advertisement. Now imagine it filled with everyone from drug dealers and gang lords to foreign investors in their million rand penthouse apartments.

that central well is scary just to look at. *shivers*

In cities which are economically depressed, there's some very interesting empty space where all sorts of horror could unfold without being noticed.

My city had too many hospitals, so one that was only six years old was closed. Several floors on the operating hospitals are not used, but the elevators still stop there, and they're great exploring for the bored ambulatory patient and his visitor. Creepy!

Unrented office space can result in whole buildings standing empty once the price wars begin. Whether the building itself is old or new, the insides have been renovated and made modern. Their nice lighting and new carpets would show blood nicely.

Empty industrial sites are very common, with all kinds of dangers, places to hide, heavy equipment secured with chains or locks that are now rusted to lace. My brother is into industrial archeology and tells me that many closed plants could be powered up and made operational by somebody throwing the switch.

Universities and colleges, even high schools, which do not have any summer programs stand empty for months, often with the power off. People may use the grounds, but who knows what's going on inside the locked buildings?

Maryn, considering horror

I describe horror as the suspense of the unthinkable. A modern setting has plenty of unthinkable places - just because it's such an artificial and superficial environment.

What are the 'unthinkable' places in a modern setting that we never look at, are never allowed to go or never want to go? Here's my list:

• A garbage dump, littered with all the discarded refuse of last year's 'must have' items, with each pile telling its tale of tawdry lives and buried secrets.
• Crawlspaces in roofs - hot, close, dusty, with bare wires, plaster, rough fibres and animal droppings.
• Railway tunnels with their hidden niches, ancient graffiti and the menacing beacons of distant lightst
• Discarded vehicles - ever been to a buses graveyard? Or inside a rusted scow? Ever sat on the cracked vinyl of a fifty year old prime-mover, with its smell of stale tobacco and vintage sweat?
• Disused or empty shops, with bare wires, raw cement floors
• The service corridors in any shopping mall or modern building -- the places that only tradespeople and staf see
• Any place that was once thought 'quaint' and is now forgotten: an abandoned diner or grill, a boarded-up barber shop, a movie cinema, a deserted drive-in, an abandoned bowling alley, an empty amusement arcade or rusting side-show.
• Any place that was once beautiful and now fallen on grand ruin - especially in a seedy part of town. Homes of Edwardian folly, ornate deco salons
• Any place with high concentrations of human misery. A prison; a mental hospital; an old peoples' home; a hospice; an orphanage; a ward for the congenitally deformed; a foster home with uncaring parents; a brothel; a sweat-shop; a place where sex-slaves work.
• Sewers and sewage treatment plants
• Under bridges and inside bridges
• A zoo or animal shelter after it's closed for the day
• In the deep holes dug for skyscraper construction sites, with just walls of clay or rock around you and the nearesst people a hundred feet above you
• In staff-only ares of an hotel, a railway terminal, an airport terminal, a bus station - or anywhere that people rush through and ignore one another.
• In the back room of a mortuary, a crematorium, a medical waste incinerator
• Any medical or cosmetic place that experiments on animals
• In any junk store or opportunity shop - especially stores selling intimate, soiled or unloved things - hats, gloves, underwear, matresses, prosthetics, spectacles
• Inside the carboard box of a homeless person
• In a crack house or homeless person's squat
• Inside the kiln of a brick factory, or any industrial incinerator
• Inside an industrial milk-churn, wine-vat, a grain silo, shipping container, the hold of a cargo tanker, or inside a petrol tanker
• Inside the effluent container of a modern ocean-liner
• At the bottom of an oil-rig
• Inside a gas pipeline
• Inside any container used to traffick people illegally
• In any town that has been bypassed by a freeway, or on any 'old road' that has since been replaced by a bigger, faster road nearby.
• In any park, playground or school that children no longer use - especially if others have other uses for it now.
• Any caravan or trailer park where most of the residents are permanent.
• Inside a gated or remote community where the customs and values are not your own.
• In any country or community where the language and customs are not your own, where you are not where you wish to be, you are not welcome, and cannot leave.
• In any place where for whatever reason, you are the centre of unrelenting unwanted attention: media, beggars, inmates, tourists, military, police, doctors, scientists, or just locals

I'm trying to work more with urban settings. I have a WIP that takes place in a condemned project high rise inspired by Cabrini-Green and other such housing projects. And another idea I'm fleshing out in my head that would take place in an environment similar to the Walled City of Kowloon in the 80's / 90's. The idea of more supernatural horror colliding with the urban nightmare freaks me out.

Great thread. I'm loving this stuff.

Maryn said:

Maryn, considering horror

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Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Do it. Do it.

Parking garages are the creepiest places ever, especially at twilight, when you are there alone. :shivers: Shadows move. What's that noise? Is it a rat? Oh please god let it be just a rat. Wait. Are those footsteps? Are they following me?

Very new modern buildings can be scary. Escpecially if everything is clean and bright there is kind of a coldness to it because it hasn't been used yet.

Buildings in progress. Like the gated place I moved into a couple of years ago, when only about 10 houses were complete. The rest were skeletons, and you should have seen them loom at night.

Sometimes I used to close a large restaurant, and it was not soothing to the nerves, I can tell you.

I've set a couple of stories in office buildings, and in new police stations.

Almost any place after hours if you're alone. Places which should have people but don't. Schools, for example.

Also, weather plays a large part in spookiness. The same place in gloomy rain vs. bright sunlight feels very different.

Well Demon Pooh! I've been beaten to the punch on all my ideas. I live in an old 19th century apartment building in the heart of the downtown business district in my city (think of the Bramford, only smaller and far less expensive) and lots of things in the inner city creep me out, from the obvious (the Ghetto) to the, hmm, not-so-obvious (the Scientology Center). Parking garages, under-construction office buildings, the laundry room, old boarded up tenements/theatres, the riverbank (I live a ten minute walk from the Ohio River, people live along the riverbanks), hmm, also here in Cincinnati we have an incompleted subway, I've never been down there but here it's pretty creepy what with satanic grafitti and whatnot, little woodsy areas along the entrance to the freeways (hell, woodsy areas along ANY part of a freeway!)...I remember several years ago there was a closed down Chinese restaurant with a Chinese family living in it. That creeped me out. You would see them coming and going, but never opened for business. One of them got shot in the doorway. Eventually the building was bought by a chain restaurant and the Chinese people don't live there anymore. I know people who live in the suburbs who don't come downtown at all because they are scared, and I don't think they're referring to the traffic. Neighbors who won't open their door when you have to go knock for some reason, or only open them a little teeny tiny bit, that's creepy! But you know what really creeps me out? Spending a night in the country! All that wide open silence, seeing a sky full of stars, animals creeping around in the woods, twigs snapping. No wonder the Blair Witch Project scared the bejeebus out of me! I need my sirens and bus brakes!

Everyone else has gotten most of the good ones I thought of, so I'll just add one: an interstate exit in the middle of absolutely nowhere. You know, gas station, diner, maybe a hotel. Funny thing, though: the state map you picked up at the border doesn't show an Exit 41 . . .

For maximum effect, I'm thinking of a twilight or after-dark arrival. I'm also envisioning it being in Nevada, Arizona . . . you know, a state with nice long stretches of nothing.

Izunya

How about timeless settings--saw a movie recently set in a cave--really awesome
Something i remember made me shudder is we were driving down south on back roads and we saw tons of (human size) crosses along side the roads--

An aquarium, a museum, or a library.

Libraries can be creepy because they are quiet places and because of all the bookshelves it is so easy to not be seen and you can't see the whole room you are in.

Izunya said:

Everyone else has gotten most of the good ones I thought of, so I'll just add one: an interstate exit in the middle of absolutely nowhere. You know, gas station, diner, maybe a hotel. Funny thing, though: the state map you picked up at the border doesn't show an Exit 41 . . .

For maximum effect, I'm thinking of a twilight or after-dark arrival. I'm also envisioning it being in Nevada, Arizona . . . you know, a state with nice long stretches of nothing.

Izunya

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Kansas, too, mostly the western half of the state. Ever see those signs that say "point of interest" and point down a gravel or dirt road? And you think, I don't see a damned thing from here, what's so interesting?

Yeah.

The above suggestions are all so good! How about trains. Modern ones, such as the Autotrain that goes from Virginia to Florida, and your car is shipped right along with you. And you don't have to use a sleeping car, you can sleep in coach. One time my family and I were the only ones in that coach car at night; not too many people were traveling. Spooky.

A 24-hour laundromat late at night

Any big city 24-hour post office also at night (it's so freakin' quiet you can hear your footsteps)

A musuem when no one is around but one or two employees

Anywhere in the deep woods at night

Empty auditoriums

Buildings on any college campus late at night

Bar or restaurant after closing time

Parking lots at night

My office is shut down for lunch. Outside it's bright and sunny. In here, the lights are off so people don't come and hassle us. It's cave-like and quiet.

There's plenty of stuff in my normal life that could probably creep some people out. For starters, I work in a store, alone, with 6 offices/storage rooms plus a bathroom. I work behind bullet-proof glass. But the part that creeps me out is the last door. I call it 'back there.' Beyond that door is a small room with huge double-doors (with a thick metal safety bar) leading to the outside. Since I'm alone all day, my mind plays tricks on me sometimes and I tip-toe 'back there' just to make sure that safety bar is still attached. I keep wondering what I would do if, one day, I find that it's missing. That would mean somebody else is here.
Then I drive an hour home with only 3 turns and most of it is back country roads.

Hospitals- i know Maryn already said it, but I had to second it- The hospital I work in is over 100 years old and the original building has been swallowed by on-going construction, but if you know where to look, you can still find remnants of it- The morgue is original and is accessed by an ancient elevator that is barely big enough to hold the body on the cart and you- you have to pull a rusty gate closed and hold the button all the way to the morgue or the elevator will stop trapping you and the body- shudder-

Also I second old schools- we have several old one room school houses around where I live- very spooky- all the original desks and chalk boards can be seen in some along with messages on the chalk board left by the last students-