One of the best (and worst) aspects of horror is that pretty much nowhere is safe. Given the right circumstances, just about any space can be transformed from warm and comfortable to absolutely terrifying. Some places are just inherently scary though, and for me almost nothing tops abandoned places. There’s just something so wrong about them you know? Buildings, houses, factories and what have you just sitting there empty instead of being filled with people and all the normal (and comforting) hustle ‘n bustle that comes with them. Take away the people, and just about anything can move in and just about anything could happen too.

The first place that comes to mind as immediate “nope!” territory is Mount Massive Asylum from Outlast. Now it’s not completely abandoned, but it’s definitely been in a state of decay for some time before Miles Upshur arrives to document it all with his camera. Sure, the offices on the upper floors look okay, but just about every other portion of the place looks like its ready to collapse in on itself at any second. That’s not even mention all the partially flooded rooms and the rats running around.

Of course, Mount Massive Asylum is only as bad as it is because it actually has what you’d fear most should you ever find yourself in an abandoned building in the dark: something stalking you. Yup, the inmates are still in the asylum, they’re all absolutely crazed, and more than one of them wants to take you apart in some way.

They’re oddly acclimated to the dark too, so you either gotta stumble around in the dark or burn precious battery power your camera’s night vision. Any light at all is a dead giveaway! So not only are you stuck in a nearly-abandoned asylum, but you also gotta try and sneak out of it in the dark lest you attract the attention of one of its resident crazies. Yeah…no thanks.

So here’s the thing, I’ve never actually finished any of the Metro games. I’ll get it into my head that I want to play one evvery so often, but I only ever make it so far before just kinda letting the effort peter out. Looking back on these attempts though, I can’t really point out anything that made me stop playing. They aren’t particularly difficult and they’re not terribly scary; finishing one shouldn’t be some big chore. But then I go back and try to skulk around in the underground metro again and it all comes back. I really can’t stand the place!

The populated stations are bad enough what with everyone living crammed into these spaces meant for so many fewer people at a time, but the tunnels? The abandoned stations, and the surface? It’s all just so wrong! All these decayed spaces potentially crawling with radiation-warped monstrosities is just so off-putting. Sure, the tunnels are one things as those are dangerous in the modern age for any number of reasons, but the stations and the surface? Those are so wrong in the Metro games! A subway station shouldn’t be deathly quiet and empty, and the surface streets surrounding a station entrance shouldn’t be a hostile, bombed-out ghost town. And yet, that’s exactly what they are in the first couple of games.

The really scary thing though is that you don’t have to have a devastating war in order to see once thriving locations turn ghostly empty and still. Catching the last train here in Japan will see you plodding through an almost completely abandoned station whenever you do it and man that’s an experience. Everything is shuttered, and the only sounds to be heard sometimes are your own steps and some automated machinery. There are also more than a few shopping centers that are not nearly as lively as they obviously once were, not mention all the houses and buildings that I’ve never once seen anyone come or go from.

I suppose this is all to say that exploring these sorts of places in games can be just a bit too real sometimes. Not that I’ve ever wandered around a dilapidated asylum or anything, but more like these sorts of places feel like they could really exist in the world, and games like Outlast and Metro not only give us a chance to satisfy that morbid curiosity, but also the…”opportunity” to run into some of our worst nightmares while doing so.

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What sorts of environments give you the creeps in gaming? What is it about them that skeeves you out the most?

Image compiled by Hatmonster