Few months feature special “theme” games as much as October, when minds turn towards Halloween and GMs are more inclined to run a spooky or creepy game for the players. While many horror games use monsters or jump-scares to get the players’ blood running, sometimes the lack of any signs of life can have players become more and more paranoid. In some cases the reason for abandonment increases the fright factor and in others never knowing the reason makes an abandoned location that much more daunting. Here are some external list links of real-world abandoned locations that can be adapted for games and either populated with a horror or more, or left alone for a more subtle creep-factor.
Amusement Parks
Abandoned amusement parks are one of my favorite locations to run a horror adventure. They twist what was once a place of noise and exuberance into an eerie solitude. I’m particularly fond of using abandoned midway/circus locations to prey upon some of my players’ fear of clowns. I especially like using Atlas Obscura’s Abandoned Amusement Parks page to get ideas for my abandoned amusement parks. Shorter list pages that I’ve used include The Richest: 10 Of The Creepiest Abandoned Amusement Parks and The Web Urbanist: 11 Sad Abandoned Circuses & Carnivals.
Ghost Forests
Ghost forests occur in areas where an alteration in sea level (from earthquake, tsunamis, hurricanes, volcanoes, rising seas, and/or floods) changed the overall environment, leaving behind evidence of a past forest. Some ghost forests are little more than stumps on a shoreline, while others remain a cove of standing, but dead, trees. Often, there is very little animal life in a ghost forest. Some ghost forests include Neskowin in Oregon, Copalis River in Washington, Turnagain Arm in Alaska, Nienhagen in Germany, and Aokigahara in Japan.
Hospitals and Mental Asylums
Despite their intentions and reasons for being, hospitals and mental asylums are often creepy even when maintained and filled with people. When abandoned, the “ooky” factor jumps exponentially, as these places of healing feel more like buildings where the dead must walk. There are no shortages of movies and games (video, board, and PnP RPgs) where the setting is in an abandoned hospital or asylum. Some real world resources I’ve used to construct abandoned medical centers include: Weather.com: 12 Spooky Abandoned Hospitals and Asylums, io9: Six Abandoned Asylums with Genuinely Chilling Backstories, Trippy.com: 11 Abandoned American Hospitals and Asylums “Open” for Exploration.
Hotels and Resorts
There is an already transient quality to hotels and resorts, regardless of the luxury status. They are a place where people stay for only a short while before leaving. And then there are those hotels and resorts where everyone left. In this type of abandoned environment each room can contain a series of different stories and histories. Some lists of inspiration: Weather.com: 13 Abandoned Hotels and Resorts, HuffingtonPost: The 13 Coolest Abandoned Hotels and Resort Towns, CNN Travel: 10 abandoned hotels for the curious traveler to check out, and Yahoo!: The 10 Spookiest Abandoned Hotels Around the World.
Places of Worship
Often, thinking about religion is entangled when thinking about death. So, there is a certain eeriness when a religious building is dead. The ideas of not only ghosts, but angels, demons, and other mythological spirits are invoked. Let these lists evoke your imagination: Sunday Express: Ghostly snaps capture America’s most beautiful and abandoned places of worship, Visit Meteora: Old Ruined Monasteries, Web Urbanist: 7 Stunning Abandoned Churches & Chapels, HuffingtonPost Abandoned Churches Are Eerily Beautiful.
Towns and Cities
Many abandoned areas make for good one or two game adventures. When a whole town or city is abandoned, it can potentially be a multi-part adventure or campaign season. Large numbers of people worked, lived, and died in these hamlets and the number of pasts in a town are uncountable. The strangeness factor goes through the roof when the reason a town is left unpopulated remains a mystery. Here is my final list in this entry of lists: History.com 6 Famous Ghost Towns and Abandoned Cities, How Stuff Works: 5 Modern Abandoned Cities, All That Is Interesting: 7 Creepy Abandoned Cities, Web Urbanist: 20 Abandoned Cities, Towns & Places Around the World
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