Stories About Abandoned Places
by H.J. Dutton and Reese Hurd
Almost everyone, regardless of where they grew up, remembers “that place.” It’s an old building either on the edge of town or right smack in the middle of it. If it’s made of brick or concrete, chances are its corpse has been festering there since before your birth. For one of us, that place was right on the other side of town, across the train tracks. Its windows were too crusted with filth to peer through. A sludge of ancient leaves clogged its gutters. It sagged in on itself like a rotting jack o’ lantern, pits in its roof where it lost the battle to age. Its owner, an old man who never seemed to show himself, lived there until his dying breath. It’s gone now, has been for years, yet thoughts about it linger. Why is that?
Abandoned spaces are somewhat liminal, stuck between the presence and absence of human life. However, our fascination with them stems from different curiosity: instead of what’s missing, what remains inside draws us to them. Specific items, such as disused appliances, that we might find, attract us and thus reveal a desire to build connections to people from times before our own. Decay also stimulates our curiosity, a desire to see the results of time’s passage. What happens to a space when we no longer inhabit it? Naughty Dog’s 2013 dystopian horror-adventure game The Last of Us crystallizes this curiosity. Upon the game’s release, players were enamored by the undeniably beautiful depiction of our contemporary world reclaimed by nature over the course of years.
Abandoned settings are a staple in horror, often a fundamental component. In Adam Nevill’s 2012 novel Last Days, a documentary filmmaker’s research into a notorious death cult takes him across continents to the secluded places in which the cult congregated. The 2015 found footage film Hell House LLC also features a documentary crew, one that makes the mistake of turning an infamous haunted house into a Halloween attraction. Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum (2018) is arguably one of the strongest takes on the subject, second, of course, to The Blair Witch Project (1999), the climax of which takes place inside an abandoned house.
Below we’ve compiled a handful of short horror stories that explore the subject.
“The Spook House” – Ambrose Bierce (1889)
Seeking shelter from a storm, a lawyer and a judge enter a Kentucky plantation house the original residents of which vanished without a trace. This classic haunted house story showcases Bierce’s talent for creating information gaps to heighten fear of the unknown.
Read it for free here.
“Now Day Was Fled as the Worm Had Wished” – Brian Hodge (2000)
While exploring the English countryside, three tourists – two of them an engaged couple – come across an old estate. The couple thinks it’s the perfect stage for their wedding ceremony. As they explore the gardens, they discover, shrouded behind walls of ivy, a horde of massive stone faces. It’s a wonderful example of Hodge’s quiet horror, a tale that weaves unease into its prose through painstaking, meticulous build-up of atmosphere.
“The Pennine Tower Restaurant” – Simon Kurt Unsworth (2010)
Presented as fact, this story follows a narrator whose estranged friend, now a nervous wreck, reaches out to him years later with a collection of notes detailing the history of the titular restaurant, a real-life brutalist landmark that now stands empty beside Britain’s bustling M6 motorway. The more the narrator reads, the more he pieces together the truth behind the restaurant’s lengthy number of disappearances. This is one of the scariest short stories I’ve read in recent memory.
“Adela’s House” – Mariana Enriquez (2016)
Two brothers living in Buenos Aires befriend a girl on their street – the titular Adela – whose fascination with the infamous old house in their neighborhood soon rubs off on them. Together the trio muster the courage to enter the house, a mistake that will alter their lives forever. Enriquez once again demonstrates her penchant for emotionally bleak conclusions.
“Yuma Lines” – J.L. Schnelle (2022)
Where most stories focus on the abandoned place itself rather than those who once inhabited it (who are usually long gone), this story does the reverse. A journalist records her interviews with the former employees of a now dead shopping mall. Little by little, the men and women divulge the reason why the property was so abruptly abandoned. Schnelle’s piece is a delightful exercise in epistolary form and the “less is more” principle.
If you’re hungry for more stories of abandoned places, visit the following works in our archive:
“Darcy’s Docks” by H.J. Dutton
An abandoned amusement park ride becomes a pilgrimage destination for two siblings, and something might be waiting for them.
“Squatters” by Devin James Leonard
That abandoned Queen Anne on Dock Street? Maybe someone… or something… has moved back in.
“To Dream of Better Worlds” by Grigory Lukin
That dead, blue planet? People used to live there.
“The Screaming Man” by C.M. Saunders
At the long-abandoned St. Kenneth’s comprehensive school, lives unravel along with time itself.
“The Underground Auction Ride” by Briar Shannon
The setting is again an abandoned amusement park, but this time a lively, inhuman population is using the leftover equipment for very inhumane purposes.
“The Revenge Room” by Robb White
An abandoned pump station, cement-block walls, isolated and hidden, perfect for a plan. Only the rats know it’s there.
The way H.J. Dutton and Reese Hurd describe that abandoned building feels hauntingly familiar—like the kind of place that lingers in the back of your mind long after you’ve left it behind. It’s not just about the physical decay, but the stories it holds, the silence that seems to echo through its broken walls. That opening paragraph really sets the tone for what’s sure to be a chilling read.
The way H.J. Dutton and Reese Hurd describe that abandoned building feels hauntingly familiar—like the kind of place that lingers in the back of your mind long after reading. It’s not just about the physical decay, but the stories it holds, the silence that seems to echo through its broken walls. That opening paragraph really sets the tone for what’s sure to be a chilling read.
That opening paragraph alone gave me chills—there’s something so haunting about how you describe that abandoned building as if it’s still breathing. It makes me curious about the story behind it and how it shaped your perspective on forgotten places. I’d love to hear more about the specific memories or experiences tied to these kinds of locations.
The way H.J. Dutton and Reese Hurd describe that abandoned building feels hauntingly familiar—like the kind of place that lingers in the back of your mind long after you’ve left it behind. It’s not just about the physical decay, but the stories embedded in the walls, the silence that seems to echo with forgotten lives. That opening paragraph alone gives you that chill, you know? Makes you wonder what kind of people once called that place home.