We’re currently living through an apocalypse: the Retail Apocalypse. Over the past two decades, as e-commerce has rapidly evolved to be the default form of shopping for most consumers in most industries, physical stores are dying by the thousands. This has transformed malls from go-to shopping spots and social hubs into empty, abandoned shells. And these shells are massive.

With hundreds of vacant spaces and acres of isolated shelter, these ghost malls have become meccas for criminals, the homeless, and allegedly even paranormal entities. Time is only making things worse; every year, these monuments to obsolescence decay further and play host to more shady activity. Abandoned malls are just plain creepy, and this list gathers together ten of the creepiest.

Related: 10 Eerie Abandoned Animal Parks

10 The Acropolis, Mexico City

The Acropolis was a shopping center in a suburb of Mexico City called Naucalpan de Juárez. The mall’s heyday was the late ’80s, but by the end of the ’90s, low traffic numbers had caused the mall to close altogether. It has sat abandoned ever since. Though abandoned malls are all a little bit the same, the Acropolis has developed a particularly unique creepiness among all those on this list.

The mall was designed as a tribute to Ancient Greek culture, as its name suggests. Visitors would enter through towering white Greek columns, intentionally designed to look dilapidated like their real counterparts. The theme continues inside, with columns placed throughout. Open, agora-like storefronts and stucco walls that look straight out of Spartan homes in 300 try to bring you closer to the Greek ruins. That’s why its current decay is so haunting; a place deliberately alluding to ancient ruins is itself becoming one. The combination of artificial rot and very real rot atop it is a poignant reminder of humility.

9 Hawthorne Plaza Shopping Center, Hawthorne

Hawthorne Plaza is located in Hawthorne, a city just outside of Los Angeles (not New York). The mall was open from 1977 to 1999, and during that time, it slowly succumbed to crime and a changing economy. Since its death, it has found new life as a movie shooting set. No, not just for student films or YouTube videos, but rather numerous movies and television shows, including Teen Wolf, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, and Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Despite the occasional use, the area sits vacant most of the time, and over the years, it has deteriorated rapidly. Looters have stripped the mall of seemingly everything not drilled down—plus some pieces that were. Much of the mall is without handrails, windows, or doors. Walls are smashed inward, and windows shattered. Staircases lead nowhere, and as for its gaping holes in the floor—you might not want to know where they go.

8 Wayne Hills Mall, Wayne

The Wayne Hills Mall in Wayne, New Jersey, was open from 1973 to 2015, and over that impressive 42-year run, the mall came to be seen by its community as more than a mall. A series of articles and video essays on the mall all paint it as a warm place, social center, and an exceptionally popular Christmas destination. Memories of Wayne Hills are warm, fuzzy, and nostalgic. And then there’s the hellscape it became after closing.

The New Jersey weather took its toll on the building, and wet, heavy snow collapsed portions of the roof. The result was an interior that spent half of every year alternating between flooding, icing over, and filling with snow. The inevitable mold and rot then had all summer to spread. Before demolition, the Wayne Hills Mall became a damp, sludgy cesspool that looked about a century older than it was. 

7 Rolling Acres Mall, Akron

The abandoned Rolling Acres Mall in Akron, Ohio, was so dangerous that the mayor of Akron made a public statement about its safety. He urged people to steer clear of it. The mall was no stranger to violent crime while open, and things did not improve while it was closed. Which, you know, we could expect since it was empty.

Most famously, in 1986, the field behind the mall was the site of the brutal torture and murder of Wendy Offredo and Dawn McCreery. The details of the case were horrific, and it achieved nationwide fame. Coupled with varying degrees of theft in the area, Rolling Acres gained a poor reputation. This reputation, as it should have, is thought to have played a role in the mall’s demise. Honestly, it just seemed like it was cursed from the beginning. After the mall closed, the body of another murder victim was discovered there. If that wasn’t enough, a man was electrocuted and fatally caught fire attempting to steal copper wiring inside, among others.

6 Randall Park Mall, North Randall

When the Randall Park Mall opened in 1976 in North Randall, Ohio (what’s going on with you, Ohio?), it was the largest mall in the entire world. Between 2013 and 2015, just a few short years after its closure in 2009, photographer Johnny Joo took a series of photos showing just how far the mall had fallen.

Every photo is more tragic than the last. Many are due to hasty closures in the months after Christmas; a lone Christmas tree, still decorated, stands among the mud, glass shards, and plaster crumbles of the center courtyard. Perhaps even worse, a now-famous image shows a lone Christmas teddy bear, left posed in front of a long stretch of filth and decay.

5 Old Town Mall, Baltimore

Baltimore, Maryland, has a less-than-stellar reputation for safety as it is. Add to that a 200-year-old outdoor mall the size of a neighborhood, and you have a combination ghost-town/crime-den.

Originally named the Bel Air Market, Old Town Mall was built in 1818 and has a long history of decline and failed revitalization attempts. By the 1980s, it had deteriorated into a dangerous wasteland that now has almost nothing to boast about—unless you count the fact that its violent crime rate is about five times the national average. Yikes.

4 Dixie Square Mall, Harvey

The Dixie Square Mall in Harvey, Illinois, was open from 1966 to 1978. After closing for good, it was used as the setting for the famous mid-mall car chase scene from the 1980 movie Blues Brothers. Since then, it has fared worse than possibly any other ghost mall.

In the years after its closure, the mall was featured in multiple national news reports about the level of trespassing, vandalism, and theft within its walls. As a result, its deterioration was better documented than most, noting when the last window had been broken and when someone stole its trademark “Dixie” sign. Since then, conditions have only worsened; the ruins have caught fire twice, and the mall was the site of at least one brutal murder. Honestly, this seems like one “historical” site that needs to go.

3 Gwinnett Place Mall, Duluth

Chances are, you’ve seen the inside of Gwinnett Place Mall, whether you know it or not. The abandoned mall was used as the filming location for StarCourt Mall, the main setting for Stranger Things season three. Despite such a recent and high-profile use, the mall wasn’t able to shake its dark reputation.

The empty mall has been used for a laundry list of crimes over the years, and a search for news reports about the mall will reveal several charges involving drugs, prostitution, and violent attacks. Most notable among these is the 2017 discovery of Georgia State University student Silling Man, murdered and left to decompose in the back room of the food court’s Subway.

2 New World Mall, Bangkok

The New World Mall In Bangkok, Thailand, gained worldwide notoriety after its closure, as its fate was unlike that of any other ghost mall in the world.

The mall closed in 1997 after The Thai Supreme Court ruled that seven out of eleven of its floors violated safety standards. Two years later, a fire caused its roof to cave inward. Due to rainfall, the mall’s bottom floor flooded and became a mosquito breeding ground. In response, the locals introduced various species of tilapia, mango fish, carp, koi, and catfish to eat the mosquito larvae. Before its eventual drainage in 2015, the mall had become one deep lake filled with over 3,000 fish.

1 Metro North Mall, Kansas City

It’s hard to find an article on abandoned malls that doesn’t include Metro North Mall in Kansas City, and with good reason. If there is one definitive source on ghost malls, it’s photojournalist Seph Lawless, who has explored countless dead buildings and published books on his findings. That definitive source once told HuffPo that “the abandoned Metro North Mall in Kansas City is by far the creepiest place I’ve ever stepped foot in.”

You can’t argue with that and seeing his pictures, you wouldn’t want to, anyway. Most of the mall sits in total blackness, and the few beams of light that pour through the roof show spots that are yellowed, moldy, warped, and graffitied. Truly, Metro North Mall no longer looks like a mall, but a creepy, bygone, haunted sanitarium.

What are ghosts? Are they creepy figments of an overactive or jittery imagination? Or are they manifestations of souls that cannot pass on to the next phase?

If they do, in fact, exist, why do only certain people see or sense them? Why do some ghosts haunt places for decades only to disappear abruptly, while others appear only on the anniversary of a tragedy?

These questions are likely to remain unanswered as the debate around ghosts, and other paranormal entities continue. However, many people have had eerie real-life experiences that have shaken up and even convinced some skeptics that certain specters may be real. So here are 10 real-life eerie paranormal encounters that are sure to creep you out.

Related: Top 10 Creepiest Episodes Of Paranormal Television

10 Saying Goodbye

Nina De Santo was busy closing up her New Jersey hair salon one cold Saturday evening in 2001 when she spotted one of her customers standing outside the shop’s window. Michael had become a good friend of hers over the years, and she knew that he’d been going through a tough time after his wife left him for his stepbrother and he lost custody of his children to boot.

Nina had tried her best to cheer Michael up whenever he came to the hair salon and had even taken him for drinks a couple of times to give him a chance to talk. So when she opened the door to him that night, Michael seemed transformed and even happy. He smiled at her and said that he couldn’t stay long but just wanted to stop by and thank Nina for everything she’d done for him. They chatted a bit, and then each went their own way for the evening.

Early the next morning, Nina received a distressing call from a salon employee. The woman told her that Michael’s body had been found the previous morning, around nine hours before Nina had spoken to him at the salon. He had committed suicide.

In today’s terms, Nina had an experience with a crisis apparition which many are convinced is the spirit of a recently deceased person who appears to close friends and family to say goodbye. There is very little scientific research to fall back on when it comes to these apparitions, but some believe that it’s merely a trick of the brain.^[1]

9 No Time

Nature can be extremely cruel. When the 2011 Japan earthquake triggered a massive tsunami, people had mere minutes to flee their homes and try to stay alive. But hundreds of those who made it to evacuation sites were swept away anyway, as the waves overwhelmed them. As a result, nearly 20,000 people died, either from drowning or by blunt force after being hit by dislodged trees and other large pieces of debris.

Weeks after the disaster, as those who survived were trying to figure out how to go on with their lives without their loved ones, some people started reporting seeing ghostly queues outside what used to be a supermarket. Others were kept awake at night by disembodied voices crying out in the dark.

Shinichi Yamada and his two children somehow managed to escape the waves. Shinichi later salvaged two Buddhist statues he found in the wide-spread rubble and brought them back to his temporary home. Almost immediately, both his children became ill. An unexplained chill invaded the house and would follow anyone who came inside. Shinichi knew it was time to call in the help of an exorcist after he felt someone walking over him as he lay in bed one night.

The exorcist, Kansho Aizawa, also had her own frightening tales to tell. She had been seeing headless and mutilated ghosts ever since the disaster. She advised Shinichi to build a shrine for the statues, which he did. The ghostly activity in his home subsided a bit, but even though incidents still occur now and then, Shinichi believes the spirits that haunted his family are now at peace.^[2]

8 Ghosts or Demons?

Many people believe that there is no such thing as ghosts and that whenever lights flicker on and off or taps open and close by themselves, there’s a crooked demon finger doing the work instead.

Between 2011 and 2012, Latoya Ammons and her three children moved into a house on Caroline Street in Gary, Indiana. Almost immediately, Latoya sensed something was off. She and her mother Rosa would hear footsteps coming from the basement and doors creaking open when the children were fast asleep, and no one else was in the house. If they thought the house was haunted by ghosts, they soon changed their minds when swarms of flies invaded the house’s porch in the dead of winter, and the children suddenly started behaving strangely.

Rosa once awoke to loud screams only to find her 12-year-old granddaughter levitating over her own bed. Latoya found her youngest son in the closet talking to an unseen presence. Her son was also thrown across the room by an invisible entity.

The Department of Child Services was called by neighbors who thought the children were being abused. Case manager Valerie Washington interviewed the family at a local hospital. During the interview, she witnessed Latoya’s nine-year-old son crawl backward up the wall and ceiling, flip over his grandmother, and land on his feet.

It was then that an exorcist was called. Rev. Michael Maginot performed multiple exorcisms at the house and is quoted as saying that the property was a “portal to demons.” The Ammons family moved out soon after, and the house was demolished in 2016.^[3]

7 Creepy Phone Call

In the late 1960s, Simma Lieberman was in love and happy. Her hippie boyfriend Johnny had proposed to her, and they were to be married soon after getting an apartment together.

Late one night, Simma was at her mother’s house when the phone rang. Simma answered and heard Johnny on the line. He sounded rushed, like he was far away. She struggled to hear what he was saying through the loud static. She made out the words “I love you” and “I’ll never be mean to anybody again” before the line went dead.

Simma tried to call Johnny back, but without any luck. She finally fell asleep and awoke with an ominous feeling inside her chest. A few hours later, she received the news from Johnny’s mother that he’d been murdered the night before, shortly before the call came through to Simma. Throughout her life, Simma continued to believe that Johnny had contacted her after his death to say goodbye.^[4]

6 Mischievous Spirits

Not all supernatural presences are out to possess people. Sometimes, it seems, they just want to have a little fun. In 1937, W.S.J. wrote a letter to Country Life in which he recounted a ghostly experience he’d had in 1885. W.S.J. described being a schoolboy on summer vacation with his family at a holiday home on the Isle of Wight. He recalled the garden at St. Boniface House being one of the most charming he’d ever seen.

However, things soon turned paranormal when ghosts started pacing the floor in his sisters’ bedroom, causing them to flee. W.S.J. also noted that a figure would walk up and down past the housemaids and ring bells in the dark of night.

Eventually, the village priest was called in to help, and after blessing the house, the spirit activity subsided. W.S.J. claimed that the house had been torn down, but he hoped the garden would still shelter those who visited it by night.^[5]

5 Quarantine Ghosts

When lockdowns were put into place around the world in 2020, most people were simply wondering how they would get through the specified number of days without going insane staring at their walls. And spending so much time confined at home, some believed that they weren’t as alone as they thought.

Lockdown for Kurt Schleicher happened in the Tampa, Florida, house where Victor Licata killed his parents, siblings, and dog in 1933. Kurt witnessed his dog sitting and barking at the wall in the bedroom where the mother was murdered and claimed to have felt the temperature drop abruptly in the bathroom.

Adrian Gomez, who lives in Los Angeles, heard and saw a doorknob and window rattling so violently that he thought an earthquake was happening. After realizing that there was no earthquake to speak of, he started believing that something paranormal may be happening. This belief was fortified when a window shade in his bedroom began shaking against the closed window while the adjacent one remained perfectly still.

Those in Indonesia who were lucky enough to live in non-haunted houses but decided to break lockdown rules were locked inside homes believed to be haunted as punishment.^[6]
https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2020/04/21/indonesia-locks-virus-violators-in-haunted-house.html

4 Lola

The story of the wailing woman is well known around the world. However, in a tale that still makes the skin of professional skier Drew Tabke crawl, the wailing woman takes on the form of Lola at La Parva. La Parva is a popular ski spot in the Chilean Andes and the place where many people say they knew Lola before she died.

It is said that Lola and her son were spending the day on the slopes when a thick fog rolled in. Mother and son made their way down the mountain but lost contact with one another. Scared that he would fall, Lola began screaming his name. Then she stumbled and fell down a steep slope. A lift operator found her as he returned to his cabin before the inevitable storm hit. He found that Lola was still alive, and he managed to get her to his cabin. He went for the doctor, but when the men returned to the cabin, Lola was gone. The only thing that remained behind was bloody sheets.

It is believed that Lola went back into the fog and ensuing storm to find her son. Neither she nor her son was ever found again. But whenever skiers, including Tabke, go near that cabin, they hear Lola wailing for her lost child.^[7]

3 Then Who Was in the Closet?

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Sometimes a Reddit thread produces some of the scariest paranormal encounters ever. And whether the accounts are told as they happened or embellished for dramatic effect, they do send shivers up spines worldwide.

Redditor tooabstract788 was home alone one night, playing games, when his dog started barking at the closet. When he got up to see what was agitating the dog, he heard scratching sounds coming from inside the closet. As he got closer, the scratching got quieter until it abruptly stopped when he stood right in front of the closet. About to go back to his game, tooabstract788 was shocked when he suddenly heard a loud crash followed by several softer ones as items started hitting the inside of the closet door.

He ran outside at once and only went back inside when his friend came over to check on him. They checked the inside of the closet and found clothes and hangers scattered over the floor of the closet. But they never found any secret openings in the walls or ceiling.^[8]

2 Someone’s Watching

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

When Hilary Prue began her job as an usher at the du Maurier Theatre Centre, now known as the Harbourfront Centre Theatre, in Toronto, the first story she heard from employees was about the two ghosts haunting the venue. The spirits, a man and a woman dressed in period clothing, caused at least one security guard to quit after he saw them while locking up. The building that now holds the theater is said to have originally been an ice warehouse and also a temporary morgue after a boat sank in the harbor.

Hilary initially didn’t experience anything out of the ordinary as she went about her daily tasks. Then one day, while alone in the office, she heard a terrifying scream. She walked around the building, and there was no one else inside. But one of her colleagues later confirmed that they’d had a similar experience.

After this incident, Hilary continuously felt like she was being watched. Once, she thought that a co-worker had brought their children to work and that one of the kids was messing with her, but that turned out not to be the case.

When a ghost hunting group visited the theater, they not only spotted the woman in a Victorian dress and the man wearing a bowler hat, but they also claimed to have seen a little boy who hid in the rafters. Suddenly, Hilary knew who had been watching her all that time.^[9]

1 Danny

Donna Stewart had several best friends when she was six years old. One of them was Danny, who often came over to her house to play. On one particular morning, Donna and Danny had a play date, but it was to be cut short so that Danny could go to the hospital for scheduled surgery to have his tonsils removed.

The following day, Donna was in her bedroom when Danny appeared in the doorway. He asked if they could go outside and play.

Donna went to her mother to ask if she and Danny could spend some time playing outside and was confused at her mother’s reaction. The woman instantly turned pale. Then she broke the news that Danny had died the day before after suffering an allergic reaction during the surgery.

Donna ran back to her room, but Danny was gone.

Years later, Donna joined a paranormal investigative team in Oregon. She believes that the encounter changed how she saw the concept of death. She also believes that those who die are never far away from their loved ones and appear to them during times of trouble and grief.^[10]