Have you ever been frightened by a building?

[spiderpig]

We were walking up Connecticut Avenue in DC and there was a looming granite apartment-looking complex on the north side of the street. It just bothered me on a subconscious level. I hated it on sight. Tall central building with two wings. Light-colored facade.

Anybody know what I'm talking about, or should I take Uber to the nearest nursing facility?

[nocoincidences]

1. I don't often admit this, but some buildings have a very emotional

effect on me, almost like they are telling me about the emotions stuck in their walls. Not all of them, in fact, it's sort of rare, but very powerful when I feel it.

So I don't doubt you are picking up some vibes from that nasty building.

[spiderpig]

2. Thank you for coming forward.

I just had a visceral response to this place, and I'd never been there before in my life.

[spiderpig]

5. Yes, we have to fake conversation and things when passing a building.

I don't know why it bothers me so much, but it does.

[FSogol]

15. That's called psychometry. While I don't believe in stuff like that, my mood always improves

around old bricks, old buildings, etc. I love walking around older parts of cities.

[smirkymonkey]

20. Is that what it is called? I have always loved and gravitated toward older parts of cities, or even

towns and villages and always attempt to live in the older neighborhoods w/ the brick row houses & brownstones. I also feel very alienated and depressed when I am in an area where all the buildings are modern and everything looks the same, especially if there are no trees. I just thought it was because I was very sensitive to aesthetics.

However, I do feel like I have felt that certain buildings have very good energy and others have very bad energy. I don't know why, it's just a feeling I get. Most buildings are pretty neutral, but a few strike me very much as being one way or the other.

[FSogol]

21. My grandmother (Irish) told me and my sisters all types

Of tales and she believed that stones, bricks, and old trees soaked up the emotions around them. She always claimed to know good places and bad places from the bricks.

[OriginalGeek]

24. I don't mind modern...

Glass and steel and black and chrome. Those are fine although my absolute favorite building material is red brick. Especially for houses. Red brick and white shutters just looks to me like a house is supposed to look.

but what I am sick to death of is stucco. And I live in Florida. So I'm stucko with stucco. I hate everything about stucco. How it looks, how it smells, how it ages, how it exists. I hate it. I couldn't believe when I moved back to Florida that red brick was mostly for rich people. Everywhere else I had ever lived we had red brick houses. Even us poor people had red bricks. If I ever win lotto you can bet money that my house will be red brick.

[sl8]

3. You might want to to take a gander at the "evilbuildings" subreddit

Last edited Thu Apr 5, 2018, 12:24 PM - Edit history (1)

Or, you might want to stay very, very far away. Hard to say, really.

https://www.reddit.com/r/evilbuildings/

[justhanginon]

4. As a favor to a friend, who had been convicted in a bid rigging

case, I took him and his family to report to Fort Leavenworth Federal Prison. When we drove up to the main entrance it was the most foreboding place I have ever seen. On the other side of the guard shack a huge number of steps leading up to the entrance and nothing but barred windows and doors everywhere and the building is huge. If that was me going in I would have had a heart attack on the spot. Fortunately for him it was the wrong entrance, he was supposed to go to the "honor farm" part adjacent to the main prison since it was a white collar crime. That was not as scary but you don't ever, never ever want to go to prison.
Another time I was inside the Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine and when walking through this fort and came to the area where the soldiers lived and slept I just got a really weird feeling. I can't really describe it, it was almost as though I could feel myself living there. A strange feeling and I didn't hang around there long after that. Weird!

[yardwork]

12. The old prison in Columbia SC had the same effect on me.

I didn't get nearly as close as you, but the tall black towering building - with pigs foraging in the muddy yard (no joke) - was terrifying. Shortly after I visited there was a prisoner riot.

[FSogol]

16. Two places had that effect on me. I had to rennovate the slave quarters at Blandy's Farm

and I once toured an Irish coffin ship.

Holy crap.

[skypilot]

6. After I first saw the movie Independence Day...

...back in 1996, all of the tall buildings here in Philadelphia filled me with dread. For some reason an apartment building called The Drake especially unsettled me. It's not even that tall of a building but every time I walked by it I'd imagine it shattering like the buildings in that movie. I got over it soon enough and then 9/11 happened.

[RainCaster]

7. Yes - the White House. Although it's the fault of the current occupant

[shraby]

8. On the other side of the coin, I've come across houses that are friendly.

Even the basement of the house. Give nothing but good vibes.

[nocoincidences]

11. Me, too. There are very happy houses that seem like puppy dogs and shout their

happy emotions when I drive by them. It's like they are bubbling over with good feelings.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

9. Never seen them in person (obviously) but mere pictures of the crematorium buildings at Auschwitz...

....send shivers down my spine.

I can't even imagine. It's like looking at a portal to hell.

[Phentex]

10. I know the feeling....

I don't have a particular one in mind and I wouldn't say frightened. More like the facade is ominous and I don't want to go near it. There's a furniture store here that reminds me of Gotham.

[RobinA]

13. There Used To Be

a convent on Henry Ave. in Philadelphia. It might still be there for all I know. As a very young child I passed it with my parents with some regularity. That was back in the day when nuns wore habits all the time. As a non-Catholic I wasn't very used to nuns in an everyday way and I found them vaguely scary. Old women in black robes. As a lover of Grimm's and Russian fairy tales that my mother read to me I knew all about old woman in black robes - they were witches. Out on the street this wasn't really a problem, but their house! A house where witches lived!! I remember it as a dark place! partially hidden by trees. Scary!

[shenmue]

14. Yes

[logosoco]

17. Yes!

Several years ago we went to a marching band competition down in St. Genevieve, MO. My daughter and I went down to walk around the old section of town. The architecture was amazing! But at one point I started getting a very creepy feeling. We went back up to the high school and I asked my daughter if anything seemed strange and she said she felt it as well.

It was not the visual appeal, but there must have been something bad going on there long ago!

[Leith]

18. Do You Have a Cross Street or Address?

I'd like to find it on google maps.

[spiderpig]

30. I Googled it, and it's the Kennedy-Warren apartments

3133 Connecticut Avenue

Here's a link to their website:

https://www.kennedywarren.com/

I have no idea what it is about the place that bothers me. It's not classically spooky like The Dakota in NYC or that old asylum in Danvers, MA.

The only thing I can figure is it reminds me of a place where I had a bad experience as a child. It wasn't the Kennedy-Warren, because I never went to DC until I was over 50.

[Blue_Tires]

19. Yes I have, and no I cannot fully explain why...

[mainer]

22. I have to say, this is a weird and fascinating thread.

I've never been frightened by a building, but I suppose if someone told me something horrible happened in a building, it would affect my attitude toward it.

[spiderpig]

23. Here's a subsect of this thread: water towers

In this case, I know why I hate them. It's from a Classics Illustrated comic book of War of the Worlds when I was young and impressionable.

[ailsagirl]

25. There is an old, abandoned PG&E power station on the outskirts of Sacramento

...that has always given me the creeps. It's a huge concrete building and it's been abandoned as long as I can remember.

It frightens me in the same way that dams scare me.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/donbrr/5671566859

[bearsfootball516]

26. I took a tour of Waverly Sanitarium a couple years ago.

Place was incredibly cool, and very creepy.

[matt819]

27. For me

It’s certain bridges.

[nature-lover]

28. The creepy old state penitentiary in Moundsville, WV and of course, Trump Tower.

[RandomAccess]

29. Yes, I can give you an explanation.

Have you ever had the feeling someone was watching you and you turned around and looked directly at the person watching you? Have you ever met someone and had a strong instinctive dislike (or strong like) of the person? Have you ever been in rooms or buildings you love and would like to stay there a long time or come back frequently? Are there rooms in your own house you hardly ever go in, or maybe even dislike going into?

Everything in the physical world has its own energetic signature. Everything. For inanimate objects, the tone or quality of that energy is affected by its physical condition and what has gone on there. A well-kept building with great decor, lovely landscaping, etc., will have a positive energy. Poorly kept buildings and/or buildings where bad things happen or go on will have a negative signature.

Human beings, just like animals, are energy-sensing mechanisms and we also have own own energy.

This energy was called chi by the ancient Chinese who developed an entire cosmology around it, a system of thought and philosophy and science that includes Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), 5 Element Theory, Feng Shui, and more. I'm not all that familiar with all the history, but I presume the martial arts like Tai Chi and Qi Gong, which train the practitioner on the accumulation and effective use of chi in the body, were also part of this worldview/science/cosmology, etc.

I studied Feng Shui in considerable depth -- it's the art of increasing positive chi in one's environment, and helps to improve one's life and even health.

Chi is quite real, btw, though subtle. You can sense various types of chi, and can learn to refine your native chi-sensing abilities and as serious and alert students of Tai Chi or Qi Gong, or even accupuncture patients can attest, moving and balancing the chi can make a LOT of difference.

Psychometry is a little different, tho related. As I already stated, inanimate objects can take on the energy of their environment, so a personal item from someone will hold some of that person's energy and someone who has enhanced that part of their chi-sensing ability will be able to determine something about the owner.

If you've ever vacuumed or cleaned an area and noticed it didn't just LOOK better, but it also FELT better, you were noticing that you'd freshened and cleaned the chi. A steady supply of clean, fresh, beneficial chi coming into your environment will help you be healthier and all your affairs run more smoothly and beneficially. That's Feng Shui at work. There are many, mamy things you can do to upgrade your personal environment and a key benefit beyond "better life" promise is that it will feel better. You deserve an environment that you love because it makes you feel great being there because the chi is great and suited to you personally.

You can start anywhere -- decluttering is a natural (and usually essential) first step, as is cleaning too.

[kimbutgar]

31. The shard In London kind of unnerved me