How to Describe Scary Places in English! 🕯️🎃👻

Well, hello and welcome to this English lesson about

how to describe

scary and spooky places.

So this is a special English lesson.

I thought, because Halloween is just around

the corner I should do a lesson on how to describe places

that aren't the kind of places where people normally go.

So I think we should get started right here.

What do you think?

So let's get started right here

at this old abandoned house.

Now, if I was to describe this house to you,

I would probably describe it as a little bit scary.

This house is neglected.

That means it hasn't been taken care of.

If you look inside, you can see that no one lives here.

And I do find this a little bit scary

because even though no one lives here,

you don't know what to expect.

So I would definitely say this house is neglected.

We would also say it's derelict.

That's another word we would use to describe a house like this.

I'm going to speak a little more quickly now and get out of here as soon as I can.

You might

also wonder if a house like this is haunted

when a house is haunted, it means that you think ghosts maybe live there.

I certainly wouldn't come back to this house at night.

I don't actually believe in ghosts, but certainly if I came to this house

at night, I would find it scary and I would probably start to wonder

if it was haunted if I started to hear strange and weird noises.

Do you have a place in your town where you wouldn't go at night?

We have places like that in our towns.

I'm at one right now, and of course, it's daytime.

And if you think you don't have a place like this in your town,

you should go look around, because you probably do.

I would describe this place as sketchy

at night.

During the day, it's a very nice place to be.

It's beautiful.

You can hear the water running beside me in the creek,

but at night it's a little bit sketchy.

When we describe a place as sketchy in English,

we mean that it's a little bit dangerous.

And we're usually talking about...

Oh! There's a bit of an echo here.

We're usually talking about people who make the place a little bit sketchy.

I'm going to guess that the people

who hang out here like to put graffiti on the walls.

You can see some graffiti over there.

And they probably do other things that I'm guessing are illegal.

But a beautiful place during the day.

But definitely this is a sketchy place at night.

Shhh!

Did you hear that sound?

I'm out here in the woods, and it's a little bit creepy.

Actually, it's not too creepy right now because it's daytime.

But if I was out here at night, this would be a creepy place to be.

In the woods at night there are funny sounds.

Sometimes you might hear a wolf howling or you might hear

other animals scurrying in the night.

And even worse, sometimes you might hear a sound and you don't recognize it.

So this could be a creepy place to be if it was the middle of the night.

By the way, creepy means a little bit scary.

A little bit frightening.

Not a place that you want to be by yourself.

I certainly wouldn't want to be out here by myself in the middle of the night.

So this next place that I'm going to show you is the basement at my school.

I feel like we should probably turn the light on before we go down these stairs.

It's going to flash in a sec.

There we go. The lights on.

I would describe this place as being eerie.

When a place is eerie, it's a little bit scary.

It's a place you don't like going to.

It's eerie because there's weird sounds down here.

These pipes sometimes make strange sounds

and there's a hum over there, and I don't know what it's from.

So this is a place that I would definitely say is eerie.

People don't come down here very often, and I can see why.

It's also a little bit damp.

There's a little bit of moisture down here.

That's pretty common in a basement.

And it's a little bit musty.

When a place is musty it smells a little bit

like maybe there's mold or something.

So, again, this is the basement at my school,

a place where people usually don't come

and a place that's just a little bit eerie and a little bit scary.

So as humans, we like places that are well-lit.

We don't like places that are dark.

This is a parking garage that's not actually used very much,

and it's a little bit spooky.

I would call this place spooky because as you walk through it, the lights

turn on when they sense that you're here, but sometimes they don't turn on.

You can hear... there, one just turned on.

It actually scared me a little bit.

It's also spooky because it's so empty.

I don't know why they built this parking garage.

It obviously isn't needed.

There's a few cars here, but as I walk along,

it's just more and more interesting

to try and figure out why this place doesn't have...

I'm actually getting a little bit scared being down here.

I should probably wrap up this part of the lesson.

I'll start walking

towards the exit again

or the entrance / exit.

Pretty soon the lights are going to start turning off.

If I... Oh! See that one just turned off there.

I think these are

going to start turning off to over here.

Once they don't sense motion...

Oh, there goes one.

And if we wait long enough, I think the other one will..

Woo... That's just a little bit scary.

So I'm afraid of heights.

I'm scared of heights.

You can say either phrase to describe that.

I do not like being way up high.

Luckily, I have this super long selfie stick

to show you what it looks like

if you look over the edge of where I am right now.

I am doing this safely.

I am standing about two meters back from the edge

because I am incredibly scared of heights.

I am definitely afraid of heights.

I'm actually really happy that I'm done recording that segment now.

I can back away to safety.

By the way, it wasn't actually too bad.

I did make sure I did it totally safely.

But yeah, a scary place for me would be standing right at the edge of that cliff.

So this bridge in front of me is quite run down.

I'm not even sure it's safe to cross.

I'm going to be careful as I go across this bridge.

You can

see that there are big holes in the bridge.

Don't worry. I'm walking above

where there are some support beams, so I'm not too worried about this.

But this bridge is definitely worn out.

And it's a little bit scary underneath this bridge.

I'm going to try and give you a little view of what it's like under the bridge.

If we look through these cracks here.

Certainly not a place where I would hang out at night.

So this bridge is definitely in disrepair.

You can see the railing is falling off the side.

It's definitely worn out.

And by the way, there is a chain across over here

because they don't want people to drive their cars across it.

So kind of the scary, worn out bridge.

Well, thank you so much

for watching this English lesson about scary and spooky places.

I hope I didn't scare you too much.

And I hope you learned a few more English words and phrases

that you can use in your next English conversation.

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And if you have some time, why don't you stick around and watch

another English lesson. Bye.