Ok, the name of the game for this thread is to pick a regular place (it can be for any setting; ie. farmstead, town square, post office, space station, castle, hall of justice, coal mine, masquerade ball, dog kennel, etc etc) and pick a single detail that you could add in the description of the place that would instantly create a sense of creepiness, that something is wrong in this place...

Go.

RPGPundit

An Idea stolen right from PKD.

A gas station. Normal in every way. Cept every time you're there the things that happen are right out of some hollywood movie or another. Everytime, even when you recognize it at the time, somehow you end up playing out the scene.

A small alley, clean, in an otherwise bad part of town. A small side-alley connects it to another one some length away, though you notice no matter how loud things are outside, none of the sound carries into or out of it.

It's that well insulated.
No windows face it.
The left wall is always wet and warm, though there are no cracks.

A library/study, but scattered through the usual books on the shelf are titles like Dune, by Isaac Asimov; Plato's Odyssey; or Dungeons and Dragon: Basic Set, by R Sean Borgstrom.

It was an popular RPG forum.  Hundreds flocked to read it's messages daily.  But then something terrible happened.  A dire and twisted event.  Screams echoed into the night.  Fingers across the globe smashed keys in vain as the dread curse spread.  But the real question is, dare you log in and test your sanity against. . .

DIE BLUT CURSE AUF DER SWINENMUT!!!

A new campaign for Paranoia 2.0.

It's your room, your plain normal every day room at home, except everything, walls included have been shifted 1" to the left.

A church you've seen a hundred times that now has an inverted cross instead.

A gas station: Every pump, no matter how hard you try, only fills up your tank with $6.66 worth of gas before stopping.

A restroom in a fancy restaurant: The place appears empty the toilet stall is open, and there is a complete set of clothes on the floor in a pile and wrinkled, which appears recently worn.

The lobby to a big business in town is nice and sparkly, with stainless steel staircases leading to the open plan offices above. A very pleasant receptionist gives you tea or coffee and the plush leather chairs in the waiting area are nice and cosy. The sun slants into the lobby and makes you pleasantly drowsy. The low buzz of conversation is almost reverential; like a library or church, broken only every now and then by the sharp tap of heels on marble or the tapping of the receptionist's keyboard.

The person you are here to see is late and you have a bit of a wait. You kill some time by having a look at the recommendations, commendations and photos of the directors that bedeck the walls. Shafts of sunlight stripe the bits of framed paper. You look along the line of pictures and then move on to the oil paintings that depict the companies' directors from the turn of the 20th century. A procession of stern patricians stare from the canvas; some sitting behind old mahogany desks, some standing and leaning on fireplaces and one striking picture depicts an old codger standing on a stone balcony that sweeps from a house onto a green sward. He's pointing out into the garden where several people dance in a circle. As you take a closer look, the breath leaves your body as if a huge weight suddenly sits on your chest. Sweat oozes from pores all over your body. The quite buzz of the lobby suddenly sounds like the angry buzz of a hornets nest. The heels striking on the marble sounds more like the hammering of metal.

One of the dancing figures in the painting is you. You have a dreamy smile on your face and as your shocked eyes take in the scene, your oily doppelganger winks at you.

Dog kennel. Child shoe and some chewed bones inside.

You open up a can of Coke.
Foamy blood starts to spill out.

You come home from a hard day at work and pull into the drive. As you walk across the freshly mowed grass you notice an ant hill near the curb. As you watch, several wasps crawl out and fly away. You watch them fly off and notice similar ant hills in the houses on either side of yours.

Well, you'd expect to see all the mail delivery trucks at the post office.  But the meat truck?

No, the dog kennel is normal and its a beautiful day, but the dog is just looking at you. It isn't barking, it's just watching, ...YOU. So is the cat on the porch, and the one across the street in the neighbor's yard. Another older cat walks around the corner and saunters up the middle of the empty dirt road. It flops down in the middle to watch you. There is a songbird sitting in the tree, but it stopped singing a minute ago. It keeps cocking it's head so as to look at you. In the garden, a lizard hops up on a rock and turns it's head from side to side. It's watching YOU. Above your hdead, the sign on the gas station creeks in the gentle breeze. It's not too loud, not really disturbing. The whole place is really quite innocent looking, almost sublime. But standing on the sign is a crow. It too cocks it's head to look down at you. And as you walk to the attendant's station to pay for your gas, you can see another dog through the screen door. It's a big dog, a Mastiff Houd or a Pit Bull. That startles you at first, because there is no leash and the door is fragile. The dog could leap right through the screen door if it wanted to, but it doesn't. It isn't angry or threatening, just attentive. It is just standing there, quetly watching ...YOU.

Everyone always comes home.  

There are everything from world class doctors, crack lawyers, and famous actors in this town, because somehow, once you've been here once, it keeps drawing you back, time and time again.

Most people don't even realize it.  If you pressed them enough to ask them why the hell they'd bother to come back to such a dead end town, eventually they'd realize they didn't really know.  Fate just seems to bend, all roads lead back to the desert.

But there is something dark in the desert.  I've stood atop the butte in the middle of town and felt the darkness, blacker than night, seem to roll in out of the desert to the east.  I've been to the cave in the desert, a hole in the ground filled with mutilated animal bones and shotgun shells, dotted in the center with a great fire pit.  I've felt something touch me so deep in my bones I could not fight the urge to run and hide.  Go further north, and the deserts are littered with strange shapes built from piles of stones, unknown cairns of unknown men perhaps.

Preachers are always coming to this town from all across the world, some good, some crooks, but something calls to them.  Some voice telling them that this town needs to be saved.  And yet somehow all of them wind up broke and destroyed.  

I have awoken in the night to see writing on my wall, I have been followed through the streets by flitting forms not quite natural.  I have been assaulted in my sleep by unseen forces.

There is something deeply wrong in the deserts here, and I still know not what, only that it's a powerful evil and I don't ever want to have to confront it again.