I Had a Dream I Visited an Abandoned McDonald's, So I Looked Up Pictures... and Regretted Everything

By: Rylan B.

I have a confession.

Sometimes my dreams are completely normal.

This was not one of those times.

The other night I had a dream that I wandered into an abandoned McDonald's.

Not one of those remodeled gray-and-brown McDonald's where everything looks like an airport lounge, what do they call that... McCafe. Yeah no.

I'm talking about the McDonald's.

The one from childhood.

Bright red booths.

Yellow plastic play tubes.

The smell of fries permanently embedded into the plastic furniture.

The menu boards still hung above the counter, frozen in time

, advertising meals that probably haven't existed in twenty years.

It wasn't scary.

It was...

sad.

Like the building had simply been forgotten.

When I woke up, I did what every mentally healthy person does after having a strange dream.

I opened Google.

I searched:

"Abandoned McDonald's."

And immediately realized two things.

First...

There are way more abandoned McDonald's than I expected.

Second...

They somehow look more unsettling than they did in my dream.

There is something deeply uncomfortable about seeing one of the most recognizable places on Earth sitting completely empty.

McDonald's isn't supposed to be abandoned.

It's supposed to be open.

Always.

Even if nobody is inside.

Even if it's 2:13 in the morning and your only reason for being there is because your brain convinced you that twenty nuggets would somehow fix your life.

It's one of those places that feels permanent.

Until it isn't.

The photos I found were bizarre.

Golden arches still standing proudly above buildings with boarded-up windows.

Drive-thru menus advertising nothing.

PlayPlaces with no children.

Dining rooms where the booths had been ripped out, leaving strange outlines on faded tile.

Some locations still had the old carpeting.

Some still had Happy Meal murals.

Some looked like employees had simply clocked out one day and never came back.

It's amazing how quickly a place can stop feeling welcoming once you remove the people.

And then I started wondering why abandoned fast-food restaurants feel so... liminal.

I think it's because they're designed around constant movement.

People ordering.

Kids running.

Ice machines humming.

French fries sizzling.

Employees yelling order numbers over the sound of beeping fry timers.

Every inch of a McDonald's exists because it's supposed to be busy.

Take away the people...

...and all that's left is the architecture of routine.

A building waiting for something that's never coming back.

It's similar to why abandoned malls, department stores, and office buildings feel so unsettling.

They're not haunted.

They're interrupted.

Our brains don't see an empty McDonald's.

They automatically begin filling it with memories.

Birthday parties.

Road trips.

Parents bribing you with Happy Meals after doctor's appointments.

Begging for one more hour in the PlayPlace.

Finding a Pokémon card in your Happy Meal and immediately becoming the richest kid in school.

The building isn't empty.

The places you never thought you'd miss until they disappeared.

So yes.

I had a dream about an abandoned McDonald's.

Then I looked up pictures.

And now I'm convinced liminal spaces aren't about horror at all.

They're about memory.

Sometimes the creepiest places aren't abandoned because something terrible happened.

They're abandoned because nothing happened anymore.

And somehow...

...that feels even stranger.