Scary places are… well, scary. We broadly try to categorize them into several types, which often help to describe how they are used in storytelling.
Familiar Places are Scary is different from Foreign Locations are Scary and That House is Scary (some other common horror tropes) in that it describes when characters go somewhere they have gone to many times before, but for some reason it is now scary or creepy. It may be that they are returning home after a long absence and the house they grew up in is now haunted. It often implies ghosts from your past in some way. Examples include Stephen King’s IT and The Others.
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