Desolate, ruined, hollow—ghost towns are the remnants of urban catastrophe. Whether it’s a shift in local industry or a particularly nasty disaster that sparks a mass exodus, it means the death knell for a town. Eerie and tragic yet brimming with history, the following ghost towns are monuments to hardship, good intentions with bad repercussions, and human folly.
1. Deception Island, Antarctica
Photo source: wili_hybrid
Part of a larger group of Antarctic islands called the South Shetland Islands, Deception Island was originally a refuge from icebergs for nineteenth-century seal hunters. The island then became home to a Norwegian-Chilean whaling-factory ship in 1906. Deception Island acted as a safe harbor to more whaling-factory ships who docked there (they would process the whales brought in from sea and put the carcasses to use around the island). Thirteen ships were stationed there in 1914.
During the Great Depression, the demand for whale products dropped, and the floating whaling village was disbanded. In subsequent years, multiple scientific stations attempted to set up shop on the island, just to be driven out by a particularly nasty and noxious gas-spewing volcano. Today, two very small research settlements are inhabited during the summer, but the rest of the island has been abandoned (save the occasional tourist expedition).
2. Centralia, Pennsylvania
Photo source: Lyndi&Jason
“The Hottest Town in America,” “A Foretaste of Hell,” “Slow Burn“…all these names have been applied to Centralia, Pennsylvania, and aptly so! Although they’re dramatic, the names barely do justice to the catastrophe of Centralia.
A small town about an hour outside Philadelphia, Centralia hosts a large and active coal mine that runs for miles underneath the area. It is believed that in 1962, the town’s volunteer fire department burned trash in the city landfill and then accidentally dumped the embers into an open trash pit that was not properly constructed, with some of those embers ending up in the mine itself. Within days, a raging fire began to burn in the coal mines below the city, and almost fifty years later, it has yet to be extinguished.
So what does this mean for the people living in Centralia? For a few years, the raging underground inferno was pretty much ignored. There were some attempts to put it out, but they were underfunded and unsuccessful. Although some residents reported health problems from carbon monoxide poisoning, no efforts were made to relocate the population.
Photo source:daysofthundr46
However, all that changed in 1979, when the recorded underground temperature at a local gas station was so hot, the gasoline had to be immediately drained from its tanks so it wouldn’t explode. Then, in 1981, a twelve-year-old fell into a massive sinkhole that spontaneously formed in his backyard, only to be miraculously saved by his cousin who was able to pull him out.
Maybe it was the combination of fiery sinkholes, free-flowing poisonous fumes, lack of a gas station, and the prospect that the still-growing coal fire had enough fuel to burn for another 250 years, but by 1984 the town of Centralia had had enough. Faced with an estimated cost of $660 million to put out the fire, the state of Pennsylvania decided to condemn the town and instead pay around $42 million in relocation funds. Today, only seven people reportedly still haunt this suburban, smoldering ghost town.
