Ghost Town: Difference between revisions
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{{trope
[[Image:Ghost town Frisco in Utah.JPG|thumb|Frisco mining camp (1879-1929), Utah]]
{{quote|''"Fifty thousand people used to live in this city. Now it's a ghost town... I've never seen anything like it."''
|Capt. MacMillain, ''[[Call of Duty]] 4: [[Modern Warfare]]''}}
A town or village that no longer has enough inhabitants to be considered a town (or in extreme cases may be abandoned entirely).
Back in the days of [[The Wild West]], settlements would spring up practically overnight. Word of a gold or silver strike, or of a good water supply in arid land, and folks would flock in and put up a [[Boom Town]]. Many of these survived and grew, even after the initial rush was over (all major cities in the West Coast got their start like this). But many did not. After the gold was mined out, or the spring went dry, or the railroad went through a town forty miles away instead, there just wasn't much point to living there. So the town died slowly or quickly, and became a
In a more general sense, in an agricultural society, most people lived on a farm or a ranch, and shipped their stuff to the nearest trading town. When people started living in more urbanized areas, since they were not farming, either they needed to go to a job or have customers because they ran some kind of business out of their house. If that dried up, whether or not they owned their house, unless they could grow enough food to feed themselves and supply other basic needs, their only option was to pack up and move on. If enough people did that, then you got a ghost town.
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{{examples}}
== Anime and Manga ==
* ''[[Higurashi no Naku Koro ni]]'': {{spoiler|Hinamizawa. It gets wiped out in the Great Hinamizawa Disaster in some of the arcs.}}
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== Comic Books ==
* Lawless, Arizona in ''Marvel Two-In-One #14''. This one had a literal ghost, a hanged [[Outlaw]] that the [[Fantastic Four (Comic Book)|Thing]] and Son of Satan battled.
* ''[[Lucky Luke]]'' features almost every single [[The Wild West|Wild West]] cliché, and therefore has an adventure in a Ghost Town ; this is even the title of the book. In that case it was a Gold Rush mining town which was abandoned after it became obvious there wasn't an ounce of gold around the place. {{spoiler|In the end, after Luke has stirred the locals out of their greed and fear of ghosts, it revives as a prosperous farming town.}}
== Fan
* In ''[[Aeon Entelechy Evangelion]]'' the dome where Rei lives is this, absolutely devoid of human presence except for the hidden security detail and no wildlife (especially cats, which are natural detectors of everything abnormal).
* Clearwater Commune in ''[[DC Nation]]'' was built on one of these. Currently a thriving hippie commune and farming community, it was once a notoriously nasty mining town in Jonah Hex's day, and popular with cultists, as it's sitting on a node of magical energy. The hippies are clueless about this.
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== [[Game Books]] ==
* In Book 19 of the ''[[Lone Wolf]]'' series, Lone Wolf can visit two Ghost Towns on his cross country trip back home. One village was hit hard by a plague and is completely abandoned. Another one, the town of Amory, is a literal
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** Gatlin, Nebraska, in King's short story ''Children of the Corn''.
** And ''plenty'' of these in ''[[The Stand]]'', post-Captain Trips.
*** And the titular town of ''[[Desperation]]''.
* The town where the Twentieth Century Motor Company used to exist in ''[[Atlas Shrugged]]''.
* Snowfield, California, in Dean Koontz's ''[[Phantoms]].''
* Comala, the main setting of ''[[Pedro Paramo]]''. It seems a normal [[Dying Town]] at the beginning, but as the plot unravels {{Spoiler|and the reader realizes how ''many'' of the characters were [[Dead All Along]]}} it gets revealed as one of these.
== Live Action Television ==
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* The Hidden Village in ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess|The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess]]'', and [[Video Games/Awesome Music|its Western music]].
** Earlier than that, in ''[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link|Zelda II]]'', the town of Kastuo. Especially because {{spoiler|there are ''literal'' ghosts flying around, which can't be seen without the aid of a magic Cross.}}
* ''[[Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas]]'' has quite a bit of these in the desert areas (Las Brujas and Aldea Malvada are two examples).
* In ''[[Oregon Trail]] II'', Fort Boise and Sutter's Fort are abandoned in the 1850's, as in real life. The Whitman Mission will also be abandoned after 1847 or so.
* Hauksness/Domdora in ''[[Dragon Quest I]]''.
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=== Asia ===
* [http://www.michaeljohngrist.com/ruins-gallery/ Japan] has a large number of what are called "Haikyo", or urban ruins. They come in all forms, ranging from entire [[Ghost Town|abandoned towns]] to single buildings. Most of them are remains from Japan's mining era, or else became abandoned when their [[wikipedia:Lost Decade (Japan)|economy slipped in the 1990s]].▼
* [[wikipedia:Hashima Island|Hashima Island, Japan]]. A former coal mining town that, at its height, was the most densely populated area in the world, and the site of the first concrete building in Japan. When oil became a favored energy source, the coal mine closed down and the town died with it. Japanese photographer Saiga Yuji has two online galleries of black & white photos taken on Hashima: [http://www.ne.jp/asahi/saiga/yuji/gallary/1974/top.html one containing images from just before its abandonment], and one of more recent photos, "[http://www.ne.jp/asahi/saiga/yuji/gallary/gunsu/gunsu-html/01.html Views of an Abandoned Island]."▼
* [[wikipedia:Kantubek|Kantubek, Uzbekistan]]. During the [[Cold War]], it was a testing ground for biological weapons.▼
* [[wikipedia:Bokor Hill Station|Bokor Hill Station, Cambodia]]
▲* [http://www.michaeljohngrist.com/ruins-gallery/ Japan] has a large number of what are called "Haikyo", or urban ruins. They come in all forms, ranging from entire
▲** [[wikipedia:Hashima Island|Hashima Island, Japan]]. A former coal mining town that, at its height, was the most densely populated area in the world, and the site of the first concrete building in Japan. When oil became a favored energy source, the coal mine closed down and the town died with it. Japanese photographer Saiga Yuji has two online galleries of black & white photos taken on Hashima: [http://www.ne.jp/asahi/saiga/yuji/gallary/1974/top.html one containing images from just before its abandonment], and one of more recent photos, "[http://www.ne.jp/asahi/saiga/yuji/gallary/gunsu/gunsu-html/01.html Views of an Abandoned Island]."
* [[wikipedia:Quneitra|Quneitra, Syria]]
▲* [[wikipedia:Kantubek|Kantubek, Uzbekistan]]. During the [[Cold War]], it was a testing ground for biological weapons.
=== Australia ===
* [[wikipedia:Category:Ghost towns in Western Australia|Western Australia]] has several
=== Europe ===
* [[wikipedia:Famagusta|Famagusta, Cyprus]]▼
* [[wikipedia:Pyramiden|Pyramiden, Svalbard]]
* [[wikipedia:Prypiat, Ukraine|Prypiat, Ukraine]]. Ever since the [[Chernobyl Disaster|Chernobyl Meltdown]], the town has been largely uninhabited; of the handful that do live in the area, most are stubborn, elderly holdouts.▼
▲* [[wikipedia:Famagusta|Famagusta, Cyprus]]
▲* [[wikipedia:Prypiat, Ukraine|Prypiat, Ukraine]]. Ever since the Chernobyl Meltdown, the town has been largely uninhabited; of the handful that do live in the area, most are stubborn, elderly holdouts.
=== North America ===
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** [[wikipedia:Bodie, California|Bodie, California]]
** [[wikipedia:Fort Ord|Fort Ord, California]], while still technically containing a military presence due to the Naval Postgraduate School, it is abandoned in the visual sense with a large number of boarded up buildings and overgrown plantlife. ** Now the Mythbusters second abandoned location to casually drive cars through.
** [[wikipedia:USS Iowa (BB-61)|USS ''Iowa'']], as with all completed ''Iowa'' class ships, had a peak population of ~2000 full time residents, with many of the amenities one would expect of a small town, and now, as a museum ship, has a current population of zero.
*Hawaii
** [[wikipedia:USS Missouri (BB-63)|USS ''Missouri'']] like the other three completed ''Iowa'' class battleships, was effectively a self contained town of ~2000 people before final deactivation brought permanent residents to zero.
*Illinois
** The chorus of [[Sufjan Stevens]]' song "They Are Night Zombies..." name-drops a lot of Illinois ghost towns.
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** Dana Common and Prescott Peninsula in Massachusetts, the last significant above-ground areas of four towns ([[wikipedia:Quabbin Reservoir#Towns discontinued|Dana, Prescott, Enfield, and Greenwich]]) that were flooded to create the Quabbin Reservoir in the 1930s. Despite the removal of all significant buildings in the area, Dana Common is still regularly kept up by the Massachusetts parks people as a waystation for hikers, parts of the old golf course in Prescott are still visible (but off limits to the public), and building foundations still dot the area, including under the water.
*Missouri
** [[wikipedia:Times Beach, Missouri|Times Beach, Missouri]] became a ghost town because of dioxin poisoning. The town's buildings were razed and the soil burnt to rid it of the dioxin. It's now Route 66 State Park; its lone surviving building (a
*Nevada
** [[wikipedia:Rhyolite, Nevada|Rhyolite, Nevada]]
*New Jersey
** [[wikipedia:Deserted Village|Feltville, New Jersey]]
** [[w:Ong's Hat, New Jersey|Ong's Hat, New Jersey]]
** [[Wikipedia:USS New Jersey (BB-62)|USS ''New Jersey'']] is regularly noted by curator Ryan Szimanski to have been a small town in her own right, housing roughly 2000 people at her peak and home to many things one would expect in a settlement of that size but not necessarily on a warship (including a library, a dentist's office with ''two'' dentists, a gym, a photo studio, a print shop, a phone network, at least one civilian laundromat, several machine shops, a TV news station/studio, and even a woman's bathroom). As a museum ship she, like the other completed ''Iowa'' class vessels, now has a permanent population of zero, and is large and labyrinthine enough even a knowledgeable explorer can get lost within.
*New York
** [[wikipedia:Love Canal|Love Canal]], a infamous neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York that was evacuated in 1979 after it was learned that it was built on a toxic waste dump.
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** The state of Oklahoma, which has gone through numerous booms and busts over the years (oil, coal, lead, etc) is littered with literally hundreds of these, to the point that there's actually an official state list and classification system for them. There are even several which are partially underwater due to the construction of artificial lakes, and many more which are ''entirely'' underwater but still visible from the shoreline. The most notable is [[wikipedia:Picher, Oklahoma|Picher]], a dangerously toxic and structurally unstable former mining town featured in an episode of [[Life After People]]. ** Picher is also notable because the few remaining residents (approximately a dozen people) flat-out refuse to leave despite the fact that the groundwater is undrinkable, the air is dangerous to breathe and the entire town could literally sink into the earth at any given moment. Mostly elderly, these few residents were all born in Picher and have expressed their wishes to die there.
*Pennsylvania
** [[wikipedia:Centralia, Pennsylvania|Centralia, Pennsylvania]], built over a mass of coal
* Québec
** Val-Jalbert is a well-known tourist ghost town on the south shore of Lac St. Jean; its sole industry was a mill, powered by a waterfall, which mechanically turned wood into pulp for paper. [[Technology Marches On]] and mechanical pulp generation was supplanted by chemical processes.
*Utah
** [[wikipedia:Thistle utah|Thistle, Utah]] was abandoned after a landslide and flood in the early 1980's.
*Virginia
* Going into the future, large swaths of the American Midwest and West are expected to become ghost towns as water resources become more strained. Las Vegas and LA are two of the biggest concerns<ref> Neither city is remotely sustainable at this point in time, the LA area could support at best a couple hundred thousand people on its natural water resources</ref>, as either they and other cities will dry up, or they'll force areas of the Southwest to dry up. There's simply not enough water to support them both given current projections. Already the Colorado river is virtually a trickle by the time it leaves American soil.▼
** [[wikipedia:USS Wisconsin (BB-64)|USS ''Wisconsin'']] like the other three completed ''Iowa'' class had a peak population of ~2000 and a current population of 0 due to being retired as a warship and turned into a museum ship.
▲* Going into the future, large swaths of the American Midwest and West are expected to become ghost towns as water resources become more strained. Las Vegas and LA are two of the biggest concerns,<ref>
{{reflist}}
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[[Category:Abandoned Area]]
[[Category:Horror Tropes]]
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