Touring the Desolate Streets of America’s Ghost Towns

Travel Blog  •  Joanna Kakissis  •  10.31.07 | 2:43 PM ET

ghosttownPhoto by Mozzer502, via Flickr (Creative Commons)

A Halloween question: What are America’s ghost towns really like? Not exactly a trick-or-treater’s technicolor spookfest, writes Hugo Martin of the Los Angeles Times. Martin explored some abandoned towns in the West, offering a not-so-marketable tableau of death, decay, doom and depression. The creepiness includes:

* a headless, twice-lynched Hooch Simpson who wanders the streets of Skidoo, California.

* visitors who steal memorabilia from the sun-bleached remains of Bodie, also in California, and are beset with heartbreak, serious injury and even death.

* a murdered pregnant prostitute who haunts the once-lux, now-dead mining town of Goldfield, Nevada.

* a crazed innkeeper’s daughter, dead since 1960, who patrols tumbleweed-swept St. Elmo, Colorado.

Tags: History Travel, North America, United States, California, News and Briefs

Joanna Kakissis's writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe and The Washington Post, among other publications. A contributor to the World Hum blog, she's currently a Ted Scripps fellow in environmental journalism at the University of Colorado in Boulder.


1 Comment for Touring the Desolate Streets of America’s Ghost Towns

TambourineMan 10.31.07 | 7:06 PM ET

St Elmo, Colorado can be a creepy place, especially around dusk when the town is empty of tourists and obnoxious off-roaders. I never saw Annabelle’s ghost, but did jump out of my skin when two deer popped out of some roadside brush about 10 feet in front of me.

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