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TRAVEL BLOG

10.31.07

Touring the Desolate Streets of America’s Ghost Towns

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.

Related on TravelChannel.com
* Most Haunted

Photo by Mozzer502, via Flickr (Creative Commons)

Posted by Joanna Kakissis • 10.31.07
Categories: Weblog • California • History Travel • United States

Permalink • Comments (1)

COMMENTS

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.

By on 10.31.07 at 03:06 PM