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A ghost town is a town or city that has been completely abandoned by human inhabitants, usually because the economic activity that supported it has failed, or due to natural or human-caused disasters such as flood, government action, uncontrolled lawlessness or war. The term is sometimes used in a depreciative sense to include cities, towns, and neighborhoods which, while still populated, are significantly less so than years past.

A ghost town may be a site where little or nothing remains above the soil surface (e.g., Babylon оr Smeerenburg). Often a ghost town will still have significant art and architecture, e.g. Vijayanagara in India or Chang'an in China.

Some ghost towns are tourist attractions, among them Oatman, Arizona; Bannack, Montana; Kolmanskop and Elizabeth Bay, outside Lüderitz, Namibia. This is especially true of those that preserve interesting architecture. Visiting, writing about, and photographing ghost towns is a minor industry.

Some ghost towns may be overgrown, difficult to access, and dangerous or illegal to visit.

Factors leading to abandonment of towns include depleted natural resources (as was the case of Smeerenburg and Grytviken), or natural resources such as water no longer being available; railways and motorways bypassing or no longer accessing the town (as was the case in many of the ghost towns along Ontario's historic Opeongo Line); economic activity shifting elsewhere; human intervention such as highway re-routing (as was the case with many towns located along U.S. Route 66, after motorists bypassed the towns on the faster moving I-44 and I-40); river re-routing (the Aral Sea being one example of this), and nuclear disasters such as Chernobyl. Significant fatality rates from epidemics have also produced ghost towns; for example, some places in eastern Arkansas were abandoned after near-total mortality (over 7,000 Arkansans died during the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918 and 1919).[1] The Middle East has many ghost towns, created when the shifting of politics or fall of empires caused capital cities to be socially or economically non-viable, e.g., Ctesiphon.

Natural disasters can also create ghost towns. After being flooded more than 30 times since their town was founded in 1845, residents of Pattonsburg, Missouri had enough after two floods in 1993. With government help, the whole town was rebuilt three miles (5 km) away. Residents moved to New Pattonsburg, leaving the old Pattonsburg behind as a ghost town.

Due to improvements in scientific testing and warning procedures, ghost towns may also occasionally come into being due to an anticipated natural disaster — for example, the Canadian town of Lemieux, Ontario was abandoned in 1991 after soil testing revealed that the community was built on an unstable clay bed. Two years after the last building in Lemieux was demolished, a landslide swept part of the former townsite into the South Nation River.

Land contamination can also create a ghost town. This is what happened to Times Beach, a suburb of St. Louis whose residents were exposed to a high level of dioxins. Centralia, Pennsylvania was abandoned by many people due to a dangerous underground coal fire. Since some residents chose to stay despite the dangers, it cannot be classified as a true ghost town.

Ghost towns may also be created when land is expropriated by a government and residents are required to relocate. An excellent example is the village of Tyneham in Dorset, acquired during World War II to build an artillery range. Another example was when NASA acquired land to build a rocket propulsion testing center. Construction of the John C. Stennis Space Center in Mississippi required acquisition of a large buffer zone (approximately 34 square miles) because of the loud noise and potential dangers associated with testing huge rockets. Communities were abandoned and roads became overgrown by forest.

Construction of dams has produced ghost towns left underwater. Examples include the settlement of Loyston, Tennessee, inundated by the creation of Norris Lake. The town was reorganized and reconstructed on nearby higher ground. Other examples are The Lost Villages of Ontario, and the hamlets of Nether Hambleton and Middle Hambleton in Rutland, England, which were flooded to create Rutland Water, Europe's largest man-made reservoir, Mologa in Russia that was flooded by the creation of Rybinsk reservoir. Many ancient villages had to be abandoned during construction of the Three Gorges Dam in China, leading to displacement of many rural people.

Revived ghost towns

A few ghost towns manage a second life, often due to heritage tourism propagating an economy able to support residents. Walhalla, Victoria, for example, was a town deserted after its gold mine ceased operation. Owing to its accessibility and proximity to other attractive locations, Walhalla has had a recent surge in economy and population.

Alexandria, the second largest city of Egypt, was a flourishing city in the Ancient era, but declined during the Middle Ages. With only 150[citation needed] residents in the early 19th century, it qualified as a ghost town. During the Modern period, it has grown to a city of 3.5 to 5 million inhabitants. In Algeria, many cities became hamlets after the end of Late Antiquity. They were revived with shifts in population during and after French colonization of Algeria. Oran, today the nation's second largest city with 1 million people, before colonization was a village of a few thousand people.

Foncebadon a village in Spain, mostly abandoned and only inhabited by 2 people (mother and son) and some dogs is slowly being revived since the 1990s due to the ever increasing stream of pilgrims on the road to Santiago de Compostela.

Ghost towns around the world

Americas

Most 19th and 20th century European immigrants to Argentina settled in the cities, which offered jobs, education, and other opportunities that enabled newcomers to enter the middle class. Many also settled in the growing small towns along the expanding railway system. Since the 1930s, many rural workers have moved to the big cities.

The 1990s saw many rural towns become ghost towns when train services ceased and local products previously manufactured on a small scale were replaced by massive amounts of cheap imported goods. Some ghost towns near cities offer tourist attractions, especially during weekends.

The small village of Caraíbas, in the municipality of Itacarambi, state of Minas Gerais, suffered an earthquake in the early morning of December 9, 2007. Measuring 4.9 degrees on the Richter scale, the earthquake was rare in Brazil. Located over a geological fault, the village (76 families) was evacuated and has been abandoned since then.

Ghost towns are seen in Alberta, Northern Ontario, Central Ontario, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland and Labrador (see outport) and in Quebec. Some of these were logging towns or dual mining and logging sites, often developed at the behest of the company. In Alberta and Saskatchewan most ghost towns were once farming communities that have since died off due to the removal of the railway through the town or a bypass of a highway. In British Columbia, they were predominantly mining towns and prospecting camps as well as canneries and, in one or two cases, large smelter and pulp mill towns.

British Columbia has more ghost towns than any other jurisdiction on the North American continent, with one estimate at the number of abandoned and semi-abandoned towns and localities upwards of 1500.[2] Some ghost towns have revived their economies and populations due to historical and eco-tourism, such as Barkerville, once the largest town north of Kamloops, which is now a year-round Provincial Museum.

Most of the ghost towns in Chile had once been mining camps or lumber mills, such as the many saltpeter mining camps that prospered from the end of the Saltpeter War until the invention of synthetic saltpeter during World War I. The ghost towns of Humberstone and Santa Laura Saltpeter Works in the middle of the Atacama Desert were declared UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 2005. The copper mining camp of Sewell, high up in the Andes of Central Chile, was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2006. Despite protection laws, this ghost town suffers "tourist looting."

Port Famine (Spanish: Puerto Hambre) is arguably Chile's oldest ghost town. It was founded in the Strait of Magellan in 1584 by Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa. Starvation and the cold climate killed all of the inhabitants. The English navigator, Sir Thomas Cavendish landed at the site in 1587. He found only ruins of the settlement, and renamed the place Port Famine.

Other lesser known ghost towns are located in the southern part of the Chilean Coast Range. They were once lumbermills where Fitzroya were cut down to make roof shingles, a typical element of Chilota architecture.

Many Ghost towns today in this country are mostly as a result of the ongoing violence by illegal guerrilla groups (such as FARC). Bojayá was a small town in the Chocó department. On May 2, 2002, FARC attacked this village, and most of the people hid in the church, as later FARC threw a bomb in the building, killing aprox. 140 people including 40 children. Today, Boyajá is a ghost town and though plans have been made to rebuild it, it will not be on the exact location of the massacre.

Jonestown in Guyana became a ghost town because of the mass murder of the Peoples Temple community that lived there.

• Ojuela
• Real de Catorce

Real de Catorce was once a flourishing silver mining town in northern Mexico. Its dramatic landscapes and buildings have been used by Hollywood for movies such as The Mexican (2001) with Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts. Recent efforts to adapt the town to tourism have created a mixture of ghost town and heritage tourist site adapted to visitors in search of interesting history in the country.

There are many ghost towns, or semi-ghost towns (some of them unincorporated communities) in the American Great Plains, whose rural areas have lost a third of their population since 1920. Thousands of communities in the northern plains states like North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Nebraska became railroad ghost towns when a rail-line failed to materialize. Hundreds more were abandoned when the US Highway System replaced the railroads as America's favorite mode of travel. Ghost towns are common in mining or old mill town areas: Washington, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Montana, Minnesota, and California in the western United States and West Virginia in the eastern USA. They can be observed as far south as Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Georgia and Florida. When the resources that had created an employment boom in these towns played out, eventually the businesses ceased to exist, and the people moved on to more productive areas. Sometimes a ghost town consists of many old abandoned buildings (like in Bodie, California), other times there are simply structures or foundations of former buildings (e.g., Graysonia, Arkansas). Even some of the earliest settlements in the US are or have been ghost towns, such as Jamestown, Virginia, the Zwaanendael Colony in Delaware and the famous Lost Colony in North Carolina.

Old mining camps that have lost most of their population at some stage of their history, such as St. Elmo, Colorado; Central City, Colorado; Aspen, Colorado; Virginia City, Montana; Marysville, Montana; Tombstone, Arizona; Deadwood, South Dakota; Park City, Utah; Crested Butte, Colorado; or Cripple Creek, Colorado, are sometimes included in the category, although they are active towns and cities today.

A recent attempt to declare an "Official Ghost Town" in California collapsed when the adherents of the town of Calico, in Southern California, and those of Bodie, in Northern California, could not come to an agreement as to which of their favorites was more deserving.

The ghost town of Medicine Mound in Hardeman County in West Texas is preserved through a museum operated there by Myna Potts. Medicine Mound consists of two buildings. The museum is in the former Hicks-Cobb General Store.

A more recent ghost town is Centralia, Pennsylvania, which at its peak had over 2,600 residents in either the borough itself or in immediately adjacent areas and was over 1,000 as recent as 1981 but as of 2007 is down to nine residents as a result of a underground mine fire that started in the 1960s when a landfill created from an abandoned strip mine was set on fire. (At the time, it was legal to create a landfill from an abandoned strip mine as long as it was sealed off from any possible coal seams that could catch fire; this loophole has since been closed because of Centralia.) Pennsylvania later acquired the borough through eminent domain so it could get the residents safely moved to other areas, though a small handful remain.[3]

Sailor's Island (ÃŽle aux Marins) is a ghost town / island located a few miles away from the island of Saint-Pierre. Once inhabited by over 600 fishermen, families and tradesmen, the island was progressively abandoned until the last inhabitant left in 1965. The island is now a tourist attraction.

Antarctica

The oldest ghost town in Antarctica is located in Deception Island, where in 1906 a Norwegian-Chilean whaling company started using Whalers Bay as a base for a factory ship, the Gobernador Bories. Other whaling operations followed suit, and by 1914 there were 13 factory ships based there.

Antarctica also has many more-recently abandoned scientific and military bases, especially in the Antarctic Peninsula.

The Antarctic island of South Georgia used to have several thriving whaling settlements during the first half of the 20th century, with a combined population exceeding 2,000 in some years. These included Grytviken (operating 1904-64), Leith Harbour (1909-65), Ocean Harbour (1909-20), Husvik (1910-60), Stromness (1912-61) and Prince Olav Harbour (1917-34). The abandoned settlements have become increasingly dilapidated, and remain uninhabited nowadays except for the Museum curator's family at Grytviken. The jetty, the church, and dwelling and industrial buildings at Grytviken have recently been renovated by the Government of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, becoming a popular tourist destination. Some historical buildings in the other settlements are being restored too.

Oceania

Similar to the United States, Canada and other former frontier countries, most ghost towns in Australia were usually formed after the end of mining operations or the removal of railway services. They are spread throughout the country and are located in every state and territory. Some ghost towns in Australia include Cassilis in Victoria, Farina in the far north of South Australia, Newnes in New South Wales, and Gwalia, Goldsworthy, Cossack, and Wittenoom in Western Australia. Ravenswood in north-eastern Queensland was a ghost town for many years, due to the declining gold rushes, but new gold discoveries in the area and improved mineral processing technologies, has boosted the economy of the area and revived the town.

Old Adaminaby in New South Wales is an example of one of the drowned towns which has been subsequently revealed through drought in recent decades.[4]

Europe

In Europe, many villages were abandoned over the ages, for many different reasons.

Sometimes, wars and genocide end a town's life, and it is never resettled. This happened to the Swedish town Sjöstad, in Närke, in 1260, when the town's 700 merchants crossed the ice of Lake Vättern and were cut down by the Danes. The Danes then proceeded to the town, ravaging and burning it. The town was never resettled. A farm named Skyrstad, ruins and a silver treasure which yielded 4000 coins are all that testify to its existence (see abandoned village). The same happened in the French village Oradour-sur-Glane in 1944, when occupying Germans massacred the village's population. Natural disasters can play a role. For example, the erupting volcano of Vesuvius famously terminated Pompeii and Herculaneum in Italy in AD 79.

In the United Kingdom, the once thriving farming village of Knaptoft in Leicestershire was depopulated due to the enclosure of the surrounding land for sheep pasture. The ruins of the former church still exist as a graveyard, with graves even occupying ground inside the ruins of the church. The villages of Imber on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire and Tyneham near Dorset's historic Jurassic Coast, as well as several villages within the Stanford Battle Area in Norfolk, were evacuated by the British Army, and the abandoned buildings are now used for training exercises. The creation of reservoirs has led to the drowning of villages. These include Mardale Green in the English Lake District and two villages - Ashopton and Derwent - drowned by the Ladybower Reservoir in Derbyshire. Also in Wales the village of Capel Celyn was drowned to form Llyn Celyn, to provide water for Liverpool, and Llyn Clywedog drowned farmsteads and agricultural land to reduce flooding of the River Severn.

Industrialisation is another factor. For example, the village of Etzweiler in northwestern Germany was abandoned in the 1990s to make way for a coal (lignite) mine [4] [5]. While Etzweiler disappeared in 2006, neighbouring Pesch and Holz have become near-deserted ghost towns by now (January 2008) and all that is left of Otzenrath are the remains of the village's church, where archeologists excavate remains of sacred buildings from medieval and potentially Roman times. [6] Furthermore, parts of the motorway A44 have been removed and as the lignitemine continues to move west, parts of the A61 will follow before 2020 (with the A44 being rebuilt behind the mine).

Also in Belgium, several villages had to disappear to facilitate the expansion of the port of Antwerp, such as the former villages of Oosterweel, Oordam, Wilmarsdonk, Lillo and Oorderen. Soon, the village of Doel will follow suit.

Pyramiden (Danish, Swedish and Norwegian, meaning "the pyramid", Russian: Пирамида) was a Russian settlement and coal mining community on the archipelago of Svalbard, Norway. It was founded by Sweden in 1910, and sold to the Soviet Union in 1927. The settlement, with a one time population of 1,000 inhabitants, was abandoned in the late-1990s by its owner, the state-owned Soviet company Trust Artikugol, and is now a ghost town. There are no restrictions on visiting Pyramiden. However, visitors may not enter any buildings without permission, even if the doors are open. Most buildings are now locked. Pyramiden is accessible by boat or snowmobile. Guided tours are available (in Russian, Norwegian, and English).

The city of Prypiat and dozens of smaller settlements in northern Ukraine and southern Belarus were abandoned after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and turned into a closed alienation zone. The area has been largely untouched since then, and as such it functions as a large time capsule of the late Soviet era. There is an online photojournal of this area.

Several communities became ghost towns in Ireland in the latter half of the nineteenth century, particularly in the west of the country, due to a combination of the potato famine and economic decline brought on by the famine. These now consist primarily of knee high ruins of cottages. Notable ghost towns are on Achill Island and in the Burren area of county Clare. A more recent ghost town was created in the 1950s on Great Blasket island, where island life became unfeasible and the island was depopulated. The Island is only accessible to tourists in the summer months.

The ÃŽle aux Marins of the Saint-Pierre and Miquelon group of islands has been uninhabited since 1965.

In Finland, which is one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world, most people live in the biggest towns, and some villages near the Russian border and in Lapland are nearly abandoned.

While Athens, Greece, experienced severe decline after the end of the Byzantine Empire, it may never have been a ghost town, although it certainly came close, dwindling to some 3,000 or 4,000 people by the 19th century. It has since gone back to being a major city. Rome experienced similar declines, but it too hasn't been completely abandoned (one of its lowest estimated populations was 17,000 in 1347, down from more than a million in Imperial times[citation needed]).

The village of Nant Gwrtheyrn on the LlÅ·n in Gwynedd, North Wales was an old quarry village which was abandoned in the 1950s after the quarry closed because there was no road leading to the village. It has since been restored as a (Welsh) Language learning centre.

Hundreds of villages were abandoned during the Ottoman wars in the Kingdom of Hungary in the 16-17th century. Many of them were never repopulated but generally they are not classified as ghost towns because few visible traces remained of them. Real ghost towns are rare in present-day Hungary, except the abandoned villages of Derenk (left in 1943) and Nagygéc (left in 1970). Due to the decrease of rural population beginning in the 1980s dozens of villages are now threatened with abandonment. The first village officially declared as "died out" was Gyűrűfű in the end of the 1970s but later it was repopulated as an eco-village. Sometimes depopulated villages were successfully saved as small rural resorts like Kán, Tornakápolna, Szanticska, Gorica and Révfalu.

An increasing number of settlements in Bulgaria are becoming ghost towns as a result of the ongoing demographic decline of that country since the late 20th century. According to the 2001 census there were 138 uninhabited villages, estimated to have become over 150 by 2006. There are such ghost villages in 16 out of the 28 provinces of the country, more numerous in Gabrovo Province (57 in 2001), Veliko Tarnovo Province (34), Kardzhali, Blagoevgrad, Burgas, and Lovech Provinces. Some Bulgarian villages may avoid that fate thanks to immigration of settlers from abroad, mainly from the United Kingdom but also other EU countries, former Soviet republics, even Israel and Japan.[5][6]

The southern part of Famagusta, also known as Varosha/MaraÅŸ is fenced off by Turkish army. Prior to the Turkish Invasion of Cyprus in 1974, it was the modern tourist area of the city of Famagusta. For the last three decades, it has been left as a ghost town.

There is a ghost-town town in Milovice, 30 km from the capital, Prague. Milovice consists of four parts and two of them, Milovice-Mladá and Milovice-Boží Dar, were occupied by Soviet soldiers and their families. These two parts were abandoned in 1990-1991 after the Velvet Revolution. The population was about 20,000. Nowadays, Mladá, the central part of Milovice, is being rebuilt and many young people live there. Boží Dar, as well as the nearby airport, is totally abandoned.

A Polish ghost town is Kłomino (near to Borne Sulinowo; Russian name - Gródek\Гродек) in the northwest part of the country. It was built for Soviet soldiers and their families. The population was about 5,000. It was completely abandoned in 1992 after the collapse of the USSR. Only a few families live there now, but there are plans to repopulate the city.

There are many ghost hamlets in central Spain, as most of their former inhabitants moved to urban areas after the 1960s.

Belchite, in the province of Zaragoza, Aragon is one of the most well known ghost towns in Spain. Before the 1930s, Belchite was a growing city, with many services. As a consequence of the Battle of Belchite, during the Spanish Civil War , the city was totally destroyed. Instead of a reconstruction, General Franco decided to keep the ruins of the Old Town of Belchite intact as a memorial of the battle, being totally deserted as of 1964, their inhabitants removed to Belchite Nuevo, on the side of the Old Town. The ruins, which are not accommodated for tourism, are visited by more then 10,000 tourists annually. It is also a well known meeting point for Francoist nostalgics, especially Falangists.

Kayaköy in southwestern Turkey was inhabited by Anatolian Greeks, until 1923 when a population exchange was agreed by the Turkish and Greek governments which left the town as a site of empty houses and Greek churches.

Prypiat is one of the biggest ghost towns today because at its peak, it had a population of over 50,000 residents; all have abandoned the town after the Chernobyl disaster. Prypiat was built to be the home for the workers of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Unlike its neighboring town Chernobyl, Prypiat remains a ghost town and is completely empty.

Post-Soviet states

Apart from Prypiat, the majority of abandoned towns and settlements are located in northern Russia (Komi, Taymyr, Chukotka). They were deserted due to deindustrialisation and the economic crisis of the early 1990s. Other notable ghost towns are attributed to the post-Soviet conflicts. An example is Agdam, Azerbaijan. Semi-deserted towns are situated in Abkhazia, notably Tquarchal, Ochamchira[7], Gagra, the biggest being Sukhumi.

In European Russia, many villages have been depopulated since the 1940s.[8]

Asia

Harappa and Mohenjo Daro, two ancient cities in current day Pakistan, have such good quality bricks displaying the creativity of the ancient people, that they still stand to their original forms up to 75%.

In addition, numerous cities in India, such as Vijaynagar, Bhangarh, Dhanushkodi, and others, have been known to have been destroyed or turned into ghost towns.

Hashima Island was a Japanese mining town from 1887 to 1974. Once known for having the world's highest population density (in 1959 at 83,500 people per square kilometer), the island was abandoned when the coal mines were closed down.

The city of Sap Bani Khamis [9] is a abandoned town, previously inhabited by thieves.

As a result of recent fighting the town of Kilinochchi which previously served as capital of the Tamil Tigers has been abandoned.[10]

There are many ghost villages in Iran, Syria and Lebanon abandoned as a result of migration to major cities. Most of these towns are in ruins and a few serve as tourist attractions. In addition, the Syrian city of Quneitra has become a ghost town after the 1967 Six Day War and subsequent Yom Kippur war in 1973.

Africa

Actions by government forces and killings by armed gangs created several deserted villages in the Central African Republic from the years 2005 to 2008. Examples are Goroumo, Beogombo Deux and Paoua.[11][12]

Ilha dos Tigres. This town lies in a zone which is ideally suited for ecologic projects. It was mentioned in the 'Unknown Africa-Angola' documentary [13]

Goma. Goma is again a safe ghost-town now that the volcano eruption has passed. Still, however, the town lies in ruins. [14] Nastrid was a mining town abbandoned in the late 19th century.

Though not completely abandoned, Chinguetti could be considered a ghost town.

In Morocco a significant archaeological site, Chellah, was inhabited successively by Phoenicians, Romans and native rulers: however, Chellah was almost totally abandoned and became a ghost town in the 13th century AD, when the ruling dynasty relocated to Fes; the site was resettled by the Merinid Dynasty within the next century and re-used as a necropolis and mosque.[15]

Outside Luderitz, Namibia there are two ghost towns, Elizabeth Bay and Kolmanskop. Both were diamond mining towns and have been partly covered by the shifting sands of the Namib Desert.

There is also the ancient city of Carthage, which was rendered a ghost town by the Romans, revived by the same empire, and then destroyed again a few centuries later, with Tunis becoming the central city. Suburban settlement later occurred in the Carthage area.

Dallol is a former mining town in Ethiopia. It is located in the Dallol crater, where the temperature can rise as high as 104 °Fahrenheit (40 °C).

Grand Bassam, Ivory Coast was the French Colonial capital of Ivory Coast until 1896, when it was abandoned by the French Colonial Government. Commercial activity gradually weakened until the city became a virtual ghost town in 1960, when the Ivory Coast became independent. Today the city has revived somewhat as a tourist and crafts center, but still has the aura of a ghost town, because large areas of the city, including some of its largest buildings, have been empty for decades.

Ghost towns in popular culture

Film

• The 2006 adaptation of Silent Hill drew inspiration from Centralia, Pennsylvania, which was rendered a ghost town after a coal mine fire.

• The 2008 comedy Ghost Town is about a man who dies on the operating table but is revived, then discovers that he has the ability to see and converse with ghosts.

• Much of the remake of The Hills Have Eyes takes place in desert towns abandoned due to nearby nuclear weapons testing.

Video games

• The 1999 Playstation game Silent Hill takes place in a ghost town of the same name. It has spawned four sequels and is loosely based on Centralia, PA. [16]
• The 2000 Playstation game Dino Crisis 2 takes place around Edward City, an abandoned city due to a research disaster.
• The 2000 PlayStation game Vagrant Story takes place in a ghost town named Leá Monde.
• The 2003 PlayStation 2 game Fatal Frame 2 takes place in a small, ghostly Shinto village in rural Japan.
• The 2003 arcade game Johnny Nero: Action Hero features a Western movie-themed stage where a ghost town is filled with evil spirits, which the hero must eliminate.
• The 2004 game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas features several ghost towns.
• Parts of the 2007 games S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Call of Duty 4 take place in the abandoned city of Prypiat.
• The 2007 Xbox 360 game Halo 3 has a downloadable map pack that contains a multiplayer map named "Ghost Town".
• The 2007 Wii game No More Heroes features a ghost town.
• Numerous ghost towns littering the landscape are a major feature of the 2008 game Fallout 3, which has a post-apocalyptic setting.

Music

• The 1981 song by The Specials entitled "Ghost Town" was a commentary on Coventry in the 1980s, the city in which the band originated.
• Ghostown, a 1979 album by Irish band The Radiators From Space, is a concept album documenting the sense of social and cultural isolation felt by many Dubliners throughout the 1970s.
• The modern jazz guitarist Bill Frisell also has an album entitled "Ghost Town" (2000).
• The rock group Shiny Toy Guns has a song "Ghost Town" Released as single late 2008.

29 Comments »

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editing lacks rhythm- poor story telling

According to IMDb this is Dean Teaster's (West?) directorial debut. Why
is it everybody thinks they can direct? Yes, there are two directors
listed in the credits, but since it's called Dean Teaster's Ghost Town,
I'm assuming the other director (who has a few directing credits to his
name) was put there by the producer's to hold Teaster's hand. The
problem is he should have held it harder. Some would argue he should
have squeezed it. Like so many posts that have come before, it is in
the editing where everything breaks down. Yes, you are clearly working
on a very small budget. But that has nothing, repeat nothing, to do
with telling a good story. I have rarely watched such a poor assemblage
of scenes. It is almost as if they don't want you to follow the story.
Just when you think you know where it is going, the scene switches and
something non essential to the story is thrown in. Teaster makes many
rookie mistakes like this. He is so enamored of everything that was
shot that he puts it in no matter if it works to advance the story.
Plus he lacks the ability to create proper pacing within individual
scenes. It is like watching a conductor, who lacks any sense of rhythm,
lead an orchestra. Painful. While one can learn to cut out scenes that
don't work, lack of rhythm is another matter. A good editor, and a good
director, have an innate sense of rhythm. The best are usually
musicians, or at least play an instrument, and can transfer that
understanding of timing and tempo to the story. I would hazard a guess
that Teaster isn't a musician, and probably has two left feet as well.

shburns393 from United States - 28 April 2009

can you learn to edit?

I hope it doesn't take a brick house to fall on you Teaster before you
realize you've got a problem! Look over the comments posted here. Study
them carefully. Not the ones written by your friends and family, (those
are quite obvious) just the ones written by independent viewers. Don't
worry I'll wait… Do you see a pattern? Do you see what it is that you
did? What's the word? Let me see if I can remember it… Oh yeah,
editing! Can you learn to edit? The arguments are split on this one.
Some say you either have it or you don't. It's an artistic skill that
can't be learned. Other's claim you can learn, but it is a slow painful
process. Judging by Dean Teaster's Ghost Town I don't think we can wait
the years it will take you just to come up to adequate. On the plus
side you make Ewe Boll look good! Check this out if you don't
understand what I mean:
http://www.petitiononline.com/RRH53888/petition.html

stanglick from United States - 27 February 2009

The box is better

I truly can't remember the last time I stopped watching a movie. I
usually give a movie the benefit of the doubt and see where it goes.
The aggravating intro with the Indian woman? Scanned through it. The
absolutely poor audio in the jail cell? Scanned through it. The editing
that made each cut two beats too long? Scanned through it. The dialog
that should have been rehearsed and a better take selected? Scanned
through it and EJECTED! I saw maybe five minutes of the film. Typing
this took me longer. I quit this movie so fast and I didn't look back.
Upon turning this report in, they tell me it's too short and I need to
add two more lines of text. I just don't see how this movie deserves
any more commentary.

jackdm3 from United States - 24 February 2009

Three strikes on the editor!

To the editor of this movie I offer this: Film editing is the art,
technique, and practice of assembling shots into a coherent whole.
Judging by this simple definition is is easy to note the lack of
coherency in Ghost Town. Strike one. Deeper definitions of film editing
stress pacing, balance and rhythm. They liken editing a movie to
creating a musical composition. Again this movie disappoints. Ghost
Town stumbles along more like a drunken sailor rather than a beautiful
symphony. Strike two. Finally, other definitions note that editing,
when done well, is an invisible art. If the editor has done his job
well, the story will appear almost seamless. A film that tells a
complete story in a logical and consistent manner, using harmony,
rhythm, and appropriate pacing. By the comments listed here it is
obvious that the editing job is anything but seamless. Instead we have
a poorly constructed quilt that is barely held together with fraying
thread of clashing colors. Strike three.

ts9749 from United States - 20 February 2009

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