From the 19th-century boomtown of Bodie, California to the real-life "Silent Hill" in Centralia, Pennsylvania, these ghost towns across the U.S. serve as haunting reminders of what life was like there before they were abandoned.
Before it burned down, there was a building in Cerro Gordo, California, filled with blood and bullet holes. What happened here? No one knows. There’s no one left alive in this ghost town to tell the tale.
Cerro Gordo, like all the ghost towns on our list, was once a thriving place. People lived, worked, and died there. But when good times became bad times, the town emptied out. Today, just a few dusty buildings remain.
Though they all met the same fate, the ghost towns below have unique stories. Many were mining towns that thrived as long as gold, silver, or other resources could be found. Some were doomed by environmental disaster. And at least one was abandoned — allegedly — because of a monster.
Read on to learn the stories of some of America’s most fascinating ghost towns, from aptly named Helltown in Ohio to the blood-soaked history of Nelson, Nevada.
The Hellish Legend Of Helltown, Ohio
Andrew Borgen/FlickrAn eerie road leading to Helltown, Ohio.
Most ghost towns are filled with tumbleweeds. But legend long held that Helltown, Ohio, was home to more terrifying residents.
Originally called Boston, this village in Ohio’s Cuyahoga Valley became a ghost town in the 1970s when the federal government started buying up its residences to make room for Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Many people weren’t happy about this — one wrote, “Now we know how the Indians felt” on the wall of their home — but the town was soon abandoned.
Then, creepy stories about Helltown started to spread.
Urban legend stated that Helltown was a magnet for Satanists because of an upside-down cross on the front of its church. (In fact, this was a common motif in the Gothic Revival style.) Legend also suggested that an abandoned school bus in Hellown was the site of a grisly murder, perhaps by an insane killer or (you guessed it) a group of Satanists.
Andrew Borgen/FlickrThe upside-down cross on Helltown’s church prompted rumors that this ghost town was a magnet for Satanists.
Rumors even spread that a chemical spill produced a monster known as the Peninsula Python. While theories about Satanists in Helltown are unfounded, there is a grain of truth to the Peninsula Python legend. When the National Park Service acquired nearby Krejci Dump in 1985, park rangers got sick and broke out in rashes. The dump is a Superfund site today.
Despite Helltown’s creepy reputation, it’s not a very interesting ghost town to visit. Though curious tourists were once able to sneak through abandoned homes and look at the town’s old church, upside-down cross and all, the remaining structures in Helltown were destroyed in 2016.
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