Bodie

Bodie State Historic Park is in Mono County, California, United States and is a ghost town which received about 200,000 visitors a year. It is a mining town that started off as a camp in 1859, one of the prospectors included Q S Bodey. Bodey perished in a blizzard the following November, the town was named after him and the etymology of the present name comes from this.

By 1868 there were nearby silver mines too, but interested in the town seemed lacklustre. 1876 a profitable gold bearing ore was found and Bodie became a boomtown. At its height there were 65 salons on the main street, violence was regular and it had a red light district at the north end of the town. Rosa May was one of the prostitutes who came to help with a serious epidemic at the height of the boom and despite giving all her help to them was still buried outside of the cemetery fence.

It started to decline in 1880, Bodie became a family orientated town. In 1882 they built a Methodist Church (still standing) and the Roman Catholic church stood until it burnt down in 1930. It had a short revival in the early 1890’s thanks to the technological advances that meant the mine was able to keep supporting the town. 1912 saw the last printing of the Bodie Newspaper, The Bodie Miner, and in 1917 the railway was abandoned. In 1942 it was closed down and sadly that was the start of its decline and end.

Today the town is in a state of arrested decay, you can walk through the remaining streets and look through windows to see the stocked goods as they were left. Myers 1990, “A ghost town that is really a ghost town.”

 

JLeditor – Long exposure at night, taken with a Nikon D4 in Bodie ghost town Previously published: https://www.flickr.com/photos/brom-productions/7547993828/in/photostream/

Kolmanskop

It is a ghost town in the Namib desert, in Southern Nabia, it was named after Johnny Coleman, a transport driver, who, during a sandstorm abandoned his ox wagon on a small incline opposite the settlement. It was a small but rich mining community however, it now a tourist sight ran by a joint firm Namibia-De Beers.

In 1908, Zacharias Lewala, a worked found a diamond and showed it to his supervisor and after miners from Germany settled there because it was rich in diamonds. At its height it was producing around 11.7% of the world’s diamond production.  A town sprang up around it in 1912 was built with amenities such as a hospital, ballroom, power station and school. It was a prosperous place in its time. The town was built in the German architectural style and had a railway linked to nearby Lüderitz.

After the First World War the town declined around the 1920’s as supplies of diamonds began to deplete and in 1954 or 1956 (depending on the source) they ultimately abandoned the town. The residents went south to try and get their chance on the next area with a supply, with many residents leaving possessions behind in their haste to chase the new money venture. The new area meant that instead of hard mining they could be scouted on the beaches.

Destination Truth investigated the town during rumours of it being haunted, it seems that the abandoned town keeps many interested. Tourists now need a permit to engage and enter the town, Kolmanskop is now being claimed back by the desert and so walking around tourists will find themselves knee deep in sand, but it is still very popular. It has been used as filming location and photographed widely, as it creates some very unique images thanks to it’s location and geography.

Drive South Africa- it mentions that there is a house just outside of Windhoak, Liebig House that has also been abandoned for about 30 years at the time of their article where people have reported ghosts and hearing spirits in the hallway of the house, but I cannot find anything else about it.

https://namibian.org/tours/activities-and-day-trips/kolmanskop-ghost-town

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/eerie-fascinating-pictures-kolmanskop-desert-diamond-ghost-town


By SkyPixels – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50450485

Pyramiden

‘The Pyramid’ is a Russian settlement in Svalbard, Norway. It is a three day travel by car from Oslo, three hours plane to Svalbard or five hours by Artic Ship ‘Polar Girl’, it is not mostly abandoned, the last people left around 15 years ago or more, and it is only 1000km from the North Pole. The main inhabitants of the town are now white bears but dedicated explorers still find a way over once in a while.

Founded in 1910 by Sweden, as of 1927 it was sold to the Soviet Union and closed in 1998. The town is abandoned by the Russian mining company trust, Artikugoll, and until 2007 was considered a ghost town, in 2007 renovations began, guided and independent tours can be organised and visitors are not permitted to enter the buildings. Its popularity has invariably grown as a ghost town and with it the usual disrespectful vandals are present. It is no doubt obvious from my blogs that I dislike the practice, the mindless destruction merely stops proper researchers and the serious urban explorers that are being criminalised for sharing their finds with us.

The most recent development is the Tulip Hotel, in 2013 it was opened and whilst there are some tourism plans there is no immediate plan to re-open the settlement.

An episode of the History Channels “Life After People” featured Pyramiden, they predict that the frigid climates contribution to slow decay mean the major buildings would still be visible in 500 years time. In the cultural centre you can look into the interior, there is an auditorium which also has the northernmost grand piano in the world, Red Oktober, unfortunately the poor thing has been rendered unplayable due to neglect and deterioration.

If you have visited or you do, then please tell me about your experience.

https://en.visitsvalbard.com/visitor-information/destinations/pyramiden

https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g503714-d1842148-Reviews-Pyramiden-Spitsbergen_Svalbard.html

 

By <a href=”//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Bjoertvedt” title=”User:Bjoertvedt”>Bjoertvedt</a> – <span class=”int-own-work” lang=”en”>Own work</span>, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Klomino

The village is the only official ghost town in Poland, it is in the voivodeship of West Pomeranian and abandoned, as of 1993. It was originally a German training ground for a branch of Nazi’s and then after World War II, a base for the Red Army, only existing on Russian Military maps thanks to that. Once they withdrew in 1993 it became vacant.

Originally the area was a small settlement, Westfalenhoft, and in the 1930’s the Wehrmacht planners built a large military base. A polish newspaper from the 1939 reported the numbers of personnel at 600,000. In the Autumn of 1939 the German’s then opened a POW camp at the site, by November 1939 there were 6,000 Polish soldiers and 2,300 Polish civlians. It was renamed to Oflag II D Gross-Born in June, 1940 and was used for French Officers and Polish POW’s from the other camps. Westfalenhoft was eventually taken over by the Red Army in January 1945. It was officially Polish territory but it was occupied and held by the Soviet Union. The Polish were not allowed entry, it was renamed Grodek and the village was not named on Polish maps.

The parts of the base not needed were razed by Red Army servicemen, the base had around 6,000 Russian soldiers. The debris from the village was sent back to Warsaw, used to help rebuild the city. When it was vacated as part of the collapse of the Soviet Union the area was handed back to the Polish. It was guarded by the Polish army for a year, after which it was handed over to civilian authorities.

There was an attempt to sell the area for redevelopment but it did not happen, there were other suggestions like turning it into a drug rehabilitation centre, or perhaps a prison but it’s also worth noting anything of monetary value has already been looted. In 2011 I found reference to five residents but there is no bus route there and the nearest shop is 4km away, so it’s not likely to be a cosy place to stay.

I first came across notes about the area on a show called Stupid Man, Smart Phone. Whilst it is a ghost town it is not abandoned and is regularly visited, and seems to be a tourist spot for some. Have you been?

By Rzuwig – Own work, Public Domain, Link

 

Moonville

The name sounds like a fantasy town, unfortunately a town that is no longer there it having been in Ohio, USA. It was a mining community and little remains except for a few foundations, cemetery and an old rail-road tunnel that is the subject of numerous ghost stories.

It was never a big town with a peak population of around 100, the area was fairly isolated in the woods and walking the rail-road tracks was dangerous. One trestle was over Raccoon Creek, 50 metres from the tunnel and by 1920 five or six people had lost their lives.

The decline in use meant that the last family left in 1947, the town was then fully abandoned. By the 1960’s the buildings were gone. In 1981 a signal on the Moonville rail-track was erected, in 1985 the last train took that route in August and the tracks were removed. It is still possible to access that area but there only the abandoned area of the lines.

There is a ghost that appears in the tunnel and swings a lantern, attempting to stop trains that are no longer running. The other ghost walks the tracks near Moonville on the other side of the tunnel. 

B+O Engineers on the line would tell the each other about the ghostly lantern. Sometime in the 1920’s a group of men, some miners, were drinking and playing cards in a shack nearby. Full of moonshine and frivolity one inebriated chap wandered off with a lantern I hand off down the tracks. A train came from the other side and too drunk to think about backing up he waved the lantern, hoping to stop the train most likely. He was hit and killed and buried in the local cemetery, since then his aimlessly wandering ghost has been witnessed.

Another story is about a headless conductor but the details given seem less widely known than the lantern carrier. There are several accounts around a decapitated man who walks the tracks, often with a lantern, so I suspect this might just be an elaboration on the original tale.