LIFE Ghost Towns

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The world is full of once-populated places that were suddenly, and often mysteriously, abandoned. This special edition, full of powerful images, reveals more than 30 of the most in triguing locales and explores how and why they were left behind. You’ll visit eerie destinations like the Gold Rush town of Bodie, California, with its silent red-light district and opium dens; abandoned amusement parks like Dreamland in Nara, Japan, and a Santa-themed town in the Mojave Desert; and various places nearly wiped from the map by natural disasters. Consider, too, places of profound human error like the radioactive wastelands of Wittenoom, Australia, places of hubris like Henry Ford’s Brazilian folly Fordlandia, and even places of evil like Hitler’s hidden Austrian homeland and haunted battlegrounds of Spain, both left psychologically uninhabitable by the toxins of war. From Alaska to Alabama and across the globe, you’ll be stirred by the stillness of these places: ruins that remind us no place lasts forever. Show more