7 of the Creepiest Ghost Towns in the United States

Ghost towns aren’t just spooky sets for movies—they’re real. These eerie, abandoned locales are peppered throughout the United States. Many are old mining settlements, left to rot after the goldmines ran dry. Others, though, have even more unsettling—and outright dangerous—backstories. Below, we take a look at some of the creepiest ghost towns the country has to offer.

1. Picher, Oklahoma
2. Bodie, California 
3. Cahawba, Alabama
4. Dogtown, Massachusetts
5. Glenrio, New Mexico and Texas
6. Flagstaff, Maine
7. Centralia, Pennsylvania 

Picher, Oklahoma

Picher, Oklahoma, is said to be the most dangerous ghost town in America—and it’s not because it’s full of ghosts. Picher is toxic—literally. 

It started out as a run-of-the-mill boomtown in the early 1900s. After zinc and lead were discovered there in 1913, thousands of miners and would-be speculators hoping to make their fortunes in the mines soon followed. More than half of the lead and zinc used by the U.S. during World War I came from Picher, and it became a billion-dollar industry for the town. Yet life wasn’t as idyllic as it might have seemed.

Several health problems seemed to emerge from the mines as well. Many who worked in them went on to develop lung cancer, liver failure, and a host of other life-threatening ailments. The problems didn’t let up even after the last mines closed in 1967: leftover piles of chat containing dangerous levels of lead, zinc, and cadmium—plus poisonous dust clouds and contaminated water—continued to wreak havoc on the health of the town’s remaining population. 

The Environmental Protection Agency got involved with cleanup efforts by the early 1980s, but it was too late to restore Picher to its former glory. After an EF-4 tornado cut through the town in 2008 and resulted in the deaths of six people, the EPA deemed the area too unsafe to inhabit and partnered with the state of Oklahoma to buy out and relocate the last townspeople. By 2010, only 20 residents remained, and the municipality was officially dissolved in 2013.

The town’s buildings are still considered too contaminated to enter safely.   

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Bodie, California 

If you’re in the mood to visit a potentially cursed site from the Gold Rush days, just head to Bodie, California. Back in the late 1800s, the old mining settlement was your classic Wild West adventure story brought to life, complete with an estimated 65 different saloons, plus multiple gambling halls, opium dens, and “houses of ill repute.” 

It was established by prospector W.S. Bodey, who discovered gold in 1859 along what is now Bodie Bluff. The town—which, at its peak, boasted an estimated 8000 inhabitants, including many Chinese immigrants—quickly grew, but so did its bad reputation. The phrase bad man from Bodie soon became shorthand around the country as a way of describing the violent gunslingers and wild, angry mobs that were known to roam the seemingly lawless streets. 

The end of the mining industry and two fires turned Bodie into a ghost town in the 1940s, but it was designated as a state historic park and historic landmark by 1962. The more than 100 buildings still left behind are now preserved in a state of “arrested decay,” and are stocked with the same products and furniture that were there when the sites were initially abandoned. 

You can still visit today if the roads are passable—just be careful not to take anything home as a souvenir. According to legend, bad fortune is said to befall anyone who dares to steal an artifact from the site. 

Cahawba, Alabama

Cahawba, Alabama, sits at the junction of two major rivers and was the first permanent state capital of Alabama, but you’d never know it from the way it looks nowadays. 

While it was only technically the state capital from 1820 to 1826, Cahawba reemerged as a commercial hub, thanks to the crucial role the town played as a distribution center for cotton being shipped up and down the Alabama River. The 1858 completion of the railroad line made Cahawba seem poised for even greater things.

But during the Civil War, the Confederacy seized control of Cahawba’s railroad and tore up the tracks to extend another one that was nearby. Castle Morgan, a prison camp, was established inside the town in 1863 and, at one point, held more than 3000 captured Union soldiers. Conditions in the lice-filled prison were far from pleasant, but it was reputed to have the lowest death rates of any prison camp across the Confederacy. 

Following a major flood in 1865, Cahawba’s population declined significantly. For a time the town was a “mecca” for newly freed former enslaved people, who often used the old courthouse to host political meetings, among other things. But it was largely abandoned by the start of the 20th century. 

You can still see some of the ruins today for yourself at an archeological park, and if you’re really lucky, you might even catch a glimpse of the glowing orb that’s said to float around the grounds of the old Colonel C.C. Pegues estate on moonlit nights. 

Dogtown, Massachusetts

Venture deep into the woods of Cape Ann in Massachusetts, and you might stumble upon a 3600-acre stretch of land lined with boulders and unique rock formations, which locals refer to as Dogtown. 

This thicket of woods was once the site of an old colonial settlement known as “The Commons,” first settled in the 1600s. The population—which was never that large to begin with—shrank considerably after the American Revolution and the War of 1812, with many families just up and leaving their homes. 

Vagrants and allegedly even witches quickly claimed the now-vacant homes as their own. The women who stayed were mostly elderly or war widows who couldn’t afford to leave. They led largely solitary lives, keeping only dogs as companions. So many wild dogs were said to prowl the land after the humans died that it supposedly gave rise to the name Dogtown. 

A formerly enslaved freed man known as Black Neil—whose real name was possibly Cornelius Finson—was the last known resident of Dogtown. He was removed by authorities in the 1830s after his feet froze due to exposure and he became immobile. He was then sent to an almshouse in Gloucester, where he died a week later. By 1845, the settlement was mostly destroyed, and as of today, all that remains of it are a series of cellar holes marking where the homes once stood. 

But those who actually visit it swear there’s something else surrounding the place. Painter and poet Marsden Hartley, who explored the area in the early 1930s, claimed that “A sense of eeriness pervades all the place … [which] is forsaken and majestically lovely, as if nature had at last found one spot where she can live for herself alone.” Hartley also claimed the site was like a “cross between Easter Island and Stonehenge—essentially druidic in its appearance,” and added that it “gives the feeling that an ancient race might turn up at any moment and renew an ageless rite there.”

Glenrio, New Mexico and Texas

There aren’t too many towns in the U.S. where you can be in two states at the same time. But in Glenrio, a ghost town that straddles the border of Texas and New Mexico, you technically can be. 

The town used to be a pit stop off Route 66, and some visitors claim you can still pick up on traces of the old historic highway route when you’re passing through. From its fading Art Moderne-style buildings to its quirky signs, Glenrio feels in some ways like a time capsule to a long-forgotten era along “America’s Main Street.” 

Back in its heyday between the 1930s and 1950s, the town had all kinds of little quirks that helped set it apart from other highway destinations. For one, the post office was in New Mexico, but mail was dropped off on the Texas side of the border. And because Deaf Smith County in Texas was dry, you couldn’t sell alcohol on that edge of town, so all the bars and liquor stores were clustered in New Mexico. But if you think New Mexico was the most happening part of Glenrio, think again: the service stations tended to be on the Texas side because of that state’s lower gasoline taxes.

Glenrio’s split personality might account for some of why it ultimately ended up as a ghost town. It was also bypassed by Interstate 40 in 1975, which helped put the final nail in the coffin, so to speak. By the start of the 21st century, Glenrio had mostly become a hot spot for tumbleweeds, but you might have one pretty big reason to still stop there. A dispensary cropped up in 2023 after New Mexico legalized recreational marijuana usage. However, because it’s illegal in Texas, you still have to head to the other part of town if you want to have a good time. 

Flagstaff, Maine

The lost city of Atlantis might only be a myth, but there’s a real-life sunken ghost village about 20 miles north of Rangeley, Maine. Located under the waterline of Flagstaff Lake, the spot was once home to multiple communities, including the townships of Bigelow and Dead River. 

Settlers in the early 19th century were initially drawn to the area because of all the timber. The logging industry dominated the region for well over a century until, in 1950, the Central Maine Power Company flooded Flagstaff and the surrounding townships to erect a hydroelectric dam.

To make way for the human-made lake, officials tore down multiple structures and even had to dig up, move, and then rebury all the dead that were in the area’s local cemeteries. Many residents headed to the nearby town of Eustis, and to this day, some locals maintain that you can still occasionally see the top of the old Flagstaff chapel cresting just over the water. 

But before everything got submerged, Flagstaff actually earned its place in history in another fascinating way. According to local legend, during his famous 1775 expedition to Quebec, Benedict Arnold stopped there, and his troops built a flagstaff and hung an early version of the American flag from it, hence the name. 

Centralia, Pennsylvania 

Though Centralia, Pennsylvania, technically isn’t a total ghost town—because as of 2023, there were still four residents—this largely abandoned community has perhaps the most unsettling backstory of them all. 

The former boomtown was first settled in the 1840s and quickly became known for its coal mines, with an estimated 14 active mines at its peak. Over 2700 residents called Centralia home by 1890, but those numbers shrank after multiple mines were shut down during the Great Depression. 

Then in 1962, tragedy struck after a fire broke out in the town. Sources disagree about how it actually started, but many believe it began in a local landfill. The flames soon spread to the coal bed below Centralia. As smoke seeped out from sinkholes and temperatures and carbon monoxide levels rose all over town, many residents took this as a sign to pack their bags and leave. In 1983, Congress even allocated $42 million to help residents relocate.

The fiery inferno raging underneath the town’s streets is still burning to this day and is expected to last for at least another 100 years. According to local legend, though, the land might have been cursed long before that—by a Roman Catholic priest back in the 1860s. 

It’s said that after he was attacked by an angry mob of Irish immigrant coal miners in the area, known as the Molly Maguires, Father Daniel Ignatius McDermott condemned the group from the pulpit and claimed that there would come a day when the only structure left standing in Centralia would be the St. Ignatius Roman Catholic Church. He wasn’t too far off the mark: While the St. Ignatius Roman Catholic Church was demolished in 1997, one Ukrainian Catholic church—the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary—still stands. The town is so creepy that it was used as inspiration for the 2006 film adaptation of Silent Hill.