Talk:Ghost town

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This process continues to this day, with the village of Etzweiler in northwestern Germany being abandoned in the 1990s to make way for a coal mine [2] [3].

I don't think this is a good example - Etzweiler was abandoned and destroyed, not just abandoned. --zeno 12:34, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Hashima Island was a Japanese mining town from 1887 to 1974. Once known for having the world's highest population density (in 1959 at 3460 people per square kilometer), the island was abandoned when the coal mines were closed down.

3460 people per square kilometer is a normal figure for a large or medium-sized city. The figure is incorrect. Swe 2 02:12, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Ghosts

What about ghost towns where ghosts live?

Ghost do not exist and if they did they wouldn't live (that was a pun)

[edit] Qualifications

I've recently been starting articles for some of the small, historical towns in my community that have been extinct for many years, such as the Wabash River town of Baltimore, Indiana. Would this qualify as a ghost town? I'd be interested to know users' opinions.

(The reason I ask? To me, the term "ghost town" sort of implies that there are existing remnants of the town that are now abandoned, but in Baltimore's case there's no remaining trace.)

Huwmanbeing 20:46, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

It would seem to me that the word "town" would indicate a collection of buildings. One building abandonded, at least in my mind, is not enough to constitute a "town"; there would have to be like a dozen. If nothing remains of a town then it isn't a ghost town at all because nothing has been left vacant or abandon. --The_stuart 02:59, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
How then should a town that's completely disappeared be categorized? Extinct town? (It seems like the term "town" would still have be used in some way, despite the connotation of buildings, since that's what the place originally was.) "A town permanently abandoned by its inhabitants" is one definition I found for ghost town, which could apply in this case -- Baltimore was a town which was then permanently abandoned. --Huwmanbeing 12:31, 12 October 2006 (UTC)


I think there needs to be a better definition of "ghost town". To me, it's a place that was once inhabited and could be inhabited now, but isn't. There's some kind of choice in why people don't live there anymore. I think that's pretty different than the idea of say, the cliff dwellings of the southwest or Catal Huyuk. Ghost towns have habitable dwellings remaining, whereas archaeological sites are not habitable without serious work.

[edit] Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan has a couple of Ghost towns as Shusha, Agdam, Khojaly etc all due war with Armenia. It also has the largest ghost tonw in the world - Agdam, a city of 150,000 people but now nothing, thats gotta be a record! We need to get this information in this article!!

Sounds good to me, get a reliable source (see Wikipedia:Reliable sources) and put it in there. No need to clear it or anything, be bold! A mcmurray 14:05, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge with Abandoned Village?

Are they the same thing? I found Abandoned village and thought it must be the same thing as a ghost town. Is there a disambiguation? Steewi (talk) 04:21, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

In England, it's not uncommon to see churches without villages, or churches that look much too big for their villages. That's often because all or part of the village has disappeared. For example, at Ninekirks the village was destroyed by 1284 to extend the demesne land of the local lord. Is that the same as a ghost town? I'd always thought a ghost town had substantial visible remains whereas an abandoned village might have competely disappeared, but now that I've read the entries, I'm no longer sure. Northernhenge (talk) 23:31, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Don't merge with abandoned village

This meaning has gotten so broad that it is already nearly meaningless. Population migration, habitat and economy changes mean that many once-populated places have been abandoned. We're talking about deep time, right? To endlessly list every such place makes this ridiculous. I don't think an archeological site, where little remains above ground, is a ghost town. --Parkwells (talk) 22:09, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Er, yeah, this is a reply to you and also the previous section, and in terms of where I come from a ghost town has pretty specific applications - although including now-invisible one-time towns, and even town surveys that never happened (this was, and is, frontier). The concept of ghost towns in the UK, or in Azerbaijan for that matter, is decidedly odd to me, as a North American, particularly from "the West", although Latin America and Appalachia and the Far North have their share. Other than Australia and maybe New Zealand, where similar lifestyles/boomtowns were also part of "Anglo-American culture", I don't feel the term is used at all, until this article, for most of the places outside of North America so listed. A ghost town is a cultural artifact, usually of the frontier and, like I said, of the West, particularly the mining West (and North). In BC they're also often abandoned company towns, which were mass-scale boomtowns owned by one company as opposed to being founded by hordes of speculators, e.g. Anyox, British Columbia, Ocean Falls, British Columbia and many others though those are among hte largest. I don't know what to wsay about the above/below ground context you've raised; why a quiggly hole town isn't considered a ghost town, I don't know - especially since some were "alive" in the same period as nearby ghost towns; but similarly non-aboriginal ghost towns and other abandoned settlements aren't generally considered archaeological sites, and/or cultural artifacts, as perhaps they should be; certainly they don't have the same legal protections. Obviously a certain culture is associated with the term, or it would have been applied to Chaco Canyon, or Cahokia and others like it; but they're not ghost towns, not in the sens that North Americans use that term anyway. Also some ghost towns in BC are "still alive", mere shadows of their former size, or as in some cases subsumed into a larger metropolis or other wise still distinct. Do Britons really speak of their abandoned towns/villages as "ghost towns"....or is this just an over-extension of the strict meaning as defined by the page; maybe what's needed is to redefine that strictness, huh? Towards that end I'll put the Gold Rush wikiproject template on the talkpage, if it's not already there, to see who might offer up some suggesetions about what's a ghost town and what's not.Skookum1 (talk) 22:22, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
I agree with you that ghost town has had a fairly specific meaning in North America, and it doesn't serve any interest to expand it to cover every abandoned place in the world, and to list some. There could be narrative to explain there are abandoned villages/towns/cities in every culture for the variety of reasons noted, but this article should stick to ghost towns. A different article should talk about heritage tourism around ancient sites that were formerly cities.--Parkwells (talk) 14:04, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] sushi is gross!

Bodie CA is a fraud! Bodie is dumb and I like CHEESE!!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 169.199.168.183 (talk) 19:07, 23 May 2008 (UTC)