Fascinating or creepy? Ghost towns around the world

With silent streets and crumbling buildings the eerie and sometimes creepy, ghost towns can be both intriguing and unsettling. Here's a list of places around the world that were once bustling communities but are now slowly decaying after being abandoned.

Belchite, Spain

Belchite was a site of a brutal battle during the Spanish Civil War, which killed thousands of people. A new Belchite village was built near the ruins of the old, which remain a ghost town as a memorial to the war.

Varosha (Maraş), Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus

Varosha became a ghost town in the wake of Turkey's 1974 peace operation on the island in response to a coup aimed at Cyprus' annexation by Greece. Entry into the town was prohibited except for Turkish army personnel stationed in the TRNC for decades, but since 2020 it's in the process of partial reopening to the public.

Pripyat, Ukraine

Pripyat was abandoned following the worst nuclear disaster in human history. An explosion in a reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant left swathes of Ukraine and neighboring Belarus badly contaminated and led to the creation of a no man's land within a 30-kilometer (19-mile) radius of the plant.

Oradour-sur-Glane, France

Oradour-sur-Glane was destroyed in the summer of 1944, when Nazi forces massacred hundreds of its inhabitants. The town was left abandoned as a permanent memorial to the victims.

Hashima Island, Japan

The island was known for its undersea coal mines established in the late 19th century and grew to peak 5,200 inhabitants by 1959. However, after the mines were nearly depleted by 1974 all the residents departed Hashima.

Kayaköy, Turkey

Kayaköy village was evacuated during the exchange of population between Turkey and Greece in 1923. As Turks coming from Greece did not want to reside in Kayaköy, the village stayed abandoned.

Kolmanskop, Namibia

Once a small but very rich diamond mining village, Kolmanskop was abandoned in mid-1950s. Since then the desert partially reclaimed the area, filling many buildings with sand.

Craco, Italy

The town founded in the eighth century was completely abandoned after 1980 following a string of natural disasters, including landslides, flooding and an earthquake.

Pyramiden, Norway

Located within the Arctic Circle on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, Pyramiden was a Soviet coal-mining town between 1927 and 1998. Once promoted as a model socialist city, its well-preserved empty buildings now serve as a tourist destination.

Bodie, California, U.S.

Up to 10,000 people lived in Bodie in 1879, which used to be a bustling gold-mining town. As the mines depleted, however, people began to leave it and it became a ghost town as early as 1915.