There are abandoned communities all over America that have spine-chilling histories. From long-forgotten Wild West mining towns and former resorts to road trip pit stops and railroad hubs, these seriously spooky towns are sure to give you the heebie-jeebies...

Click through the gallery as we check out the eeriest ghost towns across the US...

Tucked away in the breathtaking Big Smoky Valley, Manhattan witnessed a silver mining boom in the mid-1860s and another population growth in the early 1900s. The number of residents rose to 4,000 and the town established its own business district with different shops, a telephone service and electric lights. Another mining boom in 1909 lasted into the 1940s, only to cease in 1947 driving people to move elsewhere. 

Although gold is still prevalent in the area, mining continues just 10 miles (16km) from Manhattan on a small scale. With 125 people residing in the town today, Manhattan refers to itself as a living ghost town. If you ever pass the small village, make sure to visit its only remaining establishment, The Manhattan Bar & Motel (which will reopen later in 2024 following a change in ownership).

Originally named Turquoise, after the mineral mined by the Indigenous tribes in the area, the town was renamed after a local miner, John Gleeson, registered a copper claim and opened the Copper Belle Mine. By 1900 the town housed about 500 people, who were all primarily miners. While in 1912 a fire burned down half the town, it was rebuilt as demand for copper boomed during the First World War.

The mines closed in the 1930s and the town was abandoned as the post office closed in 1939. Although several families still live here, the only commercial site is a rattlesnake products store. Visitors can wander around the ruins of a hospital, saloon and a jail that's been renovated to house a museum.

In 1865, Pablo Flores discovered silver in the area and started mining and smelting operations near the town. After a few years, word of the silver at Cerro Gordo spread, bringing in lots of new prospectors. In the following years lead and ore were also discovered and the town boomed. However, it didn't last: litigation over who owned the town, falling lead and silver prices and a temporary drying up of the water tower all led to Cerro Gordo being abandoned by the late 1870s.

Cerro Gordo was privately owned until June 2018 when it was put up for sale and sold for £1.1 million ($1.4m) to two Los Angeles entrepreneurs. They've kept it open to the public and have preserved the existing buildings and their interiors. You can't stay overnight but you can take a tour for £8 ($10) per person, with all proceeds going to the Cerro Gordo Historical Foundation.

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Upon discovering silver in 1880, two prospectors eager to make a quick buck created a Miner’s Protective Association, and within five years, Ashcroft boasted 20 saloons and more than 3,500 residents. But like most mining towns, the silver ran out quickly and by the end of 1885 only 100 residents remained.

By the 1930s the Winter Olympics brought a new wave of attention to the area and even plans to build a ski resort, however, the momentum fizzled and Ashcroft has remained a ghost town since 1939. The plans for the ski resort moved about 10 miles (16km) north – to an up-and-coming town called Aspen.

In its heyday, the town had 13 saloons, four hotels, two barbershops, a doctor's office and a school as well as a daily stagecoach route to nearby towns. Garnet was a lively mining town from the 1860s when prospectors discovered gold and semi-precious red gems in the area. Unfortunately, half the town burned down in 1912 and, as the mines were running out of gold anyway, it was abandoned. 

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Most of the residents left the town immediately after the fire so there was no one to rebuild it. Now more than 30 historic buildings remain, their interiors untouched and still full of personal belongings of the former residents, including furniture and clothes.

Between the 1940s and the 1960s, the busy Route 66 sent thousands of travellers through the town of Glenrio. Built on the border between New Mexico and Texas, the town offered motorists a road stop with gas stations, diners, bars, motels and even a dance hall. However, when the I-40 was built in the 1970s, the travellers bypassed the former desert oasis.

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the Glenrio Historic District includes the old Route 66 roadbed and 17 abandoned buildings as well as cars. The broken signs welcoming non-existent motorists to the Little Suarez Diner and the State Line Motel are especially creepy.

Unlike Bodie, Calico in California was the largest silver mine in the state. By the late 1800s Calico had over 500 mines and a population of 3,500 people. However, in 1896 the government decided to regulate the price of silver with the Silver Purchase Act. Overnight, the Calico mines became unprofitable and were shut down, leaving Calico a ghost town.

Calico is the quintessential Wild West mining town, and it’s easy to imagine gunslingers and sheriffs making their way into the town’s taverns and shops. It’s a popular destination with tourists in southern California, particularly around Halloween, when Calico holds an annual Ghost Town haunt where visitors can experience mine tours, gunfight stunt shows and trips on the historic narrow gauge Calico & Odessa Railroad train.

Swarming with miners hopeful for gold in the late 1800s, the town's bustling life didn't last long as the mines were dried up by 1989. The town was renamed Youngsberg in 1921 to try and bring its population back up, however, it was abandoned again in 1926.

In 1988, the state saw a money-making opportunity and just like other abandoned mining towns, it became a tourist attraction. Visitors can wander around the preserved historic buildings or participate in one of the many activities, including a reptile exhibit and horseback rides. There's also a museum and an authentic Wild West saloon. 

Home of the historic Chisos Mining Company, Terlingua attracted miners with cinnabar, from which the metal mercury is extracted. The town was booming in the mid-1880s with more than 2,000 people living in Terlingua. However, the population dwindled as soon as the mines were abandoned and now there are several dozen people living in this ghost town.

The residents of Terlingua realised its potential as an attraction on the way to Big Bend National Park. The town offers several dining spots, a souvenir shop and tours of the abandoned buildings. 

A once-booming Mississippi River port town, Cairo has become a scary ghost town. The town boomed along with the steamboat industry, however, it's been on the decline ever since. Today, a walk through the main street is eerily quiet with most buildings boarded up and businesses shut.

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The town has also had its fair share of racial tensions, when the steamboat boom brought a migration of African Americans to Cairo looking for work. When the shipping and ferrying industries declined, jobs grew scarce, leaving the downtown area abandoned.

A happy accident, a flooding in 1905 that lasted for two years, created the largest lake in California – the Salton Sea. The town by the lake quickly became a popular vacation spot, with thousands of visitors flocking to the town on the weekends. However, the lake lacked a natural drainage system or an ecosystem to keep it healthy.

By the late 1970s fish in the lake started to die and the fertilisers flowing into the lake caused an overgrowth of algae that also died and eventually turned into hydrogen sulphide gas. The residents reported smelling and even tasting the gas in the air and the town was quickly abandoned, with people leaving everything behind to escape the toxic gas.

Around 120 miles (193km) northwest of Las Vegas, high in the Bullfrog Hills, is Nevada’s best-known Gold Rush ghost town, Rhyolite. Founded in 1905, it was one of several mining camps that popped up around the edges of Death Valley as thousands of miners and prospectors arrived in the region following a gold discovery. But several crises led to the downfall of Rhyolite: the 1907 San Francisco earthquake and a financial panic later that same year both made it too expensive to prospect for gold. By the end of 1910, the mine was operating at a loss and it closed in 1911.

Today it’s one of the most-photographed ghost towns in America. Ruins include a railroad depot and the Bottle House, which has thousands of bottles embedded into its walls like a mosaic. The town has also served as a set for several Hollywood pictures like The Island and Six String Samurai. About a dozen buildings or remnants are still standing, including a general store, bank, jail and train station (pictured), and it’s possible to wander in and around most of them.

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Established in the 1880s, Silver City was not only a booming gold and silver mining town but also served as the county seat of Owyhee County between 1867 and 1934. At its height, around 2,500 people lived in the town and there were around 75 businesses.

Due in part to its remote location and the decline of mining, the population dwindled and today the town has about 70 buildings remaining, most of which are owned by third- or fourth-generation descendants of the original miners. The Idaho Hotel in Silver City was restored and re-opened for visitors in 1972, turning it into a tourist attraction. The town and its buildings are also listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

A ghost of the community that used to live in Thurmond, there are still five residents that keep the town going. Once a big stop on the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway, the invention of the diesel locomotive in the 1950s made its coal-run railroad obsolete.

The train depot is now a museum and a visitors' centre for travellers who come to raft on the New River Gorge National River. However, Thurmond is an eerie throwback to what American towns used to look like and an unsettling reminder of how fleeting prosperity can be.

Kennecott was never really a town, but more a mining camp in southeast Alaska. In 1901, mining students spent months sampling the soil and digging around Kennicott Glacier before determining it was possibly the richest copper site in the world. Between 1909 and 1938, Kennecott mines produced over 4.6 million tonnes of ore that contained £1.2 billion ($1.55bn) of copper. But by the late 1930s, the mines were depleted and the facilities abandoned. It has been a national park since.

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What survives of the old Kennecott Mine is otherworldly. High up in the Alaskan mountains, the mill is perched on the edge of a cliff and the surrounding beauty is undeniable. Tours of the mill run from end of May through September, while an organised expedition to the Erie Mine involves a breathtaking scramble around a cliff side. It's definitely not for the faint-hearted.

Perhaps one of the best known Gold Rush ghost towns in all America, Bodie has been a tourist hotspot for years. In its heyday, this California gold mining town had 10,000 inhabitants and 65 saloons, gambling halls, opium dens and brothels. The frequent outbreaks of violence and murders earned Bodie the dubious reputation as the most lawless mining camp in the far west.

Over time, the mines became too expensive to run and in 1932 a huge fire burned 90% of the town to the ground. Today, 110 buildings are protected and preserved as ruins – tables are still laid with crockery and in the school, books lie scattered on desks. Visitors aren’t allowed inside the houses and the church, but there are daily tours of the old stamp mill where you'll learn how the ore was crushed so gold could be extracted and turned into bullion bars.

Originally named Forrest City, St. Elmo lies in the heart of the Sawatch Range almost 10,000 feet (3,048m) above sea level. The town peaked in the 1890s when it had a telegraph office, a town hall, five hotels, a number of saloons and dance halls, a newspaper office and a schoolhouse. But by 1922 the biggest mine was closed and the town was abandoned. Though it is considered a ghost town, a handful of residents still live among the old buildings as the town survives on tourism.

The old mining routes around St. Elmo are now 4 x 4 adventure trails, and daring visitors are treated to spectacular vistas of the Colorado mountains along the way. The general store is open during the summer, and many of the old mining buildings are still intact, making St. Elmo one of the most photogenic ghost towns in the US.

About an hour's drive west off the Loneliest Road in America, Belmont Mill remains a well-preserved ghost down from the country’s mining boom. Established as a company town in the 1890s with financial backing by the Tonopah-Belmont Development Company, the constructed mines weren’t as profitable as expected. This caused operations to shut down within a few years and people to move to other neighbouring towns.

Although it didn’t live long as a town, Belmont Mill’s remains are mostly intact and even its historic tramline can still be visited. Visitors can also explore historic miner cabins, machinery and old cars. 

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