A Real American Ghost Town....

Halloween being just a few days away brings out bizarre and haunting stories throughout the local newscasts. In fact, Washington DC's WUSA 9 has even set up a web page promoting the Metro area's ghoulish sites. This time of year reminds me of a modern day ghost town which I always heard about during my college days in Pennsylvania. The story of a once thriving coal town destroyed by an underground mine fire that has been burning without end for decades. A town where the ground is so hot you can light a match by touching it. Highways have been closed after buckling from the heat and entire rows of houses have been destroyed for safety reasons. A town where black pipes rise out of the cemetery venting noxious smoke and gas among the burried. A town in which the government has purchased most of the homes and relocated most of the community, minus about 15 or so people who refuse to leave. If ever there was a town that illustrates the dangers of the industrialized world, Centralia Pennsylvania is it. I've never been there, but I have heard that in places it looks like a volcano recently errupted. Take a stroll through a modern day ghost town.....

Paul