If, like us, you’re battling a post-Turkey Day stupor that descended some time after your last (third?) slice of pumpkin pie by basking in the lux languid pleasure of aimlessly surfing the world wide web, then let us add some fuel to your flagging fun. Helen Keller once said that “what we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.” It’s a divine sentiment that we like to remember when we’re looking through photos of one our favorite — albeit devastating — photographic obsessions: ruin porn. As haunting as they are beautiful, abandoned cities and villages tell a story of loss on a grand scale. Be it natural disaster, human devastation, or that inevitable thing called progress rendering a way of life obsolete, these deserted towns are fascinating snapshots of urban memories fading fast. From a nuclear city to a real deal Wild West town that was abandoned after the Gold Rush ended, click through to join us on a virtual romp around the world to visit some of the most fascinating ghost towns on the planet.
Prypiat, Ukraine
Images via cool interesting stuff; Just walked by; eBaum’s World
Hashima Island, Japan
Images via abandoned places; hashima-island
San Zhi, Taiwan
Images via H.I.A.T.; glass magazine; 99 WOW
Oradour-sur-Glane, France
Images via Lugg’s Log; Creafrance; maisonburke; Weird Wide World
Centralia, Pennsylvania
Images via skyscraperpage
Rhyolite, Nevada
Image credit: Horsepuckey; Life at 55mph; Nylon Daze
Bodie, California
Images via World Around Us; Ghost Town Gallery; pdphoto
Humberstone and Santa Laura, Chile
Images via H.I.A.T.; Struan and Anna in Chile; fotopedia
Grand-Bassam, Côte d’Ivoire
Image credit: kafka_on_the_shore; UNESCO
Kolmanskop, Namibia
Images via Michael Johngrist;Joshua Eckert
Varosha in Famagusta, Cyprus, Greece
Image credit: H.I.A.T.; Dickelbers; Skyscraper City
Kayaköy, Turkey
Image credit: At Home in the World; Traveling with Krushworth
Kadykchan, Russia
Image credit: Laika ac