History Main / GhostTown

Ghost towns don't necessarily have actual ghosts in them, [[NothingIsScarier but are generally spooky even without them.]] Crumbling buildings, rotting wooden siding, rusting iron, banging shutters, creaking floors, (or in a Western, an old player piano that suddenly activates) is spooky. Sometimes the evacuation will have been so sudden that it appears that people left in the middle of dinner; there may be old crockery and rusted cans in the cupboards.

** And ''plenty'' of these in ''Literature/TheStand'', post-Captain Trips. In fact, the only known inhabited cities in the U.S by the mid-point of the story are Boulder, Colorado, and Las Vegas, Nevada, having been resettled by the main characters and the BigBag and his followers respectively.

Sometimes there will be a [[MayorOfAGhostTown single octagenarian inhabitant]] who will explain the history of the area, or, who will brandish an ancient shotgun and attempt to drive off the intruders. And if it's the horror genre, whatever evil spirits/monsters that caused the place to become a ghost town will very likely still be in the area (and about to wake up snd be hungry for a human meal).

* Parodied in ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddParents'' with the Dad's hometown, now a ghost town even by wild west standards. He went for the feeling of nostalgia before remembering that it was just plain awful.

* ''ComicBook/LuckyLuke'' features almost every single [[TheWildWest Wild West]] cliché, and therefore:

* In the 2017 Arnold Schwarzenegger film "Aftermath" (based on the Uberlingen Mid-Air Collision), the airport the doomed plane was supposed to land at is entirely unpopulated except for staff. As anyone who has flown knows, this would not happen - planes fly 24 hours a day, and you would also have family members/taxi drivers waiting to pick passengers up. Later in the film, Arnold's character arrives in a hotel which doesn't seem to have anyone else staying there, nor any traffic outside. The only indication in the film that there's a population beyond people he interacts with in the film is when he attends a memorial for the 217 crash victims. The movie may have been low budget, but it feels glaringly unfinished as a result of this.

[[folder:Web Comics]]

* ''[[VideoGame/DeathEndReQuest Death end re;Quest 2]]'' has the reveal that [[spoiler:Le Choara is a long abandoned town made to look active via Julietta's RealityWarper abilities. The inhabitants are reanimated once a year to explot a loophole in gathering the requisite sacrifices to summon Marbus, while luring in the protagonists of both this and the first game to further Julietta's RoaringRampageOfRevenge.]]

** ''Daisy Town'' ends this way, making the entire fight with the Daltons and the Indians pointless, as all the citizens run off once they hear news about gold being discovered elsewhere. Unlike other stories with a similar ending, Luke doesn't seem too bothered by it, and even laughs about how everything turned out.