St. Elmo is a former mining town tucked deep in the Colorado mountains. The buildings are still standing. The streets still connect. From a distance, it looks like it should still be in use.

Transcript

Host:

Some places don’t feel abandoned.

They feel paused.

St.

Elmo sits deep in the Colorado
Mountains, a former mining town where the buildings still stand, the streets still connect,
and everything looks like it should still be in use.

But it isn’t.

No movement.

No voices.

No reason for anything to be there.

These days, people point to things like the back rooms when
they try to describe that feeling.

But it doesn’t start there.

You can walk through places like this
in the real world.

And if you stay there long enough, it starts to feel like something is just
out of reach.

Tonight on The Midnight Drive, we’re in a town that never quite moved on.

If you drive far enough into the mountains of central Colorado, the road begins to narrow.

The pavement gives way to dirt.

The turns get a little tighter.

And eventually, the landscape
starts to open just enough to reveal something that doesn’t quite fit.

A town.

Not ruins of a
town.

Not debris of a town.

But a town.

Wooden buildings still standing.

Fronts facing the road
like they’re expecting something.

Someone to stop in.

Windows intact.

Roofs holding their shape.

From a distance, it doesn’t look abandoned at all.

It looks quiet.

That’s St. Elmo.

It was found in the late 1800s during Colorado’s mining boom.

Silver pulled from the mountains brought people in quickly.

Families.

Workers.

Workers.

Businesses that followed wherever money was moving.

At its peak, the town had everything
it needed to function.

A general store.

Hotels.

Saloons.

A telegraph office.

Even a school.

The kind of place where daily life had a rhythm to it.

Mornings started early.

Work moving out
toward the mines.

Evenings pulling people back into the center of town.

Light in the windows.

Voices carrying through the streets.

Nothing unusual.

Just a place doing what it was built to do.

And for a while, it worked.

The town held together.

People stayed.

More arrived.

The buildings filled with purpose.

Every space was used.

Every structure was part of something
active.

But like most places built around one thing, it didn’t last.

The mining slowed and then
it stopped.

And when that happens, the rest of the town usually follows.

People leave.

Businesses
close.

Structures fall into disrepair.

And time moves forward.

But St.

Elmo didn’t change the way most places do.

It didn’t collapse.

It didn’t disappear.

It just
stopped.

Families packed what they needed and left.

But not everything.

Some things were too large.

Too fixed.

Too tied to the place itself.

Furniture stayed.

Tools stayed.

Entire rooms were left the way they were last used.

Doors closed behind people who never came back.

And over time, fewer and fewer people remained.

Until eventually, almost no one did.

But the town itself didn’t go anywhere.

The buildings stayed
upright.

The streets stayed defined.

The layout of the place still made sense.

If you walk through
it now, you can still follow the path of how it used to work.

Where people would have gathered.

Where people would have gathered.

Where they would have passed each other.

Where something should still be happening.

That’s the part that feels weird.

Because
most abandoned places show their age immediately.

Collapsed roofs.

Broken walls.

Nature taking over
in very obvious ways.

You can tell right away that no one has been there in a long time.

St.

Elmo doesn’t do that.

Or at least not in the same way.

There’s definitely where.

Of course
there is.

Wood fades.

Paint peels.

Time leaves its marks.

But the structures themselves still hold.

They still present themselves as usable.

As functional.

As if they’re waiting for someone
As if they’re waiting for someone to come back and continue where things left off.

And that’s where the feeling starts to shift.

Because when a place looks like it should still
work, your mind treats it that way.

You expect something.

A sound.

A movement.

A sign that the
space is being used.

Even when you know it isn’t.

You walk down the main street and it feels like
you’re early.

Not late.

Like something is about to start.

Not something that already ended.

A door slightly opened.

A chair positioned like someone just stood up from it.

A window looking out onto a street that still connects every part of the town in a way that
even now still makes sense.

Nothing is out of place.

And that’s what makes it feel out of place.

Because there’s no clear break between then and now.

No moment where the town fully transitioned
into the past.

It just exists in a kind of overlap.

Where everything is still arranged for use,
but nothing is being used.

That’s a hard thing to process because most places give you cues.

Clear signals that tell you how to interpret what it is that you’re seeing.

This is old.

This is gone.

This is over.

St.

Elmo doesn’t do that clearly.

It leaves just enough intact that your mind keeps
expecting the next part.

Footsteps on the wooden boards.

A voice inside one of the buildings.

The sound of something moving behind a wall.

And when none of that happens, the absence becomes
noticeable.

It’s not overwhelming.

It’s just present.

The kind of quiet that feels like it
has a shape to it.

Something you move through.

Not something you’re just surrounded by.

People
who visit during the day notice it, but it’s easier to brush off.

There’s light.

Other visitors.

The
sound of the wind through the trees.

Things to anchor the experience.

But even then, there’s a
moment.

Usually when you step slightly away from the main path.

When the noise drops just enough.

When the space opens up around you.

And for a second, it feels like you’re somewhere you’re not
supposed to be.

Not because it’s dangerous.

Not because anything is happening.

Just because the
place doesn’t fully register as empty.

And that’s where St.

Elmo separates itself from other ghost
towns.

It doesn’t rely on what’s missing.

It relies on what’s still there.

The structure.

The
layout.

The sense that everything is still arranged for something that never resumed.

And once that feeling settles in, it doesn’t really go away.

Even after you leave.

Because it’s not
tied to a single moment.

It’s tied to the way that the place exists.

A town that didn’t disappear.

It didn’t collapse.

It didn’t fully move on.

It just stopped being used.

And stayed exactly
where it was.

Waiting for something that never came back.

You’re listening to The Midnight Drive.

Tonight, we’re talking about the ghost town in Colorado called St.

Elmo.

Have you ever been to
a ghost town? I’d love to hear about it.

Let me know in the comments below wherever you might
be listening tonight.

If you’d like, feel free to reach out to us on our hotline,
The Midnight Drive at 402-610-2836.

We always love to hear your stories.

Now what’s wild is now people are obsessed with back rooms as their liminal spaces of choice.

But people often forget that there are ghost towns peppered all throughout the American Southwest.

St.

Elmo is one of them.

When you spend more time in a place like St.

Elmo, the details start to stand out.

Not all at once, just gradually.

It’s the small things.

The way a door sits slightly open.

Not
wide enough to notice from a distance.

But enough to catch your attention when you pass it.

The way
a window reflects the outside light, but not quite evenly.

Like something inside is breaking
the shape of it.

The kind of things that don’t mean anything on their own, but start to feel
different and there’s no one around to explain what’s going on.

There’s a story that often comes
up when people talk about St.

Elmo.

It doesn’t involve the whole town, just one person.

A woman
called Annabel Stark.

She lived here long after most people had left.

Stayed behind as the town
emptied out.

She watched the place change without ever fully leaving it.

People described her as
reclusive, private.

Someone who kept to herself, but still present.

Still part of the town,
even as everything else faded.

She spent years there, feeding the chipmunks.

Walking the same
paths.

Moving through the same buildings that everyone else had already abandoned.

Eventually she passed away, like everyone does.

And that should have been the end of her story.

Just another person tied to a place that no longer functions the way it used to.

But her name keeps coming up.

Attached to small things.

Attached to movements.

Attached to changes.

Attached to details that don’t stay fixed.

Doors that aren’t quite where they were before.

Objects that seem slightly shifted.

Not missing.

Not disturbed.

Just different.

And like everything else here, none of it is super dramatic.

There’s no single moment that stands out
as proof of anything.

It’s just repetition.

Small, consistent reports that don’t fully resolve.

Some people say they’ve heard footsteps.

Not outside.

Inside.

The sound of movement in a space that should be very still.

Wood reacting the way it does when someone walks across it.

Very steady.

Very even.

Not random.

Not the kind of sound you’d expect from a wind or the structure settling.

Others describe the sense that they’re being watched.

Not in a threatening or creepy way.

Just awareness.

Like there’s something else in the space that hasn’t fully left.

That doesn’t interact.

It doesn’t approach.

It just exists alongside you while you’re there.

There are also accounts of lights.

Not bright lights.

Not obvious lights.

Just
subtle changes.

A reflection.

Where there shouldn’t be one.

A shift in brightness inside a building that doesn’t have any power.

The kind of thing you notice for only a second and then question immediately after.

And that’s where the feeling deepens.

Because nothing here confirms anything.

It doesn’t give you a clear experience.

It gives you moments that don’t quite settle.

And that’s where the word comes in.

These days people point to things like the back rooms
when they try to describe that feeling.

But it doesn’t start there.

Places like this have existed
long before there was a name for it.

Places that look complete.

That make sense structurally.

But don’t function.

Not anymore.

Not fully.

The gap between what a place is and what it’s doing.

Create something harder to define.

Because your mind keeps trying to complete it.

To fill in what should be happening.

Footsteps where there are none.

Movement where nothing moves.

A presence where there’s only space.

Not because something is actually there but because the
place is built in a way that suggests there should be.

And that’s exactly what makes St.

Elmo different from somewhere like Gold Camp Road.

There isn’t any ritual here.

There’s no specific
action people take to trigger something else.

No moment where you have to turn off the lights.

Something else.

No moment where you have to turn off the lights and wait.

This place is already in that state.

It doesn’t need anything from you.

You just walk into it.

And for a while it feels like you’re moving through something that hasn’t
fully ended.

That’s what people carry with them when they leave.

Not a story they can clearly
explain.

Not a moment they can point to.

Just that feeling.

That something about the place didn’t
line up quite right.

That it existed in a way that didn’t match the present.

And that maybe
if they had stayed just a little bit longer.

If they had stepped into one more building.

Or taken one more turn down a side path.

They might have seen something that made it make sense.

But they never do.

They leave.

And the town stays exactly the way it was.

Unchanged.

Unbothered.

Not
reacting to anything.

Because whatever this place is it doesn’t depend on being seen.

It doesn’t
depend on being experienced.

It just exists in that space between use and abandonment.

Between
past and present.

And that’s where the unease comes from.

Not from what’s there but from what
feels like it should be.

Because when a place looks like it’s still waiting for something to happen
it’s hard not to feel like you’re the only one who arrived too early.

Or too late.

And there’s no clear way to tell which one it is.

So you move through it carefully.

Quietly.

Trying
not to disturb anything.

Even though there’s nothing there to disturb.

And when you leave
you don’t feel like you’ve exited a place.

You feel like you’ve stepped out of a moment that never
fully finished.

And it’s still sitting there.

Exactly the same.

Waiting for someone else to walk
into it and feel the exact same thing.

Not because anything happens.

But because
something about it never stopped.