Alaska ghost towns aren’t unsettling because they’re haunted. They’re unsettling because they were never supposed to be empty.

Transcript

Host:

Tonight on the midnight drive there’s something strangely unsettling about an
abandoned town.

It’s not because of what you find there, it’s because of what you
don’t find there.

No laughter drifting from open windows, no lights glowing in
the distance, no footsteps echoing down the street, just building standing
exactly where they were built, quietly waiting for people who are never coming
back.

Tonight we’re taking a drive through Alaska’s forgotten communities
to ask a question that has very little to do with ghosts.

Why do empty places
feel so lonely? And why does the silence inside an abandoned town seem so much
louder than silence anywhere else?
Now if you ask me, I’ve always thought the phrase ghost town was a little bit
misleading.

Not because it isn’t descriptive, but because I don’t think
ghost towns are haunted by ghosts.

I think they’re haunted by memory.

They’re
haunted by expectation.

When you hear the word town, your mind immediately begins
filling in the blanks.

Think about it.

You’re probably doing it right now.

You’re
picturing people, children riding bicycles, a diner with fresh coffee,
somebody sweeping the sidewalk outside of the shop, dogs barking somewhere in the
distance.

You don’t have to consciously imagine any of that.

Your brain just
does it automatically because that’s what towns are, or at least that’s what
they’re supposed to be.

Then you arrive.

The buildings are still standing.

The
roads are still there.

The church still overlooks the main street.

The school
still has windows.

The houses still have porches.

Everything is exactly where it
ought to be.

Except the people are all gone.

That’s what makes ghost towns feel
so strange.

Nothing appears obviously wrong, and yet somehow everything is.

I’ve
wondered if that’s because human beings are remarkably good at noticing absence.

Imagine walking into your living room tonight.

Everything is exactly where you
left it.

The couch, the coffee table, the lamp in the corner.

Now imagine one thing
is missing.

It’s not something big.

A family photograph that’s usually hanging
right there on the wall isn’t there anymore.

You would notice it immediately.

Not because the photograph occupied a lot of space, but because your brain
expected it to be there.

Expectation is one of the most powerful forces shaping
our experience of reality.

We don’t just see what’s in front of us.

We compare it
against what we expected to find.

Maybe that’s why ghost towns leave such an
impression.

They violate one of our oldest assumptions.

If there are buildings,
there should be people.

I’ve been thinking about that while reading the stories behind
Alaska’s abandoned communities.

Places like Kennecott, Dyea, Portage.

Each one disappeared
for a different reason.

A mine closed.

A trail shifted.

An earthquake changed the landscape.

The circumstances weren’t the same at all, but the outcome was silence.

I found myself wondering what these towns felt like before they became destinations
for photographers and history buffs.

Imagine arriving in Dyea during the height of the
Klondike Gold Rush.

Thousands of people moving through muddy streets.

Horses pulling freight.

Merchants shouting prices.

Steamships arriving at the dock.

The whole town buzzing with the
kind of optimism that only exists when people genuinely believe tomorrow might change everything.

Gold has a funny way of doing that.

It convinces people that the future is just over the next
mountain.

For a while, that optimism built entire communities.

Hotels appeared.

General stores.

Blacksmith shops.

Churches.

Schools.

Everything a town needs to believe it has a future.

The trail changed.

The crowds all disappeared.

Business slowed.

Families left.

One by one,
doors closed until eventually, there was nobody left to unlock them again.

I’ve tried imagining what it would have felt like to be one of the last people living there.

Not the first person to arrive, the last person to leave.

Consider it.

There’s something profoundly wrong with the way things have changed.

There’s something profoundly sad about locking the door to a place you know is not coming back.

Looking one final time, down a street where every building still stands exactly
as it should.

Knowing you’ll never see another porch light turned on.

Never hear another child
laughing outside.

Never wave to another neighbor across the road.

Then you leave.

And the town begins waiting.

That’s the word that keeps coming back to me.

Waiting.

Ghost towns don’t feel abandoned.

They feel patient.

As though they’re quietly expecting
someone to return.

It’s a different kind of patience than what we talked about with the Pacific Ocean.

The people have built new lives somewhere else.

The town itself seems to seem to be
seems to sit in a state of anticipation.

In a state of paused hope.

All of the people from the town have built new lives somewhere else.

The children grew up, the businesses disappeared, time continued moving.

The town
simply stopped moving with it.

Maybe that’s why these places affect me more than abandoned buildings in the middle of a city.

Cities evolve.

They’re always evolving.

One business replaces another.

A restaurant becomes
a bookstore.

The bookstore becomes apartments.

Life keeps rewriting itself.

Ghost towns don’t
get rewritten.

They become snapshots.

It’s like patience paused in time.

Frozen moments where history simply
stopped.

I’ve heard people describe abandoned towns as eerie and I understand why.

But if I’m being honest, that’s not the first emotion I feel.

Loneliness is.

Not my loneliness,
the towns.

Which I realize sounds a little ridiculous because buildings don’t get lonely.

Roads don’t miss people.

Windows don’t wonder where everyone went.

We’ll talk more here on the
Midnight Drive.

Imagine yourself standing in the middle of Main Street in an abandoned town.

It’s remarkably difficult not to project something
human onto them.

It’s hard not to personify them.

Maybe it’s because they were built for human life.

Every staircase expects a footstep.

Every doorway expects visitors.

Every front porch expects
conversation.

And when those things disappear, the buildings don’t change.

Our relationship with them
does.

I’ve started wondering if that’s why so many ghost stories begin in abandoned places.

Not because abandoned places are filled with spirits, but because they’re filled with
unfinished expectations.

We arrive expecting life.

Instead, we find evidence that life has already
happened.

And somehow that feels even weirder, doesn’t it? I’ve also noticed something curious
about abandoned places in general.

The longer you stay, the quieter that you become.

You’ve probably noticed this too.

It’s not because anybody tells you that.

It’s almost like an
unspoken rule.

It’s almost as if the place requests it of you.

Personally, I’ve experienced that in
old churches, cemeteries, libraries.

People instinctively lower their voices.

They walk a
little slower.

They pay a little more attention.

Nobody gathers everyone at the entrance and says,
please be respectful.

The place somehow communicates that on its own.

I think ghost towns do the exact
same thing.

You don’t arrive wanting to tell ghost stories.

You arrive wanting to understand
who lived here.

What was their life like? What did they hope this place would become?
Those questions feel much more important than whether someone hears footsteps in an old hotel.

I’ve been wondering why.

And I think I finally figured it out.

Hear me out here.

Ghost towns
aren’t really about death.

They’re about interrupted futures.

Every building in a ghost town was built
because someone believed tomorrow would happen there.

Nobody builds a school if they don’t expect
if they don’t expect children.

Nobody opens a bakery if they don’t expect customers will come in.

Nobody plants a tree in front of their house because they’re thinking about next Tuesday.

They plant it because they imagine years, decades, maybe even generations.

Every nail driven into a
wall in its own way is an act of optimism.

That’s what makes abandoned towns so emotionally
powerful.

You’re looking at optimism that ran out of time.

It’s not because people stopped caring.

It’s because life changed.

The gold disappeared.

The mine closed.

The railroad moved.

The earthquake
came.

The cannery shut down.

History doesn’t always ask permission before changing direction.

Can you imagine how nice that would be though if you had a little heads up before something really
life-changing happened? No, doesn’t work like that.

Sometimes history simply keeps moving forward.

And people have to follow.

I think that’s why I was so struck by the image from my field journal.

Imagine traveling through the Alaskan wilderness more than a hundred years ago.

Days surrounded by forests, mountains, cold, silence, and finally, finally you see buildings,
smoke rising from chimneys.

What could it mean? A place to eat? A warm bed? Other people! Hope
appears on the horizon.

Now, imagine making that same journey years later.

The buildings are still
there but the smoke is gone.

The windows are dark.

The streets are empty.

That has to be one of the
loneliest feelings a traveler could ever experience.

It’s not fear.

It’s disappointment.

The kind that settles quietly into your chest.

I’ve realized something while working on this
episode in particular.

I don’t actually think the phrase ghost town refers to ghosts.

I think the ghosts are expectations, as I said in the opener.

I think the ghosts are also memories.

The expectation of laughter mixed with the memory of laughter.

The expectation of conversation
mixed with the memory of conversation.

The expectation that someone will answer when you
knock on the door.

And the memory that someone will answer when you knock on the door.

Instead, you find silence.

And silence has an amazing way of inviting the imagination to just
finish the story.

That’s probably why so many abandoned places eventually become haunted.

Not because something supernatural moved in, but because something
that was profoundly rooted in humanity moved out.

Our imaginations hate unfinished stories.

We talk about that all the time on this show.

Our brains start filling in the blanks.

Someone hears an old floorboard settle.

Someone else notices a shadow in an upstairs window.

Another visitor swears they heard voices carried on the wind.

Could there be ordinary explanations?
Absolutely.

And usually.

Old wood expands.

Metal contracts.

Wind whistles through broken windows.

Animals make sounds we don’t expect.

But I don’t think those explanations are the most interesting
part.

The interesting part is why we’re listening so carefully in the first place.

We’re listening because we’re standing inside someone else’s unfinished life.

And that is a ridiculously heavy thing to think about.

I’ve also noticed something about places like Kenny Kott and Daiya.

When you look at photographs,
they don’t feel fake.

They don’t feel like theme parks.

They feel honest, weathered wood,
rust, paint peeling from old buildings.

Nature slowly reclaiming what people once built.

Nothing seems staged.

Nothing feels manufactured.

If anything, that’s why they’re so moving.

They’re not trying to entertain us.

They’re simply existing.

Become a little skeptical of people that
lean too heavily into haunted attractions.

The more a place insists it’s mysterious,
the less mysterious it usually becomes.

Ghost towns don’t have to advertise themselves.

They don’t need actors, or sound effects, or dramatic music.

They simply stand there, patiently.