Which unexpected stories surround the abandonment and death of buildings, great urban complexes, cities…? Which causes lead places with more than 10,000 inhabitants to become empty from one day to another? What is hidden behind those untidy dinning tables, closets still full of clothes and unmade beds that we can still see en many of those homes?Tragic stories whose skeletons are an alive reminder of their history and that we want to revive in this Day of the Dead. Russia, Japan or even France are some of the countries in which we can find the retails of glorious cities turned into ghosts, around whose streets we invite you to wander in this 31st October 2016.
ŌKUMA (Fukushima, Japan)
Located in the coast of the Pacific Ocean, this city belonging to the Fukushima Region is today an authentic ghost urbanisation. With a population of 11,500 inhabitants, the city was evacuated overnight, consequence of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster taking place on the 11th March 2010, as a direct consequence of the friction between the Pacific Tectonic Plate and the Norteamerican one. More than 30 swim of city that still continue today without any more occupation than powder and radiation.
HASHIMA ISLAND, 端島 (Nagashaki, Japan)
Known as Gunkanjima (軍艦島), literally ‘the Ironclad Island’ due to its walled perimeter as a protective shell agains typhoons, this island of 50 by 80 m, es one of the 5 inhabited islands in the Nagashaki Prefecture. During its most glorious times it hosted one of the most important coal mines, being its workers who lived there with their families. Becoming that mine a UNESCO Human Heritage, works were stoped there, unchaining a process of abandonment 1n 1974. Its only halo of life that seems to remain in this city is in the film world, as the humid salinity of the site have accelerated its deterioration process until it has become uninhabitable.
ORADOUR-SUR-GLANE, Glana Orator (Limousin, France)
With a surface of more than 38 sqKm, this French ville was abandoned in 1944 after the massacre with the same name taking place there in the hands of the nazis. Despite the entire city was reconstructed in a different place to host its population in a new space, the original urbanisation las left uninhabited forever, being its ruins still preserved as a symbol of the martyr populaition that inhabited it one day. Therefore, the place still shows its original streets structure, the general outline of its houses and even the wiring of its power lines. A bloodcurdling ghost whose well preserved corps will give you goose bumps.
SAN ZHI (Taipei, Taiwan)
This ghost urbanization was situated on the outskirts of the capital of Taiwan, Taipei. The so-called "UFO houses" began to be built in 1978 as a holiday resort for the US military officials stationed in East Asia and the Taipei's upper class.
However, only two years after the project was abandoned, although the reasons are unclear. The theories that attempt to explain what happened range simple versions as unsustainable financial losses or a thyfoon passage which ruined the construction company, as the bad luck that the locals used to tell about. On the occasion of the enlargement of the path, they broke the Chinese dragon (symbol traditional worship) in two - it which was located at the entrance of the urbanisation - which inexplicably have resulted in many accidents at work and traffic at this access, with the death of several workers, whose spirits would have taken the place and tormented the other employers.
Although a demolition order to end the superstition was ruled in 2008, it arouses curiosity still nowadays, both architecturally as authentic futuristic ruin and its black legend.
PRIPYAT (Ukraine)
Pripyat is perhaps the best-known ghost town, because in April 26th, 1986 it suffered the effects of the worst history of nuclear energy's accident. This year has fulfilled the disaster's 30th anniversary.
The city of Pripyat was founded in 1970 by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union as home for the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant workers and their families in northern Ukraine, near the border with Belarus, a fertile and well connected area that allowed the city's quick development. During its years of greatest peak it was known as "the city of the future".
At the time of the accident the central conducting an strategic military program of the Soviet army experiment, and a staff failure caused the terrible outcome. Despite the fatality, the population was not evacuated until the next day.
The city today is surrounded by a 30km security perimeter, completely abandoned, with many of the former inhabitants' belongings inside buildings, as frozen in time. One of the bleakest landscapes is the amusement park, which never came to work because its opening was scheduled five days after the explosion
PYRAMIDEN (Svalbard, Norway)
Svalbard is the northernmost inhabited land in Europe, north of Norway, and it is there - less than a thousand kilometers away from the North Pole - where we find the ghost town of Pyramiden (Пирамида).
Pyramiden was originally founded by the Swedes as a mining town, around 1910, and was sold to the Soviet Union in 1927, who moved hundreds of employed people by the Artikugol state company. He became self-sufficient, and a very popular destination among the workers of the Union because of the conditions there - a real utopia were functioning properly. After the Wall and the USSR falls, the company managed to maintain the settlement, but in 1998 its inhabitants were ordered to evacuate the city within 24 hours, without further explanation.
Today it has about 5 inhabitants - the guide who makes circuits for tourists and maintenance personnel - and it has invested in the construction and renovation of hotel facilities, in order to exploit the curious city.
