On my summer vacation, I decided it was time for me to go to Silent Hill.
Welcome to Silent Hill.
While I was driving all over creation, I made a stop in a very peculiar place in northeastern Pennsylvania. There’s a town there named Centralia, which isn’t a town anymore. In the 1960’s, a fire had broken out in the coal veins beneath the town. Things seemed fine until sinkholes began appearing and the townspeople questioned the safety of the area. Throughout the 1980’s, the town slowly turned into barren ghost town. Centralia served the inspiration for the 2006 movie adaptation of Silent Hill.
It’s empty now, but at one time this street was lined with houses.
There are no hospitals with faceless nurses, or children who were burned and are exacting their revenge on the populus. In fact, most of the town has been torn down and there’s only few houses left standing along with, ironically, a fire department. While there were no signs of evil cults, a church is one of the few remaining buildings, which is still actively used. It’s a Russian Orthodox church, which has an odd style of cross that many people wouldn’t be familiar with. If you saw the movie and let your imagination get to you, it’s quite ominous.
Still, you can see the gridwork of the town that was there, complete with concrete steps leading up to porches that were once there. I’ve always had a fascination with urban ruins, it was pretty cool to see. There’s a few hot spots where you can feel the fire burning beneath the streets, as well as some places where you can see puffs of smoke rising from the ground.
This is the only type of ghost you’re going to see in this “ghost town.”
Sadly, there’s a lot of vandalism, but at least some of the graffiti is video game related.