The remains of a mostly or entirely depopulated town, often located in the western United States. Once thriving, prosperous communities, with economies usually rooted in mining or prospecting, ghost towns quickly became deserted when the gold or silver was mined out.
Now they stand as reminders of the optimistic promise of the western frontier, where boom and bust were often just days apart.
They're rarely actually haunted. (There's no such thing as ghosts.) But sometimes, it's fun to imagine the ruins of an old Western town stuffed full of specters and spooks of the Wild West.