“Can we make Centralia by nightfall?”

My brother and I had a map spread out on the hood of our pickup truck. We had both taken a year off College and outfitted the Mitsubishi 4WD with a camper. Our plan was to spend the fall overloading in the Southwest and up the West Coast. We’d dreamed of hitting a western ghost town for Halloween, but prepping the truck took longer than expected. We were finishing our shakedown trip in upstate New York on Halloween morning.

I asked, “What’s Centralia?”

“The town Silent Hill is based on.”

“The burning one?”

“Exactly. It’s abandoned because the underground coal mines lit on fire in 1960. They’re still burning.”

“Where is it?”

“Pennsylvania!”

With that, we had our first destination. We broke camp and took off for central Pennsylvania. And we found Centralia every bit as creepy as promised. The streets are abandoned, most of the houses and businesses torn down. But the shells of certain buildings remain.

The broken pavement of the roads still snakes through the woods. We put our truck in 4WD and crawled along the remaining asphalt. I could clearly see the grids of avenues where old neighborhoods teemed with life from the 1800s to the 1960s. We parked and explored several places. I didn’t have to walk far into the woods to find piles of trash, from license plates to rotted furniture–the relics of life in the 1960s.

The creepiest aspect of the ghost town is the haze that hangs over the streets. As we drove around, we found sinkholes where a burned out vein of coal collapsed the earth overhead. Columns of smoke rise from many of them as the underground fire fights for air. Experts predict it will burn for another 250 years.

Camping on the outskirts of Centralia was a bad idea. Many residents stayed into the late 1960s, or even the 1970s, finally abandoning their homes when poisoning from the smoke and other fumes forced them to flee. We were young and gung ho, so we found an empty lot and stayed. It was a solemn night, we ate some cold dinner and turned in early. But if the winds and fires had been slightly different it could have been a dangerous choice. We got lucky.

I’m not especially superstitious, so I wasn’t expecting ghosts to rattle our camper. But in 2010, Centralia still had several holdouts: residents in houses on the outskirts ignoring warnings to leave. We were also lucky that no one bothered us.

After Centralia, we pushed further west. Since that night, I’ve camped in many ghost towns in many states: Colorado, California, Wyoming, Montana, and North Dakota. None hit me quite like Centralia.

Out west you find mining towns or other towns that boomed briefly, and were almost all abandoned 100 years ago. You may see big, grand chimneys or foundations. You may even see arches or other monuments. But the trash has all rusted into the ground. No residents remain. They are creepy, but beautiful too. The country is wide open and by driving up a hill nearby you can usually survey all of what was the town and get a feel for the layout.

Centralia is something unique. Choked by eastern forests its ruins are confusing and even claustrophobic. Still strewn with trash it is easier to imagine individual residents who were forced to leave their homes. The Pennsylvania ghost town is certainly scary. But it is also the saddest ghost town I’ve ever seen.

If you love ghost towns, a drive through Centralia is a must. But if you are looking for somewhere creepy yet photogenic to camp, I’d recommend you drive out west if possible. If you want to learn more about Centralia, take a tour in the YouTube video below: