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146: Living in a Ghost Town
32 Plays1 year ago
Abandoned, lonely, often forlorn, how can places seem so sad and neglected? What makes a ghost town a ghost town?
We explore some lost settlements and what happened to them, really. Sometimes it's a loss of income and prosperity, othertimes, something more destructive and very final. Whether the town died out, pardon the pun, or came to a catastrophic end, it's an tale worth telling and we say, put on your safety goggles and your hiking boots!
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Transcript
Introduction and Casual Banter
00:00:00
Speaker
Well, welcome to Castles and Cryptids, where the castles are haunted and the cryptids are cryptic. As fuck, if you can believe it, it might answer that one. I'm Kelsey. And we're here coming at you live from the studio on Saturday night. No, Sunday night. But you are listening to this whenever you're listening to it, and we hope you're having a good day. Yeah.
00:00:27
Speaker
Oh, it might even be Friday where you are. What's it like there? Yeah, we're just starting a new week. Maybe you're having like TGIF.
00:00:38
Speaker
Yeah, that Friday feeling instead of having the, what does Mr. Ballen call it on his ads? The Sunday scariest because you have to go back to work on Monday.
Milestone Celebration and Patreon Content
00:00:49
Speaker
Or you're like Kelsey and you're like, I literally just worked all day. Yeah, I worked all weekend. So I have, I have Monday off and then I have Saturday off. So I don't even have two days back to back. That's annoying.
00:01:05
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So Monday is your Sunday. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We don't usually do this on a Sunday, but anyway, I'm just like, what am I doing? Only a few times. Oh, right. Um, yeah. So we hope you guys are doing well. And what was I going to say? I don't know. Oh, we got 200 Spotify followers today.
00:01:34
Speaker
That might not sound like a lot, but that's nice. I did just notice that when I checked just before we started recording to see if it would ask me about making that stupid login because I hadn't checked for a few days. And then, yeah, that was very nice. Thank you all. Yes. Thanks to all of our followers and
00:01:58
Speaker
If you're new here, welcome to the Cryptic Cutie Club. Oh, I guess that's what I'm calling it now. The Cryptic Cutie Club and join our Patreon and you can become an Illuminati. Part of the Illuminati. I know. The club is open to all. The Illuminati is a little more exclusive. You get that paywall, baby.
00:02:24
Speaker
Oh yes. I did make a post about our most recent episode, but I still haven't posted about our most recent Patreon episode. Um, which you guys should go check out because it was fun. We spilled the tea. It was our first, uh, yeah, it was all kind of different. It's what we do in some of our mini video. So we haven't really done it as a regular Patreon monthly episode before. True.
00:02:54
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, read it and there was some fun, I did some fun Bible typos and you did some fun erotica. Yeah, some, what did they call it, men writing women, where it's like, that's not how the female body works. Who allowed this man to write this book? How did this get published?
00:03:25
Speaker
genitals were verbs. There was things were happening. Things were breasting boobily. Yeah, part of the description on the Patreon because it was like you can't ever like always remember specifics. Yeah, I didn't remember that I was trying to remember it.
00:03:46
Speaker
trendy kid's name. I would never have gotten that name. I just knew a few people. It was just they named their kids Malachi. And I was like, is this like, you know, it's like when everybody was named Sarah or Jessica or whatever. It just seemed like a little blip in my universe where it was a little bit of a trend. But anyone else ever? No. Early 2000s-ish.
00:04:16
Speaker
No. At that time?
Trendy Names and Personal Anecdotes
00:04:19
Speaker
Just me? Alright. Well, what crazy trending names have you guys seen around? Or do you encounter in your lives that you were like, wow, I hear that a lot. Yeah. Or like, I love weird names too. Sometimes I just, I see a good name when I'm processing something at work and just like, cool name, bro. Right? Yeah.
00:04:44
Speaker
or like you have the same name as a celebrity yeah it's funny when it's the first and last name and you're just like wait a minute yeah yeah and sometimes they're just kind of generic like Christopher Cross I had the other day I was like crisscross yeah anyway um yeah so
Episode Topic Introduction: Ghost Towns
00:05:13
Speaker
What are we talking about this week on our 147th episode? Got a couple like abandoned ghost town. We are living in a ghost town, baby. Yeah. They're fun. Also, there's a lot more out there than I thought of.
00:05:41
Speaker
Yeah, I think when I first typed it in, Google really wanted to send me to explore the province I live in because it came up with a list and it was like 25 of the best ghost towns in Alberta. And I was like, holy fuck, there's 25 in Alberta that are the best. Wow, that is a big list. It was a lot. I was like, um, I'm not really looking for ones in Alberta, but I guess, I don't know.
00:06:10
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I did get that too. Like a lot of them came up Western Canada, Western US, which is like, okay, that's not that shocking, but holy shit. Yeah.
Exploring Bannock, Montana
00:06:20
Speaker
25. Wow. Yeah. It was just like, what the hell? I was like, this is insane. I remember visiting a couple of them when I was a kid, we'd go camping and kind of drive through one or stop a little bit, stretch your legs. Like, but yeah, not really something you see out in the East.
00:06:40
Speaker
um old dilapidated buildings on the side of the road yeah yeah yeah that's one or two that's just one or two usually abandoned farmhouses everywhere yeah everybody's got those yeah those outhouses calendars and stuff yeah those are funny yeah well if you guys like old toilets come along and join me with us now
00:07:10
Speaker
I'm sure there's going to be some other fun tidbits along the way. Like, why are they ghost towns? Yeah. Yeah, I did end up. Well, my first one's creepy. My second one, not so much, but I have. I don't know. It doesn't have much of a history. It's fairly recent, but my first one has quite a bit of interesting history, I thought. Oh, I'm always here for the history.
00:07:40
Speaker
Yeah, I hadn't heard of either of these. I thought they were kind of cool when I was looking up all these, all those listicles that you run across. That's half the fun. Ooh, but I could do this one and this one and this one. Because sometimes there's not a lot on them, really. Yeah, absolutely. So the first one I have is Bannock Montana. Montana. Okay.
00:08:09
Speaker
It's spelled B-A-N-N-A-C-K, but it's like Bannock, the First Nations or Indigenous bread kind of biscuit they make. They're so good. One of my managers, she doesn't work at our location anymore, but she was Indigenous and she
00:08:32
Speaker
made them all like the different holidays um and everything and she would hand make them they were so good i love it so i kind of had to pick this one that's awesome no i was like yeah isn't that a food because again i think that's something maybe you find more here at west but
00:08:53
Speaker
Yeah, it's spelled a little bit different. So the food is B-A-N-O-C-K. Oh, that's what it is. It is technically named after the food. Yeah, it just kind of got a little typo-ed along the way. Hey, Montana has some cool place names. Yeah.
00:09:14
Speaker
So Bannock started out as a little town in July of 1862. It was founded when two gentlemen, John White and Pikes Peaker. What a name. Oh, that was his first and last name? Yeah, right. Aren't those both last names? Pikes Peaker.
00:09:41
Speaker
They discovered gold. They were kind of prospectors. They discovered gold in the creek waters and then they kind of built up the town and as word kind of spread, everybody started coming there. There's gold in that creek. The creek was initially named Willard Creek after the Lewis and Clark expedition that came through the area in 1805.
00:10:11
Speaker
And then later due to the large grasshopper population, it was actually renamed in 1862 to Grasshopper Creek. Oh, okay. It seems to stay being called Grasshopper Creek. So they liked the grasshoppers, I wonder? I don't know. Yeah, I guess. I thought they ate all your crops. Yeah, like infestation.
00:10:39
Speaker
So Colorado prospectors had filed one of the first gold claims in what would later be Montana, and news of the gold spread quickly leading to one of the greatest gold rushes to the west of the US.
00:10:55
Speaker
A mining camp was built, said virtually overnight, with miners beginning to settle in tents, caves, dugouts, shanties, huts, and even just sleeping in their wagons. I love that shanty. I love that shanty. Not that I want to live in one, but it's a good word. Me too.
00:11:19
Speaker
Uh, word also spread that the gold found at Bannock was not like other golds. It was 99 to 99.5% pure while most other gold being discovered at the time was about 95% pure. So it was a lot better. Uh, so that also caused a bigger influx of people. Uh, Oh, for sure. Yeah. Do you want that?
00:11:44
Speaker
almost 100%. It's like, you have to have a condom and it's 97 to 99%. Yeah, and one of them is 99.5%. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, so this obviously caused more miners than usual, like would coming to the area, then just like
00:12:06
Speaker
somewhere where they found gold, they'd be like, oh, yeah, there's a certain amount of people that come. But this was like the best gold. So it was like even more people. Right. Yeah.
00:12:18
Speaker
They're going to be disappointed. Everybody can't find some. Right. Bannock became known as the new El Dorado of the North, and it filled with not just miners, but also people who were deserting the Civil War. It also quickly filled up with, you know, follows money, but the outlaws and businessmen who were all looking to profit off the gold, or its growing population, like the people moving there.
00:12:47
Speaker
I heard something about the El Dorado the other day that like the indigenous people might have just been kind of telling the Spanish or whoever it was just like yeah there's a cold city down there sure just go over there and leave our town alone like oh nice I like that like maybe that helped the perpetrate the the myth or whatever because obviously no one's been able to find it yeah I love that
00:13:16
Speaker
It said that unfortunately many of these new settlers to the area lacked the supplies or even the preparation to survive these harsh Montana winters. Oh, yeah. Yeah, because they're all moving like so quickly. Yeah.
00:13:34
Speaker
And the population mostly consisted of men, except for some saloon girls and painted ladies. And then there were like a few wives that were living in these camps, again like the tents and all that kind of stuff.
00:13:50
Speaker
For the wives and that kind of stuff, it said that there was, they kind of held dances and gatherings that were kind of their only social activity that they could do outside of their homes, but most of their homes were tents. Excuse me. That's a whole lot of sky prayer.
00:14:18
Speaker
In 1863, the settlement was about 3,000 residents. So that was like less than a year, like within six months, it went from nobody to 3,000 people. Totally. Yeah. Popped up overnight. Boomtown. Yeah. And this is when they applied to the US government for the name Bannock, spelled B-A-N-N-O-C-K, named after their neighboring Indians food.
00:14:43
Speaker
um however the government messed up and because they'd never mess up right they spelled it with two a's instead of with an o which it has remained to this day i mean on something that's not english what shocker um
00:15:02
Speaker
So Bannock quickly gained not only a reputation for gold, but also for one of lawlessness with many killings happening in the streets. People just getting murdered all over the place. I thought they played up the Wild West thing.
00:15:19
Speaker
Hey, this is very cliche. If you Google this place, the pictures of the streets are like, everything is wood. There's hardly any grass. There's a tumbleweed. I don't know. Posts to latch up your horse or whatever.
00:15:34
Speaker
Yeah, it's so cliche. So in January of 1863, this gentleman who becomes very important, his name is Henry Plummer, he arrived in Bannock and was pretty quickly, just a few months later, elected sheriff. And they were hoping to finally bring peace to the settlement, like with all these killings and the population increasing so much. Yeah, everybody's gold hungry.
00:16:02
Speaker
Yeah. What they didn't know was that Plummer would go on to become the leader of the largest gang in town, over 100 men, and they called themselves the Innocents. Okay. Plummer used his position as sheriff and then his contacts to intercept when other gangs were planning on moving, like stolen gold.
00:16:29
Speaker
and also who their members were and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Damn, he turned quick.
00:16:37
Speaker
Right? And a few months later, by May of 1863, a group of miners discovered gold about 80 miles east of Bannock. And after they discovered it, they came into town because it was probably one of the closest places from where they were. And they took their newfound gold to buy supplies. And they're just like, oh, strangers in Bannock, they have gold.
00:17:05
Speaker
So word quickly spreads that there's new gold nearby and many leave Bannock for it's called Alder Gulch, which would later become Virginia City. Oh, I like that a little better. Gulch is such a weird word. Gulch. It does sound like a slang term for a vagina somehow.
00:17:36
Speaker
The road between the two towns quickly became a very dangerous place to travel. I weigh robbers. With travelers being targeted for robberies. That was literally the end of that sentence. I just couldn't let you get it out.
00:17:57
Speaker
Oh, that's like me to Pat, like I had one more word. So, Plummer, the sheriff at Bannock, he extended his reach to Virginia City when he's appointed as U.S. Deputy Marshal for like that region.
00:18:16
Speaker
And after this it said that violent hold-ups became even more common and in 1863 about a hundred men were murdered. So like a lot of killings. Yeah, for a very small population that's a lot. Yeah, like a hundred people get murdered one year. Like that's a lot for only having 3,000 people living there. Yeah, a lot of like
00:18:44
Speaker
women milking the cows and doing all the farm chores. Next, it seems that President Abraham Lincoln, we know him, he appointed a Chief Justice of the same territory. So he would have been like above Plummer and his family settled in Bannock, the Chief Justice.
00:19:13
Speaker
And by December of 1863, citizens of Bannock and Virginia City had pretty well become tired of all of the violence surrounding the area.
00:19:25
Speaker
As do you might. Yeah, so these groups of men from the two towns came together and kind of formed. Well, sorry, they came together along with men at Nevada City, and they began meeting secretly. And together they organized as what was called the Montana Vigilantes.
00:19:54
Speaker
Yeah, just a great thing to happen. Yeah, they're just putting it right out there and calling it what it is. Yeah, I think that's what they it uses the word vigilantes a lot. So I don't know if necessarily that's what they call themselves or that's kind of what they became known as their group, but
00:20:16
Speaker
The masked men would visit suspected outlaws in the middle of the night, warning them, and didn't really say how, seemed to just be warnings. At least initially. And they would also put up posters. This is kind of weird. So they would put up posters featuring a skull and crossbones.
00:20:41
Speaker
Or the mystic numbers, three, seven, 77, like three dash seven dash 77. Okay. Which some have said was the measurement for a grave three feet wide, seven feet long and 77 inches deep. Okay. Yeah. A date.
00:21:09
Speaker
Yeah, a little weird. 77. Yeah, true though. I mean, that would have been like 14 years after this though. I was like, I don't know what year we're in yet. It said while their exact meaning is not known, the Montana State Highway Patrolmen still wear the emblem 3777 on their shoulder patches today. Okay. And apparently nobody knows what the fuck it means.
00:21:37
Speaker
Oh no, I would want to know. Right? That's not great. You're just like, yes, on my shoulder, I'm supposed to be protecting citizens, but I just have the measurements for a grave on a patch on my shoulder, maybe.
00:21:52
Speaker
The numerology on it is just all off. I thought that was a little weird. It said that the vigilantes quickly spread their rough justice throughout the different areas in the region. They hung about
00:22:13
Speaker
24 men, one of which pointed. So I don't know if these people were actually like guilty. It seemed like it was a mixture of people that were actually guilty of being in laws and people that maybe got a little caught up in being accused and that kind of stuff. Yeah, like they're not holding a trial for these guys. Yeah, like very witch hunty, it seemed.
00:22:42
Speaker
It seems like though at least one of the actual outlaws, I think it was, pointed the finger at Sheriff Henry Plummer as the gang's leader. So like that finally got let out into the public and it caused a huge panic through the town since they said that the sheriff was their leader basically.
00:23:05
Speaker
Oh, they didn't really know that. Okay. No, it was still kind of a secret. If you weren't part of the gang, you didn't really know. He's like playing both sides. Okay. Yeah. So residents were divided, like arguing, starting with some believing that Plummer was corrupt and obviously other people not. It said that under the cover of darkness one night, he was tracked down by a group of vigilantes after he'd been out drinking.
00:23:35
Speaker
And this was on January 10, 1864. It said that 50 to 75 men captured Plummer and his two, like, right-hand deputies named Buckstinson and Ned Ray. And the three were marched to the gallows where the two deputies were hanged first.
00:23:57
Speaker
And then, according to one legend, Plummer offered to tell the crowd where there was this $100,000 worth of gold buried in exchange for his life. And it said, according to the legend, the vigilantes ignored him and hanged him. He died. Much as he probably would have done to others. Yeah. OK. Wow. Yeah.
00:24:27
Speaker
They're just like, woo, success. We hanged him and his deputies. So they're like, woo, all the crimes should stop, right? But no. Answer crime with crime. Right? Yeah.
00:24:40
Speaker
Everything will be right. Yeah. So the death of Plummer and his two deputies did not stop the robberies. Stage robberies became more organized with more robbers involved, like bigger groups and more intelligence being passed around. So like there was more information being gathered and spread from group to group after Plummer died than him orchestrating this huge network himself. So they claimed.
00:25:15
Speaker
Many historians today actually think that Plummer being corrupt and running a gang was actually to cover up the real lawlessness in the Montana Territory and that was the Vigilantes themselves. So they think he was maybe a scapegoat and they put all the stuff on him and were like, let's hang this one person and people will ignore us.
00:25:39
Speaker
it's as tail as old as time I think like the people trying to oh yeah we'll be the ones that'll bring justice and then they get a hold of the power and then they go yeah crazy with it and it does remind me of stuff like that was in the outlander books of course before the revolutionary war take a drink yeah
00:26:05
Speaker
Um, but like they were in North Carolina, there was groups that were called like the regulators and they were some of the first to kind of start fighting. And then they were like, Oh, like, I don't know. But then there's like people called the safety committees, but they were just running around.
00:26:24
Speaker
you know shoot people up and grab people too so it's just like it's scary there's no like oversight by staff and yeah just your neighbor one day just like oh yeah i'm part of a militia now and so i can arrest you and you're like okay great yeah by what authority yeah just because we never got along my dog barks at you oh poor neighbor
00:26:53
Speaker
Doesn't make her one neighbor. No, it does not. I don't know why. So May 1864, that territorial Chief Justice, his name is Sidney Edgerton.
Bannock's Historical Transition
00:27:10
Speaker
Edgerton, maybe. He was appointed as governor and Bannock became the first territorial capital.
00:27:20
Speaker
By the fall of 1864, nearly 10,000 people were living along the hillside in scattered settlements in what would later, or in what they would call the 14-mile city. I think that's kind of the in-between the Virginia, what would be Virginia City and Bannock. They called it the 14-mile city because there was 10,000 people living along that highway.
00:27:47
Speaker
It's not great. Yep, that sprung up quickly. Yeah, there's going to be infrastructure there. Two years from when they first struck gold there. And there's like 14 or like 13,000 people living in the region now. Yeah, the change that happens in some area. Crazy. Unfortunately for the residents, gold was already getting harder to find by then.
00:28:16
Speaker
By 1866, Virginia City was larger and took over the title of territorial capital, which it remained until 1877 when it was changed to Helena. Helena. Helena, that's what it is.
00:28:35
Speaker
Oh, no, I think, yeah. And I was like, isn't there a song in the Helena, Montana? Nope. I don't know. I don't know either. I watched just a lot of American TV, you know. Yeah, I clearly don't watch enough. No. Yeah. There's like a lot more details. This was kind of, I didn't get into a lot of it, but. Oh, there's rabbit holes, man.
00:29:00
Speaker
I fall into them. In these three years since Plummer's death, the Vigilantes had continued their antics and virtually ruled the mining towns in the area. In March of 1867, the towns with the help of their governor stood up against the Vigilantes stating that if they hanged any more people, the law-abiding citizens would retaliate five to one.
00:29:29
Speaker
So if they hung one person, they would kill five vigilantes. Great. Fight, fight vigilante with vigilantism. Oh yeah, fight fire with fire. It said though a few more lynchings happened, the vigilantes reign was over.
00:29:53
Speaker
Their threat basically worked, from what it seems. By 1870, the gold was even harder to come by and the population shrunk to just a few hundred people. And in the next five years, a better school and county courthouse was actually built, but the population's still dwindling.
00:30:20
Speaker
I mean, that's what happens to a lot of these gold places. Like, there's just not enough gold for everybody. It springs up and then five years later, it's gone. Right. Yeah, pretty well.
00:30:33
Speaker
I know, like oil, you can keep pumping it. Yeah. In 1877, the threat of an Indian attack on Bannock led to the citizens hiding inside the courthouse. And these like lookout buildings that they had built said though, other than four settler deaths nearby, no attack ever actually occurred. And then then these four deaths.
00:31:00
Speaker
The only reason I mention it because they decided it said like through a traveling like minister or something convinced them that they needed to build a church in town to thank God for sparing them, which still stands today. It's one of like
00:31:22
Speaker
the buildings that is very popular to go and visit. Yes, those godly men, they're like, build a church here, you have a bar, you have a house, you should have a church. Right?
00:31:37
Speaker
In 1881, the courthouse was abandoned and later remodeled into a hotel, which opened and closed several times over the next few years whenever mining activity dropped or increased. It wasn't really needed otherwise because there was only about 400 residents living in Bannock at that point. Oh, wow. Down from about 3,000. Yeah.
00:32:06
Speaker
um it's crazy but yeah those mining towns like yeah you just come up and then just go on yeah um i don't have too much more but in 1895 bannock was revived a little bit um when the first electric dredge was invented i was confused by what a dredge is but
00:32:33
Speaker
I tried Google, it didn't help very much. It was like, I don't know, some sort of like mining stuff they're doing, right? I'm like, I have a vague notion that it is some sort of tool, but yeah, like, like dredging the oceans or whatever, like, it's like, yeah, stuff off the bottom. I don't know. Yeah. I don't know how you did that to land. It said that, um,
00:32:57
Speaker
them dredging in the area ended up destroying many of the buildings in town. Yeah. It said by the 1930s, businesses had left town and very few people remained. The school was forced to close and the town was abandoned. Maybe they were looking for more places to mine or deposits.
00:33:24
Speaker
I think so. And the Great Depression's happening. So I think it just wasn't enough in the area. Right. In 1954, the town was actually saved from probably total destruction by the elements as well as vandalism by the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks.
Preservation Efforts of Bannock
00:33:45
Speaker
I thought it was kind of cool that they like recognized it so quickly. It's like 1954.
00:33:53
Speaker
Yeah, true. It seems pretty old that they, I wouldn't expect them to be doing that in like the 50s trying to save these towns. Yeah, somebody was nostalgic. Yeah, today it says over 60 structures remain standing, most of which can be explored. The staff preserve the buildings and allow visitors a chance to explore the best preserved Montana ghost town.
00:34:21
Speaker
So apparently it's pretty well preserved. I ran into one source that said there's something called Bannock Days. It features some historic displays, little reenactors and activities that are held
00:34:36
Speaker
The third weekend in July, held annually so coming up fairly soon. There's also I guess a campground that features 28 campsites, as well as like
00:34:53
Speaker
As far as I understood it, there's like separate camping, also along Grasshopper Creek, as well as like little picnic sites. The crick. Yeah, the crick. Yeah. That's cool. I like places like that though, like old historical. Yeah, if you kind of look it up, it looks very cliche, ghost town. Just like buildings, everything's wood.
00:35:19
Speaker
right but yeah it's cool they can go into all of them and walk around and yeah like that yeah a lot of them so they it said that they
00:35:27
Speaker
what they focus on, instead of trying to restore the buildings, just preserving them so they aren't renovating them or replacing anything. They're just basically keeping it as is, but probably getting rid of safety hazards. I don't know. Yeah, making sure it's structurally sound, at least. Yeah, but they're not doing anything else, really. Yeah, but you can go camping in the area, which I thought was cute. Yeah, yeah. Oh, it looks beautiful.
00:35:58
Speaker
We share a national park with Montana there. It's like it's half on the Alberta side and half on the their side and it's Glacier National Park or what's its name in the States? Waterton. Is that? Oh, I don't know. I'm terrible at geography.
00:36:18
Speaker
I, it was like, this is things I learned passing up maps working in the travel department and stuff. Right? Yeah. Or like, I don't know. I don't mind looking at maps. Some people would get really into this guy would come in and tell us how this was wrong and the Edmonton map and whoever printed it was wrong. Oh my god, no. I don't care. I don't have anything to do with that. Go print your own map. Wow.
00:36:43
Speaker
yeah map nerds right i i do have a second place i only have a little bit about it a second bee named ghost town when you text me them they don't want to spell either of these oh yeah it
Modern Ghost Town: Burj al-Baba's in Turkey
00:37:12
Speaker
It kept auto correcting and I had to keep going back and be like, no, I'm not trying to say whatever it kept correcting to spell Bannock incorrectly. It's like, yes, I'm intentionally spelling it wrong. Get out of here. Yeah, judgy red lines.
00:37:32
Speaker
It really didn't like this one because it's Burj al-Baba's in Turkey. It's a lot more recent, but it's equally abandoned. It's kind of interesting if you look it up. It's a very unique ghost town I ran across.
00:37:56
Speaker
I want to know what it looks like. Yeah, it's made up of about 700 abandoned, what's described as Disney-esque castles.
00:38:08
Speaker
What? Okay. Just picturing a lot of sand, but okay. Give us what we've got in the desert. No, we aren't. This housing development started as an idea and that was to build 700 identical, like identical Chateau, like on a small scale.
00:38:31
Speaker
So they were going to be built in the countryside of central Turkey with prices starting about $500,000. They were trying to like draw in like new people to live in Turkey, I guess. That's crazy looking.
00:38:48
Speaker
Yeah, right. And they have absolutely no yards. It's crazy. It's just like boom, boom, boom, boom. And they're like three stories and they look like a tiny castle. Like castle shape, there's turrets, but then it's like that it's like the and balconies and everything. And then it's like, everything's the same where it's just like, like 100% exactly on the hillside. Like, yeah.
00:39:12
Speaker
It's that arrested development place where they started to make Sudden Valley and then they just had a couple of big homes. But it's filled with all the fake castle homes. Oh my god, that's crazy. Yeah, it's insane. There's like hundreds of them. It's very creepy. So construction only began for this in 2014, very recent.
00:39:31
Speaker
And yeah, I didn't keep the name. It was some development group with like a bunch of people that like invested, I guess. Oh, wow. Okay.
00:39:47
Speaker
Yeah, the houses are all in different stages of completion. It was aimed at being these quote unquote mini castles that could be used as holiday homes for wealthy golf tourists. So like people, they wanted it to be like secondary homes, you wouldn't like live live in them, but they were going to be like vacation homes and that kind of stuff. Oh, okay. So developer
00:40:12
Speaker
I think this would be like Sarat, Sarat Group. They ended up filing for bankruptcy in 2019 with a debt of like $27 million after only a handful of the homes were ever actually sold. Oops. Out of a planned $700, they sold a handful. So like four. Less than five.
00:40:37
Speaker
should have started with like just a little neighborhood to see how that one did expand yeah and yeah so they filed for bankruptcy after several investors backed out and it now sits as one of the world's most unique ghost towns the development was plagued I think this
00:40:59
Speaker
played a big part in it. The development was plagued by controversy before it even started with locals hating that it didn't keep with the area's traditional architecture. I don't think it keeps with anybody's traditional architecture. It's very Disney. It's like pure white and a lot of turrets, little balconies, three stories.
00:41:24
Speaker
I mean they're huge. Yeah like I'm not sure whatever that kind of castle type is called but you're like okay but like we know these aren't castles they look like look like they're just made out of cheap like concrete or whatever it's kind of yeah I don't even know what they were made out of like it's like it's like
00:41:41
Speaker
communist Russia trying to do the Cinderella castle for your house. Yeah. Yeah, so the locals hated it. And it actually said that since then, like partially because of this, the Turkish government has introduced new building regulations designed to preserve local character and heritage.
Architectural Controversy and Criticism
00:42:03
Speaker
And this, like,
00:42:05
Speaker
The laws or whatever in the Turkish government include several places where they must remain low rise and fit in with existing neighborhoods, which this does not. It's just like on the side of a hill and we're like fucking 700 castles. Do it.
00:42:27
Speaker
Yep, it's like a sore thumb. So awkward. It said that they also had a fairly unstable economy that has left a bunch of other developers in debt. And there being many incomplete housing projects all across the country, just like this one.
00:42:47
Speaker
Yeah, they're really trying to like draw people in. Yeah, when I was looking it up, there was a bunch of articles about like the government being like, we're drawing people into Turkey. And then it's like, but all the investors are backing out and like people aren't buying these properties and that kind of stuff.
00:43:09
Speaker
yeah this is a different kind of housing crisis and the one guy's like we'll solve we'll solve the economy problems and revitalize everything in less than six months and it was like articles from five years ago and i'm like oh my god
00:43:22
Speaker
by spending more money in building this ship. Yeah. I guess what wasn't completed is that the development would have been completed with a central complex that included Turkish baths, some fitness facilities, sports pitches, a cinema, as well as shopping. So I guess that was planned after the houses.
00:43:50
Speaker
Maybe they should have started with that and then people would have had jobs in their weird hillside community and a reason to move there because it doesn't seem to have anything anywhere near them that they could
00:44:06
Speaker
buy food at or anything yeah that's not how a town is related it seems yeah it said that no one ever actually even lived in the town or moved into a single one of the houses it seems like um and it said that with uh 730 yeah so like the planned 732 castles
00:44:33
Speaker
or empty. We're always empty, which is such a weird number. And it's like 583 of them were how many were built. So there's 583 abandoned castles in Turkey.
00:44:51
Speaker
And some of them not even finished cryptids. And some of them like aren't even finished being built or like mostly built and some of them are a hundred percent built. But yeah, it's very such a bad idea.
00:45:06
Speaker
It's so weird and I do have to say like we joke about like cookie cutter homes where like everything is the same except oh we changed the color of the siding. This one's white and the next one's gray and this one's brown. This is so cookie cutter. They all look absolutely identical. It's scary. It looks like fucking what is it?
00:45:33
Speaker
Edward Scissorhands, it's like the creepy neighborhood, aren't the houses all the same? Like that suburb? I think of a few different things. I think at the beginning of the show weeds, because it started with this little houses on the hillside, and they're all made out of tiki-daki, and it shows a bunch of houses that all look the same in the beginning. Yeah. But like, yeah, yeah. Why? Just think like that. But it's all three story castles with barely a sidewalk between them, and no yard.
00:46:02
Speaker
Even saying castles, that gives poor castles a bad name. How they do not look... That looks weird. It's like a three-story house, but it's like a castle style, I guess, but it's not that much bigger than a house would be. So drab, no stones.
00:46:24
Speaker
And I didn't really see any any pictures of what the inside looks like. So yeah, probably a lot of white just like the outsides were all white. Everything's just like kind of fake like on the inside of the rest of development community that never came to light. They all end up living in that like show home where the
00:46:44
Speaker
open the cupboards. There's like nothing in it. It's like a Barbie house. Yeah, we have a sticker. This is my fridge. It's a sticker. Yeah, I was just reading this book about these two twins who got separated during the when the wall came up.
00:47:07
Speaker
between East and West Berlin during the Cold War in the 60s. It was interesting. But they would like describe like how yeah, that because the East was siding with like
00:47:18
Speaker
communist Russia and like, oh, we're gonna put up a wall to like, keep all our guys from the east from defecting to the west. And then it's like, I'm like, yeah, this looks like castles that they would make in like East Berlin. Nothing can be beautiful. And you know, it's all like, yeah, stark. And like, yeah, yeah, very, like, impersonal.
00:47:42
Speaker
yeah you would never be able to find your house no it's crazy it's like little winding streets it's um i did run across on youtube i didn't watch it but there's like drone footage of people that have flown their drones like above it because it looks crazy from above yeah um oh there was a horror movie where they i read every house looked the same if they tried to leave their house what the fuck was that called we watched it recently
00:48:12
Speaker
Yeah, this guy and just couple of whatever stuck in their suburban house, but then if they like, all the other houses on the block, like, look the same. And if they tried to leave that area, they kept bouncing back or something. Yeah, I don't really remember.
00:48:31
Speaker
Oh my God, that had, I know which one you're talking about. It was, I can always see the actor who's in it. I know he's from like, don't you see me and all that. Was it Vivint or something? Yeah, it was like Vivint or something. Wasn't it? It started with the correct. Let me just, yeah. Yeah. Very true. That was a lot of the exact same house.
00:48:57
Speaker
uh oh vivarium maybe oh that's what it was my very almost like vivant how could you not remember this made up word no i i think i think vivant is a security company oh yeah that's really yeah it was fiction yeah vivarium yeah that was a weird movie i don't mind those ones where they're like there's a magic room in my house or
00:49:27
Speaker
If I go outside, apparently I'll die. You're like, wait, what? I like the ones where it seems like a perfect, perfect neighborhood or, uh, yeah, everybody's too happy, that kind of stuff. And then it like slowly falls apart. It's like a little mystery. What, what's the weirdness? Yeah. Behind the curtain. It's the Truman show or is it get out where they're all like evil. Yeah.
00:49:57
Speaker
I'm so good at describing things today. They're all evil, you know. Taking over the Black people, wait. Whatever that one was. We watched Jason Statham movie today. The Beekeeper, it was called. Oh, okay. That was a lot of action. As one can imagine, but he also really took care of bees and it was
00:50:27
Speaker
Oh, like, save the bees, but also kill Bill. Yeah, it's like how John Wick is like...
00:50:35
Speaker
I love dogs, but also like don't fuck with me or the dog. He's like, I love bees. Gotta save the planet, bro. Save the bees. Well, they've also fucked with this senior that he was like friends with. And he can take kindly to that because they scammed her. They just copied John Wick, but they changed the dog to a senior citizen. Kind of.
00:51:02
Speaker
That was, you know, it's the same character. He plays in everything. He wants justice and, you know, he's going to kill to get it. All he cares about is right and wrong. Yeah. It was interesting. Josh Hutcherson was in it and was like, Oh, really? Yeah. Like a villain or whatever. So he was kind of a trash.
00:51:27
Speaker
interesting yeah i don't think i've ever seen him in like a villain role before right he's way more like um high school musical disney yeah he's normally such like a nice nice young man i don't know exactly oh that was anyway i digress sorry was that was that it were you done yeah that's the end oh
00:51:57
Speaker
not bad i like it um that was two very different places yeah it was like the wild wild west but i also couldn't not talk about the disney-esque castles yes yeah i would never have heard of that one i didn't run across it um no i hadn't either and i was thought it was so weird i was like oh this is really recent it's like they started building these in 2014 it's like 10 years ago
00:52:27
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, someone I'd picture for a ghost town, but there's there is modern like abandoned communes and places like that. Well, this is weird because it was like abandoned before people ever even lived there. Like, true. Nobody ever even put their stuff in. Yeah, it really doesn't fit your typical mold. That's for sure. But yeah, those ones are interesting when people try to do their like, idea of utopia, like there's a
00:52:57
Speaker
that place by Disney World in Orlando where he wanted this planned community and whatever Walt had a vision for so it's kind of like supposed to be like picture perfect like it's almost like you're living on the streets of Disney where like you know everything's gonna be like in this neighborhood and it is creepy and then of course there's it's not perfect and so of course there's like crimes that have happened there and shit like that and it's like
00:53:28
Speaker
Yeah, sorry, dude. People are going to people so you can't make it perfect. Yeah. Anything. You're just going to have to deal with the consequences when people fuck up. Yeah. Interesting.
00:53:43
Speaker
people try to make these unique little neighborhoods and whatnot. Yeah, I feel like if they had maybe done like a street of them, it would be a lot more like rare, and then it would have been like this whole thing, but to build like 700 of them.
00:54:01
Speaker
um and just like talk about not in keeping with any of what i picture must be the architect architecture and turkey yeah turkey is gorgeous and these are probably yeah like yeah stick out so much and are so misplaced i would rather stay in okay i want to say it's called capadocia
00:54:25
Speaker
And it's like, it might be in Turkey. And I feel like it's one of those deserty places where there's like, they carved little houses like into like, the hills and the ground and stuff. And so you like, at least literally- I think that came up when it was looking, looking up like a bayonet places. Yeah. I mean, the interesting place to visit, that's for sure, but not to live there.
00:54:51
Speaker
I know, like I wouldn't hate to go to Turkey and like try exploring one of the finished or like mostly finished places to see what they're like. Right. Yeah, just seems creepy. I just can't get over why they went that way. I'm like, right? Okay. Two door castle here in Turkey or whatever. I like it. All right, well, I'll take a quick break and
00:55:21
Speaker
I'll be right back for more ghost hands. Oh no, I'm yawning. This one, no, I know, cause it is getting late.