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Writer's pictureJude

Ghost Towns and Other Misnomers

Abandoned spaces hold silent clues to everyday history.


We're called sensitives, intuitives, psychics, mediums, and other colloquialisms, depending or country or region. With only slight variances in the meanings behind the terms, we all have something in common... we love to visit "ghost towns."


While the name bespeaks active spirits, I can't say I've ever actually had a classic paranormal experience at a so-named ghost town. That said, it doesn't mean I haven't felt something profound.

When I practice psychometry - using inanimate objects to read an event, energy or connect to a spirit, I sense a definite residual life attached to that object. Depending on the receptivity of the spirit, the importance of the object and the need of the client, I've had some remarkable connections. It's quite different when visiting an entire town that still cradles the essence of its residents.

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Bodie Ghost Town, Bodie, CA


At one time, calloused hands hammered beams and timbers building a home, a business, a dream...

Abandoned places hold a certain sadness unlike anything else. I always think of what occurred within walls - how much people lived, loved, lost throughout dozens of decades that slipped by without notice. At one time, determined calloused hands hammered the beams and timbers building a home, a business, a dream, never imagining the state of arrested decay of a place like Bodie, California.


Emptiness... that's what crosses my mind when walking through Bodie's deserted streets. Not just any emptiness, though, abject emptiness - as if the air had left the region. It's quiet upon quiet, even with incessant wind, nothing seems to move. The town is far from everything and it's hard to imagine how it could've been so self-sufficient so many years ago.


Mining made Bodie possible, gold specifically, and at one point more than 10,000 people lived, worked and thrived there. Now, soft voices from the past meld with the occasionally creaking walls and unsettled tools left, undisturbed. Bodie's existence was like a flame in history, burning too bright and hot to sustain. A general store, still stocked with supplies, bespeaks of a rapid decline. Much of the town actually burned near the turn-of-the-century and, again in the 1930s, leaving about 100 structures today, all judiciously monitored by the Parks Dept.


Because of it's delicate nature, visitors are not allowed to enter the buildings, touch or handle anything. My fingers often reached closely to objects that called my name, but fell short of the connection.


Calling Bodie a ghost town means something different than it serves as a safe harbor for the spirit world. It means the soul of the town itself had departed to another realm. It lives in memories, what's left of them, history books, and imaginations. Still, those desert winds mask thousands of voices, heartbeats, lives well lived, fully, with purpose and ambition. They continue.



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