Fascinating Or Creepy Ghost Town In Africa

 Nothing can quite intrigue and horrify us in equal parts like a town that was abandoned in its entirety, whether you're looking for a creepy, off-the-beaten-path way to spend a day or a backdrop for a chilling photo series, we've rounded up the 4 most photogenic and terrifying ghost towns in Africa...!!!

Ghost cities are known to be vacant neighborhood permanently abandoned by inhabitants due to war, business decline or because of a mine being worked out.

Saint Martin of the Tigers 

(in portuguese: São Martinho dos Tigres), sometimes referred to simply as Village of Tigres Bay (in portuguese: Vila da Baía dos Tigres), is a ghost town in southern Angola, located on Tigres Island, currently separated from the Angolan mainland by the Tigres Strait.The village had great infrastructure, having become the largest Angolan fishing center before the first half of the 20th century. However, in 1962, strong waves broke the isthmus of the Tigres peninsula, making it the current Tigres Island. Thereafter Saint Martin of the Tigers faced many difficulties, suffering problems with the supply of water, food and basic items.

Pictorial representation of the current state in Tigers

Between 1975 and 1976, given that the majority of its population was of European descent and, fearing reprisals from nationalist movements in the ongoing civil war, the village was abandoned, never being populated again for long periods. In the 1980s and 1990s the Angolan government tried to encourage waves of migration to repopulate the village, but was unsuccessful.

Pictorial representation of the current state in Tigers

Even so, from 1996 onwards, the Angolan government figuratively appointed the communal administrator of Saint Martin of the Tigers,, elaborating an ambitious project to recover the locality and the valuable fishing center. The European Union has come to foresee support, but the town's recovery has not yet started. The economic activity that still develops in the area is tourism, thanks to the popular legends that emerged after its transformation into a ghost town.

Kolmanskop (Afrikaans for “Coleman's head”, German: Kolmannskuppe) is a ghost town in the Namib in southern Namibia, ten kilometres inland from the port town of Lüderitz.

Kolmanskop’s prospectors were becoming rich overnight simply picking diamonds off the desert floor, but German authorities wanted greater control over the incredible riches. They cracked down, declaring a vast area of Namibia a Sperrgebiet, or restricted zone, forbidding entry to ordinary people and reserving prospecting rights for a single, Berlin-based company. Tribespeople displaced from their land by the zone’s construction were often employed as laborers in diamond mines, forced to live on cramped, barracks-like compounds for months at a time.

         Pictorial representation of the current state in                                  Kolmanskop

But it wasn’t to last. Intensive mining depleted the area by the 1930s, and in 1928, the town’s fate was sealed when the richest diamond fields ever known were found on the beach terraces to the south. The townspeople left in droves, abandoning homes and possessions.

By 1956, Kolmanskop was completely abandoned. The dunes that once rolled over Lewala’s railway tracks now burst through the ghost town’s doors and porches, filling its rooms with smooth banks of sand.In 2002, a local private company called Ghost Town Tours was awarded the concession to manage Kolmanskop as a tourist attraction, bussing visitors into the forbidden zone to explore and photograph the sand-covered ruins. Today, as many as 35,000 tourists visit the site every year, bringing money to the nearby coastal town of Lüderitz,But even these reminders that nothing lasts forever won’t last forever. Despite ongoing conservation efforts and a yearly limit on the number of tourists, studies undertaken around 2010 showed “a marked deterioration” of several structures in Kolmanskop.

Before long, the town might vanish into the desert.

Until then, the surreal ruins remind us of our societies’ power to build—but also of the material waste and human suffering we’re capable of wreaking. Today’s tourists visit a testament to the evils of the colonial system, a melancholy monument to a world disappearing once and for all beneath history’s shifting sands.

 

Dallol (Amharic: ዳሎል) is a locality in the Dallol woreda of northern Ethiopia. Located in Kilbet Rasu, Afar Region in the Afar Depression, it has a latitude and longitude of 14°14′19″N 40°17′38″E with an elevation of about 130 metres (430 ft) below sea level.

At Dallol there was a mining community where an Italian and later a U.S. company mined potash; being in use since the early 1900s it was abandoned in the 1960s, its known as one of the hottest, driest, and lowest places on the planet – 380 feet below sea level. The average temperature there is 93 degrees Fahrenheit, the highest in the world. The fact that it barely rains Dallol, one of the most remote places on Eart, only receives 100 to 200mm of rainfall per year – doesn’t help As most buildings were made of salt blocks and because of the extremely aggressive environment, the town and factory as well as what remains of a railway leading to Eritrea is little more than a pile of rubble and rust today.

GRAND-BASSAM, CÔTE D'IVOIRE, Hundreds of years ago a French colonial settlement located in this place. The city settled down in an impossibly beautiful area and was remarkable for its housing development. Initially it was a tourist centre with lots of guesthouses, and most beautiful parks and gardens. In 1896, the French Government decided to leave the city because of the regular outbreak of yellow fever. However, for a few more decades Grand-Bassam has remained the main tourist attraction and its infrastructure was being improved.

In the 60s of the last century Grand-Bassam began to lose its former popularity and gradually fell into ruin. In 2012 the historical centre of the city was recognized a global sight and became a UNESKO heritage. The greatest value of the abandoned town are the architectural monuments that maintained their impressive appearance despite the town’s difficult period. Unique monuments that date back to the old colonial days are surrounded by dense vegetation which is not peculiar to this area. Grand- Bassam really looks like a wonderful oasis-mirage from the past.

Having read through this beautiful piece, which do you think it is Fascinating 😊 Or Creepy 👻?, Also when are you visiting ☺️? Do well to engage in the comment section, thanks for all the love and Encouragement you give💚