Terlingua Ghost Town

Terlingua boomed as a mercury mining town in the early 1900s, then collapsed after World War II when the industry died. Workers just left. The ruins are now a tourist stop near Big Bend, and Best Life Magazine ranked it the second creepiest ghost town in America.

Terlingua Ghost Town rises from the Chihuahuan Desert like a monument to boom-and-bust dreams, its crumbling adobe ruins scattered across the stark landscape near Big Bend National Park. Once a thriving quicksilver mining community of 2,000 souls, Terlingua was abandoned in the 1940s when the mercury mines played out, leaving behind not just buildings but the spirits of miners who gave their lives extracting the toxic "liquid silver" from the earth.

The quicksilver mines claimed countless lives through cave-ins, equipment failures, and the insidious effects of mercury poisoning. Miners who survived the underground hazards often succumbed slowly to tremors, madness, and organ failure--the terrible price of handling the poisonous metal. Their spirits wander the hillside dotted with mine openings, still searching for the ore that killed them. Hikers report seeing lamp lights moving through sealed mine tunnels and hearing the rhythmic clink of pickaxes echoing from workings that have been abandoned for nearly a century.

The Perry Mansion, the grandest structure in Terlingua, served as home to mining magnate Howard Perry and his family. The partially restored building generates intense ghostly activity--footsteps on non-existent upper floors, the rustle of formal gowns in empty rooms, and a woman in Victorian dress gazing from windows that no longer hold glass. Some investigators believe Mrs. Perry never accepted leaving her desert kingdom.

The old cemetery on the hill above town holds the remains of miners, their families, and the children who died in epidemics that periodically swept through the isolated community. Visitors report seeing small figures playing among the wooden crosses at twilight, their laughter carrying on the desert wind before falling silent.