A View for the Apocalypse: A Visit to Centralia, PA
We all have days when the zombie apocalypse seems all right. Days when we need to see no one, to hear no human sound, to brood in our melancholy and surround ourselves with a landscape so other than we can escape our lives entirely. On those days, only a place that reflects how we feel inside will do. Centralia, Pennsylvania is a place for those days. It is a place for Halloweens, cold winter low-light days and assorted ends of the world.
Centralia lies in Eastern Pennsylvania, just over an hour’s drive from the capital city of Harrisburg and an easy two hours from Philadelphia. For years it has attracted vandals, misanthropes, and devotees of the Silent Hill video game, which was inspired by the location. Halloween is a popular time in the abandoned mining town, with dozens of teenagers gathering to create bonfires by throwing logs into certain cracks in the road, where they will ignite without the help of lighter fluid, compliments of the fire that has burned underneath the desolate streets since 1962. They rummage through the few houses and trailers left unoccupied decades ago, though anything of value has long since been taken away. They make off with creepy reminders of the families that lived here generations ago — baby dolls and children’s socks and pot-holders, and replace them with empty beer cans and used condoms.
But visit Centralia any other day of the year, and you’re bound to have the place to yourself, unless some of the 5 residents who still technically live here are home. Visiting on a winter day is best, as the sounds of the wind rustling bare braches and fire crackling underneath the pavement compliment your view of miles of abandoned land and add to the sense of foreboding that draws people here. A walk through the woods brings to mind the forest scene of A Nightmare Before Christmas, dark naked trees towering over you as you think about the circumstances that lead a town to ghost status.
Centralia’s coal mine opened in the 1860s, but even in these early days a cloud smelling vaguely of rotten eggs seems to have hung over the town, as its founder was murdered while driving his buggy back home shortly after Centralia’s establishment. He was killed by the infamous Molly Maguires, an Irish society operating in secrecy that plagued miners in the area, their violent actions eventually leading to 20 members’ executions by hanging. Nonetheless, the town thrived without him, at one time claiming 2500 residents who built traditional homes along the perfectly straight roads, laid out in a simple grid, as well as a church that towers over the town atop a hill with an impressive cemetery.
Centralia enjoyed illustrious status even amongst so many other similar towns throughout the region because the coal mined there was famous for burning cleaner and much longer than that elsewhere. This was also the town’s downfall. In the 1940s, amongst circumstances as distorted as the church seen through a cloud of steam, workers set some coal near the surface on fire, supposedly while burning trash in the landfill atop a hill well outside the town. The fire spread underground and, because it had latched on to such quality coal, the fire was predicted to burn for 300 years. Town officials, hoping to monitor the temperature of this fresh hell beneath them, installed tubes that ran down into the burning earth. No one thought of the side effect that this produced — introducing oxygen to the fire.
Seemingly unfazed by the fact that the ground beneath their feet was literally waiting to engulf them in flames, the residents of Centralia stayed put until the 1960s, erecting small trailer parks and white wood-sided homes, planting gardens and attending Sunday mass, avoiding the landfill where the fire had started, but unable to avoid the smell of death that came whistling down the hill on breezy days. Their peaceful ignorance of what lay beneath came to an abrupt halt in the early 60s, when a young boy was playing in his back yard, only to suddenly disappear from sight as a sinkhole opened beneath him. The boy was saved by the quick thinking of a cousin, but it was clear the people could no longer remain in the town. So they left. And not only did they leave, they left many of their belongings.
Today, almost no houses remain in Centralia, victims of nature and mischief-makers. Those that remain are coated in layers of grime. One house worth a visit sits on the grounds of the church, which still holds Sunday mass for the town’s 5 occupants. Sneak around the creaky wooden porch, avoiding loose planks under foot, and you can peer through the shattered windows, Virgin Mary decals still clinging to them as if to keep the hell outside from coming in.
When you finish marveling at the water that rushes down the church stairs like a waterfall after rains, visit the cemetery, which features some impressive, and some puzzling tombstones. Try and decipher the symbols that recur and ponder why someone would have left a bathtub here. Imagine the place as it will look at the end of the world — much the same, more than likely. If you’re thick-skinned and not prone to nightmares, walk around the church property to its outer edge, where you’ll find a couple abandoned trailer homes, their possessions heaped nonchalantly in a pile, graffiti as horrifying as what lies below the town scrawled on their sides. You might see a singed stuffed animal, its once soft fur matted down after years of being tread upon. You will certainly find old chairs and tables, recliners that seem they may start rocking of their own accord at any moment. Some of these are missing legs, the result of the Halloween crowds looking for wood to throw into the cracks of the street to see if it will catch.
Wander back into town, if you can tell that’s where you are. There are no houses left in the city center, but the grid of streets remains, though they’re overgrown with weeds. The foundations of some homes remain. Walk these deserted streets and come out on the other side to find the hill where everything started. You can still walk up to the landfill, though numerous red signs will caution you against it. You’ll smell the place the fire started before you see it; here the steam pours out more heavily than anywhere else, and you can feel the ground growing slightly warmer beneath your feet. You may pull your coat around you as the wind whips your hair around your head, but just inches below your feet lie flames that would melt the skin off your bones, and that will threaten to do so for another 250 or so years.
If you want to test what you’re made of, visit Centralia alone. If you’re wise, bring a few friends with you. Even if you venture off the beaten path, all you need to do is stand on the hill where it started and scream down into what was Centralia. Your voice will echo off the hills, off the chipped walls of the church, bounce around the windowless trailer homes, and reach your companions down below, so you’ll all know no one has been pulled into the spidery arteries flowing with fire beneath where you stand.
