
There are planes, trains and automobiles as well as homes, airports and mines. And all are eerily quiet.

These are some of the world's strangest places, spots where time appears to have stood still. Once thriving settlements that are now nothing more than ghost towns.

They still stand as monuments to changing economic circumstances, political upheavals, wars gone by and natural or man-made disasters.



Among them is perhaps the most notorious deserted town in recent history, Pripyat in Ukraine.

A doll is seen amongst beds at a kindergarten in Ukraine's ghost town of Pripyat, in April 2006

Prypiat in the Ukraine, the Chernobyl worker's town evacuated after the disaster

Bumper cars at a once popular amusement park stand abandoned in Pripyat, two miles away from the Chernobyl nuclear plant

A view of the ferris wheel in the deserted town of Pripyat, near the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, Ukraine

The Chernobyl nuclear power station is seen from Ukraine's ghost town of Pripyat

Wall shadow paintings outside the Palace of Culture in Pripyat town. Chernobyl exclusion zone, Ukraine

In April 2006 marked the 20th anniversary of the world's worst nuclear disaster, when a reactor at the Chernobyl plant exploded, spreading a radioactive cloud across Europe and the Soviet Union.



But as these pictures show, there was no-one there to remember.

Some 50,000 residents from and around Pripyat were evacuated after the 1986 accident. Now, 27 years after the Chernobyl disaster, the contaminated zone with the abandoned town of Pripyat has become a popular tourist destination for numerous visitors.

To this day in Pripyat there is the remains a fairground with a ferris wheel and bumper car ride that look frozen in time.



Another eerily quiet town is Kolmanskop in Namibia, southern Africa. Here sand dunes have enveloped what was a mining settlement on the Namibian Diamond Coast.



It was abandoned in the 1950s after the Second World War as diamond prices crashed, and operations moved to Oranjemund.



A man walks outside of the crumbling oval skeleton of the House of the Bulgarian Communist Party on mount Buzludzha in central Bulgaria

A man walks inside of the crumbling oval. Over two decades after the toppling of the regime they glorified, the megalomaniac monuments of the communist era are still standing

The United States Steel Company paid $385,000 toward the construction of this $1million Gothic beauty in Gary, Indiana, in the 1920s, but now the church lies in decay

Abandoned: The City United Methodist Church in Gary, Indiana

Sand dunes surround the abandoned houses of the ghost town of Kolmonskop, Namibia

Sign of the times: Kolmanskop is a ghost mining town in the Sperrgebiet National Park, Namibia

Sands of time: The interior of a house filled with sand in Kolmanskop, Namibia, Africa

Two rooms. A ghost town buried in the sand at Kolmanskop, a mining town near Luderitz on the Namibian Diamond Coast

The town was abandoned in the 1950s after World War II as diamond prices crashed, and operations moved to Oranjemund

In Cyprus, deserted houses and streets are seen in the town of Varosha, in northern Cyprus. Varosha was a popular seaside resort until the Turkish invasion in 1974. It lies between the Turkish Cypriot north of the island and the Greek Cypriot south.



And in South Tyro in Northern Italy sightseers gather where the v illage of Graun once stood. Now just a church tower can be seen sticking out of the partially frozen Lake Reschen reservoir.

The village was destroyed and the valley flooded in 1950, due to damming up the Etsch river to produce electricity .

Abandoned hotels in Varosha, the Greek Cypriot resort town of Famagusta, remain sealed off to people and settlements despite an easing of checkpoint crossings on the ethnically divided island

Beach umbrellas on Palm Beach bordering the ghost town of Varosha, abandoned during the Turkish invasion of 1974

Deserted houses and streets in the deserted town of Varosha, in northern Cyprus

Derelict apartment blocks and crumbling hotels riddled with bullet holes sit on empty beaches behind barbed-wire fencing after Varosha's 15,000 residents fled in 1974

In the U.S., perhaps the best known abandoned building across the nation stands derelict. The abandoned Michigan Central Station is seen in Detroit, Michigan.

The city is a part of America's Midwestern 'Rust Belt', the heartland of the country and home to big unionised manufacturers like the auto and steel industries.

For years, Michigan Central Station, the towering train depot on the outskirts of downtown Detroit, stood as a haunting symbol of the city's decline and fall.

People take pictures in front of the former church tower of the village of Graun in South Tyrol which sticks out of the partially frozen Lake Reschen reservoir in northern Italy

The village was destroyed and the valley flooded in 1950, due to damming up the Etsch river to produce electricity

The last train pulled out of the station in 1988, shortly before the Honda Accord became the best-selling car in America, a humbling milestone for the city and its top industry.

Continuing the industrial theme, old locomotives are seen in a train cemetery in Uyuni, near a salt flat some 290 miles south of La Paz.

These locomotives and freight cars were part of Bolivia's first railway network that carried minerals between Uyuni and Antofagasta, Chile, nearly a century ago, according to local media.

Rust belt: The abandoned Michigan Central Station is seen in Detroit, Michigan

The Michigan Central Train depot sits vacant just west of downtown Detroit, Michigan

Rusty steam locomotives are also pictured left abandoned at a locomotive graveyard at Thessaloniki, in Greece. The hulks include those of an American S160, Austrian 2-10-0 and 2-8-0, and other 2-8-0 steam locomotives.



In Japan, an aerial view of Battleship Island shows the site of an abandoned coal mining operation in Nagasaki Harbour.

Miners and their families lived on the island in apartment complexes and worked the tunnels underground.

Old locomotives are seen in a train cemetery in Uyuni, near a salt flat some 290 miles south of La Paz

End of the line: An old locomotive at the train cemetery in Potosi, Bolivia

Out of steam: Rusting machines at the Uyuni train cemetery, in Altiplano, Potosi, Bolivia

Rusty steam locomotives abandoned at a locomotive graveyard at Thessaloniki, in Greece

Closer to home, the eerie sight of derelict Maunsell Forts in the Thames Estuary can be seen. These were small fortified towers built in the Thames and Mersey estuaries built during the Second World War to help defend Britain from invasion.

They were named after their designer, Guy Maunsell. The forts were decommissioned in the late 1950s and later used for other activities.

One became the Principality of Sealand; boats visit the remaining forts occasionally, and a consortium called Project Redsands is now planning to conserve the fort situated at Redsand.

Ship wrecks rusting on the shores of the beach of Nouadhibou, one of the largest ship wreck cemeteries worldwide, Mauritania, north-western Africa

An aerial view of Battleship Island, the site of an abandoned coal mining operation in Nagasaki Harbour

Closed for business: Nara Dreamland, was closed in 2006, due to lack of visitors

Nara Dreamland is an abandoned amusement park in Nara, Japan. It operated from 1961 up to 2006, when it was closed due to lack of visitors

Light shines through the windows inside the empty main hall of the decaying Nicosia International Airport

An abandoned Cyprus Airways plane lies on the tarmac at the decaying Nicosia International Airport

Nicosia International Airport is an abandoned airport of the Cypriot capital of Nicosia. It was originally the main airport for the island, but the commercial activity ceased after the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974

Long departed: Nicosia International Airport was originally the main airport for the island, but the commercial activity ceased after the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974

An abandoned Cyprus Airways plane is seen on the tarmac through the shattered glass in a hangar building

Set adrift: Derelict Maunsell Forts in the Thames Estuary