Built with visions of suburban prosperity in more optimistic times, the empty shells of former dream homes dot the countryside among piles of construction rubble and fallen-down fences. Economic highs and lows have led to abandonments of entire villages all over the world, from China to the Mediterranean, but Ireland is among the nations that was particularly hard-hit.

Photographer Valérie Anex captures Ireland’s ‘ghost estates’ in a series of striking images that juxtapose a fading hope for sanitized suburbia with the current reality, which is simply that nobody can afford to live in these houses. The National Institute for Regional and Spacial Analysis defines ‘ghost estates’ as developments of ten houses or more in which fifty percent or less of the homes are occupied or completed.

The latest tally of ghost estates in Ireland, taken in 2013, is 30% less than it was when Anex took these photos in 2011, but that’s still well over ten thousand mostly-empty neighborhoods in a relatively small nation (and just a small percentage of Ireland’s 350,000-some-odd abandoned houses.)

Most of the ghost estates are found in the rural areas of the northern and western parts of the country. Says Anex, “These empty shells are eyesores for the locals in these small towns. The crisis is affecting the country – unemployment, debts, budget cuts, flights of capital investments – but it is also shaping its landscape.”

“Bitter memories left by the spectral and temporary nature of the property boom in Ireland, ghost estates are the symbol of the property market’s collapse, a topology of the economic disintegration of the country.”

The Ghost Estates series will be on display at the Photobookshow in Brighton, England this June.

Hell no, the last residents of Picher, Oklahoma won’t go – even though their town is officially labeled a hazardous waste site, and there are only 10 of them still clinging to the remains of its past. Picher isn’t even considered a town anymore. It’s just a Superfund site dominated by mountains of mill sand and tailings from the old lead-zinc mining fields, with extensive subsurface excavation putting everything in danger of caving in. Municipal activities stopped in 2009, and the vast majority of its residents vacated the town by 2013.

(top image via randylane; above image via claycountypara)

At its prime in the 1920s, Picher had a population of over 20,000, with 14,000 people working in the mines. Between 1917 and 1947 the town produced over $20 billion worth of ore, including more than fifty percent of the lead and zinc used during World War I. But as mining activity slowed down, the population dwindled. Then, the extent of the contamination was discovered.

(image via: wikimedia commons)

Once the mining ceased, Picher essentially became a toxic waste dump for the contaminated water from 14,000 abandoned mine shafts as well as 70 million tons of mine tailings and 36 million tons of mill sand and sludge. At one point, the piles of debris were so high, they looked like mountains dominating the otherwise flat landscape. These piles of mining waste were located right beside neighborhoods, the wind blowing the particles all over everything and everyone. Kids played on those piles of waste, and went swimming in tailings ponds full of toxins. A 1996 study found lead poisoning in 34% of Picher’s children.

(image via: wikimedia commons)

The town was declared the Tar Creek Superfund Site, and in 2006, a mandatory evacuation was announced, with all residents bought out by the State of Oklahoma. The fact that all of that mining had seriously compromised the ground beneath the entire town made it even more dangerous – and then, in 2008, an F4 tornado came along and destroyed 150 homes. Picher is officially uninhabitable, but that hasn’t stopped about ten people from clinging to it anyway.

(image via: marada)

MSNBC reports that six homes and one business remain, even as everything around them is demolished, the final residents insisting that when the Superfund cleanup is complete, Picher will rise again. It’ll take at least thirty years for that to happen, however, since the Tar Creek Superfund Site is just one of four sub-sites within the Tri-State Mining District, all of which continues to contaminate towns throughout Kansas,  Missouri and Oklahoma with toxic runoff.

(image via: marada)

Pharmacist Gary Linderman runs the sole remaining business in Picher, which acts as a social hub for former residents who still travel there to get their medicine despite relocating to other cities. “I think there’s going to be a resurgence in Picher – in time,” says Linderman.

Mildewed crosses, lonely spires, barely-visible stone foundations and rusting bed frames are all that’s left to show for these 10 intentionally submerged towns and structures from India to Massachusetts. When additional water and power is needed to provide for growing populations, small villages often have to be sacrificed, and while some were demolished before their remains were flooded, others can still be seen as ghostly visions wavering beneath the surface.

Potosi, Venezuela

Another town lost to the creation of a hydroelectric dam, Potosi was abandoned in 1985, its residents relocating and leaving their former homes to be filled with water. For 20 years, all that was visible of the Veneuzuelan town was a single mildewed cross topping a drowned church, but by the year 2010, the waters began to recede and the town slowly reappeared. The gothic church that was once submerged is visible again due to droughts and water shortages, erosion and water damage making it appear much older than it really is.

Steeple Tombstone: Curon Venosta, Italy

A single spire marks the location of an entire town lost beneath Lago di Resia. The alpine village of Curon Venosta was flooded soon after World War II when officials decided to merge three pre-existing lakes into one to create a hydroelectric dam. Before it was inundated, the town – which included 163 houses and nearly 1,300 acres of land planted with fruit – was filled with sand. The bell tower, which was built in the 14th century, was left intact as a memorial, and can be reached on foot in the winter when the lake freezes over.

Vilarinho da Furna, Portugal

In 1972, the creation of a new dam meant the ancient Vilarinho da Furna was lost beneath the water. The Portuguese village, which dates back to Roman times, was home to almost 300 people inhabiting 80 houses before it was submerged; the property still belongs to their descendants, and reappears every now and then when the reservoir levels fall. The community was unique in that it had a communitarian social system with a council called the Junta made up of a single member from each family, a practice dating back to the Visigoths. When the villagers left they took as much as they could, creating their own road to transport things like rocks and roof tiles to their new homes. Some of those rocks were used to build a museum commemorating Vilarinho da Furna, which contains a collection of clothing, agricultural tools, and paintings depicting daily life in the village.

Jal Mahal, Jaipur, India

The Water Palace of Jaipur, India sits in the center of Man Sagar Lake. No one knows exactly when it was built, but it’s believed that the red sandstone structure is at least 300 years old and was constructed before damming created the lake, submerging its lower four stories. When the lake is full, only the top level can be reached, and only by boa. At night, the place is illuminated with floodlights like some kind of hallucinatory ghost structure. The palace was recently restored and is now open to visitors.

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Remains of everything from an island prison that once held mafia bosses to the shells of modern Greek villas that fell victim to economic strife bake under the hot sun in the nations situated around and within the Mediterranean Sea. Some of these modern additions to all of the ancient ruins, like the resort town of Varosha or the medieval village of Anavatos, fell victim to bloody wars, while others continue the same old sad storyline heard around the world of riches gained and lost.

Abandoned Resort Town of Varosha, Cyprus

(images vía: pablo fj, klearchos, sometimes-interesting)

Once a playground for the rich and famous, where stars like Elizabeth Taylor lounged on hotel balconies overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, Varosha now stands silent and empty, its windows smashed, its beach chairs rusting. Unlike other resort towns around the world that have found themselves on the decline due to changing tourism patterns and the economy, Varosha didn’t fall slowly. Rather, everything ground to a sudden halt in the summer of 1974, when the ongoing war between the Greeks and the Turks entered within the city limits. Smack dab in the middle of high season when it was packed with visitors,Turkish forces stormed the city with air strikes and ground forces. Everyone fled, tourists and residents alike, and the town that was once home to 39,000 was totally empty. The Turkish army fenced it off and forbade entry, and it has remained that way to this day.

Bones of Modern Villas in Greece

(images via: patrick van dam)

The hollow concrete bones of what were supposed to become luxurious villas in the Greek islands stand on the coast looking like modern versions of the nation’s celebrated ancient ruins. These homes are just a handful among many that were planned before the economic meltdown and left unfinished when the money ran out. Some of the developers reportedly still plan to pick them back up when conditions are better. Says photographer Patrick Van Dam, “The architectural lines combined with the ash-grey concrete structures are an attractive contrast against the rough, red-coloured rocks, the warm yellow high grass and the olive green bushes and trees. This almost abstract scenery shows a unique synergy between architecture and nature. It creates a new and intriguing landscape in which failure, poverty and hopelessness are easily forgotten.”

Kayakoy, Turkey

(images via: pavelrybin, chris_parfitt)

Stone ruins of a once-vibrant town bake in the sun at the base of the Taurus Mountains near Olu Deniz, Turkey. The haunting remains of Kayakoy stand as yet another symbol of the Greco-Turkish War. Established in the 1700s, Kayakoy was built on the site of the ancient city of Karmylassos and was home to Anatolian-speaking Greek residents. Nearly all of them fled during the official population exchange in 1923. About 300,000 Turks were forced out of Greece and into Turkey, and 200,000 Greeks sent back to their homeland. Kayakoy was heavily damaged by a 1957 earthquake and is now a preserved ghost town, run as a museum village and historical monument.

Asinara: Abandoned Prison Island, Sardinia

(images via: montereybay, parks.it)

It may now be a tranquil marine protected area where rare species like the muflone sheep can thrive, but the island of Asinara, Sardinia was once used for less peaceful purposes. The island is dotted with ancient Roman and Greek ruins and was home to pastoralists and fishermen in the 1800s, but it became a quarantine for people with diseases like smallpox at the turn of the 20th century and by World War I, it was used as a military concentration camp. In the 1970s, officials took advantage of its isolation to house terrorists, and later built a maximum security prison that’s got to have some of the best views in the world. The prison held mafia members like Totó Riina until it was closed in 1997, at which point the island became a national park. In addition to the remains of the abandoned prison, visitors can explore small cities built for and by the inhabitants of the quarantine camp. The prison can be seen in the video above at the 2:47 mark.

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Haikyo is the Japanese term for ‘ruins’ and intimates infiltration and exploration of the country’s abandoned places, of which there are many. The economic highs and lows of the past century have produced abandonments that are every bit as colorful and fascinating as the nation’s culture, from love hotels with genitalia-shaped rock gardens and ghost clinics full of human body parts in jars to a concrete tower deemed the world’s most perfect anti-zombie fortress.

Not So Sexy: Abandoned Love Hotels

Japan is famous for its ‘love hotels,’ places where busy parents, people carrying out illicit affairs and anyone who’s just plain curious can pay by the hour for bizarre themed rooms, which might feature anything from a real Japanese bridge to a carousel or a human-sized cage. But inevitably, some of these hundreds of hotels are going to go under – and what’s left behind can be eye-popping. Take, for example, Fuurin Motel in the small town of Chiba. Documented (along with many other fascinating Japanese abandonments) by Haikyo.org, this ten-room love hotel is still strewn with beds shaped like carriages, statues of knights, gold-painted bath tubs and zen gardens full of penis-shaped rocks.

Human Organs in Jars at the Nichitsu Clinic

Nichitsu is a former mining village in Saitama Prefecture that was once home to 3,000 people in the 1960s, and is now completely abandoned, tucked away in a valley that’s often shrouded in fog, making its yawning, deteriorating architecture even more eerie. While the entire town is worth a look, it’s within the wooden walls of a relatively unassuming-looking clinic that real horrors can be found. The entire place is strewn not only with debris, furniture, x-rays and arcane-looking doctor’s tools, but jars of human body parts – including the ear seen above, tucked away under a fern leaf just outside. Urban explorers like French photography Jordy Meow, who took these photos, report that these jars are disappearing, apparently taken home by tourists as macabre souvenirs.

Meme-Worthy ‘Zombie Fortress’ Shime Tower

Looming above the landscape in all its ugly concrete glory, its face stained and its legs often covered in ivy, the abandoned Shime Tower has so much character, it’s become the subject of countless memes. It’s all that’s left of the abandoned Shime coal mine and has been decaying for the last half-century. The wisdom of The Internet has deemed it the greatest anti-zombie fortress ever and thus made it the subject of one amazing photoshopped image after the other, depicting it as a Transformer, an AT-AT and the last thing standing on the beach after the Planet of the Apes apocalypse. In reality, the tower completely dominates the entire town of Shime, but the citizens don’t seem to mind. They erected a playground at its base and even installed uplighting so it glows like some kind of dystopian castle after nightfall.

The Ghost ‘Battleship’ Island of Gunkanjima

It looks like a military warship from afar, but bring your boat a little closer and you’ll see that this decrepit collection of concrete off the coast of Nagasaki is actually an island. Gunkanjima, or ‘Battleship Island,’ is the nickname for Hashima Island, a dense abandoned metropolis once packed with 5,259 people. It started as a small reef, but when coal was discovered there in the 1800s, it was quickly developed and expanded. It was used as a mine from 1887 to 1974 and its concrete architecture was designed to withstand typhoons. The switch from coal to petroleum in Japan led the mine to close, and for decades, accessing it was forbidden. The public is now allowed to explore a limited range of the island as part of an official tour.

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