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A GHOST TOWN WITHOUT A TOWN: MULTIPLE ENTANGLEMENTS IN THE CENTRALIA LANDSCAPE John G. Sabol Ghost Excavation Research Center
A GHOST TOWN
WITHOUT A TOWN:
MULTIPLE
ENTANGLEMENTS
IN THE CENTRALIA
LANDSCAPE
John G. Sabol
Ghost Excavation Research Center
A Ghost Town Without A Town:
Multiple entanglements
In The Centralia Landscape
~ John G. Sabol
“A spectre is haunting contemporary
archaeology – the spectre of the present”. ~~ Dawid Kobialka
A Ghost Town Without A Town:
Multiple entanglements
In The Centralia Landscape
~ John G. Sabol
“filled with the presence of absences. What appears
designates what is no more.....(what) can no longer be seen”.
~ Michel de Certeau “The Practices of Space”
A Ghost Town Without A Town:
Multiple entanglements
In The Centralia Landscape
~ John G. Sabol
A Ghost Town Without A Town:
Multiple entanglements
In The Centralia Landscape
~ John G. Sabol
A Ghost Town Without A Town:
Multiple entanglements
In The Centralia Landscape
~ John G. Sabol
The ruination of Centralia occupies a multi-
layered “staged process”:
Anthracite coal mining was the act of ruining the
landscape, seen today in “culm banks” and
“stripping holes” that still surround the town;
Abandoned mine shafts became a condition of
being ruined; and the
Shafts and “stripping holes”, together with the
nature of the product (coal) was the cause of the
loss of the town’s social character.
A Ghost Town Without A Town:
Multiple entanglements
In The Centralia Landscape
~ John G. Sabol
A Ghost Town Without A Town:
Multiple entanglements
In The Centralia Landscape
~ John G. Sabol
A Ghost Town Without A Town:
Multiple entanglements
In The Centralia Landscape
~ John G. Sabol
A Ghost Town Without A Town:
Multiple entanglements
In The Centralia Landscape
~ John G. Sabol
A Ghost Town Without A Town:
Multiple entanglements
In The Centralia Landscape
~ John G. Sabol
A Ghost Town Without A Town:
Multiple entanglements
In The Centralia Landscape
~ John G. Sabol
This happened here....
Made In The U.S.A.” (1987) with Chris Penn
A Ghost Town Without A Town:
Multiple entanglements
In The Centralia Landscape
~ John G. Sabol
“Then, one day in 1962, miners down in one of the deep shafts broke through the coal wall into a large cavernous opening. It was so large that their helmet lamps didn’t do much to illuminate it, and the miners had to call to the surface to bring down some large industrial lamps to illuminate the cavern.
When they did, they were surprised to see an extensive grouping of buildings set side-by-side, many of them several stories high stretching out across the cavern….there appeared to be roadways and connecting walkways and the whole setting had the appearance of an immense underground city. As they began to explore the site, they discovered a group of large human skeletons, some of which appeared to be over 12 foot tall….”.
The story then becomes a mix of fact and (mostly) fiction. An archaeologist from Penn State University is brought in to investigate and, seeing all this, thinking it an elaborated hoax, throws his kerosene lamp into a pile of rotting mine timbers, starting a fire. The fire quickly spreads to an exposed coal vein, and the Centralia mine fire begins! According to this fictional account, then, it is an archaeologist that starts the fire.
A Ghost Town Without A Town:
Multiple entanglements
In The Centralia Landscape
~ John G. Sabol
