Terlingua Ghost Town

Named the second creepiest ghost town in the U.S. by Best Life Magazine, Terlingua was a booming quicksilver (mercury) mining town in the early 1900s thanks to the Chisos Mining Company. When the mining industry collapsed after World War II, workers abandoned the town, leaving behind ruins that now serve as a tourist destination near Big Bend National Park.

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 restless 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 are said to 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 paranormal activity—footsteps on non-existent upper floors, the rustle of formal gowns in empty rooms, and the apparition of 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.