'All dead cities have some kind of ghosts in them. Memories, I mean.' He stared at the hills. 'You see a staircase and wonder what Martians looked like climbing it. You see Martian paintings and you wonder what the painter was like. You make a little ghost in your mind, a memory. It's quite natural. Imagination.'

If you, like me, are a fan of all things apocalyptic and creepy as fuck, then you are going to like this thing which Mr. Gleemonex put me onto. His description alone was enough to make me think of taking an Ativan before bed (I didn't do it, but Shatner en pointe in a vintage DVF wrap dress did I want to): The Ghost Towns of China.

Y'all, this is so fucked up, it's getting a new tag: CHINA WHAT THE FUCK

Some writer I am, I can't even explain to you why this creeps me out so goddamn bad. Part of it is the realization that China doesn't have to tell us ANYTHING IT'S DOING and all we hear is whatever they want to tell us and all that shit they're NOT telling us? Is pretty bad shit. And if we thought our housing bubble-burst was a catastrophic mess, just fucking wait till we get a snoutful of the blowback from theirs. I feel a bad case of Doomsday Prepperism coming on, right in my own pantry.

But for this specifically, it's the empty-cities-after-a-plague thing, the real-ish, too-real-to-be-real fakery of the buildings, the complete insanity of it all -- I would lose my mind in about four goddamn minutes in a place like any of these. EEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeegh.