'Cursed' American town is a real-life Silent Hill where the same fire has been burning for 63 years
There are plenty of video game locales we'd never like to visit in real life, with BioShock's Rapture, Alien: Isolation's Sevastopol Station, and Resident Evil's Raccoon City being just a few of them. While these are all thankfully fictional, there's a 'real-life' Silent Hill that feels like it's pulled directly from Konami's survival horror series of the same name.
Even though Silent Hill movie screenwriter, Roger Avary, has confirmed Centralia was used as inspiration for the live-action adaptation, video game art director Masahiro Ito has said the parallels are mere coincidence when it came to the 1999 PlayStation classic.
The tragic history of Centralia has seen its population dwindle from a high of 2,761 residents in 1890 to claims that there are just five people who still call it home. Once a thriving mining community, Centralia boasted seven churches, five hotels, 14 general and grocery stores, and 27 saloons, but in 2025, it's known as 'PA's ghost town'. It's all traced back to a devastating fire in 1962, and 63 years later, it's still raging.
Accounts vary, but it's thought that five members of the volunteer fire company were tasked with clearing out the town landfill that was located in an abandoned strip-mine pit. Instead of the fire burning out, it apparently escaped into an opening in the pit and quickly spread through the 'labyrinth' of abandoned mines below. Others claim the Bast Colliery fire of 1932 wasn't properly extinguished and eventually reached the landfill in 1962.
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Even though residents became aware of issues in 1979, the Centralia fire gained notoriety when a 12-year-old boy fell into a sinkhole in 1981. When the U.S. Congress allocated over $42 million for relocation efforts in 1983, nearly all of those in Centralia took up the offer, leaving just 63 people on the census in 1990.
As the years have gone on, it's become a popular dark tourist hotspot despite the population continuing to drop alongside the number of surviving buildings.
Speaking to the Daily Mail, travel influencer Josh Young explained what it's like to visit Centralia in modern times. On his Exploring with Josh YouTube channel, Young has documented the current state of Centralia, and it's a pretty grim one.
Saying that something feels 'off' as soon as you head to Centralia, Young added: "'It's something out of a horror movie but yet peaceful at the same time.
“Every now and then you'll see new smoke appear from different locations and areas depending on whether the tunnels underground are smoked out or not."
Although a 2013 federal lawsuit allowed those remaining to keep their properties until they die, and awarded each of them a $349,500 payout, Young maintains that 'everything is pretty much gone'.
The Daily Mail couldn't clarify whether he town church on top of the hill was still in operation; however, Young had said it was a "beautiful church and it brings that eeriness and freakiness because it looks over the entire Centralia town."
Another major tourist attraction (if you can call it that) was an abandoned stretch of Route 61 that had been covered in art. Even this had its own unfortunate demise, and as part of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the owners covered the colorful graffiti with mounds of dirt.
As for the Silent Hill comparisons, Young concluded: "'I'm a huge fan of Silent Hill which doesn't necessarily correlate, it just has the same kind of vibe and history."