209 - Ghost Towns in the American West with Aubrey Carter

Hi everybody, my name is Shawna and this is the American English podcast. My goal here is to teach you the English spoken in the United States. Through common expressions, pronunciation tips, and interesting cultural snippets or stories, I hope to keep this fun, useful, and interesting. Let's do it. I grew up near Coloma, California. Well, somewhat close. And if you've never been, let me paint a picture for you. There's a post office that no longer works, buildings that look like nobody's touched them in decades, and it's silent. And here's the thing. It's not exactly abandoned. It's preserved. Basically, it's designed to feel like you've stepped into 1848. Coloma back then used to be full of miners, thousands of them, men who packed up everything they owned, and traveled from all over the world to look for gold. Gold had been discovered there. It was the gold rush. For a while, people found gold, and Coloma, as a result, was vibrant and busy. Then the gold ran out. And just like that, poof, everyone left. Gone. That's the story of most ghost towns in the US. And here's a fun fact that genuinely blew my mind when I learned it. There are more than 3,800 documented ghost towns in this country. Texas alone has over 500. California has nearly 350. Many of them are out west for a reason. They were built around gold rushes, silver rushes, copper mines. And the resources dried up, the towns became what we call ghost towns. Today many of them attract history buffs and tourists. Others come to experience paranormal activity. Some of the ghost towns are said to be haunted by real ghosts. What do you think? Could it be true? In today's episode, I sit down with my guest, Aubrey Carter, who was actually visited some ghost towns across the US. We talk about them and what it's like to visit as a tourist. And we cover some fun vocabulary and phrases related to this topic as we go along. Of course, we also talk about ghosts. Why not? Hope you enjoy this episode. Hi, everyone. Welcome back. Today we have a very special guest, Aubrey Carter here. Hi, Aubrey. Hello. How are you? It's good to see you again. Good to see you again, too. Aubrey was on episode number 124. Titled "Three Must-Know Expressions for Isles and Daily Life." Aubrey, do you still work with all years English in the Isles Energy Podcast? I do. Yes, I'm a co-host of All Year's English and of Isles Energy as well. And yeah, if you're studying for Isles, you definitely should be following Isles Energy. But just, you know, if you love Shawna's Podcast, All Year's English would be great as well. It's a fun place to learn new vocab and some fun language strategies. Yeah. An American English, right? An intermediate to advanced American English. Yeah. Okay. Similar to this. Um, so you are here today to talk about a topic that's really fun for me. I don't talk about spooky things very often. Ghosts, ghost towns and such. But I love talking about them. My first question for you. Do you believe in ghosts? Aubrey. So this has really changed for me over the years. As a child, I did believe in ghosts. I grew up as part of a church, a religion that did believe in ghosts in the afterlife and that spirits could manifest here, could appear to us here. And there were actually some really interesting things we were taught. For example, we were taught that if we saw something that we weren't sure if it was a real person or a ghost that we should ask to shake its hand because a ghost wouldn't have a physical body and wouldn't be able to shake our hand. So I remember as a young person planning for that. Like, okay, if I see something, I think it's a ghost, I'm going to ask to shake its hand. And thinking back now, I'm like, that seems really nuts. I think I would have been really scared as a young person. I probably would have just wanted to run away instead of asking to shake its hand. So at church, was it on Sundays, Saturdays, what day of the week was church? Usually Sunday. So this was the Mormon church, the LDS church that I grew up in. Church was on Sundays. And there were midweek meetings as well. But this wasn't necessarily something that you would learn in like a church meeting. It was more like, it was almost more like lore. Like you would hear it from your parents, friends. It would just be taught. And I'm curious now I would have to look if this is actually in any official teachings anywhere, maybe recommended by one of the apostles or the prophet at one point to ask to shake the hand of any kind of apparition or something. If you're not sure if it's a real person, because this church believed that ghosts would not have a physical body. Okay. Well, I think in my head it sounds pretty smart. Shake the hands. Although they have a body. So it's pretty interesting if anyone ever comes up to you and shakes your hand. The back of your head, you're thinking, hmm, they think exactly. But there were other interesting things. If someone felt like an evil presence in their home, they could contact those who had the priesthood in the Mormon church and they would consecrate the home. They would bless the home to sort of rid it of any evil spirits. Make sure that only friendly spirits were there. This was very well known. This happened often, you know, whenever someone felt that that was a possibility. So I very much believed in ghosts, believed that was a possibility that I could see a ghost. And my brother saw had a recurring experience where he would see a specific ghost and it would have the same sort of mannerisms that never spoke to him, but he would see it. And I believed him. I didn't think he was making that up. I've still asked him about it today. And he's like, oh, yes, that happened. So I do believe ghosts are real, but as I get older, I'm more skeptical of things. I'm like, who knows? Maybe it was a trick of the light. Maybe he was seeing things, right, as an older person. I'm definitely more skeptical. Yes. I would consider myself a scaredy cat. Yes. Which is a funny way to say that I get scared often and in a lot of different situations. My daughter actually came to me the other day and she said, Mom, there were four people in our backyard. And I was like, what do you mean there were four people in our backyard? And she's only five years old. And she said, no, they were, they were floating through the air and they had sort of, she didn't say translucent. That's too advanced for her. But it's sort of like clear, white clothing, long cloaks. And for me, I would describe something and translucent. Exactly. And for me, it really spooked me out, scared me a little bit and I thought, huh, I don't think I believe in ghosts, but at the same time, I'm not writing anything off. Anything is possible. Waiting for the moment to prove me wrong. Right. I don't approve either way. I personally haven't seen a ghost. But you know, like you said, I'm not going to write. I'm not going to write it off either way. I'm just going to say, I don't know for sure. Yeah. So, have you ever been to an area of the United States, maybe a ghost town or a place that is spooked where they say there are apparitions and things happening that are not normal? Yes. The biggest one is in Montana, there are two old west towns, right? Next to each other very close, Virginia City and Nevada City. And they're both still towns, people live there. You can go as a tourist and do all those old west things and it looks very authentic. The old ice cream parlor and shop and a lot of it feels very authentic, like you're actually in the old west. And in Virginia City, it's supposed to be one of the more haunted towns in the US where you can do a ghost walk. That's like a ghost tour where they're taking you to the places where apparitions have been seen. but you can also do a horse-drawn wagon ghost ride. Amazing and so spooky. - Whoa. - And they do a cemetery walk ghost tour. So those are above and beyond just the sort of average ghost tour where you are taken through a building and told those are interesting as well, but and these aren't far from Yellowstone National Park. So if you're visiting the States and you're going to Yellowstone, these aren't too far off the beaten path. - Ooh, and what does it mean to be off the beaten path or not off the beaten path? - Yeah, so places that are very popular for tourists, we call it, we say they're on the beaten path. Beaton path would mean a path that has been walked on a lot where it's a dirt path that's clearly traveled often and then we'll use this figuratively to talk about a place that's either visited a lot very touristy or if it's not very touristy, then it's off the beaten path. So if you go to Virginia City, you would probably be the only tourist, maybe there would be tourists there but they'd usually be from the States or there wouldn't be very many, right? 'Cause you do have to go out of your way and it'd be like an hour drive from Yellowstone together. - Yeah. And so have you been there before? - Yes, I would have. - You have. - Summer. - Mm-hmm. I did, I went and it was so amazing. We loved it, we loved everything about the town, we got that old timey western photo, I was there with my sister and her kids as well. So it's a very cool town but there are so many places in the States wherever you are if you're in California, if you're in New York, if you just search ghost tours, ghost towns, there will be one not far. You would be surprised there are so many places from the old west that have been preserved and a lot of these places it seems like have had paranormal activity. - Yeah, it's really interesting. I've been to a ghost town before in California and I think actually a lot of these towns appear where there was a gold rush or a bunch of people at one point in time came like miners who were mining the caves and the ground to find gold or silver and then after the rush was gone, they just left and just dropped everything and went back to wherever they came from. - And they left the churches. - Yeah, those ice cream shops like you're talking about. Yeah, so I visited one in California. So Sutter's Mill was where gold was found in California and there's a little town called Coloma there and you go there and you get sort of the chills walking through and thinking like how many people used to be there, what used to happen there, all of the gun fights and the, I don't know, the panors that would get in fights with Native Americans, it's just wild how much history you can find in some of these spooky old towns. And I can totally see it being a fun tourist thing to do just because it ties in that big part of American history with fun attractions like other, you know, not the typical trip that you would go on. It gives you such an interesting taste of American culture and these are sites that are appealing to Americans as well. We visit them, you visited that one, we do as well and they're all over. So wherever you are, you'll probably be able to find one not too far here in the Phoenix area and there's Goldfield ghost town and they do a ghost tour of the mine. It's a gold mine there as well. Mammoth gold mine and they take you down into the mine after dark with one of those old times. After turns. No, that's too cool to the mine and they tell you ghost stories about a stories about what has happened there. But it's not just the ghost tour. There's a huge like you were saying, all of the buildings from when a town sprung up around this mine because there was a lot of industry there and then even when they were no longer finding gold in the mine, maybe they abandoned those buildings and then came back and now it's just sort of a tourist area to see what life was like back then. So cool, so cool. So in your opinion, what makes ghost towns so fascinating? It's a good question. I think the people who run these places really make it fun, right? They're making it so that people want to come pay a fee to go on the ghost tour. So that's a lot of it. You're doing it after dark and they've got the old oil lantern like they're building. It's like you're in a movie, in a theater because there's some drama there. You're all buying into the experience. They'll talk about a place that's colder and they'll point that out and tie it to the paranormal activity and you really get into it, right? But not only that, I think even if you don't do the ghost tour at a place like that, seeing an old town, it's especially appealing for us in the states where our history isn't that old. Someone that lives in-- - True. - It'll be your Spain or France where you have churches that are older than anything in the states. Maybe that's not quite as exciting to you, this old West town, but there's still this interesting draw of the American West and how wild and lawless it was when these towns were popular. So I think they're still an appeal to be in a town that's sort of recreated to help you feel what that was like. - Yeah, it's sort of like real life Disneyland. Like I think of Pirates of the Caribbean and how much art went into making it look so realistic with the figurines and all the sceneries that were created and it's when it's real life. I mean, you're experiencing what was really there and seeing the real stuff. - Yes, there is an old West town at Nottsbury Farm. Have you ever been to Nottsbury Farm in Southern California? - I haven't and I've heard so much about it. So I need to go sometime. My kids loved it, we all loved it, but they have created. Part of it is a big old West town and they have, it's really fun because they do, for kids there, there's sort of, almost like escape room activities where they're finding secret codes and getting messages from the actors that are dressed up in the Old West and they go through this whole adventure, sort of a scavenger hunt to sort of solve a mystery there at Nottsbury Farm. So it was amazing to not only do the amusement park rides, but to do all of that as well, but it really does point to what you were saying that that was really fun, but to see, that's all clearly created, kind of like Disneyland to have the experience, to be in an actual town where it's the real buildings, people really lived and died there is another experience entirely. - Yep, it's a blast from the past. - Yes, exactly. (upbeat music) - I'd love to share a couple of idioms that I thought of that are related. So the first is to say about a place, this place is like a ghost town, which we'll say this if like a store is empty or maybe a party isn't as well attended as you thought, you get there and there are only a few people and be like, wow, this place is like a ghost town. So we use that sort of idiomatically to exaggerate how empty a place is. Do you use that idiom? - So actually, I enjoy going to parties where there's fewer people. I probably have the only person out there that's like, who there's only three people at this park. - So you'd be like, this is amazing. - This is perfect. - No, I just don't enjoy a lot of people in one space. So when something's a ghost town, I think it sort of has a negative connotation like, ooh, maybe there should be more people here. - It definitely does. So if you like that there are less people, you wouldn't say that, right? That's only if you expected it to be really well attended. - Maybe you plan a carnival, a fundraiser and you're expecting it to be well attended and then it's not. You might say to someone like, this is a ghost town. What did we do wrong? - Yeah, totally, that really makes sense. Are there other expressions like when you think of the Old West and you're thinking of spooky towns and saloons and all of that environment, does anything else come to mind? - This is very related. It has the same meaning as a place being like a ghost town is that we'll use the word dead to describe a place. We'll say this place is dead. So again, like maybe a party where everyone's leaving, okay, it's time to go or an empty store. It's interesting that we use that word idiomatically to mean not lively, not a lot of people, not really fun. Like, okay, this place is dead, let's go. - Yeah, yeah. Have you been anywhere recently that was, you expected there to be a lot of people and then it was dead? - Yeah, I went to, there was a tribute band, a concert near my home and it was not that expensive. It was Fleetwood Mac. - Fleetwood Mac cover band. That actually is from California they came here and I love Fleetwood Mac. And they did such a good job. They sort of embodied them and they were like bickering like they would. It was more like a theatrical production. I loved it so much and it was like a ghost town. It was so dead. No one had come. I don't know if they didn't market it well enough or if people weren't interested in that. But it was like just kind of a few people. I felt bad for them that it wasn't better. So you're the only person in the audience. I feel like at-- loud as I can. There's always that woman or that woman and her friend in the audience that are in the central area dancing like crazy when everyone else is sort of chill. Was that you? No, I would be the chill one. I would be singing the chairs. Sometimes if it's a bigger crowd, I would even dance. But I'm more likely to be chill in my chair just enjoying the vibe. I've seen that those, you know, those ladies usually where they don't care what anyone else is doing. Yeah. They are partying. They are dancing, even if everyone else is just chilling out, I would be chilling out. Yeah. Yeah. I always feel like power to you. Yes. I hope that one day I won't care enough and do that. Right. Maybe when we're older, we'll get into our, um, that phase of our lives where we care less and we're, we're willing to do that. Yeah. Right now, I'm like, hmm, do my dance moves look like Elaine from Seinfeld, like the awkward? Anyway. Sometimes I will dance. And I'm like, maybe I look off awkward. That's fine. But usually, usually at least if there are like a few other people, you know, because if you just you by yourself, that feels very awkward. Yeah. That's, that's funny. So ghost town and dead would be great ways to describe a situation where there's not much happening. Not many people. Not much going on. Yeah. Let's see, I actually have one here. I don't know why when I imagine these old towns. Um, so obviously there's always a saloon and old wet, the old west. And I think a lot of my English learners confuse salon and saloon. Do you mind explaining what the difference between a salon and a saloon is? Sure. So I am not super familiar with salons because I am not the type of person to go and get my nails done and my hair done. But that's what it would be. There's a hair salon where you're going to go and get your hair cut and colored and styled, um, maybe just a blow out, right? And then there are nail salons where you'll go for a pedicure, a manicure. Yeah. So this is what we call a salon, sort of different from a spa, which might have a lot of those services. But a salon will be more specific usually to these beauty services. A saloon is like the opposite extreme about a salon, right? 100 percent. All you do is add one. Oh, and you have such a different place. Yeah. Totally. Totally. And in a saloon, you might find, I imagine people 1800, it late 1800s, early 1900s, like these, yeah, those old western costumes with maybe a nice big hat, suspenders, dirty white t-shirt, like, rugged, chaps, right? All of that boots with spurs. Yes. Exactly. You would have like cowhands and also like outlaws. And then usually they're often when you see a Western film with a saloon, they're also like working girls there, right? So that's interesting as well. It's been interesting to see how that like sex work has changed throughout the years. And if you watch an old west film now, it's treated very differently than people talk about it now, right? So that's interesting when we watch these old films and we see the sort of recreation of what it might have been like in a saloon. Yeah. All of the women with the tight bodices and serving beer to, yeah, alcoholic drinks to, yeah, all those right? I imagine whiskey in a saloon. Exactly. Exactly. So I think of this sort of quintessential old town in the west. And for me, what comes to mind is to bite the dust because I imagine it being really dusty and the air filled with dirt. Yeah. And to bite the dust means to kick the bucket, right? Exactly. But do you use it actually in conversation? It's interesting. I had a conversation with a student recently about kick the bucket. And the same guidelines apply for bite the dust as kick the bucket where we would not use it in serious situations. If there's a funeral and someone has actually passed, we wouldn't say when did they bite the dust? When did they took the bucket? No, this is not how we use it to talk about actual death because we try to be respectful. Yes. It has a funny nature to it. I'm automatically laughing because it seems so ridiculous to say that out of funeral. No, it would be horrifying and offensive and very strange. That would be no social skills if you ask someone that. Instead, right? Even though it means to die, we don't actually use it when talking about or referring to real death, right? Instead, maybe we'll use it to talk about our phone dying like an electronic device. It'd be like, I got to buy a new phone, mine bit the dust, mine's about to bite the dust, mine's going to kick the bucket. With kick the bucket, we might say, what do you want to do before you kick the bucket? So we're sort of talking about someone who hasn't died yet. And instead of saying, before you die, this is a more lighthearted way to say it, bite the dust and kick the bucket. But if someone did actually die, then do not use these phrases. And what would be an appropriate phrase to say if someone's usually used the word past. So if you're like, I'm sorry, I heard your grandmother passed. Very sorry to hear it. How are you doing? Right? So very respectful terms. I feel like we try to avoid saying died. I heard someone died. We'll usually say past or passed away. 100%. 100%. Sometimes my daughters say die in situations where I'm like, it's felt too harsh right there. Passed away. Pass. Yes. Stopping it. Exactly. Yeah. Very good. Is there anything else that you think when you thinking of this topic, you're like, oh, I really want to share this or that? Yeah. You know, I meant to mention this at the top of the episode, but I kind of have nostalgia for times in the past where things would happen that don't happen now. So an example is when I was growing up, there was this crumbling brick house just around the corner. And as kids, we would go and play there. And it was creepy that it was falling apart. And it was so dangerous. My parents, of course, did not know that we were playing there. But there was no fence. It was just open. Like there was nothing keeping us from hanging out there. And even as very young children, we would just crawl around. You could climb up to the upper level, which had become sort of like a balcony because a lot of the walls had crumbled. It really was looked even earlier than it was. It was very much crumbling, falling apart. Not long after they tore it down, someone built a new home there. And I think about that sometimes my children have no opportunity to do anything like that. So I guess in some ways, it's good that they are safer. But what an adventure we had. You know, so exciting. I love that. It sounds like a scene from a movie. I think I'm in here one of those old things. Exactly. I think it takes to you how's that in there? Remember seeing a movie when I was a kid called the Ghost and Mr. Chicken, which was with Dawn Knotts. It was the most rude. Oh my gosh. It's one of the most ridiculous, innocent, scary movies. And he goes, he's dared to stay the night in this very spooky place. But every time there's a scary scene, they kind of cut it with humor. And so it makes it fun. But I also can kind of, it's like I have nostalgia for something I haven't lived. I don't know if there's a word for that. Like that. Or when you just told me about that experience that you had growing up going into this. I'm like, FOMO. Yeah. I have FOMO for something I never was able to experience. Exactly. Yeah. Fear of missing out. Yeah. I was for the past because like FOMO is more current or the future. Yes. I'm trying to think if there's a way we say that for first just like, you know, I'm sad. I wasn't able to do that. Maybe NVS. I'm NVS that you experienced that and I missed out. Yeah. If I had grown up there, I could have done that. Yeah. Exactly. All of the regrets we have where the grammar does become a little bit trickier. Right. Yeah. So do you think? Using the conditional subjunctive often comes into play the subjunctive mood with those if clauses. Yes. But it is one of the interesting things, most interesting things to connect about. We talk about connection, not perfection all the time on allers English. And that is amazing to connect with people about regrets. What would you have done differently if you could go back and talk to yourself as a kid or, you know, what is something you experienced that you wish everyone else could have experienced? Yeah. Totally. So we've got the recommendations that you gave about visiting some of these places. Do you mind mentioning the names of the places again just so that? Yes. So if you are going to Yellowstone National Park, look up Virginia City, Montana, and also Nevada City, Montana, they're both right next to each other. So definitely check both out. And then if you're in the Phoenix area, the Goldfield Ghost Town, and I wanted to mention one that I didn't mention, Grafton Ghost Town is near Zion National Park. So if you're doing sort of a national park tour and you go to Zion National Park, Grafton Ghost Town is one you just need to look it up. You just drive and it's a self-guided tour. There are like plaques with information in these old [BLANK_AUDIO] buildings. And that's almost like what I experienced as a kid in these crumbling buildings. They're a little better preserved than that. So they're safe. But you're sort of just on your own. There's no staff there to walk you through it. And that's kind of a cool experience too. Wow. Love that. Okay. So grafting. And then one last one I know you'd mentioned Waley House. So this is in San Diego in Old Town, San Diego. There's this is cool too. They've recreated an old west town. But it's like a currently working Old West Town. So you can go in the shops and buy all this stuff. And it's built around sort of a market with a lot of restaurants. So it maybe does feel a little more touristy. But dead center in the middle of it is Waley House, which is famed as America's most haunted house. So a lot of paranormal paranormal experiences there. A lot of people who do the ghost tour have reported that they'll see something or they'll feel a presence. So you can do a ghost tour there. And a lot, I mean, San Diego. What a great. Coronado. For a lot of reasons. Yes. Coronado. You've got San Diego Zoo there. Sea world if you're interested in that. And don't miss Old Town San Diego and go to Waley House. Yeah. An old town sack if you head up north to Northern California. They've got the Old West feel. You can hop into the candy shops with the big barrels that are filled with saltwater taffy. Yeah. It's a special experience. To me, that was a great episode. There was so much information. So many expressions that we covered. I can't really think of anything else. Yeah. I think so. I feel like we kind of covered it. One thing to just hit on even harder wherever you're going in the States. Maybe a lot in the rest of the world. But if you're not right by these that we specifically mentioned, there might be one close by it because there were so many settlements in the American West that have been preserved and have it to give people that opportunity. So just search ghost tour, ghost town, old west town, wherever you are. And you can find one close by. Yeah. Great tips. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Once again, Aubrey Carter works with all ears English. And she is the host of the IELTS Energy Podcast. So do you check that out? I will link her in the episode notes. Thank you. This is so fun to chat about ghosts. This makes me want to go and do another ghost tour. Go check one out. I think they're so fun. Me too. Yeah. I did it in off the record. But yeah, I did one in in Savannah, Georgia. And it was such an interesting experience in my ex-boyfriend at the time. They kept asking if you see anything, if you hear anything, please let us know because we document everything that happens here. And he really house does that too. Let us know because they want to be there like we're the most haunted house and we want to keep the record of that. Exactly. So he was really into graphic design and Photoshop. And so this was before AI and stuff because with AI now, people could probably mutate these photos to add ghosts here and there. But he went in and spent forever creating the perfect ghost and sent it to them. This photo of one of the places we visited. And I'm like, I wonder how many people are doing that. Right. You never know what to believe anymore now with. I know. I see a photo and I want to go ahead and then I'm like, but maybe it's AI. I don't dare be impressed by anything now. I know. That's hysterical. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Hope you enjoyed this episode. And until next time, bye. Thank you for listening to this episode of the American English podcast. Remember, it's my goal here to not only help you improve your listening comprehension, but to show you how to speak like someone from the States. If you want to receive the full transcript for this episode or you just want to support this podcast, make sure to sign up to premium content on AmericanEnglishPodcast.com. Thanks and hope to see you soon.