This story was originally published in 2021 on our podcast and remastered by request.

Back in the early days of the United States, when people were moving to the West and discovering empty lands to harvest and purchase property to live in, everything seemed to be an adventure on its own.

I mean, if you were going to migrate toward new and distant lands, you needed that explorer spirit. Still, people began to group together and form towns and communities wherever they saw potential.

Though some of these settlements turned into the big and small cities and towns that we know today, many

of them found their death on the timelines of civilization.

Some were driven by the greenery and farming potential, while others were built around extracting

precious metals from the earth.

Some had silver and gold.

But as we all know, where there's silver, there's money, and where there's money,

there's greed. And where there's greed, there's murder. But this isn't the typical death-filled

ghost town. Here we have history with residents who call this place home and refuse to leave, even

after death.

So today I have for you a retelling of a sleepy place from the mining era of the United States,

the Calico Ghost Town in California.

My name is Edwin, and here's a horror story.

Did you know that California is known as the Golden State?

Well, it has a reason for it.

Perhaps it's a combination having to do with the way that its residents describe the sunsets.

I mean, it's possible.

But really, I think it's just about the final destination of miners and pioneers who came to the Golden State, aka joining the Gold Rush,

where there was gold. Even though you might imagine California as a place with only sunny beaches

in modern cities, it has a lot more to offer than most people are aware of.

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