Ghost towns: Silent Hill and Centralia. Silent Hill - the existing city of Silent Hill based on real events

It is not difficult to see that this diary of mine has a highly specialized format, namely, the topic of abandoned and forgotten places of residence by people. I didn't plan to go beyond this topic until I came across the story of a real American city Centralia. The fate of Centralia and the fate of Silent Hill are like twin brothers.

For this reason, I decided to go beyond the format in my first post and first talk about Silent Hill. Believe me, without such a retreat, the history of Centralia will not be complete, and even flawed! Please do not judge me harshly - I promise that in the following posts we will only talk about the town of Centralia.

So, Silent Hill.

The most famous manufacturer of computer games that love to scare us in a good way is the Japanese studio Konami. It was founded in 1969. Konami is best known to us through the Silent Hill series of games.

The first part of the series was released in 1999 and instantly became a cult bestseller in the gaming industry. Everyone remembers this game for its well-developed atmosphere of horror and chaos, interesting logical riddles, non-linearity, excellent music and an extraordinary plot. I will not describe all the games in this series and will avoid describing the film of the same name based on this game. I will only dwell on the town of Silent Hill itself - what do we know from the games and the film?

Silent Hill (English: Silent Hill - lit. "Silent Hill", also translated in Russian as "Silent Hill") is a fictional city. It takes place in whole or in part the action of all games in the series released in 2010, except Silent Hill 4: The Room. Located in the United States, in the state of Maine, although most games do not mention the exact location of the city. In the movie "Silent Hill", the town is a mining town and is located in the state of West Virginia, in Toluca County.

Silent Hill is often perceived as an abandoned ghost town, but apparently it is not one - the heroes of the games encounter only “alternative” versions of the city: a “foggy” Silent Hill that looks like an ordinary city, from where it suddenly and mysteriously disappeared all people, and the infernal “otherworldly” Silent Hill. The real city continues to live its own life and develop. This resort town, which is a relatively popular place for tourist pilgrimage.

There are different versions of the origin of the alternative sides of Silent Hill. According to one of them, the alternative side is the result of the rituals of a certain closed magical order that controls the city and is obsessed with the idea of ​​building Paradise on earth through the suffering of people. According to another, the city was influenced by Toluca Lake, a local landmark. Confirmation of this theory can be found in the second part of the series (Silent Hill 2: Restless dreams). It talks about how the inquisitors who carried out executions of witches washed their axes in the waters of the lake, as a result of which it became cursed; as a result of which the fog from the lake, which also covered the city, “brought with it changes” to the city.

GEOGRAPHY

Silent Hill is located on the shores of Toluca Lake, surrounded by mountains and forests and dividing the city in half into two parts - northern Paleville and southern South Vale. At the other end of the lake is the smaller town of Shepherd's Glen; the larger settlement of Brahams (Brahms) is over the mountains; further away is Big City Ashfield. In addition, the city of Portland (Maine) is relatively close to Silent Hill. From Ashfield, Silent Hill can be reached via County Road 73, which becomes Nathan Avenue; Similar unnamed highways lead to the northern part of Silent Hill from the north (Bachman Street) and the east (Midway Avenue).

Paleville - more old part cities; it includes old Silent Hill, the city's business center and a resort area with an amusement park. Southern South Vale, built up during the 20th century, is an industrial area; It is home to attractions such as the Silent Hill Historical Society (a former Toluca prison turned museum), Rosewater Park, where victims of the epidemic are buried, and Brookhaven Hospital.

Thanks to the unique natural conditions The city is almost always exceptionally quiet and calm. Toluca Lake attracts fishermen and boaters.

STORY

The first settlements in the Silent Hill area appeared at the beginning of the 17th century, during the development of New England by colonists who came from Great Britain. They displaced the indigenous inhabitants of these places - the North American Indians, for whom the territory of Silent Hill was the sacred “Land of Silent Spirits”; however, Native American beliefs had a great influence on the early inhabitants of Silent Hill.

Around 1700, Silent Hill was hit hard by a mysterious epidemic that also affected neighboring settlements, and was abandoned for decades, turning to real city-ghost. However, by the end of the 18th - beginning of the 19th centuries, the city was repopulated. In 1810, a federal prison and Brookhaven Hospital, which later became a clinic for the mentally ill, were founded in the city, which received the status of a penal colony. The prison was closed around 1840 due to another epidemic, and the city experienced some decline, followed by an industrial boom when extensive coal deposits were discovered in the city area in the early 1850s; The opening of the Wilts mine attracted many workers to the city.

Around this time, a mystical sect known as the Order appeared in the city. In 1862, in connection with the American Civil War, a prisoner of war camp was created in the city, later transformed into the new Toluca prison, which existed until the beginning of the 20th century. After its closure and the depletion of coal deposits, the city was turned into a resort.

In the years 1900-1920, there were many cases of mysterious disappearances of people in the city; The closure of the prison was partly due to this. The most notorious episode was the disappearance of the pleasure yacht “Little Baroness” on Lake Toluca in 1918 - with its entire crew and passengers. The city authorities had to make great efforts to smooth out the impressions of these mysterious episodes and restore the good name of the city. Around this time, four Silenthill families left the city and founded the small town of Shepherd's Glen on the other side of the city.

The action of all games in the series takes place in the second half of the 20th century, without precise reference to any dates. Before the start of the first Silent Hill, the city became the center of a drug trade involving the hallucinogenic drug PTV, produced from the local White Claudia plant. The production of PTV was in the hands of sectarians, and attempts by the authorities to investigate crimes related to it ended in nothing. It is not known exactly when the next games take place, but you can estimate based on these facts. It is absolutely clear that the third part takes place seventeen years after the events of the first part. In the fourth part, it is mentioned that Walter Sullivan was imprisoned and committed suicide ten years before the events of the game. And after reading the note in the “House of Wishes” shelter, it can be assumed that Alessa and Walter were about the same age. That is, Walter's murders could have occurred even during Harry Mason's visit to the city. This means that most likely the events of the fourth game take place before the events of the third. It is not known exactly when the events of the second take place, before the first or after, but it is obvious that it is before the fourth, since in the game you can find a mention of Walter Sullivan in the newspaper.

SLAYERS OF REALITY SILENT HILL

A "real" city, inhabited by people and continuing to live a normal life, is not shown in any game in the series. However, there are characters in games who live there - such as Laura in Silent Hill 2. They do not see those nightmarish images of the city that are presented to the protagonists of the games, and continue to live a normal life.

The “foggy” city, the image of which is approximately the same for all games in the series, looks like an abandoned city, abandoned by people. It is covered with a dense layer of fog, through which only the nearest buildings are visible; Most of the houses are boarded up, disabled cars are parked on the streets, and the electricity and water supply do not work. In Silent Hill, Silent Hill 2, Silent Hill: Homecoming and Silent Hill: Origins, as well as the film "Silent Hill", the city is dissected into pieces by strange bottomless holes, similar to traces of an earthquake. In addition to fog, in the first Silent Hill snow falls from the sky (which surprises the characters, since the game does not take place in winter), and in the film Silent Hill and Silent Hill: Homecoming there is ash.

“Otherworld” Silent Hill, which the heroes of the games find themselves in from time to time, looks different; in general, these are the embodiments of the characters’ personal phobias, reflections of their internal state. Night always reigns there. Considered the most iconic "otherworldly" city of Alessa Gillespie, appearing in Silent Hill and Silent Hill 3, it is a very dark place, somewhat reminiscent of an industrial plant; there are a lot of bars, chain-link fences, pipelines, rotating fans; Windmills and chimneys are visible against the sky; in addition, frightening traces of violence are scattered randomly across it - pools of blood and dismembered corpses.

In Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, the otherworldly Silent Hill is plunged into deep winter, covered in snow and ice. The otherworldly city in Silent Hill 2 appears heavily damaged, falling apart and rotting; There is some kind of construction work going on there, as evidenced by the scaffolding and the walls being finished.

Not only Silent Hill, but also other cities shown in the series are subject to the transition to the “otherworldly” version, for example, Shepherd's Glen from Silent Hill: Homecoming and the unnamed large city from Silent Hill 3 (probably Ashfield, shown in Silent Hill 4: The Room).

PLEASE NOTE

Silent Hill:
- located on a hilly area;
- there was a certain mystical order in the city;
- mining town;
- in the fog;
- forest in the vicinity;
- thanks to the unique natural conditions, the city almost always enjoys exceptional peace and quiet;
- there are strange bottomless holes in the streets;
- ash falling from the sky associated with fire or fire;
- a lot of fences and fences made of chain-link mesh;
- Windmills are visible against the sky.

Now let's move on to the real-life city of Centralia. I will continue the story in the next post...

Since Silent Hill is not a real city, why can each of us visit it? Since all this is fiction, why does meeting the legend of this God-forsaken settlement leave a cold, sticky imprint and anxiety in the soul? Walk through the streets of Silent Hill just once, and the viscous heavy fog in St. Petersburg will always remind you of something. The fruit of the imagination of video game developers from the Japanese company Konami has captured the whole world, turning from a video game with quests, locations and monsters into a multifaceted phenomenon of modern culture.

1. Welcome to Silent Hill!

Quiet Hill is a kind and calm name, but in a quiet hill there are not even devils, but some worse ones. Everyone sees Silent Hill in their own way, depending on what kind of sin is in your soul. This reality plays with you, releasing demons. What was barely glimmering in the back of your consciousness has already come to life, mutated, incarnated and is attacking you. What kind of creepy story must be behind a place where such things happen? I'll give you a map and give you a short tour.

Silent Hill is the individual embodiment of your fears, so no one can show you the city on the map. But you will definitely find it. Presumably, this is a small settlement in Maine, where representatives of the indigenous people of America once lived. In the 17th century, the colonialists asked the Indians to leave and founded Silent Hill where only yesterday ancient rituals were carried out and folk holidays were celebrated. In general, they are in vain.

Silent Hill has an old town with a church, school and streets named after famous writers Ray Bradbury, Robert Bloch and other authors.

The city survived two terrible epidemics, and during the War of the North and South a prison was built there. Silent Hill is built on both sides of the large Taluka lake. This is due to the fact that at the height of epidemics it was necessary to isolate healthy people from the hopelessly ill. Then, on the opposite bank from the old city, Brookhaven Hospital was built, around which the southern part of Silent Hill grew.

The coal deposits under the city were indeed a pleasant find. But already at the beginning of the 20th century, the development of the mine was abandoned and the workers were fired. The state authorities decided that since Silent Hill had not left industrial centre, a resort will certainly come out. New infrastructure facilities were needed, a police station - in general, a whole new district was created.

A resort area with an amusement park and a hotel was also developed on the shore of Lake Taluka, but the lake clearly did not like it. Soon, several accidents occurred on the water, and the most terrible tragedy was the disappearance without a trace of the motor ship "Little Baroness" with all the resort guests and crew.

Much later, in the 1960s, the city mayor and several officials died under mysterious circumstances. Impressive story. I bet there's a lot to see at the local history museum, the Silent Hill Historical Society building.

2. What awaits the player?

The ghost town may not have captured you yet, but it immediately takes the heroes of the first part of the game hostage. Young writer Harry Mason travels with his daughter to Silent Hill. Police officer Sybil Bennett is also on her way there - she needs to investigate a drug trafficking case. But everyone gets into an accident at the entrance to the city - Officer Bennett’s motorcycle is destroyed, and Harry saw a little girl on the road and crashed into a fence so as not to hit the child. While Harry was unconscious, his daughter disappeared, and there was no one in the car except him. He sees the silhouette of a girl, calls his daughter by name, but she runs away, and our hero feels that in pursuit he turned somewhere wrong. Rust, darkness and, it seems, someone's remains. And a couple of bloodthirsty monsters from around the corner. That's it, gotcha!

The hero comes to his senses in a diner. It's good that he's alive, but where is his daughter? Officer Bennett, who was nearby, says that she did not meet the girl. Silent Hill plays hide and seek with Harry, either pretending to be an abandoned foggy town with a well-preserved infrastructure, or showing its rotten, charred interior with iron bars and pools of blood. And it is not clear when one dimension will replace another. An abandoned school, a church in which an elderly religious fanatic is hiding, a hospital with zombified nurses in the corridors, a sewer infested with monsters - Harry searched everything. During his search, he came across a photograph of a girl who looked like his daughter, but at the same time a completely unfamiliar one. They say that the child died in a fire and all this is connected with the cult of black magic that flourished in the city. The religious lady even says that a demon is trying to take over the city and needs to be stopped urgently. There are a lot of monsters all around, but I’m tense with the demons. Only the same girl, first met on the road, appears in strange, abandoned places inappropriate for children, but immediately disappears, as if she never existed. Chaos and confusion. And how it ends depends on the hero’s actions during the game.

The developers decided to remember the fate of the writer and his daughter in the third part. The main character, teenage girl Heather, dreams that she is in Silent Hill, but in fact she just dozed off in a cafe. It's time to go home, I need to call my father and hurry up. But she is slowed down either by a stranger who introduced himself as a private detective, or by a strange woman talking about the coming of a new paradise, or by a monster eating a corpse. The heroine is not timid and knows how to stand up for herself; not even monsters in the subway can stop her. At home, the girl sees her dead father and, most likely, the killer - that crazy woman who again weaves something about a new coming and says that she will see the orphan in Silent Hill, the city where it all began. Neither running away nor changing her name helped the girl forget that she was from Silent Hill. Local sectarians found her again.

Whether the demon will come and whether anyone will survive depends on the player. The strange birthday greetings with different numbers of years that the main character receives get on my nerves. Either a card given for your sixth birthday, or a strange call wishing you a happy 31st birthday. The main character's double, blood-smeared, attacks her in an amusement park. And there’s also a strange monster hanging around that doesn’t attack, but for some reason protects.

It’s not just the writer and his daughter who are looking for answers in Silent Hill. The hero of the second Silent Hill received a letter from his late wife, which said that they needed to meet in Silent Hill, where they once visited. I would feel uneasy too. The excited recipient went to the abandoned city to find the answer.

He meets an aggressive girl, an overly well-fed young man in full bloom of physical but not mental strength, a frightened girl with a knife in her hands who is looking for her mother and has not seen her father and brother for a long time, a dancer of a local club who outwardly reminds him of his wife, but no, alas, this is an optical illusion. And dozens and dozens of monsters. In the park, in the hotel, on the streets - agile monsters without faces and the most important guard - Pyramid Head. How it all ends depends not only on actions, but also on the style of play. Confronting monsters, the desire to avoid injury, and a first aid kit at hand bring a successful outcome closer. Options range from escaping from Silent Hill with a charming beauty to “well, everyone died.”

The fourth part of the game best reflects the characteristic feature of the entire series - you can be attacked everywhere, nowhere in the world of Silent Hill can you feel safe. Even at home. And even if your home is not in Silent Hill.

Silent Hill 4: The Room really forces us to play in a room, or rather, in an apartment, from which there is no escape - Henry, the owner of the home, wakes up after a nightmare and realizes that he has been walled up from the inside, the telephone and other means of communication do not work. After spending several days in captivity, he suddenly finds huge hole in the bathroom wall. Through a secret passage, he ends up in the subway, then in the vicinity of Silent Hill, then in prison.

The people the hero meets die almost immediately, and strange numbers can be seen on their bodies: 16121, 17121, and so on. And only Henry wakes up again and again in his apartment after another nightmare. Finally, one of the fellow travelers, Henry's neighbor, does not die, but simply ends up in the hospital with the numbers 20121 carved on her back. But by that time, both the apartment and the whole house are in the grip of horror. It turns out that a journalist who was planning to expose the cultists from Silent Hill used to live in Henry’s apartment.

If the hero wants to live, then ahead is the solution to the mystery of ritual murders, human-sized ghosts flying overhead, monsters crawling out of the walls of the apartment, a meowing piece of meat in the refrigerator, shapeshifting monsters walking on their hands. The ending can be different, life and living space are at stake.

That's all Team Silent managed to do. The friendly development department was disbanded. But the Silent Hill universe continued to live, although the work was entrusted to other specialists. There were sequels to Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, Silent Hill: Downpour and others. I see no reason for those who are video game fans not to check them out. We have film adaptations, music and other ghost towns coming up.

3. A ghost town takes over Hollywood

In modern culture, it always happens that every popular, successful idea is certainly picked up and filmed by Hollywood. Computer games cannot avoid this either.

The first Silent Hill film was released in 2006. What can happen if you adopt a pretty newborn without documents or information about where she comes from? Perhaps nothing. But Sharon grew up and began to walk in her sleep and mutter that she needed to “Home to Silent Hill.” The girl is not getting better, the doctors cannot help. Then mother and daughter go to Silent Hill. She knows that this is a ghost town, but despair and the desire to find an answer are stronger than fear.

Everything is like in the game. At the entrance to the city, an accident occurs due to an unfamiliar girl jumping onto the road. The mother woke up and noticed that her daughter was not in the car. Police officer Sybil Bennett, although she fell off her motorcycle, did not lose her professionalism. The first thing he does is handcuff the desperate mother. But you can’t get to the police station - instead of a road there is a steep cliff. And ash falls from the sky. And monsters are crawling out of an abandoned mine and from dark alleys. After the women meet with Pyramid Head, who almost shreds them with a gigantic knife, the heroines decide to stick together.

They are located in the oldest part of the city. A gas station, a school, a hotel are deserted and dangerous abandoned places through which it’s as if someone is guiding them with the help of clues. But the church is full of people. Who are these good people? Sectarians.

Having realized a little too late where his wife and daughter had gone, the head of the family rushes to search. And he learns a lot of interesting things about his adopted daughter’s family, about the fire in Silent Hill, about the fact that there were people in this city who may have deserved to die in the fire. I wonder if it is possible to get into the dead city of Silent Hill and return home safe and sound, if they were really waiting for you in Silent Hill?

The creators of the game and films also asked themselves this question and decided to be optimistic. Because in 2012, the film “Silent Hill 2” was released, in which the grown-up Sharon hides under the name Heather and lives together with her father. Only they live on the run, because the sectarians of Silent Hill do not sleep. The original film is called Silent Hill: Revelation. Excellent word revelation. Translate as you like: revelation, exposure, apocalypse, end of the world.

As in the game, the heroine calls her father and cannot get home for a long time because of monsters and frightening strangers. Moreover, strange, strange birthday greetings come to hand, but for some reason the name on the cake and balloons is correct: “Happy Birthday, Heather!”

Mysteriously missing father and the invitation “Come to Silent Hill” written in blood on the wall leave the girl no choice - she has to go. Ahead is a visit for an artifact to the former head of a dark cult who has lost his human appearance. He's in Brookhaven Mental Hospital. This is not our first day in Silent Hill and we understand that we are at south coast Taluka lakes.

And what lies ahead, a happy ending or a game over, we will find out when we walk through the amusement park (in the resort area of ​​the city, as we remember) past the ominous plush pink bunnies and meet our dark self on the carousel, which will be spun with all our hearts by Pyramid Head. “Everyone has their own nightmare in Silent Hill,” says the infernal enemy. At the very end, another battle surprise awaits, but here we, if we survive, will just be spectators.

I love it when people in St. Petersburg check the city warning system. This means that for several minutes the exact same siren as in Silent Hill sounds over your hometown, all that remains is to say “Darkness is coming.” By the way, in the film version, the characters claim that Silent Hill is located in the state of West Virginia. Another proof that everyone has their own trap town of Silent Hill.

In my opinion, both films about the ghost town are wonderful, although they are very different. The most fascinating films for me are always films about ordinary people who found themselves in terrible, unusual circumstances and were able to find enough strength and intelligence to solve a problem that went beyond the scope of everyday life and the usual course of affairs. In both films, we watch with bated breath a fragile woman or girl who overcomes fear and fights back against the devilish forces because she wants to save someone immensely dear and close. It is impossible to remain indifferent to such a story.

The first "Silent Hill" looks like a scary, sad fairy tale, but at the same time like a psychological drama. Fierce monsters do not look very impressive against the backdrop of the sins that the sectarians committed, ordinary people, only with powdered brains. But over all this, like a ray of light, the motive of maternal love and self-sacrifice dominates. But this does not save Sharon’s mother from meeting a crowd of monsters - bloodthirsty, curvy, lifeless nurses.

The second film is closer to game logic. After the disappearance of her father, the heroine finds a box of papers and learns almost everything about Silent Hill from his detailed investigation. That is, in a sense, he receives a task. Searches for the second half of the artifact, fights monsters. And everything around is somehow puppet-like. Carousel, amusement park, plush pink bunny and mannequins that look and breathe. Heather will come face to face with a multi-headed mannequin spider. Which also needs heads, arms and legs.

4. Music of a doomed city

Musician and composer Akira Yamaoka is a man whose name is strongly associated with the legend of Silent Hill. By the time he started working on the music for the first game in the series, Yamaoka was already an experienced professional; the composer was taking on a task that was familiar to him. It’s not surprising, otherwise he wouldn’t have been invited to Team Silent. But it was the musical accompaniment to the Silent Hill games and films based on them that made the musician a world-class celebrity. It is difficult to overestimate his merits, because without suitable sound design this eerie, depressing atmosphere of a ghost town would not have happened.

When they first encountered Silent Hill, gamers heard melodies that were combined with the space surrounding their character, lost in the abandoned city. These could be either background compositions or sounds that were very nerve-wracking. Akira Yamaoka combined the artistic features of musical instruments with the sounds of more prosaic objects. Do you remember how you had your teeth treated as a child, how the equipment buzzed when the dentist sawed out the damaged part of the tooth? This familiar sound from an early age helped make the music that plays during the battle with the final boss unbearable. For the second Silent Hill game, Yamaoka recorded more than a hundred footstep samples to make what was happening even closer to reality - each next step of the hero sounds slightly different than the previous one.

By the third game, Akira Yamaoka had created full-length songs, energetic compositions with vocals. From many applicants, the composer chose the American singer Mary Elizabeth McGlynn, deciding that her voice would best suit the music he wrote. Note that Akira Yamaoka's songs with McGlynn's vocals sound good not only in a computer game, but also in a live performance on stage. The offer to participate in a new project by Konami developers ended with the legend of Silent Hill turning into a large musical performance, with which Yamaoka went on tour, including performing in Russia. And recently information appeared about Akira Yamaoka’s performance with Mary Elizabeth McGlynn and the Symphony Orchestra in St. Petersburg in April 2018.

But even without the main composer, there are many interesting musical discoveries in the Silent Hill case. For example, the mother of the lost Sharon loses consciousness as if in an abandoned basement, where she is attacked by small but too numerous monsters. A comes to his senses in an empty bowling alley, where an old machine is playing the Johnny Cash song Ring of Fire. It turns out to be an interesting contrast between the horror the heroine has just experienced and a carefree love song from the 1960s - the time when people still lived in Silent Hill.

I would especially like to note the participation of the frontman of the American metal band Korn, Jonathan Davis, in creating the soundtrack for the game Silent Hill: Downpour. Davis is a great narrator scary stories. The artist generally loves extravagant things: he plays the bagpipes, wrote songs for the film about vampires “Queen of the Damned,” and together with Korn played such a live cover of the ballad One that the authors themselves, the band Metallica, gave a standing ovation. In general, only Silent Hill was missing from Davis’s collection. It turned out to be extremely interesting.

5. How to revive a monster?

The ghostly world of Silent Hill has such a diverse and dangerous fauna that the game developers decided to warn the inexperienced player about what troubles await him in the fog. To do this, they released a colorful bestiary - the book Lost Memories ("Lost Memories"), telling in detail about each of the monsters - where and under what circumstances you can encounter them and the embodiment of what fears they are. Lost Memories has answers to other mysteries as well. True, the publication only talks about the first three games. Then they offer to navigate themselves.

Many frightening images from the game migrated to movie screens, but there would have been no place for the entire animal world of Silent Hill in the limited one and a half to two hours of film time. The filmmakers came up with something themselves, because they have completely different means of expression at hand.

You don’t immediately notice that the final boss in the second computer game (the one with the letter from his dead wife) is a demon, embodying a woman tormented by illness, chained to a bed, and the demon has a tentacle with which he can strangle an opponent. The bedridden heroine of the first Silent Hill film also seeks revenge, but instead of a tentacle she has an infinite amount of barbed wire.

Small troubles include cockroaches, which have safely marched from games to movies. Among the atmospheric tricks - at the beginning of the second game the hero walks through the fog for a long time, without encountering a single enemy. Young Heather is forced to take the same walk in the film; she walks the last kilometers to Silent Hill.

There are some nice little things that seasoned players will certainly notice in the film. The radio, walkie-talkie or cell phone begins to crackle if a monster is nearby. The hero has a small flashlight attached to his chest pocket - you will need both hands to fight the monsters. The feeling of open space is well conveyed. The first game hooked gamers because for the first time the space in which the character could act was not limited to a location with several enclosed rooms. Experts say that at an early stage, the fog that shrouded the city was very helpful: while the hero was running, the image of the city was gradually loading, something the power of the late 1990s would not have allowed to do otherwise. In short, Silent Hill won people's hearts with its exciting exploration of the surrounding space. There are also funny endings with UFOs in games, when the game ends with nothing, you are simply abducted by aliens, but in cinema there are stricter genre boundaries that do not leave much opportunity for hooliganism.

But let's get back to our monsters. Which were played by people in the first Silent Hill film. The amount of computer graphics tends to zero. Armless, Pyramid Head, Martyr, Gray Child, a team of dancing nurses - all these images were embodied on the screen by actors, dancers, and special effects masters. The filmmakers talked about this in detail in the documentary video.

The popularity of the Silent Hill legend has some limits. You cannot buy a book about this city in your local store. The original source is the game, and comics based on it are only available in Japan, in Japanese.

Besides, why write about this, if even talking about the topic of revived fears and our own inner monsters is unpleasant for us? Silent Hill cannot be forgotten, but it is better to keep the memory of it to yourself as something personal. This legend invites us to trust our intuition and enter into a special dangerous reality, subjective, full of puzzles, it tries to break us and tickles our nerves. Silent Hill is a city that challenges us, forces us to admit our sins, and no one likes to do that.

6. Silent Hill Twins

Abandoned cities, which in English are called ghost towns, do not disappear from the face of the earth. They stand, orphaned and doomed to slow destruction, as if they are guarding the peace of the walls of houses where people used to live, but where the windows will never again light up with soft electric light, and a friendly family will never gather around the table.

Where do ghost towns come from? The closure of city-forming enterprises, wars, natural and man-made disasters drive residents away. This settlements, living in which has become impossible.

We can, of course, talk about the picturesque Italian commune of Craco, abandoned by its residents due to landslides. It’s a beautiful place, movies have been filmed there more than once. But let's get closer to our subject.

Centralia (or Centralia, as you prefer), a city in American state Pennsylvania is the prototype of Silent Hill. A small town with a difficult fate was founded in 1841. For most of its life, Centralia thrived on coal mining. In the second half of the 19th century, there was a secret society in the city; the founder of the city was killed under mysterious circumstances; this crime was followed by several more mysterious massacres and arson. The city had theaters, hotels and 27 saloons.

In 1962, Centralia's population was about a thousand people. The authorities decided to liquidate the landfill in the area of ​​the cemetery and abandoned mine - to clean up and improve the landscape. They decided to set the garbage on fire. And then it was extinguished. But not completely. The fire spread to underground coal mines and continues to this day. Now there are only a few people living in Centralia who have refused government help in moving.

We live in the former USSR, so when we think of ghost towns, our thoughts first turn to the lands around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Reactor explosion causing release huge amount radioactive substances, occurred in 1986. But even today, more than 30 years later, there are many who want to explore the empty streets and houses, industrial facilities, where everything remains the same as in the Soviet years. Only without people.

Why go where it might be unsafe? It’s probably better to ask this question to extreme researchers. In addition, the level of radiation in the region has noticeably decreased over the decades; now excursions, including illegal ones, are offered there for the most curious. On November 29, 2017, media reports appeared about the death of a tourist from Belarus in the Chernobyl exclusion zone. A 33-year-old man tried to climb a classified radar station and fell from a height of 15 meters. He wandered around the exclusion zone with like-minded people, another traveler from Belarus and a Russian woman. The comrades of the deceased, as reported, will be fined and consideration will be given to their expulsion from Ukraine. The deceased extreme sportsman is survived by his wife and three children.

Three days later, on December 2, we received a new batch of news from the exclusion zone. Three guys aged 18 to 23 illegally entered the territory abandoned city Pripyat. Police spotted them while patrolling the area and detained them. Protocols on administrative violations were immediately drawn up. Most likely, the heroes of this story are now puzzled by paying a fine of 20 to 30 minimum wages.

Oddly enough, more positive things happen in the exclusion zone. On September 12, 2017, a video of enthusiastic tourists from Poland appeared on You Tube. They made their way to Pripyat and mechanically launched the Ferris wheel. The attraction was planned to be launched during the May holidays in 1986. But after the accident, the city was empty; no one took a ride on the carousel. As it turned out, its mechanism is completely functional. A moving Ferris wheel looks terrifying against the backdrop of a deserted city.

The creators of the Silent Hill legend have touched our hearts by creating something frightening and attractive. A dead city in which they are looking for answers and salvation. If something is seriously bothering us, will danger stop us on the way to solving it? The very idea that such a place, a place of answers and forgiveness, where you can challenge your fears, could exist, haunts people. The hope of getting to Silent Hill and the fear of not being strong and sane enough for the test fight in each of us.

Mages_Queen

A little about Silent Hill:

Silent Hill is a fictional city from the universe of the Silent Hill game of the same name. According to the developers, it is located in North America. According to one version, in Maine (in the film, the ghost town is located in West Virginia, next to a certain Brahams).

A couple of kilometers away is South Ashfield, and on the other side of the lake is Shepherds Glen.

A former resort, now abandoned city on the shores of Lake Toluca, which has two forms: normal and alternative Silent Hill.

There are different versions of the origin of the alternative side of Silent Hill. According to one of them, the alternative side is the result of the rituals of a certain closed magical order that controls the city and is obsessed with the idea of ​​building Paradise on earth through the suffering of people.

Centralia

In fact, Centralia served as the inspiration for Silent Hill.

It is located in the USA, Pennsylvania.

In 1841, Jonathan Faust opened the Bull's Head tavern, and already in 1866, Centralia received city status. In 1854, Alexander V. Rea, a civil mining engineer, arrived in this city by order of the Locust Mountain Coal and Iron Company. After breaking up the land into lots, he began laying out streets. The community was originally known as "Centerville" until 1865, when a post office was opened there and the name changed to "Centralia."

The coal and anthracite industry was the main production here. It continued to operate in Centralia until the 1960s, when most of the companies went out of business. The mining industry, based on blasthole mines, continued to function until 1982. Open pit mining in this area is still ongoing, with approximately 40 workers working in underground mines about three miles to the west.

During the 1860s and 1870s the town was home to a secret society of Irish emigrants, the Molly Maguires. The founder of the town, Alexander Rea, became a victim of a contract murder. He was killed on October 17, 1868 outside the city. Three people were accused of this crime and were subsequently sentenced to hang in the center of Bloomsburg County, Pennsylvania. The sentence was carried out on March 25, 1878. Also during this period, several more murders and arson were committed.

The town was served by two railways- “Philadelphia and Reading” and “The Lehigh Valley”, and “The Lehigh Valley” was the main source of railway communication. The railway service ceased in 1966.

The township had its own school district with several elementary schools and one high school within the surrounding area. There were also two parochial Catholic schools in the town.

The city's infrastructure was quite developed and included seven churches, five hotels, twenty-seven salons, two theaters, a bank, a post office and fourteen supermarkets. For most of the town's history, while the coal industry was active, the population was over 2,000 residents. About 500-600 more people lived in areas outside the city limits, in adjacent territories.

It started when...

In May 1962, the Centralia City Council hired five volunteer firefighters to clean up the city's garbage dump, located in an abandoned open pit near the Odd Fellows Cemetery. This was done before Memorial Day, as in previous years, but earlier urban garbage dumps were located in other places. The firefighters, as they had done in the past, wanted to set the trash piles on fire, let them burn for a while, and then put the fire out. At least that's what they thought.

Due to the fire not being completely extinguished by firefighters, deeper deposits of debris began to smolder and the fire eventually spread through an opening in the mine to other abandoned coal mines near Centralia. Attempts to extinguish the fire were unsuccessful, and it continued to rage throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Several people complained of deteriorating health caused by the release of carbon monoxide.

Joan Quigley's book, published in 2007, describes the fire as occurring on May 27 and being caused by a cigarette butt thrown away by a tractor-trailer driver. As his version, Quigley cites interviews with volunteer firefighters, a former fire chief, city officials and several witnesses to the event.

In 1979 local residents The true extent of the problem was finally discovered when a gas station owner inserted a stick into one of the underground tanks to check the fuel level. When he took out the stick, it seemed very hot. Imagine his shock when he discovered that the temperature of the gasoline in the tank was about 172 degrees Fahrenheit (77.8°C)!

Statewide, attention to the fire began to increase and reached highest point in 1981, when 12-year-old Todd Domboski fell into a four-foot-wide, 150-foot (45-meter) deep earthen well that suddenly opened up beneath his feet. The boy was saved only because his older brother pulled him out of the mouth of the hole before he met certain death. The incident quickly brought national attention to Centralia as the investigative team (including a state representative, a senator, and a mine safety chief) coincidentally happened to be walking in Domboski's neighborhood at the exact moment of the near-fatal incident.

In 1984, Congress appropriated more than $42 million to prepare and organize the relocation of citizens. Most residents accepted this offer and moved to the neighboring communities of Mount Carmel and Ashland. Several families decided to stay, despite warnings from government officials.

In 1992, the State of Pennsylvania required a permit to expropriate all private property city, citing the building's unsuitability for use. The residents' subsequent attempt to obtain some kind of solution to the problem through the courts failed. In 2002, the U.S. Postal Service eliminated the town's zip code, 17927.

Today

Only a handful of occupied homes remain in Centralia. Most of the buildings have been demolished and at first glance the area now looks like a meadow with a few streets running through it. Some parts of Centralia are filled with newly grown forest. Most of Centralia's roads and sidewalks are also overgrown. The only remaining church in the city holds a weekly service on Saturday night. There are four cemeteries in the town. In general, Centralia's cemeteries now have a much larger "population" than the city itself.

Ghost towns.

The only signs of the fire, which covers approximately 400 acres and is spreading on four fronts, are low, round metal steam vents in the south of the town and a few signs warning of underground fires, unstable ground and carbon monoxide.

Smoke and steam can also be seen coming from an abandoned section of Pennsylvania Route 61 (which was closed in the 1990s after several large cracks appeared in the road), from areas near a hillside cemetery, and from other cracks in the ground. , scattered throughout the city. Route 61 has been rerouted and is now a bypass away from the abandoned town.

However, the underground fire is still burning and will continue to do so until an undetermined point in the future. No attempt is made to extinguish the fire. There is enough coal there to fuel this fire for 250 years.

One of the few remaining buildings was notable in that it was supported by five pillars, like chimneys, along each of two opposite walls, where the house had previously been supported by a series of adjacent buildings before they were destroyed. This house was also destroyed in September 2007.

As of late 2005, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania had not renewed its relocation contract, leaving the fate of the remaining residents uncertain.

Most of the former residents are expected to return in 2016 to open a time capsule buried in 1966 next to the memorial.

There are rumors...

Some residents who lived in Centralia believe the state's right to foreclose on their property was staged to gain mining rights to downtown anthracite.

Residents estimate its price to be more than $1 billion, although the exact amount of coal is unknown. Commonwealth officials stated that the State of Pennsylvania had no anthracite mining rights and no reason to acquire it, and no mining industry had been established in the area.

Of course, Centralia does not have the horrors that took place in Silent Hill.

The city became just a muse for Avery, who was looking for the most interesting version of the script. But the muse is very charismatic: fog periodically spreads over the city (smoke from mines burning underground), the roads and streets of empty houses are overgrown with moss and cracked. In some places, pipes protrude from the ground, from which smoke pours out. In a word, if fans of the game and the film Silent Hill want to walk through historical places, you can’t find a better point on the map than Centralia.

Silent Hill - a city under which an underground fire has been raging for many years - for us is just a horror movie from the computer game and film of the same name. However, on the map of the United States there really is a city, under which a fire has been burning for 47 years.

The Americans themselves have a hard time believing that in their prosperous country, it turns out, there is a prototype of Silent Hill. But you can't argue with the facts. A fire near the town of Pennsylvania began back in 1962. Ironically, the city's longest fire was started by volunteer firefighters. The guys just decided to burn the garbage in an abandoned coal mine. But, as it turned out, they abandoned the mine in vain: there was still gunpowder in the flasks, and so much that it was enough for 50 years to come. It must be said that in the vicinity of Centralia there are entirely deposits of anthracite, so, according to scientists, this fire will burn for at least another 250 years.

Interestingly, the authorities did not pay attention to the underground fire for 17 years, despite numerous complaints about carbon monoxide poisoning in and outside the city.

The scale of the problem impressed officials only in 1979, when the mayor of Centralia personally encountered the consequences of a fire: it turned out that at the gas station he owned, the temperature of gasoline in underground tanks reached 80 ° C. However, the problem received due publicity in 1981. Only an accident that almost ended in the death of a 12-year-old boy forced the state authorities to think seriously. A 50 m deep crevasse suddenly opened up under the teenager’s feet as he walked peacefully along the back yard of his own house.

Fortunately, the boy was not seriously injured, but this incident was enough for a decision to evacuate the population to be made.
Today Centralia is a real ghost town. Of course, it is not a nest of demons, like the “toy” Silent Hill, but still, a walk through Central is not a trip to visit grandma in the village. The threat is posed by sulfur and carbon monoxide fumes, sinkholes and dilapidated buildings.

Again, ironically, the city called Centralia became the least densely populated area in the United States: in 2007, only 9 residents remained here. These persistent “tin soldiers” are truly in love with their ghost town and do not intend to leave it. I can’t help but remember the ending of “Silent Hill”: the ghost town never let the main character and her daughter go Big world. But if they are in other world held by the curse, the residents of Centralia are held back by their love for their destroyed and abandoned city.

In 2006, director Christophe Hahn made the film Silent Hill. The film takes place in a mining town, under which a fire burns endlessly in the depths of the earth. A dead city with ash flying in the air, covering everything around. This city is not the director's imagination. He exists.

This is Centralia, Pennsylvania, USA

Photo 2.

The city arose in 1866. The basis of his wealth was coal mines. The volumes of anthracite mined grew, and so did the city. During its heyday, it had 7 churches, 2 theaters, 27 saloons, a post office, a bank, and 14 stores. There were 2 railroad lines running through Centralia. The population exceeded 2,000, and about 500 more lived in the surrounding area. According to company experts, the coal reserves in the bowels of Centralia should have been enough for 600-1,000 years of production. Prosperity and prosperity were predicted for the city.

However, the city was not a quiet place.

Photo 3.

Members of the Irish secret society of miners, the Molly Maguires, were founded in Centralia. This “underground trade union” did not shy away from using not entirely legal methods in its activities, including arson, kidnapping and murder. In 1869, the founder of the city, Alexander Rea, was killed in Centralia and the priest of the local church, who denounced Molly members in his Sunday sermons, was severely beaten. Arriving at the church after the beating, Father McDermott, looking at his tormentors, said: “This city will burn in hellfire for its sins!”

Almost a century later, the curse was completed.

Photo 4.

Residents of Centralia did not burden themselves with the problem of disposing of household waste. The city dump was one of the abandoned pits. From time to time, firefighters arrived, set fire to the garbage, and when it burned out, they extinguished the flames, and so on until the next time. In May 1962, firefighters cheated and did not completely extinguish the flames. The smoldering fire spread to a coal mine running directly under the city. The coal seam flared up like a match. Attempts were made to extinguish the underground fire, but they were unsuccessful.

The fire continued to burn in the 60s and 70s. Patients began to be admitted to the hospital more and more often; doctors were surprised to find that they had carbon monoxide poisoning. Until the end of the 70s, the authorities managed to avoid unnecessary publicity. And the underground fire continued to flare up.

Photo 5.

In 1979, the owner of a local gas station, measuring the fuel level in one of his underground tanks, noticed that the dipstick was strangely hot. He measured the temperature of the fuel in the storage facility and was horrified: 78 degrees! It turned out that the city was living on a smoldering powder keg. City authorities were forced to acknowledge the danger.

Photo 6.

In 1981, a crevasse opened up right under the feet of 12-year-old Todd Domboski. A column of hot steam mixed with gases poured out of the opened crack. The boy miraculously survived - his brother saved him. Several people witnessed the incident. The story became public, the city attracted the attention of state authorities, and a special commission was sent to Centralia.

Photo 7.

The commission's report was disappointing: a fabulous sum of $500 million was required to eliminate the underground fire. There was no such money in the state treasury, the fate of Centralia was decided. It was decided to evacuate the city. In 1984, Congress allocated $42 million to organize the resettlement of residents. The city began to empty.

Photo 8.

In 2002, the city of Centralia officially ceased to exist: it was removed from the state register, disappeared from the map of the country, postal service The US zip code, 17927, was canceled. Interstate 61, which runs through the city, was closed and re-routed.

Photo 9.

Silent Hill fans often visit the city. Upon entry, tourists are greeted by a poster warning that visiting Centralia is life-threatening. The city has very unstable soil; here and there, sinkholes suddenly form, at the bottom of which there is thousand-degree heat. The authorities are making no attempts to put out the fire. Experts say that the coal under the city is enough to burn for 250 years. There are 7 people living in Centralia, including the former mayor and several devotees hometown residents who flatly avoid communication. There are signs on their houses that say “We do not allow interviews.”

Photo 10.

Ashes fly over the city. Smoke saturated with toxic gases rises from numerous cracks, tearing at the throat. And on a hill on the outskirts there is a church, within the walls of which Father McDermott once cursed the city

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There are now only seven residents left in Centralia. A couple of years ago, most of the city buildings were simply demolished, and now in place of houses and roads there are only green meadows. The remaining houses are gradually covered with thickets - now the city looks like an exemplary illustration of how quickly the planet can destroy traces of humanity.

Photo 15.

But there is another more spectacular city above the burning abyss.

Photo 16.

In Jharia, India, fires are raging underground. Huge coal reserves burn continuously. Sometimes huge holes open up in the ground, swallowing up all living things. Photographer Johnny Haglund told the world about the lives of people under whose feet the flames of hell blaze. His photo essay won second place in the Pictures of the Year International for Science and Natural History Picture Story competition.

Photo 17.

In 1916, coal mines were closed due to violations of mining technology. This is the main reason for what is happening now in the town of Jharia. Twenty years ago, the ground opened up, revealing a huge sinkhole, destroying 250 houses in just two hours. Over time, the fire consumed 41 million tons of coal, which amounts to billions of dollars. Today there are about 70 burning points. People's lives pass in smoke. Due to harmful underground gases, they constantly suffer from respiratory and skin diseases. The reporter recalls that during a visit to Jharia last year, he partially experienced this himself.

Photo 18.

“At the end of each day there was a layer of coal on my clothes and skin, and often my face was just burning. I had quite heavy boots, but the soles of them were almost melted."

Photo 19.

People in this area barely make ends meet by quietly stealing coal from more than 20 surrounding mines. They sell it at the local market or use it for cooking and heating.

Photo 20.

The authorities turn a blind eye to all this. The main danger in illegal coal mining remains cracks in the ground; people are often injured or killed by falling into them. Among the injured and dead are many children who, with their last strength, carry heavy baskets of coal away from the mining site.

A crack in the ground just 200 meters from the neighboring village of Bokopahari. It opened for the first time in 1976 and was filled with sand and stones by order of the government. In 2001, the crack opened again

Photo 21.

“I was there [as a photojournalist] for many years and never got used to the suffering of children. I saw little children, six or seven years old, carrying coal, walking barefoot and inhaling this poisoned air. It was terrible,” says Hagland

Photo 22.

Underground fires are notoriously difficult to extinguish. A similar fire in Centralia, Pennsylvania burned for decades, eventually forcing most of the residents to move elsewhere. Some experts say there is enough coal in Jharia to burn for another 3,800 years. The fire can be extinguished with sand, water, or by cutting off the access of oxygen to the fire.

Photo 23.

Efforts to evacuate locals have been hampered by bureaucratic delays and resistance from residents themselves. Hagland says he's talked to a lot of people who would love to leave. But, according to them, the government gives them little money, and they themselves do not have the funds to move.

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