In May 1962 the borough of Centralia, Pennsylvania torched its landfill for a spring cleanup — and the fire found the labyrinth of worked-out anthracite mines beneath the town. Carbon monoxide crept into basements, a boy nearly vanished into a steaming sinkhole, and the government finally condemned the whole place and bought almost everyone out. The coal below could keep burning for another 250 years.
Start here: a tight overview of the underground inferno that emptied a town, with footage of smoke curling out of cracks in the bare earth where streets used to be.
How it actually started: the council's plan to 'clean up' the dump by setting it alight, the fire slipping into an unsealed mine opening, and every failed attempt to dig it out.
The full dossier: a population that fell from over 1,000 to five, the 1981 sinkhole that nearly swallowed 12-year-old Todd Domboski, and the day the state revoked the town's ZIP code.
A time capsule from when people still lived there: residents testing their basements for carbon monoxide and arguing over whether to stay, years before the forced buyout.
A walk through what's left: cemeteries that outlived the town around them, grid streets with nothing on them, and vents still exhaling heat decades later.
Aerial 4K footage lays the devastation bare: the scorched burn zone sitting dead in the middle of living autumn forest, and the buckled, abandoned stretch of Route 61.
Why a real burning town became the fictional hell of the Silent Hill films. Screenwriter Roger Avary grew up hearing about Centralia from his mine-engineer father — the fog, the fissures, the fire all made it in.