While metal detecting along the riverbanks of a long-abandoned ghost town, my wife’s detector signaled something different and what we unearthed connected directly to the people who once lived there.

In the California desert, ghost towns pop up sporadically along miles of empty highway. Just west of the Nevada border, the ruins of Route 66's revelrous heyday can be seen in abandoned spots around ...

In the U.S., eerie remnants of once-inhabited towns or villages exist in the form of "ghost towns," left in forgotten corners of the country. Nearly every U.S. state has some sort of ghost town, ...