A Mexican church half-buried by lava, a deserted village on a Turkish hillside, the ruins of an entire mining settlement on an abandoned island in Japan, a penal colony in the Indian Ocean slowly being engulfed by jungle—images like these are bound to make us wonder: what happened here? From former gold-rush towns to settlements evacuated after natural disasters or chemical spills, and from communities caught in war zones to deserted ports and whaling stations, Ghost Towns tells, in 160 striking images, the stories behind 100 abandoned places.