Why do people call ghost towns "ghost towns"?

Brainyblonde

A ghost town is a town that has been abandoned, usually because the economic activity that supported it has failed or because of natural or human-caused disasters. The word is sometimes used in a depreciative sense to include areas where the current population is significantly less than it once was. There are many ghost towns in the American Great Plains, whose rural areas have lost a third of their population since 1920. There are more than 6,000 abandoned sites of settlement in the state of Kansas alone, according to Kansas historian Daniel Fitzgerald. Ghost towns are almost stereotypically common in mining or old mill town areas. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_town Jul 26 06, 10:59 AM

smartie806

The name comes from the fact that no living people are in the town; only ghosts would be there. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ghost%20town Jul 26 06, 11:00 AM