While countries like the United States and Australia are famous for their ghost towns, South Africa has its own collection of forgotten settlements. Before long, Leydsdorp was abandoned, leaving behind crumbling buildings, an old cemetery and one of South Africa’s most authentic ghost towns. The old mining settlement at Okiep, Northern CapeAlthough modern Okiep is still inhabited, sections of its original nineteenth-century mining settlement feel frozen in time. Why ghost towns continue to fascinate usThere is something deeply humbling about walking through a place where life simply stopped. South Africa’s ghost towns are reminders that prosperity can be fleeting.