The eerie world of abandoned buildings — in pictures

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  A barber shop in cellblock 10 at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. The penitentiary took in its first inmate in 1829, closed in 1971 and reopened as a museum in 1994. Matt Rourke / AP Photo

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  Trams and trolley buses sit abandoned and wrecked in the Loftus Tram Shed in Sydney. Trams were a key part of life in Sydney after the network was installed in 1879, with 1,600 cars in service during the height of its popularity. The service was eventually shut down in 1961. Rob Griffith / AP Photo

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  The ruins of a vandalised, golf ball-shaped cover for antennas of the abandoned former listening station of the United States National Security Agency, at the Teufelsberg (Devil’s Mountain) is reflected in a puddle in Berlin. The listening station, which was active until the early 90s, is now used by graffiti artists and can be visited only with guided tours. Markus Schreiber / AP Photo

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  Sand fills an abandoned house in Kolmanskop, Namibia. Kolmanskop, was a diamond mining town south of Namibia, build in 1908 and deserted in 1956. Jerome Delay / AP Photo

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  Dusty keys in the mail slots of a hospital basement post office at the former Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo, California. The shipyard dates from the 1850s and was the first US Navy base in the Pacific. At its peak in World War II some 50,000 worked on the island. Today about 4,000 either work, live or go to school there. A number of its buildings and facilities are still empty following the closing of the shipyard in 1996. Eric Risberg / AP Photo

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  Cell-block 12 at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. Matt Rourke / AP Photo

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  A swimming pool at the abandoned Palace hotel at deserted tourist resort of Haludovo, near Malinska on the northern Adriatic island of Krk, Croatia. The resort was built as a joint venture of Yugoslav communist government and Bob Guccione, the founder of the Penthouse magazine. The resort was intended as a haven of extreme decadence for upscale vacationers on the Adriatic Sea. Today, it sits abandoned due to ownership issues and mismanagement. Darko Bandic / AP Photo

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  Chairs rest on tables in an empty classroom at an elementary school in the abandoned village of Simacem, North Sumatra, Indonesia. The village was abandoned after its people were evacuated following the eruption of Mount Sinabung. Binsar Bakkara / AP Photo

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  Buttons that used to open and close gates at the abandoned Central State Farm prison in Sugar Land, Texas. The unit was closed down three years ago. Pat Sullivan / AP Photo

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  A row of concrete structures called “Quonset huts” lie inside the Subic Bay Freeport Zone, Zambales province, northern Philippines. The huts were used as barracks for US Marines inside the former American naval base. It was closed in 1992 after the Philippine Senate voted not to extend the lease on the facility. Aaron Favila / AP Photo

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  An artefact at the west terminal of old airport in eastern Athens. The seaside site of Athens’ old airport hosted half a dozen Olympic venues during Athens 2004 Games. This year, private investors won a tender to develop the entire area into a residential, commercial, hotel and leisure centre, in a 7 billion-euro investment. Thanassis Stavrakis / AP Photo

AP Photo spotlight: Our ghosts are with us, for all to see. All we need do is look carefully.

People, many of them long dead, built structures in which they could work or live or play. And then they moved on to other, newer places. Sometimes the wrecking ball obliterated all evidence of the past, but often the carcasses remained, growing majestic in their decrepitude.

And so sand reclaims an abandoned house in South Africa. A shed in Australia, visited only by vandals, still holds trams that have not run in more than a half century. A barber’s chair sits amid the ruins of a Philadelphia prison. Quonset huts in the Philippines, long abandoned by US. Marines, dissolve in apocalyptic splendour.

“Time crumbles things,” said Aristotle. And there’s an awful beauty in that.