The eerie British ghost town that’s been totally abandoned | World | News

Frozen in time for over a decade, an entire town – comprising dozens of huge four-bedroomed houses as well as a barrack-like apartment block, sports facilities and even a petrol station – is being reclaimed by nature.

Built by the British government at the height of the Cold War, JHQ Rheindahlen housed up to 12,000 British servicemen and their families from 1952 until 2013. But it’s not in the UK – it’s in Germany.

“This place is so big it is pretty much its own city,” says Colin Hudson, who documented the site for his Beaded Explorer YouTube channel. “I cannot believe this whole estate is completely abandoned.”

He described the experience of wandering around the sprawling town – now populated only by deer and red squirrels – as like being in a post-apocalyptic world where all human life had vanished.

The eerie site which covers 376 hectares is so overgrown with young trees that in summertime many of its houses would be virtually invisible. When Colin visited, most of the trees were still bare, allowing the viewer to get a sense of what the garrison town would have been like when it was populated.

Many of the buildings would be worth millions, if sold today. As an entire development, the overall value of the site is incalculable. There is some evidence of vandalism and graffitti, buit overall the site remains untouched. However, while it was quite a warm day, Colin tells the Express that it was strangely cold inside many of the houses.

“This is actually incredible,” Colin said. “This is probably the closest I’ve ever felt to be like walking around in The Walking Dead. This is exactly what it would look like if the world ended everyone disappeared nature would just literally take over everything.”

After the British Army formally handed the town back to the German government in December 2013, plans were drawn up to redevelop it to house asylum seekers but over a decade on, there has been no progress.

A consortium of Arab investors submitted proposals to convert the site to a leisure park in 2015, but those plans appear now to have fallen through.

Another part of the facility is set to be used as a training facility for the North Rhein Westfalia police force, allowing them to practise hostage rescue and other operations under the most realistic conditions possible.

The town looks very much like any other modern British or German town. Many of the houses have their own garages, some of which remain locked.

In one or two cases, trees have grown in front of the garage doors, making them impossible to open: “Some of these haven’t been opened in a very very long time,” Colin said.

At its height the site, then known as JHQ Rheindahlen, included a NAAFI superstore, a BP petrol station two post offices, dress shop, and five British primary schools.

Colin tells us he’s heading back there next month for another look at the massive site, but beyond that, plans for the eerie town remain uncertain.