High up on Buck Mountain in Maggie Valley, USA, there is an abandoned wild west theme park.
Visitors have not graced Ghost Town in the Sky for decades and its only guests today are the vultures which circle the empty rides.
More eerily, the park still has overgrown roller coasters next to a deserted saloon and silent animatronic animals.
But how did the park come to lie empty?
The park opened in May 1961 and quickly became a popular attraction.
It brought visitors to the area with its Western-themed standoff re-enactments and variety of rides.
At one point, the park was bringing in around 620,000 people per year.
Trouble started in the late 1980s when problems on the rides became a regular occurrence at the park.
Rides would often be closed or break down and this caused visitors numbers to plummet to just 360,000 people per year, a massive drop in income.
A chairlift malfunction in 2002 led to Ghost Town in the Sky’s temporary closure.
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It did manage to reopen in 2007, but this was short lived and just two years later it was struggling with financial problems.
With allegations that the park could not pay its staff, it filed for bankruptcy in 2009.
Things got worse when the walls around the park collapsed in 2010 and caused a mudslide which led to the evacuation of 40 nearby homes.
Attempts were made to reopen the park on several occasions but the mudslide incident was the final nail in the coffin and it has been closed ever since.
The parks’ owner Alaska Presley passed away last month aged 98 and left it ownerless and with a bleak future.
Photographer Ben James from the UK has visited the theme park and documented its demise in video and photos.
He described its empty state as similar to the ‘apocalypse’ and explained that he could imagine hearing laughter in the empty and silent premises.
He said: "I had seen the theme park had been abandoned for a while, and the owner died recently so now the park just sits abandoned.
"It was very much like something out of a zombie apocalypse film, it was a real ghost town in the sky.
"It was very eerie because everything had been left, you could imagine all of the laughter that went on there.
"It's a real shame because it would have brought joy to a lot of people and now it is one of the most haunting places to explore.”
As the park was built high up on a mountain, its empty state gives it a particularly creepy feel.
Without any people nearby, the sounds and sights that would normally be heard at a theme park are missing.
The strangest thing about it, Ben explained, was the haunting beauty of abandonment.
He said: "The fact that it's so high up, on the mountain, and there's not a soul around, it's very eerie, but one of the most incredible things to see, especially the rollercoasters.
"I think every photographer dreams of doing an abandoned theme park and it's probably one of the best in the world.
"Because it's so high up, there's nothing around except vultures and eagles sitting on the rollercoasters.
"It was a very haunting but peaceful place."
More of Ben's photography can be found on his Instagram and TikTok, @places_forgotten.
