My sister recently visited a ghost town in Montana called Bannack. The town was founded in 1862 and was the site of a major gold discovery. Today sixty historic structures remain standing in the town. The last residents left in the 1970s. A ghost sign remains on the ghost hotel. […]

Sanok is a Polish city located in the Carpathian Mountains. Historically, the region was inhabited by Lemkos and Boykos. In the interwar period, the city was known as a center of the Ukrainian movement in Galicia, and of the cultural heritage of Lemkos and other Rusyns. I didn’t spend much […]

In Tallinn, I found an old metal roller shutter with a Russian inscription. Estonia was part of the Russian Empire until 1917 and so the shutter dates to before the Russian Revolution. From an issue of the newspaper Сибирскій листокъ, dated April 10, 1905, there is an advertisement for Штори […]

On Saturday I wanted to visit one of my favorite ghost signs, to see how much was left as it has been crumbling. Instead of being sad about how it is slowing disappearing, I was pleasantly surprised to find a man uncovering an epic ghost sign in the same passageway! […]

I have good luck when it comes to finding ghost signs right when they have been uncovered and right before they will be covered again. Today I went on a bike ride to a part of Lviv I go to only every couple of months, and found that some ghost […]

I thought a good place to start my blog was with myself, specifically with my name as “Areta” is an antiquated Ukrainian name, especially in Ukraine. The name “Areta” comes from the ancient Greek word “areté” (Greek: ἀρετή), which means virtue. Possibly one of the first Aretas to live in […]