It would be pretty close. It’s between Lebanon and Lascasses. IIRC, the center of the state is just north of Murfreesboro and this would be in that range. There is still a church there and some houses in the countryside surrounding, but no businesses.
I live on Cainsville Road and one day, shortly after moving there, got curious as to where Cainsville actually was, so I took a drive and found it. If others are interested, I could check to see if the church has a pavillion or shelter for rent to a bunch of Dopers.
“Far tar”?
You’re asking if the premise of a Stephen King story is plausible? 
Haven’t read the story or seen the movie in a good while, but I’ll give it a shot.
Short term, probably. If they killed all the adults in the town, and it was sufficiently isolated, they could possibly go for half a year or so without anyone finding out.
However, IIRC the guy driving through the town found a book at one point listing the births and deaths of the kids, noting that when they turned a certain age (18 I think), they’d be sent into the corn (sacrificed). So this was going on for years and years. Don’t forget, there was a mysterious evil being in the corn that was able to influence people from afar. In IT, there was a killer clown on the loose, and no one noticed, remember? In that one, people sort of became lulled or brainwashed into just not thinking about it. We need to come up with a new scenario.
How about this:
Kids murder their parents, drag them off to sacrifice to the Corn Monster, clean up afterwards, and set up their own Amish style community. By and by, Sheriff from the next town stops by to check on things. If the kids killed him, his disappearance would surely be noticed and investigated. So they hide in the corn while Evil Corn Monster uses his mental powers to convince the sheriff the town has been abandoned, but not to tell anyone about it. In Stephen King’s world, this is a perfectly logical and common scenario. What about worried relatives and lost travellers? They’re sacrificed to the monster and said sheriff dismisses any demands to inquire as to their whereabouts. After all, the town is abandoned in his mind. After all, they’re not using electricity or utilities so there’s not really a lot to draw attention to them. I don’t think the handful of kids there would have harvested the corn, which would have been noticed. Probably just eaten enough of it to survive. Or maybe the monster was feeding them somehow. What did they do in the winter? Oh look, I’m out of ideas, gotta go…
Correct. About five or six years ago I asked my BIL, who works for the Vermont Historical Society, to check into whether or not the town existed, and he confirmed it never did. (The VHS has records of every town that ever existed, even those that long ago disappeared). I later read that King coined the name and considered Momson for the setting of his book before settling on Jerusalem’s Lot, and then used Momson in a fake newspaper article in the prologue.
On a more humorous note, the EPA almost succeeds in making Springfield disappear thanks to a Tom Hanks ad and some judicious OnStar map tweaking in The Simpsons Movie.
A bit off-topic, but I always thought this was interesting: Bullfrog County, Nevada - Wikipedia
I remember reading about that. IIRC the vein of coal was so close to the ground that when it caught fire, they couldn’t get it extinguished?
Another town, population 9:
It was the original capital of Illinois, in fact, but flooding made it an island in the Mississippi for awhile. I guess it got reattached on the MO side because it’s actually west of the Mississippi now. If there were another flood and everybody disappeared, people would figure they got washed down stream I suppose.
Yeah, but there may be people who don’t WANT to be found or assimilated. If they start shooting at you, you probably leave them alone. Also, cults like Jonestown or the Branch Davidians…it would be easier for a town to disappear with that type of scenario, where they already had cut ties to loved ones.
Or like Aintry in “Deliverance.”
Right, but the property tax man wouldn’t be deterred.
This made me think about the thread in here about Detroit going down the toilet. IIRC it was a poster who lived near there who said that so many places have been condemned (and the tax base has been dwindling) that the city literally can’t afford to knock them all down. Meanwhile you have foreign investors scooping up handfuls of properties for 10% of their “value.” You could have some nice neighborhoods and some not-so-nice that would be ghost neighborhoods inside a city of nearly 1M. Not usually a big mystery why they left, and sure, some is white flight. But I wonder where those who were too poor to move to the 'burbs went. Squatting? On the street?
About three miles north of where I live is the municipality sign for Sutton NC. The thing is, that’s all that’s there – the sign. There’s a house about 250 feet up a side road, but nothing at the intersection marked by the sign but pavement, grass, and trees.
My landlady, who grew up here, says back when she was a kid it was a fairly populous little community, but everybody moved away, and the houses went out in hurricanes and fires.
If you look at a USGS map for Pamelia Quadrangle in NY, you’ll see “Noseville” – which is a mishearing of “Knowlesville”. Same thing – a former crossroads community that vanished. It’s still shown on the maps, but nobody lives there anymore.
Or, on a grander scale: Uncontacted peoples
What’s the story on Cainsville? I’m a couple hours from there, but know nothing about it. I’m not from these parts originally.
I’m not sure what the history of the community is or whether it was even incorporated, but it is a farming community between Lebanon and Lascassas. According to a couple of old timers here in Lebanon, it used to be a small farming town with a couple of general stores and a post office. There is still the remnent of what appears to be a gas station / store along SR 266 and a Methodist church.
BTW, shall we put you on the Middle TN Dopers list for any upcoming Dopefests?
Centralia really isn’t a great example of a ghost town or a town ‘dropping off the map’. Aristes is still populated and barely a mile up the road. Frick’s lock was another example of a town where everyone was made to leave and the area was sealed off as well, there are plenty of pics on google since it is a favorite of urban spelunker types.
That being said there are plenty of ghost towns in every state in the Union. Wether there is anything left of the town is another matter.
The chances of this happening in the United States, are zero.
The United States is too populated, there are too many people, and every inhabitable piece of land…is inhabited.
There are just too many hunters, fishermen, teenagers, genealogists, real estate agents, OTR riders, snowmobilers, and people with metal detectors wondering around everywhere in America.
An inhabitable town in the United States that is not regularly and frequently intruded upon by strangers would be a Shangri La, and non-existant.
Tell me of such a Shangri La in the USA where I wont be bothered by strangers and neighbors, and i myself will move there.
I’m from Pittsburgh originally. While I didn’t travel through Central PA at all, I’ve heard that it’s sparsely populated.
Even better, check out this population map of Wyoming:
That’s just too much empty area to be harassed by hunters and fishermen.
Thanks for the info. It sounded kind of notorious, and I hadn’t heard of it at all. That’s not surprising, but once I’d heard about it, I had to know more.
If there’s a Mid-TN Doperfest notification list, sure, put me on it.