Eerie photos of abandoned malls and retail stores around the world (2024)

The American retail sector has been struggling for years. Once the largest retailer in the United States, Sears filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2018. More recently, theCOVID-19 pandemic swept shoppers from the aisles.

What follows is a look intodeserted mallsand other retail stores around the world.

The Sears store pictured here was the last open store at the now-defunct Salem Mall in Dayton, Ohio. It closed in 2013. By July 2020, only 61 of the department stores remained.

Dismembered

These mannequins in a closed Macy's in Philadelphia's Plymouth Meeting Mall are missing more than just their garments.

No toilet paper here

This grocery store once kept pantries stocked in Lordsburg, New Mexico.

Lights out

This was the scene at an empty storefront on San Francisco's Market Street in October 2020.

It used to be stocked with shoes.

Ghostly Milan

The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II shopping mall in Milan, Italy was quiet during the country's strict COVID-19 shutdown in March 2020.

Vaccines on aisle 12

Workers in Germany convert an abandoned supermarket into a vaccine distribution center in December 2020.

Forgotten spaces

Photojournalist Seph Lawless — who captures the world's abandoned places — has photographed a number of dead malls, like Ohio's Rolling Acres Mall, pictured here. Many of these photos can be found in his book, "Autopsy of America: The Death of a Nation."

Snowed in

In this shot, the Rolling Acres Mall appears cold and forgotten.

Lockdowns in Istanbul, Turkey

Stores are closed and shoppers sent home just weeks before the Christmas holiday.

Everything must go

Here, mannequins are sold at discount prices at a soon-to-be-closed JCPenney in 2017.

No shoppers in Concord, Calif.

A mall parking lot stands deserted during a COVID-19 shelter-in-place order from California Governor Gavin Newsom.

No fresh produce today

In March 2020, empty bins and boxes piled up in front of a market in New York City's Brooklyn borough.

No growth

This tree struggles to survive in the lonely and abandoned Randall Park Mall, which closed in Ohio in 2009.

New life

This abandoned Kmart on Long Island is slated to become a supermarket in 2021.

Closed for coronavirus

A pedestrian wearing a protective mask stands in front of closed stores in Newark, New Jersey, in November 2020. The city issued a stay-at-home advisory from November 25 to December 4, shutting down all non-essential businesses.

Just a few items left

These display tables and lone mannequin are the last remaining relics of what was, until 2017, a Pennsylvania JCPenney.

A shuttered Target

This Target store in Melbourne, Australia was empty on a Saturday afternoon in September 2020. The city entered a lockdown after a second wave of COVID-19 infections swept the area.

Time to leave

More forgotten plant life reaches toward what's left of the light source in Euclid Square Mall. This Ohio shopping center closed in September of 2016.

Past its prime

The Landmark Mall in Alexandria, Virginia closed in 2017. A year later, film crews used the empty shopping center to shoot scenes for "Wonder Woman 1984."

Holes

Tiles and floorboards aren't all that's missing here at Ohio's Randall Park Mall.

Dark dining

This ghostly dining terrace in a dead Ohio mall has seen better days.

Wide-open spaces

The usually busy parking lot of this London shopping center was all but deserted during coronavirus shutdowns in April 2020. A few kids used the open space to ride their bikes.

Fryers cold today

KFC is cordoned off at a deserted Hong Kong shopping mall. The COVID-19 pandemic crippled the region's economy, already made fragile by months of political unrest.

Crumbling commerce

This photo shows a deteriorating, non-functional escalator in Owings Mills Mall in Maryland. The mall closed in 2015 and has since been demolished.

A food court with no food

This was the scene at Singapore's Lau Pa Sat Hawker Center food court during the coronavirus lockdown in May 2020.

Reflections of a bustling past

This Madison Avenue storefront represents just one among thousands of New York City business closures as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dropped call

The closed Randall Park Mall was one of the last places you could still find a payphone. The mall began demolition in 2016.

A garden grows

Plants are the only things headed up around this Rolling Acres Mall elevator.

Potted and alone

No shoppers are to be found here at Lincoln Mall in Chicago. The shopping center closed in 2015.

A bygone era

This JCPenney was the last remaining department store at the Becker Village Mall in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina. It closed in 2017.

Going down

Demolition of Lincoln Mall began in spring of 2017.

Ray of light

In this shot, sunlight reaches for the dark floors of the now-demolished Owings Mills Mall.

Skylight and darkness

It seems anything could be lurking in the dark spaces of Metro North Mall in Kansas City, Missouri.

For lease in Los Angeles

The coronavirus pandemic forced the permanent closure of many businesses on this once-bustling strip in West LA.

Shattered and shuttered

This decrepit shopping space in Rolling Acres Mall is creepy, to say the least.

Lonely

The once-bustling Rolling Acres Mall is now a chamber of echoes.

Pandemics and protests

Businesses along Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles boarded up windows before a series of protests against police brutality and racism in June 2020.

Escalator to nowhere

This escalator in the abandoned Hawthorne Plaza Mall in California is perpetually out of order.

Graffiti

Hawthorne Mall can be seen in movies and shows including "Gone Girl" and HBO's "Westworld."

Dark corners

Here's another shot from the infamous Hawthorne Mall, which wasapproved for demolitionin 2016 The process could take years.

Barcelona business restrictions

In-person holiday shopping slowed to a crawl in Barcelona, Spain when the government announced the closure of all malls larger than 800 square meters to slow the spread of COVID-19.

Smaller stores were open but limited to 30% capacity.

Unattended atrium

Greenery grows in the shuttered Dixie Square shopping center south of Chicago. It's all but unrecognizable in this image, but movie buffs might know Dixie Square as the setting of the mall scene in "The Blues Brothers."

Citing rising crime in the area, the shopping center closed just 13 years after opening and remained abandoned for more than 30 years before it was torn down in 2012.

Skylight

The urban explorer who captured this shot of the defunct Metro North Mall in Kansas City described the location as "the mall" during his childhood. "As I walked through the mall," he said of his shoot, "it was ultimately surreal." The site is beingdemolishedand redeveloped.

Final resting place

Hampton Towne Centre, once known as the Hampton Square Mall, is in Essex Township, Michigan. The site lost retailers over time once one of its anchor stores, Kmart, filed bankruptcy. The mall officially closed in 2010, but was purchased one year later by an optimistic businessman.

Gasping for air

Another shot from Hampton Towne Centre shows what happens to mall foliage when no one visits.

Canceled carousel

This merry-go-round now sits still in the dead Medley Centre Mall (also known as Irondequoit Mall) in Rochester, New York.

Blackout

Cincinnati Mills (formerly Forest Fair Mall) is considered a nearly dead mall, as there is one section still in operation. This is not that section.

Store closing

Shelves and racks are bare after a closing sale at Sears Boulevard Mall in Amherst, New York.

End of the road

This dead mall in Akron, Ohio, closed after its bigger retailers began shutting their doors in the early 2000s. It wore its label scars up until its demolition in 2016.