An abandoned subway station is the right stop for young imaginations.

A long-closed train station in Center City is very much alive in my kids' imaginations. Soon after the Bicentennial, cobwebs and mothballs became the dominant features of the Franklin Square PATCO station.

Because of a lack of ridership, the station was shut to passenger traffic almost 30 years ago. Franklin Square used to be the first stop the High-Speed Line would make after it crossed over the Ben Franklin Bridge from New Jersey, a few blocks before Eighth and Market Streets.

Now it is an underground ghost town, rendered to the realm of intrigue and imagination. When you whiz by the station on the High-Speed Line, the tunnel lights create an eerie netherworld. I have seen many passengers strain their eyes and necks trying to glimpse whatever may be lurking in the shadows.

My two young sons are convinced that there are still riders waiting for the train at Franklin Square. It's just that now those passengers are apparitions, apparently attempting to inspire a children's book about their secret world. It would be a kind of ghoulish version of the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, the adventures of kids stealthily living at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

My sons have spun a tale of a ghost family that lives inside the Franklin Square station. The mommy, daddy, kid, and baby ghosts apparently float about the station, playing happily with other kinds of spectral creatures. I have been informed that ghosts have an advantage over us mortal types. They can catch the train whether it stops at the station or not. "The ghosts can just float right onto the train," my 6-year-old son, Kameron, has explained to me, not really understanding why I can't seem to comprehend something so obvious.

My younger son, 4-year-old Josh, points out the ghosts lined up waiting for the trains each time we go speeding by the station. "How come they're not getting on?" I inquired on a recent trip. "They are getting on," he remarked in an incredulous fashion.

My sons are certainly right to be intrigued. Franklin Square station is far more captivating than any haunted house. Since you can never really get more than a tiny glimpse of what lies beyond its flickering lights, it is rendered almost completely to the realm of your imagination.

It's reminiscent of the old horror movies that were frightening because of what they didn't show instead of what they did.

Franklin Square is something rare in modern society. It is a living artifact that is trapped in time. It's not like one of those reconstructed museum pieces with a neatly placed plaque telling us exactly what the significance is, and as a result, taking our imagination out of it.

If we could turn on all the lights within Franklin Square station for a few moments, instead of discovering a breeding ground for spectral organisms, we would probably find a kind of archeological site. Still permeated by the echoes of leisure suits and bell-bottom jeans, there is no doubt a piece of chewing gum stuck to the station platform with a story to tell about who we were back then.

But that's not nearly as mesmerizing as the unearthly yarns fueled by the imagination of our kids. Ghost towns fascinate us because they are canvases that allow each of us to paint our own pictures. Having an underground ghost town only adds to the palette of possibilities.

The article above was found on Google and was published originally on philly.com