Whoever said it was better to burn out than to fade away was just wrong. Sometimes fading away is cool.

Take the faded apparitions that are found in many large cities or small towns across America. Termed "ghost signs," even the name actually has several layers -- like many of the signs themselves.

The products and services advertised are usually now dead or defunct, the signs often appear or "materialize" after a rain--and sometimes they can appear after a fire or storm exposes a wall that was hidden by another element of a building.

The faded, painted images and verbiage usually placed on brick, cement or stucco walls can seem "ghostly," also, when you are trying to decipher what they once said or displayed. In some instances, there are successive ads painted on top of others, creating an abstract composition with the most intriguing and mysterious--with others, something more along the lines of a quizzical puzzle.

Advertising images typically depicted might include the great American Coca Cola, large loaves of bread, ads for diners, tocacco or cigarettes, coffee, beer--or goods and services of a local nature.

The paint used, a white lead based formula, lent itself to preservation, as does physical protection of the signs from the elements.

Signs in some places have obviously been repainted, with hopes of preserving the quaint charm of the original--although this is not always done successfully. Other signs continue to flake away, remaining ghostly spectres of their former selves.

Of course, these signs were not meant to be mysterious, picturesque, or symbols of urban charm. They were intended as highly visible advertising messages placed in locales designed to draw business. The sign painters who produced the images, also known as "wall dogs,' were in fact, highly skilled artists. They were an eclectic lot, traveling from city to city or town to town, generally working for one of a few major sign companies that existed.

The owners of the buildings whose walls became canvasses were often given smaller ads in exchange for the use of the space, as can be seen. These were often painted just above or below an ad for a national product.

Some great areas to search for ghost signs include any older industrial age city, like Chicago or New York, and especially in the Midwest, Texas, and California, as seen by my research here--but true to their ghostly character, ghost signs can be seen haunting human habitations anywhere.