Gary, Ind., has lost half its population since 1960, and a realestate analysis firm now raises the specter of parts of it becominga ghost town — at least for the purposes of a tongue-in-cheekHalloween-themed survey.

Three Gary zip codes were listed among the top 10 with thehighest ratios of vacant homes with dead owners in a survey ATTOMData Solutions called “Spooktacular Zip Codes: Zip Codes Where theVacant Home May Be the Haunted Home.”

Earlier this year, Gary was planning on demolishing nearly 700vacant homes using a state fund to fight urban blight. As the steelindustry withered, Gary's population fell from a peak of 178,320 in1960 to 80,000 in 2010.

Nationwide, more than 40,000 single-family homes are vacant and have a listed owner who is now dead, or one in every1,795 homes, according to a survey of 72 million homes by LosAngeles-based ATTOM (formerly RealtyTrac).

But the ratio was eerily higher in some zip codes. The Top 10were:

• 46407 in Gary (one in 41)
• 46402 in Gary (one in 52)
• 15110 in Duquesne, Pa. (one in 56)
• 15104 in Braddock, Pa. (one in 57)
• 36610 in Mobile, Ala. (one in 69)
• 48217 in Detroit (one in 71)
• 39203 in Jackson, Miss. (one in 74)
• 35207 in Birmingham, Ala. (one in 81)
• 46404 in Gary (one in 81)
• 44506 in Youngstown, Ohio (one in 83)