Just in time for Halloween, I have for you what seems to be one of the scariest places on earth! This is not one of those set-up haunted amusement parks like Great Adventure or Terror Behind the Walls at Eastern State Penitentiary. This is an actual abandoned amusement park that is actually the home to ghosts. This is no joke!
It's been decades since the Lake Shawnee Amusement Park was filled with the laughter of children. According to the local legend though, the park is still a playground for ghosts. The southern West Virginia park was been abandoned back in 1966, after the accidental deaths of two its patrons, but it seems Lake Shawnee's haunted history reaches much further back.
Word has it; Mercer County was home to a Native American tribe until 1783, when a European family attempted to settle the land and sparked a turf war. The patriarch of the family was a farmer named Mitchell Clay, who was out hunting one day, when a band of Native Americans reportedly killed his youngest son, Bartley. One of his daughters was knifed to death during the melee and his eldest son, Ezekial was kidnapped and burned at the stake. Mitchell Clay would then enlist the help of other white settlers to seek vengeance for his family. After burying his children, he murdered several of the Native Americans.
Centuries later, in the 1920s, a businessman named Conley T. Snidow purchased the site of the Clay farm and developed it into an amusement park. He built a swing set, a ferris wheel, and opened up the pond for swimming, but unfortunately death still hung over that cursed piece of land. A little girl in a pink ruffled dress met her demise when after climbing the circling swing set, she was killed after a trunk backed into the path of the swing. In another story, a little boy, drowned in the amusement park's swimming pool. According to records, the amusement park's rides were responsible for a total of six deaths and would eventually shut down, but its structures were left to rot and rust.
The park's new owner, Gaylord White, says he can hear the wooden swings creak, even though there is no wind to push them. He says sometimes the seats would start to move underneath your hand until you feel cold air blowing through the seat. When you get to the middle of the park, you feel something warm and he believes that's the little girl's spirit. White's son said he's even seen the little girl, with her dress covered in blood. He said, "She looked at me and as long as she looked me, I couldn't move."
Paranormal investigators now frequent the amusement park and the Travel Channel has even featured this place in its "Most Terrifying Places in America" show. White has opened Lake Shawnee up for a week for daring visitors who want to see the place for themselves. It's opened from now until Halloween and he says flashlights are mandatory, though you may not like what you see. You know what I say to that? NO THANKS!
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