Abandoned Amusement Parks: Hauntings, Disasters, and more // DARK SUMMER VOL. 2
Summer is the perfect time to visit an amusement park, but for every park that’s open and bustling during the warmer months, there’s one that’s fallen into disrepair and sits there abandoned.
But what causes this to happen? Well, sometimes a series of horrible accidents cause the public to lose faith in a park, and ticket sales plummet. Sometimes, a once in a generation disaster occurs and an entire city must evacuate, leaving the park inside empty. And other times, a park somehow winds up built on an ancient graveyard, and unexplained, supernatural events scare the public away.
Today, we’re talking about River Country, Pripyat Amusement Park, and Lake Shawnee Abandoned Amusement Park
TW: Child death
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SOURCES
https://abandonedfl.com/disneys-river-country/ (good real-world assets to pull)
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/34266925/disney-abandoned-park-comeback
https://www.thesun.co.uk/travel/8254711/disney-theme-park-closed-269million-revamp/
https://parklore.com/main/river-country/
https://www.cdc.gov/meningitis/about/amebic-meningitis.html
Newspapers.com Links:
https://www.newspapers.com/image/188733405/?match=1&terms=river%20country%20disney%20drowning
https://www.newspapers.com/image/1130928201/?match=1&terms=river%20country%20disney%20drowning
https://www.thoughtco.com/chernobyl-animal-mutations-4155348
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210422-the-guards-caring-for-chernobyls-abandoned-dogs
https://etn.redmud.org/banana-equivalent-dose/
https://abandonedin360.com/abandoned-commercial-properties/pripyat-amusement-park
https://www.wvlakeshawnee.com/faq/history/
https://visitmercercounty.com/places/lake-shawnee/
https://lostandabandonedam.wixsite.com/laaa/lake-shawnee-abandoned-amusement-pa
https://www.grunge.com/1039702/the-shady-history-of-the-cursed-lake-shawnee-amusement-park/
https://www.nydailynews.com/2013/10/26/abandoned-west-virginia-amusement-park-has-a-bloody-history/
https://theclio.com/entry/20080
https://www.the-sun.com/news/6310305/kids-killed-haunted-theme-park-burial-ground/
TRANSCRIPT
Summer is the perfect time to visit an amusement park, but for every park that’s open and bustling during the warmer months, there’s one that’s fallen into disrepair and sits there abandoned.
But what causes this to happen? Well, sometimes a series of horrible accidents cause the public to lose faith in a park, and ticket sales plummet. Sometimes, a once in a generation disaster occurs and an entire city must evacuate, leaving the park inside empty. And other times, a park somehow winds up built on an ancient graveyard, and unexplained, supernatural events scare the public away.
This is heart starts pounding, a podcast of horrors, hauntings, and mysteries, and today we’re going to sneak into a couple abandoned amusement parks together and discuss the cursed history that led to their closures. Buckle up for this episode of dark summer, and make sure to keep your hands and feet in the car the entire ride.
But first… thanks to everyone who has purchased the new Heart Starts Pounding merch–please keep tagging me in your photos. I love seeing our little Jinx out there in the wild. There have also been so many nice messages that have come through. Seriously, thank you guys for all your support and remember the special Dark Summer tee will only be available another few weeks, and then it will be gone forever, so make sure to grab one before it’s too late. We’ll have other fun limited seasonal horror pieces in the future but I love our dark summer T. Patrons and Apple Subscribers get 10% off everything in the store. That’s 20% off for the high council tier on patreon. Check out shop.heartstartspounding.com to see what’s available.
Ok, let me tell you about our first park.
Story 1
Music- Eerie, echoey, country western music playing on a loudspeaker in the distance.
For our first amusement park, we’re heading down to the shores of Bay Lake in Florida, and we’re going to jump over the barricades keeping people out of the skeletal remains of a once thriving water park called River Country.
Once inside the park, you can hear the faint sound of music playing on an old, tattered speaker system. It’s terrifying, but the music here was never turned off, though the lights were.
The height of this theme park's abandonment was in 2019, when nearly two decades had passed since a single visitor had stepped foot into the water park with a ticket.
Then, Water in pools had turned a mossy shade of green, vacant water slides were overtaken by vines sitting atop rickety wooden support beams. If you poked around enough, you’d find an old office, still full of paperwork, that looked like someone had just got up and left one day and never returned.
But the strangest thing about this park, is that if you were to stand at the very top of the highest crumbling water slide, you’d see something that would make you do a double take. There, in the very near distance, is Cinderella’s castle, in the center of Disneyworld. Yes, this decaying collection of rides that we’re standing in once was part of disney, but a series of very unfortunate and preventable accidents led to a publicity crisis that ended in the park’s demise.
River Country initially opened on June 20th, 1976 as a water park located within Disney's Fort Wilderness camping grounds, which is a part of Disneyworld’s Magic Kingdom. At just $25 a ticket, River Country was specifically designed as a more affordable way for families—who perhaps couldn’t afford the resort hotels—to enjoy Disney’s attractions. Locals frequently visited just for the day, separate from other Disney attractions.
Now, River Country was relatively small compared to the rest of Disneyworld. It was about 6 acres, it was basically crammed in between the camp grounds and Bay Lake. for reference, Epcot alone is around 300 acres, and all of Disneyworld sits on about 27,000 acres. But for being a small part of the Disney Ecosystem, River Country was incredibly popular. It welcomed, at its peak 4,700 guests a day and was home to some really beloved rides.
It was described as a "Huckleberry Finn old-fashioned swimming hole," and featured sandy beaches, lawn chairs, and daybeds. The park was supposed to look like it was part of nature, like families had accidentally stumbled upon a watery oasis, which was a stark contrast from the heightened design and world building of Disneyworld.
There was the slippery slope plunge, which was waterslides that looked like they had been carved into a natural rock formation, and emptied out into The Upstream Plunge, which was described as a “clean water pool” of bright blue water.
The park also had pony rides, white water rapids, a kid zone, and hiking trails. It was really perfect for a family day out.
But there was one thing about River Country that made it really unique, and would also be the reason behind one of it’s biggest disasters. And that was the filtration system used for all of these pools to keep the water clean.
The main attraction at river country was Bay Cove, a massive pool that the water slides fed into. To keep the water in Bay Cove looking like natural freshwater from a lake rather than chlorinated water from a waterpark, River Country actually used water from the adjacent Bay Lake.
The lake water first passed through a filtration system before entering the park. And this system worked by keeping Bay Cove's water level slightly higher than that of Bay Lake. This ensured that lake water could not flow backward into the swimming area, maintaining sanitary conditions.
And so, despite the park’s natural appearance, the water was filtered and treated. This allowed guests to safely swim in clean water that felt like a natural lake or river environment. But Disney didn’t know the unintended consequences of having a filtration system like this.
In August 1980, an unnamed 11-year-old boy from Queens/Long Island, New York, visited River Country while on vacation with his family. He spent the day splashing around, enjoying all that the park had to offer.
But when the boy returned home to New York just a day later, he started feeling ill. He developed a fever, chills, stomach aches and vomiting. Eventually, his parents felt he was just getting worse as time went on, so they brought him into the hospital.
What followed were tests, lots and lots of tests. It wasn’t the flu, it wasn’t a stomach bug. The hospital couldn’t figure it out, but he kept getting sicker and sicker, so he was transferred to ANOTHER hospital in New York where he would eventually pass away from his mysterious illness.
Doctors there believed he had some sort of viral meningitis perhaps, brain inflamation, and they performed a spinal tap to check his spinal fluid. And that’s when they found something that made them stop in their tracks. He had contracted something these doctors had never seen before. There had only been 29 documented cases of this illness ever, and it was caused by an amoeba found in warm freshwater lakes.
The boy had contracted Amoebic Meningoencephalitis, an aggressive and incredibly rare brain infection caused by an ameoba called Naegleria fowleri.
It was thought that because of warmer than usual temperatures that year, the amoeba flourished and multiplied and had entered River Country’s Bay cove through the filtration system connecting it to Bay Lake.
the amoeba most likely entered the boy’s brain through his nose causing rapid inflammation and severe destruction of brain tissue.
In the immediate aftermath, two florida public health officials stepped forward to try and explain that this was a natural risk and was most likely not caused by any faults in River Country’s filtration system, but that didn’t matter to parents. They became terrified of the water in the park, and ticket sales plummeted. This specific type of Amoeba wasn’t found in properly chlorinated pools, afterall. And parents figured they’d just take their kids to proper waterparks.
So Disney really needed to turn the image of the River Countyr, they needed to show people that it was safe and earn back the trust of the public.
But that’s when tragedy struck again
BREAK 1
Exactly two years after the 11 year old boy’s death, a 14 year old named Howard was at River country on a trip with his church. 50 teens had just come from a church convention in Miami and were headed back to their home state of North Dakota, when leaders decided they should stop at the waterpark on their long drive back.
That night, it’s estimated there were around 500 kids swimming in Bay Cove. Howard started climbing the steps of one of the 60 foot water slides that dumps out into the cove, and it’s believed he didn’t see a sign that read “Rapid Water- Strong Swimmers Only”. Howard was described as an inexperienced swimmer.
There were 13 lifeguards on duty that night, and not one of them saw Howard come down the waterslide and stop moving once he landed in the pool. He was bobbing in the water for 5 whole minutes before a lifeguard noticed and swam out to check on him. And by that point, he had died.
A spokesperson for Disney named Ron Madden said that he didn’t feel like Disney did anything wrong in the situation. He felt as though there were enough lifeguards watching Bay Cove and there was no need to add more.
But one thing that wasn’t ever mentioned in the articles or the statements, and I really want to know more about, is why did it take 5 minutes for a lifeguard to get Howard. There were two lifeguards assigned to the slide he went down, one at the top, one at the bottom, who were tasked with watching kids go down into the water and then resurface safely. I have to believe that the lifeguard at the bottom just wasn’t paying attention. I would love anyone who has been a lifeguard to weigh in on this because I’m legitimately confused as to how this happened. It did happen at night so maybe it was dark, but in that case they should have added more lights afterwards.
So after this second death of a child, nothing changed , because once again, the park didn’t admit any fault. And I know they say tragedy strikes in three, like it’s some cosmic curse that you can’t outrun, but for River Country, when the third accident happened, it felt like they had it coming.
On June 13th, 1989, seven years after the last tragedy, a swimmer in Bay Cove was walking through the pool when they felt something under their feet. It was soft and fleshy, but the water was too deep and murky to see the bottom.
Taking a big breath, the swimmer dove under the water where he felt the unmistakable outline of a body.
Within moments, a 13 year old boy named Christopher Staff was pulled out of the Cove and onto dry land. No one could be certain how long he had been underwater for, but time was of the essence. A lifeguard ran over to Christopher and started immediately performing chest compressions on the boy.
People started gathering around to watch, including this woman named Kim Higgenbotham. Now, Kim was a 23 year old scuba instructor, she was CPR and first aid certified, she actually taught CPR at Seaworld in florida, she was specially trained for these types of emergencies in parks which is why she ran over when she heard the whistle blow. But when she got to the area where everyone had gathered, she noticed that the lifeguard performing CPR on Chris was doing it incorrectly.
Kim tried to intervene, but the lifeguards wouldn’t listen. For 15 minutes, the lifeguard continued to do improper CPR on the boy until emergency services arrived and took him to the hospital where he was later pronounced dead.
Pretty quickly after this happened, a spokesperson for Disney came forward and said, you guessed it, they were not at fault. There was no evidence that improper CPR had occurred, and that there was no reason to retrain any of the lifeguards in first aid.
But Kim always stuck to her story, that she had witnessed incorrect life saving procedures, and she even went so far as to say that Christopher may have had a chance at survival had CPR been done correctly.
It was later confirmed by a family friend that Christopher’s family did have a pool and that he knew how to swim. No one could answer how he wound up at the bottom of the Cove, and how no lifeguards saw him slip out of view.
He was on a class trip with 7 other classmates from Pace Private school, a school that caters to children with learning disabilities.
Three deaths and no accountability really damaged the park's reputation, and over the next decade ticket sales started diminishing. Eventually, the park closed for Winter maintenance in 2001, and Disney decided to just never reopen it. That’s why it looked like everyone had just packed their bags and left one day, paperwork still in drawers in the offices.
Disney actually didn’t tell anyone the park was closed for four years, there wasn’t an official announcement until that time, so guests kept arriving just to see a hanging sign that read, River Country is closed.
Over the years, there have been lots and lots of break-ins, so to deter urban explorers and vandals, disney decided to keep the music on in the park. And so for decades, emanating from the woods, the eerie sound of country western theme music could be heard playing in the distance.
In 2019, River Country was finally demolished. A new resort was supposed to be built, but was also abandoned due to covid and disney losing interest in the project.
Though it does seem like as of October 2024, construction equipment was seen in the area. Now, according to the company, a Disney Vacation Club, will be built on the grounds by 2027. And hopefully, the pools at this resort will have Chlorinated water…
We’re going to head to one of the most haunted abandoned amusement parks in the world, but first, let’s take a quick detour to the abandoned city of Pripyat, Ukraine, to a place where few have dared to venture. For this one, we’re actually going deep, deep inside the Chernobyl exclusion zone to check out the remnants of a small amusement park that was open for just one day and still lies abandoned.
There, rusted bumper cars sit off of their track, and a ferris wheel sits above the trees in an otherwise post apocalyptic hellscape.
You see, on April 26th, 1986, this area was changed forever when a nuclear meltdown happened during a routine maintenance test in reactor four of the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant, in present day Ukraine near the Belarus border. What resulted was nuclear fallout estimated to be 400 times that of the Hiroshima Atomic Bomb attack from world war 2.
Deadly Radiation blanketed the entire area, including this park, which was only 2.5km away from the reactor.
And when you look at the Pripyat Amusement park, you may think that it was abandoned because of the disaster. But you'd be wrong. This amusement park actually opened one day after the disaster occurred, as nuclear fallout enveloped the area in a toxic, invisible cloud.
The Pripyat Amusement Park is a relatively small amusement park, that had a 26 meter (roughly 85 feet) Ferris wheel, swing boats, a paratrooper ride, bumper cars and a shooting game. But it was more than just rides; it was a symbol of the future of the city where the younger population could make memories and relax, escaping from the stress of daily life. It was originally named the Park of Culture and Rest.
It was originally set to open on May 1st, 1986, but after the Chernobyl disaster, it was actually decided that the park would open the following day. See, initially it wasn’t known just how devastating the fallout was, and people weren’t told to evacuate Pripyat for 36 hours.
In that time, some reports say that the park opened as a distraction. It’s believed that The Soviet union wanted people to have something to do to take their minds off of the bright blue column of light that shot into the stratosphere coming from reactor 4, but mostly they wanted to quell the rumors that were starting to spread amongst the 50,000 residents of Pripyat that something was wrong.
So for one day, small children, their parents, and groups of teenagers ran around the grounds. Jumping in and out metal bumper cars, swinging on brand new swingsets. The sound of their laughter would have swirled in the air mixing with the devastating amounts of radiation that was pummeling through their bones and tissue, causing irreparable damage.
Radiation that would go on to give over 6,000 of those people in Pripyat thyroid cancer in the coming years. Radiation that would genetically alter the wildlife for generations, knocking out the insects of the area, mutating the fish into giant rivermonsters that still inhabit the waters to this day.
By the following afternoon, the city was told to evacuate, to just grab their valuables and go. They weren’t sure if they’d ever be able to return, and many of them grabbed what they could, thinking they’d come back for the rest at some point. But they’d never be able to.
Because now, that area is known as the Chernobyl Exclusion zone. A 1,000 mile (KM) radius area around the disaster site where it is illegal to live. In the city of Pripyat, schools lay abandoned. Kindergarten nap beds are still neatly made like the kids will come back at any moment. There’s a hospital still full of paperwork and medical equipment that looks incredibly eerie. And theres an entire amusement park that sits waiting for the children to one day return. The children who for one day, got to ride the swings and bumper cars. Many of whom died.
The radiation disintegrated these areas at alarming rates, so even though it’s only been 40 years, some parts of Pripyat look like they've been abandoned for hundreds of years.
Today the area is heavily regulated, but that hasn’t stopped people from exploring, especially the area by the amusement park. There’s a community of people who sneak into the exclusion zone, they’re known as STALKERS, and they’re the reason that we have information on what the Amusement park looks like more recently.
Now, I’ll make a note here that much of this area looks very different right now due to the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. The Chernobyl plant itself was briefly under Russian control early in the invasion and much of the immediate area is still an active war zone. But the research I did for this episode was coming from Ukranian STALKERS who were reporting on the area before 2022."
Today, the park has been taken over by weeds and radioactive moss. It’s considered one of the most radiated areas of the abandoned city, aside from the hospital where a bunch of radioactive clothing has been sealed in the basement. To visit this park isn’t just creepy, it’s potentially deadly. But that hasn’t stopped life from finding a way.
wildlife has come back stronger than before in the woods surrounding the area. There weren’t wolves pre-disaster, but they’ve been spotted on trail cams hiding out by the swings and ferris wheel. There’s also bears, and miniature horses.
But one of the most fascinating animals that has inhabited the area, especially around the amusement park, are the cats and dogs.
See, when people were evacuating, they left so quickly, many of them weren’t able to save their pets. It’s horrible, I tear up thinking about having to leave my dog, Fitzgerald, behind to save my family, not knowing what would happen to him.
And children waved tearfully goodbye to the family cats and dogs, thinking they may die from the radiation exposure. But here’s the thing, many of them didn’t. They survived, and they adapted, and they had many, many puppies and kittens, and now house pets have become wild again in the area, and I might add, they are thriving.
These animals hunt and hide from predators just like the other wild animals in the zone, but they’re also domestic at heart, so they know where the guards and stalkers hang out, which tends to be around the amusement park. They go and befriend the humans, who now regularly bring them treats and fresh water.
Ukrainian officials who patrolled the area before the current war were given explicit instructions to not touch the dogs. The risk that they were carrying deadly amounts of radiation was just too high. However, nearly every official says they do not follow that rule. Here’s a quote I found from one of them
"The dogs give us joy," "For me personally, this is a kind of symbol of the continuation of life in this radioactive, post-apocalyptic world."’
So while this abandoned amusement park represents death and decay, once in a lifetime tragedy, it also represents life finding a way.
If you want to hear more about the Chernobyl Exclusion zone, especially the urban legends and ghost stories, that is what our bonus episode on patreon and apple subscriptions is about from last month. We talk about the mothman of chernobyl that was seen days before the disaster, we talk about the creepy dolls that keep showing up all around the zone, I go a bit more into the animal mutations and cryptids that have emerged because of the radiation and more, so make sure you go check that out.
More, after the break.
BREAK 2
For our last adventure, I’m taking you to a park with cursed roots going back hundreds of years.
Lake Shawnee Amusement Park sits empty and abandoned in a heavily wooded area of West Virginia near the Virginia Border, nestled in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains. The park, like the lake itself is small, just a couple of acres of rides that look like they were built by hand. It’s not even as big as a traveling carnival would be.
But like most places in Appalachia, it’s a place where rich and tragic history meets vibrant folklore. It’s rumored to be built on cursed land, and guess what? I went back through a lot of old newspapers to find the true story for you guys. and of course, it’s got a couple of ghosts as well.
Lake Shawnee Amusement Park opened in 1926 as a playground for children led by a man named Conley Snidow. It featured swimming in the small lake, a Ferris wheel, a swing set, and many other attractions. There were cute little cottages that families could rent for $10 for an entire weekend.
Though it was on the smaller side, The park was a hit for local coal miners and their children, and it’s believed in the 1940’s, over 10,000 people visited on fourth of July weekends.
However, a few devastating accidents would eventually lead to the park's closure in 1966.
Now, Among the attractions was a spinning swing ride located in the children's playground. It was a favorite amongst the younger children.
One day in the 1950’s, it’s hard to find an exact date on when this took place, As the ride spun, a delivery truck carrying soda approached the refreshment stand, trying to maneuver into a position to unload. It seems like the driver misjudged the distance, or maybe he simply wasn’t paying attention. But the truck backed directly into the path of the swiftly moving swings.
In a horrifying instant, a swing carrying a 10 year old girl in a pink ruffled dress, slammed into the truck.
The sight was horrific. Parents tried to shield their children from the scene, but it was too late
A decade later, tragedy struck again
In the summer of 1966,, an 11-year-old boy was dropped off by his mother, who told him she’d come pick him up at the end of the day. She watched as he excitedly ran off towards the pool, where dozens of children were laughing and splashing around under the watch of a few lifeguards.
She returned that evening, expecting her son to be waiting by the exit gate of the park, but he was nowhere to be found.
And reasonably, she began to panic, and she parked her car so she could go search the grounds for him herself.
So she went to the last place she saw him, which was the swimming pool. But now, it was completely empty, even the lifeguards had gone home for the day. But there, floating lifeless in the water, was the body of her son.
Exactly how he drowned remains a subject of speculation and tragedy, and it’s unclear how no lifeguard saw him drown. The most commonly repeated story—is that the boy’s arm had somehow become trapped in the pool’s drainage pipe, and it pinned him beneath the water. He may have been down there for hours without the lifeguards noticing, before he finally surfaced after everyone had already left.
It’s believed that at least four other children were killed at the park before it closed, including a 3 year old girl who was crushed by a lift, though information can be hard to find on these deaths, even as we scoured old newspapers.
But for how many children died on the grounds in such a short period of time, people started to wonder if the area was cursed.
Conley closed the park in 1966, and it was eventually bought by a man named Gaylord White in the 80’s, but it was closed again after just three years.
Years later he was out excavating the land, when he started finding….bones. Everywhere, thousands of them. The bones looked old, and worn, and they weren’t in caskets or near any graves. Also around the bones were clay pots and arrow heads, he had seemingly stumbled upon a native american burial ground.
And this is when people started talking about a supposed curse on the land near Shawnee lake. But I wanted to look into this more, because people are quick to say “oh, it was built on a native american grave yard and that’s why it’s haunted” I actually find that to be a really annoying trope in horror movies, so basically I decided I needed to get to the bottom of this.
And well, It’s true, the land that Lake Shawnee amusement park sat on is a burial ground, but it’s a little more complicated than local legend suggests.
So Shawnee Native Americans lived on this land as early as 1000 AD, and yes, their remains are scattered all over the area. But the bones found near Shawnee lake are a little more tragic. See, these bones were all dated to around the same year, 1282, and they all belonged to children. 3,000 children, to be exact.
These remains showed a disease that caused bone and dental deterioration. So technically the idea that this is a big native american burial ground isn’t totally unfounded. I’ll just add that it’s a big Native American Children’s burial ground, which is WORSE in my opinion.
Years went by, and we don’t know much about what happened on the land, but then, in 1777, tragedy struck again when a well respected Shawnee chief named Hokoleskwa was murdered by American Militia men. As the story goes, Hokoleskwa was one of the biggest advocates for peace amongst the Native Americans and Revolutionary war soldiers. But after his death, the Shawnee tribe decided that peace would get them nowhere, and they vowed to avenge him
And finally, their opportunity came, when three years later, a slave owner named Mitchell Clay bought 800 acres of Shawnee Land, including the lake. According to the Beckley Post-Herald newspaper, Clay traded a slave woman and her young daughter for the land. The whole thing, the exchange, the living on the land, infuriated the Shawnee tribe.
Then, one day, when Clay was off tending to the farm, his children were playing down by Lake Shawnee, when they were approached by members of the Shawnee Tribe. Two of the oldest children, 20 year old Tabitha, and 17 year old Bartley were killed on the spot, while 16-year old Ezekeil was taken with the tribe. The younger children watched in horror, but were spared. The tribe wasn’t interested in any of the Clay children that weren’t yet adults.
Ezekeil’s body was later found burned on a stake outside of the property. The Shawnee had sent their message.
The Clay children were all buried in shallow graves near the lake, and little did the father know that he was mixing his children’s remains with the remains of the Shawnee children who died 500 years prior.
Some believe that this history is not only the reason for all of the disasters that took place on the grounds, but for some of the more supernatural sightings that have occurred. I mean think about it, the death toll on the land is already so high. You have thousands of shawnee children buried on the grounds of the park, plus the Clay children. And then there’s the kids who died at the park.
Former park owner, Gaylord White, who found the bones buried on the property knew this place was haunted for a long time. Heonce felt an unexplainable weight on his shoulders as he operated a tractor near the swing ride in the 1990’s. He turned around to see what it was, and he saw the young girl in a ruffled dress, the one who died on the ride, silently observing him. And before he knew it, she was gone. He left his tractor there and ran, and it’s said that his tractor still sits in the exact same spot today where he left it.
And that’s not the only sighting of the little girl who died on the swings.
If you were to approach the exact swing that she was sitting on, you may see a little pink ribbon tied to it in her honor. And if you were to stay until the sun set, you might notice the swing start rocking back and forth while the others stay perfectly still and catch a glimpse of her little, ruffled pink dress darting around the area.
Bucket 10 on the ferris wheel is another place people often see a full body apparition. No one ever died on this ride, so no one is certain who it is. But a young boy can be seen there staring out into the distance. It’s also believed that the seat belt of bucket 10 will fasten and unfasten on it’s own.
In the field, off to the side of the lake, where most of the bones of the Shawnee children were found, people have reported hearing chanting and weeping. It’s believed to be the mothers and fathers of the children who died of disease 800 years ago. Some people will approach the field and offer gifts, but they report the feeling of eyes on them constantly, like they’re being watched from all angles.
And I wonder about that feeling. Did Conley Snidow feel those eyes when he broke ground to build the park? Did Mitchell Clay feel them as he built his home on the 800 acres of land he bartered for. Have they always been there, watching, and waiting? And will they ever leave?
Well, if you’re ever feeling brave enough to find out for yourself, you can book day time and overnight tours of Lake Shawnee Amusement Park, all I ask is that you report back on what you find.
Please do not try to go to the other parks I talked about in this episode. Disney is already mad at me enough and you shouldn’t go into the chernobyl exclusion zone for, well, what I believe are obvious reasons. But do you have any abandoned scary places near you, amusement parks or otherwise? Please let me know wherever you listen, you never know when one of your stories may end up in an episode.
That’s all I have for you for this week’s Dark Summer. Join me here next week for an international story of a quiet, beautiful park in Germany where bodies kept showing up one summer. You’re not going to want to miss it.
And until then, stay curious OooOOOoooooOO