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An abandoned theme park dubbed America’s ‘most haunted’ is a hotspot for ghost sightings and spooky sounds and smells.
The Lake Shawnee Amusement Park in West Virginia closed down four decades ago and has since fallen into disrepair.
Brave explorers claim they’ve seen shadowy figures sitting on the ferris wheel and heard the eerie echoes of carnival music and children's giggles.
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There have even been reports of a strange smell of fair food cooking, despite an oven not having been turned on for 40 years.
But theme park hasn’t just imagined up its spooky connection and actually has a tragic and bloody history, the Mirror reports.
Built on land owned by the Shawnee tribe, Lake Shawnee was once farmland that was claimed by a family making their way over from Europe called the Clays.
They moved over in the 1770s to settle on the land but were warned by natives that it wasn’t theirs to work.
Furious at the theft, they killed three of the Clay’s children who are still buried in the land there today.
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Many years later, in 1926, businessman Conley Snidow scooped up the land as an investment hoping to cash in on a mining boom in the area at the time.
Multiple features from the Ferris to a bar to slides sprung up but the good times came to an abrupt halt in 1934 when a woman was shot on the edge of the park by an angry lover.
As the years went by, six more people were killed on the site – most of them were women or children and many were murdered.
A six-year-old girl was crushed by a lift while an 11-year-old boy was drowned.
Eventually, in 1966, the park was closed for good until in the 1980s when the site was bought by Businessman Gaylord White.
He tried to replace the original swings at the park with ones similar to the originals to keep the park’s style in check.
When he finally found the perfect set he checked their serial number and, to his horror, discovered they were the exact same ones that a girl had been killed on at the park when she was hit by a reversing lorry.
White’s ambitions only lasted three years and he had to close again as insurance rose. When the park was later excavated over 3,000 bodies were found buried there – it is thought it was in fact an ancient burial ground all along.
Would you visit? Let us know in the comments.
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- Family
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