Would You Dare Visit This Haunted Amusement Park Built On A Burial Ground?
The skeletal remains of Lake Shawnee Amusement Park give off an eerie, haunted vibe, which is only fitting due to its dark history.
It is located in the countryside of Princeton, Mercer County. Today, you can’t ride any of the rides, but it still attracts all kinds of tourists who are interested in the bloody and gruesome.
The Lake Shawnee Amusement Park is rooted in tragedy. Long before it was built, it was the site of a conflict between white settlers and the Indigenous Shawnee people.
Human remains and artifacts were later discovered, showing that Native Americans died and were buried there.
Many people believe that the sacred connection was behind the amusement park’s misfortunes. In the late 18th century, a European settler named Mitchell Clay moved his family west and established a homestead at that very site. He raised 14 children on this 800-acre farm near Lake Shawnee.
In August 1783, a Shawnee band killed three of the Clay children. Mitchell Clay retaliated by gathering other landowners in the area, tracking down the band, and killing several of its members.
The event escalated tensions between the two parties and came to be known as the Clover Bottom Massacre.
Many years later, in 1926, an entrepreneur named Conley Trigg Snidow bought the land and built the park. It featured classic attractions like the Ferris wheel, swing rides, and a swimming pool. It catered to the families of coal miners in the area and was a very popular destination.
Lake Shawnee Amusement Park was closed in 1966 after multiple children died on park grounds. It was said that a young girl on a swing was killed when a truck delivering sodas backed into the ride. Additionally, two drowning incidents were reported, and they happened in the most bizarre ways.
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In one, a nine-year-old boy drowned after his arm was sucked into the drain of the swimming pool. The other incident occurred in the lake. These deaths seemed to have led to the park’s closure, although officially, it was because it did not pass a health inspection.
In 1985, a former employee at Lake Shawnee Amusement Park, Gaylord White, purchased the land and reopened the park.
It opened in 1987 but was closed a year later due to high insurance costs. So, White repurposed the park and turned it into a place where fishing tournaments and off-roading sports were held instead.
Then, an archaeological dig around the park began in 1988. A total of 13 sets of human remains were unearthed, mainly consisting of children. Following the excavations, stories of paranormal activity started to run rampant.
Visitors and workers claimed to see ghosts and hear disembodied voices, among other strange, unexplained phenomena. One common sighting was of a little girl wearing a pink dress around the swing ride where she supposedly died.
The site never reopened as an amusement park again, but a lot of guided ghost tours were hosted. Today, the park’s ruins have been abandoned. It sits overgrown with vegetation as a reminder of the property’s grim past.
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