Lake Shawnee Amusement Park

The land beside Lake Shawnee, in Mercer County in southern West Virginia, carries two layers of history. Archaeologists have found evidence that Native peoples used the site long before European settlement, and in 1783 (some accounts give 1774) the settler Mitchell Clay’s family was attacked there. Local histories say two of Clay’s children, Bartley and Tabitha, were killed, while a third, Ezekiel, was taken captive and later found dead. Accounts differ on what followed: some say Clay sought revenge on the raiders, while a version told in a local heritage entry says he instead struck a deal with the Shawnee chief for his son’s burial. A statue raised in 1977 commemorates the family.

In 1926 a local businessman, Conley Trigg Snidow Sr., bought the land and opened an amusement park for the coal-mining communities of the area, with a swing ride, a Ferris wheel, a pool, a dance hall and cabins. It operated until 1967, when it closed after failing a health inspection. A former employee, Gaylord White, bought it in 1985 and reopened it in the summer of 1987, but rising insurance costs shut it again in 1988. During the early 1990s White’s crews found Native American artifacts, and Marshall University archaeologists uncovered thirteen skeletons, mostly of elderly people and young children. Soon afterwards White began offering Halloween-week guided tours.

The ghost legend grew out of that tour. According to the popular story, a string of deaths at the park, including drownings and a child killed on the swing ride, were the work of a curse put on the land by the earlier killings or by disturbed graves. The documented record is much thinner: sources report two drownings under Snidow’s ownership and a girl’s death on the swing ride in 1966, which is tragic but not unusual in the history of old amusement parks, and nobody has shown that the land caused them. The “cursed burial ground” framing is a well-worn trope that is often used to explain misfortune at sites connected with Native American history, and it does a disservice to the actual people who lived and were buried there.

The park has been featured in several TV programmes, including Scariest Places on Earth in 2002 and Most Terrifying Places in America in 2010, and the owners now offer photo and history tours and overnight stays by appointment. The county tourist bureau calls it one of the world’s most haunted places, and the story has even surfaced in a Netflix film. Visitors report footsteps, voices and shadows around the rusting swings, but the property is private, and trespassing is not welcome.

Visitors report apparitions of children, voices and footsteps, shadows, and the sense of being watched around the derelict rides; some tell of swings moving on their own.

The overgrown park grounds beside Lake Shawnee, especially the old swing ride and Ferris wheel area, and the nearby site of the Clay family tragedy.

Lake Shawnee has appeared in numerous TV shows, from Scariest Places on Earth to Most Terrifying Places, Ghost Lab, The Dead Files and Portals to Hell, and in a recent Netflix film. A local statue memorialises the Clay family.