Sightings - Lake Shawnee Amusement Park

Episode Date: August 18, 2025

When one man attempts to resurrect a beloved amusement park from his youth, he discovers that not all the rides have stopped spinning - and some passengers never got off. Sightings is a REVERB and QC...ODE Original. Find us on instagram @sightingspod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Amusement parks are built for joy, places where laughter, echoes, and memories are made. But what happens when those echoes refuse to fade, when something lingers behind the rusting rides and overgrown walkways? Because some places don't forget the past, and they don't forgive it either. Welcome to sightings, the series that takes you inside the world's most mysterious supernatural events. Each episode brings you a thrilling story that puts you at the center of the action, followed by a discussion that dives into the accounts that inspired the story, and our takes on them. I'm MacLeod. And I'm Brian, and welcome back after another week's break.
Starting point is 00:00:51 But McLeod, we are still in the heat of the summer, which means it is time to take another fun vacation. Oh, no. Last week, we went off the coast of Florida to the Bermuda Triangle for our vacay, which I have to say was not in the brochure, Brian. So, do I actually want to know where we're going this week? Well, an amusement park doesn't sound so bad, does it? Oh, yeah, I can handle that, I think. Well, I should say one thing, though. Here it comes. It's not just any amusement park. It is a haunted one.
Starting point is 00:01:23 Of course it is. That's what I was afraid of. So buckle up, everybody, put on that sunscreen, maybe a bit of ghost screen too, if that exists. And venture with us to Lake Shawnee, a little place that's paradise for the dead. Oh, shucks. My name is Gaylord White, and I reckon I should start by saying I never intended to become the owner of what some folks call the most haunted place in America.
Starting point is 00:02:16 When I bought Lake Shawnee, all I intended was to bring back and share a piece of my younger days, a place where families could come together on hot summer days and forget about their troubles for a while. I first saw Lake Shawnee Amusement Park in the summer of 1964 when I was just 16 and looking for my first job. And I have to tell you, as soon as I walked through those gates, I fell in love with the place.
Starting point is 00:02:43 It wasn't fancy, nothing like the big amusement parks you'd see in magazines, but it had a charm that caught you right away and wouldn't let you go. That Ferris wheel stood tall against. the West Virginia sky, painted bright turquoise and red that seemed to shimmer like. And the swing ride swung lazy circles near the center of the park, always humming a pleasant tune. There was more, of course, but mostly I remember the kids with their sticky fingers and wide grins and exhausted parents trailing behind. I ended up working there three summers straight, first in maintenance and later helping operate the rides. And I loved every minute of them.
Starting point is 00:03:25 Maybe just because it was all so simple compared to my adult life that came after. And, you know, sure, there were stories about the place. There always are in parks like that. You know, talks of accidents that happened over the years. About the little girl who'd been hurt on the swings. And, unfortunately, the boy who drowned in the swimming pond. The older employees liked to whisper about all that. And if you pressed them, they might even tell you the real old stories.
Starting point is 00:03:55 The ones about the family massacred on this land well before West Virginia even became a state. But honestly, I never paid much attention to that kind of talk. You know, it all just got bigger with each telling. But it must have taken hold, I guess, because the park closed for good just after my last summer there. I'd heard it was a whole mess of reasons, insurance, safety regulations, maybe just changing times. So for the next 20 years, I'd drive past the abandoned place whenever all. back in the area, and it just broke my heart to see those beautiful rides surrendered to rust and weeds. And that's when an idea started forming in my head. What if someone could bring the park
Starting point is 00:04:37 back, you know? By 1985, I'd saved up enough money to make a serious offer on the property, and that's exactly what I did. And the day I signed the papers, I felt like a kid again. I walked through those rusty gates as the new owner of Lake Shawnee Amusement Park, and I swear I could almost hear laughter echoing through the trees. Of course, actually bringing the place back to life turned out to be a bigger job than I'd bargained for. The few remaining old rides were beyond saving, so I had to start from scratch, hunting down equipment from carnivals and smaller parks that were going out of business. Finding a decent ferris wheel was the easy part.
Starting point is 00:05:21 There was an outfit in Pennsylvania that specialized in refurbishing carnival rides, and they had a beautiful wheel that was just the right size for Lake Shawnee. When it arrived on three different flatbed trucks, I spent hours just walking around it, admiring the fresh paint and imagining how it would look spinning against the sky. But the swing ride was proven to be more of a challenge. That circular swing, you know, with the seats hanging from long chains that spin and spin. Well, that had been the heart of Lake Shawnee, at least in my memory.
Starting point is 00:05:58 I must have called two dozen suppliers describing exactly what I was looking for. And most of them had modern versions, but I wanted something that would capture the spirit of the original, something that would make visitors feel like they'd stepped back in time. So finally, a dealer in New Jersey told me he had exactly what I needed. It was from a park that had been long closed, and from his description it sounded perfect. And it was. When it arrived, the ride looked almost identical to the one I'd remembered. Same style of seats, same chains, even painted in similar colors. I mean, it really was almost like finding a long lost piece of my past.
Starting point is 00:06:39 So over the next months, I threw myself into restoration work. I repainted everything in those classic park colors, bright turquoise, fire engine red, and forest green. I rebuilt the concession stands and repaired the walkways. I even had the old pool dredged and refilled. Though I decided against reopening it for swimming. You know, times had changed and liability was a bigger concern than they used to be. Working alone on the property gave me plenty of time to think and remember.
Starting point is 00:07:13 But I'd be lying if I said it didn't make me notice some things out there. Odd things, you could say. It started with shadows in my peripheral vision. Nothing crazy. You know, I'd just be focused on painting or repairs and catch a glimpse of movement somewhere across the park. I'd look up, of course, expecting to see a deer or dog or something, but there'd be nothing there.
Starting point is 00:07:38 Just empty space where I could have sworn I'd seen someone walking. And then there was the music. I was wiring the Ferris wheel when I heard it. That cheerful carnival melody the swing ride used to play when it was operating. I dropped my tools and followed the sound across the park. But as I got closer to the swing ride, the music seemed to fade. And by the time I reached the ride itself, everything was dead silent. I checked the electrical connections
Starting point is 00:08:07 and remember they weren't even hooked up yet so, you know, how had I heard it playing? I'd know that sound anywhere but ultimately I chalked it up to memory playing tricks on me. Sometimes when you spend that much time thinking about the past, I figure our brains can fill in details
Starting point is 00:08:28 that aren't really there, you know? That's what I told myself, at least. As summer approached, I hired a small crew to operate the rides and run concessions. Most of them were young folks looking for seasonal work, but a few were older locals with their own memories of the place. Having other souls in the park with me finally made everything feel more real, more legitimate. And by the eve of our grand reopening, I felt like we were ready to go. So, end of the night, I'm there alone, everyone else had gone home for some much-needed rest,
Starting point is 00:09:02 but I decided to do one final walk through of the park. You know, just make sure everything was tip-top. And everything was perfect. And I realized I was just being a worry ward, so I was just about to head home when I heard that familiar music of the swing ride drifting across the park. And now I knew the power was off this time. I'd even locked the control booth myself.
Starting point is 00:09:28 So I hurried toward the ride, and I found the swings spinning slowly, which was odd enough, but there was something else. One of the swings wasn't empty. The seat held a little girl, feet dangling as she rose and fell with the gentle motion of the ride. She couldn't have been more than seven or eight years old, wearing what looked like a white dress that seemed to glow in the moonlight. She was just up there laughing, having a ball. as she spun around and around up and down and enjoying herself just as I hoped park patrons would.
Starting point is 00:10:06 But this was no park patron. We weren't open yet, and surely an eight-year-old couldn't have figured out how to turn that ride on. It needed a key, after all, and that key was hanging from my belt. So I called out, asking who the girl was and how she'd gotten into the park. But she didn't respond. Didn't even seem to hear me. She just kept swift. swinging with that peaceful expression on her face. So I ran to the control booth and fumbled with McKee to shut the thing off. And as the ride slowed and music faded, I looked back toward the swing where I'd seen the little girl.
Starting point is 00:10:44 But now every last one of those seats were empty. There was no sign of that girl anywhere. At least not as far as I could see. So I just stood there searching the moonlight when something else called. my eye. Near the motorhousing, there was a small metal plate I'd somehow missed during my restoration work, a plate with the serial number. And as I looked close, I realized that number seemed familiar. So I ran to my office where I had records of all the original equipment from when the park first closed. And as I searched the files, I found what I was looking for. Yep, turns out, that swing ride
Starting point is 00:11:27 I'd bought in New Jersey, the one that seemed so similar to my memories. Well, it wasn't just similar to the original Lake Shawnee ride. It was the original Lake Shawnee Swing Ride. Shue, the same one where that little girl had died all those years ago. Well, no wonder then that she'd appeared to me. She'd come home. And with opening day, come. in just a few hours, I got a feeling that seeing the little girl on the swing was just the
Starting point is 00:12:04 beginning of what this place had in store for me. As the entrance gates opened for the first time the next morning, I felt like I had a stone sitting in my stomach. And as families arrived, smiling and waving, all I could do was stare at at the swing riding picture that little girl in that white dress, spinning round and round with that peaceful smile on her face. But what was I supposed to do? Cancel opening day because I'd seen a ghost. So I put on my best smile and ushered my first guests into the park.
Starting point is 00:12:45 For most of that first day, things went smoothly. Kids laughed on the Ferris wheel. Parents bought cotton candy from concessions, and the swing ride spun just like it was supposed to, and with no phantom riders. I even started to relax a little hoping maybe I'd just let my imagination get the better of me the night before. Then Sarah, one of my teenage employees,
Starting point is 00:13:09 came running up to me looking white as a sheet. She said there was a little boy hanging out alone around the entrance, but something wasn't right about him. And when she'd tried to find his parents, he'd just disappeared. She described him as maybe six years old, with dark hair and distinctly old-fashioned clothes. Over the next few days, even more reports came in. A mother said she'd seen a young boy standing by himself near a ticket booth
Starting point is 00:13:38 looking lost and confused. But when she approached to help, he'd vanished into thin air. One of the ride operators swore he'd seen the same child multiple times, always at the edge of the crowd, always alone and always disappear in the moment anyone tried to get close. I began to worry that Lake Shawnee was collecting ghosts. Then I laughed it all off as nonsense. But then came the incident that, oh boy, it really shook me.
Starting point is 00:14:10 It happened about two weeks after we'd opened. It was a busy Saturday afternoon and families were scattered all around the park. The old swimming pond was clearly marked as off limits. I'd even put a small fence around it, but people, still like to walk over and look at the water. So I was over by the Ferris wheel when I heard a sound no one wants to hear at a park that has no roller coasters. I heard the sound of screaming. So I ran over to find a woman pointing at the pond and shouting that there was a child in the water. And I tell you what, I could see him too. A little boy, maybe seven years old floating in the center of the pond like
Starting point is 00:14:50 he was drowned. So I'd jump the fence and dove straight into the pond. And that water was deeper than I'd expected and colder too. I swam hard towards where I'd seen the boy, expecting to grab him and pull him to safety. But when I reached that spot where he'd been struggling, well, there was nothing there. I dove down, feeling the murky bottom, thinking maybe he'd gone under, but there was nothing. No body, no movement. Nothing but old leaves and some mud. So as I come up gasping and looking around hoping he'd somehow made it to shore on his own. But the woman who'd first spotted him was staring at me with the strangest expression.
Starting point is 00:15:35 And she shouted that he disappeared the moment I hit the water. One second he was there and the next it was as if he'd never existed. So I dragged myself out of the pond and spend the rest of the day trying to convince myself that we'd all seen a shadow on the water or a trick of the light. But, you know, deep down, I knew better. That boy in the pond was the same one people had been seeing around the entrance, and I had a sneaking suspicion he was the same child who drowned in this park decades ago. So as I decided to do some real research into the park's history,
Starting point is 00:16:12 I needed to understand what I was dealing with here. Where I started my research was at the County Historical Society, where a woman named Mrs. Patterson had been keeping records for longer than anyone could remember. When I told her I was the new owner of Lake Shawnee, she got this odd look that was part sympathy, part concern, like she was looking at someone who'd unknowingly walked into quicksand. She pulls out a thick folder with old newspaper clippings, photographs, and handwritten accounts, and it was right there I began to learn the real details about what had happened in the park over the years.
Starting point is 00:16:47 that little girl on the swings well her name was susan and she'd been killed when a truck backed into the swing ride while it was in operation and there was an old photograph in the file and the moment i saw it i realized it was the exact same face i'd seen on the swing ride that night and then there was the boy who drowned one of several actually but tommy age six had separated from his parents and fallen into the pond decades ago, and his photo showed the exact same child I'd seen the day before. Now, if that wasn't unnerving enough, what Mrs. Patterson told me next left me outright shaking. She said that the tragedies at the park were only the latest in a long line of deaths on that land. Way, way, way back in the 18th century, a family named Clay had been attacked by Shawnee warriors. She showed me a hand-drawn map that marked the exact spot several clay children had died, and it was less than 100 yards from where I'd installed the swing ride. So as I drove home, my head was just spinning. I'd heard a few of these stories before from old-timers back when I
Starting point is 00:18:05 worked at the park, but, you know, I'd written it all off as superstition. But what was happening here wasn't just superstition. And it wasn't just that my park was built on land. And it wasn't just that My park was built on land where bad things had occurred. It seemed, I don't know, it seemed almost like the land itself was drawing these tragedies, like it was collecting them. Now, despite everything I'd learned, I kept the park running through that first summer. That fall, once we closed our doors for the season, I decided to expand. If Lake Shawnee was going to survive, it needed to go.
Starting point is 00:18:44 grow. Now, I had plans for a small roller coaster, nothing fancy, but something a bit more thrilling than our swings or ferris wheel. The excavation work started on in October morning, and I was excited to see the project moving forward. But by noon, everything had stopped. The bulldozer operator came to find me and said he'd hit something in the ground, something that looked like it might be important. Human bones and lots of them. Within a day, archaeologists from Marshall University were on site and said we'd stumbled upon a Native American burial ground. He guessed that thousands of Native Americans might be buried across the Lake Shawnee property. Men, women, and children who'd lived and died here long before any of us dreamt of it as a place for nostalgic entertainment. And, um,
Starting point is 00:19:41 Yeah, that's when I realized that my park was doomed, just like the iteration before it. Because this wasn't just a land with a dark history, this was sacred ground that had been turned into something that was never meant to be. So, yeah, that night, I just couldn't sleep. All I could think about was all those poor children, the Shawnee kids buried in the ground, the clay children killed in their own yard. and the poor park visitors on the rides themselves. How many more victims might there be if I keep the park running, you know? So I made the hardest decision of my entire life, and I locked those gates for good. Yeah, the rides are still sitting there, slowly being grown over with weeds.
Starting point is 00:20:33 And every time I drive by, I still feel nostalgic, of course, but I also remember that little girl in the white dress. spinning eternally on her swing, and the boy in the pond will never make it to shore. I told folks it was insurance costs that forced the closure, but, well, you know now, that's not entirely true. And I've got to be honest, it's becoming too expensive to keep the land, and, well, I might be forced to sell that soon enough. What worries me is, um, I just worry about what the next buyer might try to do there. And I hope that unlike me, they listen to the stories. Sightings will be back just after this.
Starting point is 00:21:41 Welcome back. What a ride, everybody. Also, what a sweet guy. I really liked the perspective of that story, Brian. No, I think you really brought it a little bit of folksy rusticness that I thought was a lot of fun. Nice. Was that the guy? Was he real? Was he real? He's real. He's passed away. His kids, I think, still own the park. Really? Or own the land, yeah. But we'll get to the park as it is today a little bit later. Sure. I just thought this would be a really fun place to take a little vacation. Because we're all, I think, familiar with amusement parks by this point. Of course. Have you taken your daughters to any yet?
Starting point is 00:22:17 You know, we've been to a carnival. Okay. And that was fun. They enjoyed themselves. Interesting, you mentioned carnivals, though, because I kind of got like a carnival-type feel from this place. It felt like kind of a sprawling plot of land that happened to have a few rides and just kind of open space where people could go and hang out and go swimming and things like that. We do have a picture. We're going to put this up on Instagram.
Starting point is 00:22:38 Yeah. But McLeod, here's a picture of the watering hole. is I think what they called it. Oh, wow, this is so cool. I got to say, the watering hole, the pond, that felt anomalous to me. Like, I've never been to a park that also just had a pond or a swimming pool because obviously kind of like was mentioned in the end of the story, like liability issues to just like have a place for a bunch of people to swim,
Starting point is 00:23:01 which, you know, there's water parks, obviously, but you have lifeguards and I don't know, it's a whole thing. It just felt odd to me and obviously dangerous to just have a pond in the middle of a carnival with lots of people. I have to think back to the 1920s, which was when this was first built, you know, before there were a whole bunch of rides. I think the concept of an amusement park might have been just more of a place to go and do leisurely things, you know? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:23:24 Yeah. There'd be a ride or two, a swimming hole. Yeah, but there's so much history in the plot of land that Lake Shawnee was built on. And that's true? Yeah. So let's kind of take a dive through history on this one, because this has to be the most tumultuous history of amusement. Parkland. Yeah, I mean, like, that discovery is chilling, was so chilling. Let's go back to the 1770s here. Well before West Virginia became a state in that area of West Virginia, I guess a southern part of West Virginia kind of over the Virginia border. There's a guy named Mitchell Clay who got a royal grant of 803 acres of land. And he and his wife and his children moved there. They built a home. They're kind of frontiersmen, I guess, so to speak. But with that came, you know, the constant risk of clashes with the Native America. whose land they were basically just taking over.
Starting point is 00:24:13 One day in 1783, I guess 10 years after they moved out there, Clay went on a hunt with one of his sons and Native American hunting party attacked the homestead, killed a few of the kids. In response, Clay rallied a whole group of locals who then went on to hunt down the hunting party. And it was just a mess. It's called the Clay Massacre. Yeah. And the spot where all the kids were initially murdered is literally on this area where the ride were. So that happened for a while, I guess, I don't really know what happened in the 19th century on that land.
Starting point is 00:24:49 What I can say happen, though, is that West Virginia did become a state eventually, and with that, became a whole boom in population as coal and timber and all those kind of industrial things became profitable. And that led us to the early 1920s when a man named Conley Snydow bought that. whole swath of land to build an amusement park on. And his park ran from the 20s to the 60s. And it had rides and the pool. It also had a racetrack. Oh, cool. It had cabins for people to stay. It had a dance hall. So like I said earlier, kind of like a whole bunch of leisurely things that people can do rather than necessarily a whole bunch of rides. Like a resort, actually. And it seemed very pleasant.
Starting point is 00:25:32 And this part of West Virginia is really scenic. Yeah, beautiful mountains. But, of course, It's not all of us rosy at Lake Shawnee. Unless it was blood. Whoa. Yep. It said that up to six deaths occurred in the park before it closed in 1966. One of them actually happened to be Snydow's daughter. Oh.
Starting point is 00:25:50 Now, her death didn't seem to happen in the park itself. It was still pretty unfortunate, though. She apparently got caught in an elevator. Oh. The doors closed and she died. Man. And then the girl who was killed on the swing ride, that actually happened. What happened was a delivery driver backed his truck into the swings,
Starting point is 00:26:06 Well, people were on it. And the little girl was decapitated. It must have been horrifying. Yeah. Then in the 1960s, more than one kid drown in the swimming hole. First, the six-year-old boy that we mentioned, then an 11-year-old. Apparently his arm got caught in an intake pipe. That's, like, just brutal stuff.
Starting point is 00:26:25 Yeah. And after that, of course, Snydow had to shut the park down, or willingly shut the park down, I guess. It sat abandoned for 20 years until it was bought again by. the man you read in the story. Okay. Gaylord White. Okay, we're up to the stories present and Gaylord. So did he actually work at the park?
Starting point is 00:26:44 He certainly did. I guess he worked there in the 60s when he was a teenager. And so he had this kind of wistful nostalgia for the place that he kind of grew up in and wanted to return it to its former glory. I suppose it's hard to do in land that's haunted. So pretty quickly, people reported seeing lots of apparitions. The swing that he found. As we heard in the story, he tracked down a random swing that turned out to be the exact one that the little girl died on.
Starting point is 00:27:13 Oh, wow. And that little girl is still seen on the swings once in a while. The swings would move on their own. It has cold spots, things like that. Gaylord White even saw her more than once, apparently. The first time, he was on his tractor mowing the grass. He saw the little girl by the swings. And he was like, you know, he just left the tractor right where it was and high tailed.
Starting point is 00:27:36 Yeah, that's about how I would respond as well. So there were also a bunch of apparitions that weren't in the story. There's apparently a man who's often seen in one of the Ferris wheel cars. Oh. And apparently is even seen jumping from it, which would be terrifying if the Ferris wheel were running. Well, sure. I guess is there any record of somebody committing suicide from the... Not that I could find, so I don't really know the provenance of that story.
Starting point is 00:28:03 It's just something that I saw reports of. There's also reports of people seeing or hearing Native Americans, like hearing Native American drums, which seems a little cliche to me. Yeah. Also, like drums, it's kind of like that could be any number of banging, banging sounds. Yeah, but despite all this, you know, all these sightings back when White had first opened the park, he kept it open for a few years until he ultimately closed it due to insurance costs and dwindling attendance. And now here's where timing gets a little bit different between the story and real life, because he ended up closing the park. And they were doing some kind of building on it or something. And that's when they ended up uncovering all these buried bodies. Gotcha.
Starting point is 00:28:42 So he had already closed it. And they were like, we're going to build a Starbucks. Yeah, or whatever. You know, or just, you know, I think just clearing land or something. I'm not sure. Uh-huh. I thought it was more poignant for the purpose of the story to have it be like, and there's dead bodies. Right.
Starting point is 00:28:58 Like, I'm out. Yeah, it's a good. It's a better button for sure. But yeah, they found, uh, some sources say 13 bodies. some say 25, they had all these experts come in from the local university, and they really have determined that that's probably just a smaller part of what is much more likely a larger burial ground with up to as many as 3,000 shawnee bodies. That is intense.
Starting point is 00:29:22 But you would think that they would have, like, with the building of this watering hole, unless that hole was kind of like already a depression that they just filled in with water. Yeah, I wonder if it was like already a lake or something. Do we have any research on sort of the nature of these types of burial grounds, like, or at least our best guess, as to, like, what purpose these served for the Native American communities? I did not dig that deep on that. So I do not want to put words in anyone's mouth. Sure. My impression seems to be that there weren't gravestones or anything like it just was a place where people were buried. Yeah, it was just the cemetery kind of. Yes.
Starting point is 00:29:57 Actually, if any of our listeners are, you know, specialists or, like, have studied or, like, have studied, or. very well educated in some of these like native american histories and cultures it'd be awesome for you to just educate us like shoot us information about you know these customs and it might help illuminate the energy that this park has right like is it is it just a is it just a cemetery and that was just sort of customary and what they would do over generations and generations or was it like a kind of mass grave for some horrible event obviously my understanding is when colonel millionists started arriving. They brought smallpox and it wiped out like 90% of the native population before anyone even raised a gun. There's no doubt that Native American history in that
Starting point is 00:30:43 part of the country and in all of the country, frankly, is rife with loss. And it's become almost a horror trope in a way. You know, oh, the house is buried on Indian. Yeah, like poltergeist. Exactly. I mean, that's the story of poltergeist where this house that has all this weird stuff happening on a Native American burial ground. Even sort of Amityville, like, kind of tried to link to that sort of. Yeah, they found bodies on the Amityville lot as well that some have said were Native Americans. It just seems to me no one did the research that they should have been doing before building
Starting point is 00:31:18 an amusement park. Building anything on this land. Although I have to wonder, you know, I mean, I wonder if that kind of history is all over the place in a lot of these lands that were formerly occupied by Native Americans. But in this case, beyond the burial ground part, you know, there was that massacre that happened. Right. There were children dying. There was all this stuff happening on this land that it's just like, oh, no, I'm out, please. And you know, it's, I'm not going to go full skeptical gecko on it, but it's like that kind of history, I can't, it has to seep into the minds and imaginations of the people
Starting point is 00:31:55 living there, especially at a time when there's even more credulity than there is now. So are the ghosts on the property real or not? That's, I think, up for debate in this case. But of a lot of the places that I feel like we've discussed, this one seems like it has the setup. Yes. More than most to be a haunted place. And there's been enough people that have seen different things over the years and over history, kind of like the Stanley Hotel in a weird way.
Starting point is 00:32:24 where just so many things have been seen that I want to believe that people are seeing something there. Yeah, absolutely. And if I were to go here, like obviously I lean a little bit more skeptical gecko on things, but still that like the knowledge of these events would create a kind of palpable effect on how I would feel in this space if I think I were to go to it. Which I guess kind of leads us to, you know, we're going to kind of skip over theories because I don't know if there's any theories to discuss here. than it's haunted. Yeah, yeah, the theory is, it's haunted. It's kind of interesting, though.
Starting point is 00:32:57 Lake Shawnee now is kind of an interesting place. As I mentioned, it appears to be owned by descendants of... It's no longer a... It's no longer a park, but the rides are still there. Oh, wow. It's just kind of an abandoned plot of land. Oh, creepy. I've got a couple more photos.
Starting point is 00:33:13 Whoa! What? Okay, so, sorry, listeners. This is in full-color modern photography. There's this nice green lawn. To the right, there's a weedy pond. There's a hill rising in the distance with the sun just set, casting a silhouette of a ferris wheel.
Starting point is 00:33:35 It's probably about, I don't know, 40, 50 feet high. And then like a weird little ticket booth sitting in front of it. And totally overgrown, everything is. Yeah. We'll put this on Instagram so everyone can see what this looks like now. And then there should be a picture of the swings as well. Oh, no. No, no, no.
Starting point is 00:33:53 Listeners, this swing is nightmare fuel. Holy cow. It looks like a torture device or like a tiny Eiffel tower, that sort of like open structure. And like it's all grown over with like weeds and rusted and no harnesses, no safety harnesses. It's just a swing that you would have to just hold on to as this thing spins you. And these are long chains. It would spin you probably like 30 feet. I would not want to spend a night here, which seems to.
Starting point is 00:34:23 to be what people do now. It's like you can go on the land, get a tour, spend the night, maybe, things like that kind of thing, and hopefully, you know, have a ghost encounter. So that's Lake Shawnee. Interestingly enough, not the only haunted amusement park in the world. There's one in Australia too that we might do an episode on maybe next summer. But that one's much more modern in like an actual theme park, so to speak. But listeners, if you've been to Lake Shawnee, we'd love to hear about your encounters there. If you remember going to Lake Shawnee, that would be really cool to hear. Or if you just have stories about haunted amusement parks that you've been to, don't tell us about it, write it, and we'll do it as a listener's story.
Starting point is 00:35:06 Absolutely, especially because we're getting close to spooky season, McLeod. Yeah, I know. It's going to be the worst. All right, so short term, where are we headed in two weeks, Brian? We are going to stay in the south, but we are heading to Mississippi for an alien. abduction story that it's going to be different than all the ones we've done before. There's a lot of intrigue on this one, so I think we're really going to have a lot to dig into on it. I'm here for it, and I hope you will be two, listeners.
Starting point is 00:35:36 Yep, we'll see you in a couple weeks. Reminder, if you're a QCode Plus subscriber, you're going to get a bonus listener story the last Monday of the month. And then we'll see the rest of you in two weeks. Same place, same time, right here on sightings. Sightings is hosted by McLeod Andrews and Brian Sigley, produced by Brian Sigley, Chase Kinzer and McLeod Andrews, written by Brian Sigley, story music by Madison James Smith, series music by Mitch Bain,
Starting point is 00:36:06 mixing and mastering by Pat Kicklater of Sundial Media, artwork by Nuno Sarnatus. For a list of this episode sources, check out our website at sightingspodcast.com. Sightings is presented by Reverb and Q Code. If you like the show, be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform, so you're first to hear new episodes. And if you know other supernatural fans, tell them about us. We'd really appreciate it.

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