With fall forthcoming, what better way to festively celebrate the seasonal change than by…
…dancing on the graves of Native Americans? Who also killed settlers for coming there?! (#MetaDeath) That’s right. A Halloween twofer! Not far away from me, yonder in West Virginia, there’s this creepy old amusement park with a quaint bit of entertaining history….
…
Bought in the 20’s, Lake Shawnee Amusement Park was built on the burial ground of massacred settlers and the feather wearing friends whose land they trespassed upon. When kids started drowning in the lake and getting killed on the swings, people started to think that maybe it had to do with the Clay family – some settlers who got the murder welcome wagon from their new Native American neighbors, including having one of their kids burned alive at the stake.
So they shut it down in the 60’s.
Now, it’s opening again for tours – just in time for our favorite creepy commercial holiday!
You can even bring your cameras to the walkthrough so you can record the experience for Youtube and profit off your own documented feigned fear about the ambient sounds of woodland creatures scratching their asses in the night – ‘cause why not? Better to make money off thrill-fear than the-world’s-going-to-shit fear, amIrite? Plus, it’s always nice to skip the middle-man of doing it on T.V.
I couldn’t make it through this whole clip, so you’ll hafta gimme a rundown.
But what I do like is how she gets to determine ghost law:
“They cain’t killya, but they kin touchya…” It sounds like a rule you’d hear in the back of a supernatural strip club of a parallel Tim Burton universe before the chilliest lap dance ever. How does she know what they can do? Is there a bouncer here with us too? Move the ouija! Tell us! Besides that’s a myth – the whole “long as the covers are over me, I’m alright” wives tale. Pssh. Heard that one before – right before getting sucked under the bed by the clown who lives there.
Plus… what if there are ghost genes? And they can mutate? And the survival of the fittest ones can kill people? And then ghosts take over the world? Come on, lady. Do you even science? Or if that’s all too complicated to have to consider, you can avoid contact issues altogether by bringing your ghost buster floor vacuum contraption (they weigh about the same as an iphone anyway).
The world’s your oyster. As for me, I’ve yet to be levitated outta my bed and ping ponged across the walls while my furniture does the Merlin cleanup dance around me of its own volition. (#yet) But what I do have an opinion about is our own emotions – and how negative associations can be powerfully haunting to ourselves while we’re still alive, as well as other people who are able to pick up on that weird energy, too. In a place like this, the perception about dead Pocahontas and friends is an illusion manufactured by your own head.
That said, the fun “haunting” aspect happens when that preconceived fear energy domino effects to others around you. Especially a tour group. But if you can’t make it to poltergeist park this Halloween, don’t feel too badly. Besides, it fails embarrassingly to meet my expectations as a novelty fall event anyway. And that’s not just because of the disrespect to the Clay family, either. Don’t wanna say “they had it coming”, but I would probably get a bit violent too if some pale aliens came and squatted on my family burial plot. Rather, it fails for the following two reasons:
A. It’d be a whole lot cooler if they were actually reopening the rusted rides for bizz
B. There are far scarier things in West Virginia. Year round.
In fact, much like our indigenous friends, they aren’t big trespassing fans either.
(Although it looks like some of them apparently know French.)