Due to the haunting nature of these haunted places, listener discretion is advised.
I'm your host Mark, and tonight I have a ghost story for you.
Let's go together around the campfire and try to not get scared.
Have you heard about the people who disappeared at the Lake Shawnee amusement park?
A group of YouTubers were looking for haunted places to explore for their channel.
They came across Lake Shawnee amusement park, which has been abandoned since the early 90s.
Jacob, Hannah, and Liam left Beckley around 8pm to make the 43 minute drive.
When they arrived, they parked one mile away from the entrance of the park to save them from getting caught by passing cars.
Hannah was the first to get out of the car, and she saw a light on the grounds of the park.
She told Jacob and Liam about the light, and that she thought it was a security guard.
They told her not to worry about it because they knew she was just seeing the moon reflect off of something.
They decided to turn on their camera and start recording for the intro of their video.
When they started to walk down the road, they started to hear horses.
The sounds kept getting closer and closer, and all of a sudden, they just stopped.
By the time they got to the gate, they wondered if this was actually a good idea.
Hannah told them about the history of the park, and the only reason they started to second guess themselves was due to the fact the land was a Native American burial ground.
Liam told them to grow up, and he jumped the gate. Hannah and Jacob followed behind.
They got out their EMF meter, and right by the ticket booth, it went from green to red.
They decided to start there, and started to try the SD's method. Hannah put the headphones on her head, and Jacob started to ask questions.
The first one, is anyone here? A few seconds went by, and Hannah said, I am.
Jacob asked who it was, and Hannah said, Ezekiel.
And she threw off her headphones, saying she heard a low growl.
All of a sudden, things started to fly off the shelves. Then Hannah was thrown out of the ticket box.
Liam and Jacob ran over to her, not knowing what happened. Hannah brushed it off like it was nothing, and she wanted to continue.
They decided to walk over to the swings to see if they could get any evidence.
They set up their laser grid, and decided to use the EVP detector.
They started to ask questions, and all of the responses were coming from children.
They noticed that the swings started to move, and Liam started to get worried, because the wind wasn't blowing.
Hannah asked the question, did you die here? A child's voice came back and said, yes.
Jacob jumped when he felt hands on his back. Then he felt cold air on his neck.
After that, their camera started to malfunction. It was a new camera with a fully charged battery.
It died out of nowhere, and just cut off for a few minutes.
They decided to walk back to what used to be a pool on the property.
They shined a flashlight, and noticed that there was water.
After a few minutes of standing near it, they heard what they thought was splashing, or like someone was drowning in it.
Then, it just stopped out of nowhere, and the water disappeared.
They started to hear the sound of horses again, and thought that it could possibly be someone on the property,
checking to see if there was anyone trespassing.
So they hid and went when the old bus was on the property.
The bus started to shake, and the windows and doors busted open.
Lights were seen all over the property, and they heard the chants of a Native American tribe.
They ran out of the bus, trying to make it back to their car.
When all of a sudden, the ferris wheel started to creak and move again.
Then they heard kids running around them, and the sounds of an amusement park.
The camera started up again, and everything suddenly stopped.
The three of them decided to take a second to collect themselves.
They were just sitting there in the silence, when all of a sudden, they heard someone scream from the other side of the park.
They started to film again, to see who was screaming. When they got to the spot the screaming was coming from,
they saw a mist, and the air started to get thicker.
The mist started to form in a circle, around the three.
And in the center, all they could hear was screams from different people.
All of a sudden, it stopped.
When they started to run back to their car, Jacob dropped the camera.
He started to run back for it, and Hannah told him to forget it.
Liam, Hannah, and Jacob jumped over the gate, running back to their car.
However, the car wouldn't start.
So they decided to run and try to find help.
The next morning, the owner made his rounds looking at the property, and he saw the camera.
He picked it up, and saw the videos that they recorded.
He looked around and saw the car was still parked down the road.
To this day, Liam, Hannah, and Jacob have never been seen again.
The Lake Shawnee Amusement Park is no longer an amusement park.
The property, just north of Princeton, at the junction of routes 10 and 19 in Mercer County, is now privately owned,
but still has some relics of some of the old rides.
Paranormal groups have investigated the property.
Lake Shawnee gamed its fame. Lake Shawnee gained fame.
When it was featured on shows, on the show, Scariest Places on Earth, Ghost Lab, and the most terrifying places in America,
the history of Lake Shawnee is just as haunting as present day.
The land was occupied by the Shawnee tribe who buried untold numbers of the dead.
Then, in 1783, a massacre took place that seared the area into both history and haunted history.
Mitchell Clay and his family were the first white settlers in what became Mercer County.
They set up their farm in an 800 area called Clover Bottom.
The year 1783 is known as the official date of the massacre, but 1781 and 1782 are also cited.
There are different versions of how the attack happened.
According to one, Mitchell Clay went hunting and assigned two of his sons, Bartley and Ezekiel, to fence wheat stacks.
His wife, Phoebe, sent their daughter, Tabitha, and other children to the river to wash clothes while she stayed home tending to the younger children.
A group of seven Shawnee decided to make their attack and shot Bartley dead as soon as the shot rang out.
As soon as the shot rang out, Tabitha and the other girls ran for the house.
Tabitha attempted to stop the Native Americans from scalping Bartley and engaged in a struggle with the knife welding Native American.
She wrestled away the knife and threw it to the ground, but other Native Americans retreated it and cut her to pieces.
The Native Americans scalped Bartley and Tabitha and took Ezekiel hostage.
Meanwhile, a man named Lincoln Blakenship has stopped to visit the family and witness Tabitha struggle.
Phoebe begged Blakenship to intervene and shoot the Native Americans to save Tabitha.
He refused and departed, going to one of the settlements at New River to report the incident.
The Native Americans left taking Ezekiel with them and returned to their own settlement in Chillicothe, Ohio.
When Mitchell returned home from hunting, he found the bodies of two children in an empty home.
He assumed that all of them had been killed or captured.
So he left for the New River settlements where he secured help.
First, a party of men assisted in burying the Clay children and then joined in the search for the Native Americans.
The men caught up with them in what's now known as Boom County and engaged in a fight.
Several Native Americans were killed, one begged for his life and broken English, but was shot to death by Charles Clay, one of Mitchell's older sons.
After this, Mitchell Clay and others arrived at the Shawnee settlement in Chillicothe, but they were too late to save Ezekiel.
He had been burned at the stake and the smoke was still rising from his hard body.
Mitchell bargained with the chief to remove his son's body and was loaned a horse for the transport.
He moved the bodies of Bartley and Tabitha to a hill behind the house and buried Ezekiel alongside them.
He never returned the horse to the Shawnee.
Later, they came in the night and took it back to the Shawnee settlement.
Phoebe refused to return to Clover Bottom, so Mitchell relocated his family to Parisburg, Virginia.
In 1962, an entrepreneur named C.T. Snydove bought the old clay land and built an amusement park on it.
He was not aware of the site's bloody history.
The park was popular with coal mining families and flourished for four decades.
It featured a spring-fed swimming pool, carnival rides, a dance hall, a saloon, complete with prostitutes and illegal gambling, a racetrack, concession stands, and cabins for overnight stays.
During prohibition, a speakeasy operated there.
Most amusement parks suffered accidental deaths, and Lake Shawnee was no stranger to those.
Two of the most infamous deaths include two children from the 1950s.
A girl on the big circle swing was killed when a delivery truck backed up into the swing.
A boy whose mother had left him at the park for the day drowned in the swimming pool.
After that, the pool was soon filled with sand to prevent more accidental drownings.
The park closed in 1966 and the property set abandoned until 1985 when it was purchased by Gaylord White,
a businessman who worked at the park during the 1950s.
White intended to subdivide the land and sell it to residents, but he shelved the idea after Native American artifacts and burial sites were discovered.
White reopened Lake Shawnee as an amusement park, but it only lasted for three years.
Since then, the property has been used for fishing, camping, and hunted attractions and guided hunted tours.
Some of the hunted phenomena are attributed to the Native Americans who originally lived, died, and were buried on the land.
People hear disembodied voices and what sounds like Native Americans chanting.
At parishes, Native Americans have been seen throughout the old park grounds, especially around the concession stands.
According to Gaylord White, six people have been said to die at the park.
The ghost of a girl who died on the swings has been seen frequently, including by White's father, who often felt her presence.
The girl told him she wanted the tractor he was riding, so he stopped it and got off.
And to this day, it remains in the same spot and has never been moved.
White has seen the girl dressed in a pink dress with ruffled sleeves. A woman who swam in the pool before it was filled with sand,
claimed she almost drowned because of some mysterious force that was trying to pull her under.
White, who lived on the property, experienced poltergeist phenomena such as doors opening and slamming shut,
lights and the television turning on by themselves. A silhouette of a man was sometimes seen sitting in the old Ferris wheel.
It's said that the man died falling off the Ferris wheel, but there is no evidence to back the story up.
Today, you can visit WVlakeshawnit.com to get tickets to the Dark Carnival
and to get tickets for a daytime and overnight haunted tour.
Thank you so much for listening to the third episode during our State Haunts Month.
Stay tuned for next week's episode.
Don't forget to follow Mountain State Mysteries on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.
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