The story below is an excerpt from our September/October 2017 issue. For the rest of this story and more like it subscribe today, log in to read our digital edition or download our FREE iOS app. Thank you!
At the former Lake Shawnee Amusement Park in Princeton and at the long-ago Whipple Company Store in Scarbro, tragedies of the past seem to live on, sometimes with ghostly aspects.
Lake Shawnee Amusement Park, Princeton
With a history including Indian wars, a massacred family, Native-American burial mounds, an abandoned amusement park and ghosts of dead children, Lake Shawnee is something of a perfect storm of creepiness that proved too intriguing for me to resist. The land’s evil history dates back to 1783. That year, farmer Mitchel Clay and his family had settled on the land, claiming it as their own. Local Native American tribes were furious their land was being encroached upon and a turf war erupted, resulting in deaths on both sides, and in Mitchel Clay ultimately leaving the land forever after burying family members.
For almost 150 years after those deaths at the property known as “Lake Shawnee,” it remained empty save for the pond. Locals avoided the land, believing it to be cursed. While most of the area around it was farmed, that ground stood dormant. Some say it was waiting.
That all changed in the 1920s when developer and businessman Conley Snidow purchased the property. He had grand plans to build an amusement park which would draw crowds from far and wide. Over the next few years, he erected a ferris wheel, spinning swing set and cleaned up the pond so it could be used for swimming. Stands for games and contests lined the midway and the park was indeed a success. At first.
But then a young boy drowned in the pond. A few years later a little girl playing on the large swing set was unaware of a truck backing up to make a delivery until it ran over her. She was killed instantly. Another boy was running across the road that passes by the park, excited for a day of entertainment when he was struck and killed by a drunk driver. A few years later a girl was found dead behind the ring toss kiosk. Her body showed no signs of trauma and her death was ruled “natural causes,” but they could never explain what caused her demise.
The final tragedy at Lake Shawnee Amusement Park claimed the lives of two brothers. While riding the ferris wheel, the siblings were wrestling in their passenger car when they got a little too rambunctious. Just as the ride rounded the top, their cart tipped over and they spilled out. The younger brother fell immediately, dying as his body slammed into the ground. The older boy held onto the iron frame for almost 10 minutes, screaming for help. Before help could arrive, he too plunged to his death.
The park shut down shortly after their deaths and has remained closed since 1966. The rides were left to rust and rot. The buildings decayed and caved in. As in the years after the Clay family tragedy, the land stood empty. At one point the ground was going to be developed for a housing complex, but when they started moving earth, workers discovered a Native American burial mound which contained hundreds of graves. The project was quickly abandoned and the mound covered up.
Those who dared venture onto the ground, whether to fish the pond or just take in the sights, reported the sounds of children screaming in pain, the galloping of horses hoofs and sometimes they even saw the ferris wheel move with ghostly riders hitching along for the ride.
Lake Shawnee received some unexpected publicity in 2004 when it was featured on a television show called “The Scariest Places on Earth” and in the years since, it’s become a popular paranormal hotspot. It’s been featured on “Most Terrifying Places in America,” “Ghost Lab,” “Ten Most Haunted Places in the World” and even the antique show, “American Pickers.” The ground was only recently opened to the public, by appointment only and with access highly limited.