What happened
In 1783, on settler Mitchell Clay’s land in what is now Mercer County, Native American raiders attacked his family: two of his children were killed and a third was carried off and, according to accounts, burned at the stake. Clay and his neighbours are said to have hunted down and killed several of the raiders, though other versions say he made peace in order to bury his children. In 1926 businessman Conley Trigg Snidow bought the land and built an amusement park with a Ferris wheel, a swing ride, a swimming pool, a dance hall and cabins – popular with coal-mining families. During his ownership there were at least two drownings, and in 1966 a young girl was killed on the swing ride. The park closed in 1967; after a brief reopening in the late 1980s, work crews found many Native American artifacts, which revived talk of sacred ground and a curse. Visitors tell of the swing ride moving with no wind, children’s voices, and the figures of a man and a little girl in a pink dress.
Witnesses
Accounts by visitors and guided-tour participants; the site has been featured by regional media and by West Virginia’s state tourism office.
Explanations and hypotheses
The attack on the Clay family comes from old frontier accounts that differ in their details, and claims of thousands of Shawnee buried here have no support in reliable sources. The accidents at the park were real tragedies but no different from what happened at other amusement parks of the time; sources disagree about the details (for example, whether the swing-ride victim was a girl or a boy). The “cursed land” story combines the familiar “Indian burial ground” motif with picturesque ruins that today are open mainly on paid tours.
Legend A story handed down through generations – it can be neither confirmed nor disproved.
Sources
- West Virginia Department of Tourism – Haunted West Virginia Locations That Are Sure to Give You Chills
- Charleston Gazette-Mail – Abandoned Lake Shawnee Amusement Park turned into spooky attraction
- Newsweek – Abandoned theme park in West Virginia said to be haunted
More: Wikipedia (en)