Lake Shawnee Amusement Park

A defunct amusement park opened in 1926 and abandoned in 1966 after multiple tragic deaths. The park was built on the site of a 1783 massacre where three members of the Mitchell Clay family were killed and scalped by Native Americans. Archaeological excavations uncovered ancient burial grounds with children's remains beneath the park.

Lake Shawnee Amusement Park in Rock, West Virginia, sits atop land soaked in centuries of bloodshed, making it one of the most haunted locations in America. The Travel Channel ranked it among the Most Terrifying Places in the country, and its history explains why. The horror began long before any amusement rides were built. In the 1770s, Mitchell Clay, his wife Phoebe, and their children became the first English settlers in what is now Mercer County. On a day in 1783 while Mitchell was away, members of the Shawnee tribe attacked the homestead. His daughter Tabitha and son Bartley were killed and scalped on the property. A third child, Ezekiel, was captured and taken to Chillicothe, Ohio, where he was burned at the stake. All three children were buried on the property, where a memorial monument marks their graves to this day.

But the Clay family massacre was only one layer of tragedy embedded in this soil. In the 1980s, when the White family, who had purchased the property, began excavating for a mud bogging track, they collaborated with researchers from Marshall University and unearthed something far more significant. The archaeological team discovered Native American burial sites containing the remains of mostly elderly people and young children. Subsequent analysis suggested that as many as three thousand Shawnee may have been buried on the property over centuries, along with bracelets, clothing, and tools indicating the tribe's long presence there.

In 1926, local businessman Conley T. Snidow built an amusement park on this burial ground, complete with a swimming lake, race track, cabins, a Ferris wheel, and a circular swing ride. For decades, the park was a popular destination for coal miners and their families from surrounding towns. Then the deaths began. In the 1950s, a young girl named Emiline Shrader was killed when a delivery truck backed into her seat on the swing ride. A boy drowned after his arm became trapped in a drain pipe in the swimming pool. At least six people are believed to have died at the park during its years of operation. The park closed in 1966.

Gaylord White purchased the property in the 1980s and, while installing vintage swing ride equipment, discovered that the serial numbers matched the original 1920s swings -- the same rides on which children had died decades earlier. The paranormal activity at Lake Shawnee centers on the swing ride, where the ghost of Emiline Shrader is most frequently encountered. Visitors report seeing the apparition of a young girl in a white dress near the swing marked with a red ribbon. The swings move on their own even on completely windless days. A pinwheel ornament near the ride has been documented responding to verbal commands -- speeding up, slowing down, and stopping on request. Electronic voice phenomena sessions have yielded recordings of whispered voices and unidentifiable sounds.

The park was featured on Scariest Places on Earth on ABC Family in 2002 and on the Travel Channel in 2010. Today, Lake Shawnee offers guided paranormal tours year-round and transforms into the Dark Carnival during Halloween season, drawing thousands of visitors to walk among the ruins of an amusement park built on a graveyard that stretches back a thousand years.