The Wandering Cryptid

The History: Lake Shawnee opened its doors in 1926 when owner Conley Snidow purchased the land. His goal, a park for families to enjoy time together and have fun, mainly from the local coal miners to relax while the kids enjoyed the local attractions like the Ferris wheel or the large swimming lake. At the time of its opening Lake Shawnee was popular family spot for many, but this all went down hill as the park continued to take in guests. In the 1950’s the town was rocked with the tragic deaths of young children. A young girl was sadly crushed to death when a delivery truck struck the girl playing on one of the swing rides. Shortly after this incident, before the town could fully heal from its loss a second death occurred. A young boy who was swimming in the large man made lake had gotten his arm stuck in one of the drains of the lake and sadly drowned. His Body was recovered after the park had closed, no one knows how long his body was there or why nobody seemed to notice that he went missing. This may seem like something from a Stephen king book, but just wait, it gets weirder. In 1980 the park was purchased by the White family in hopes of resurrecting the park once again, the park was only open for three years before they made a discovery that nobody would have imagined. While digging they started to find pottery fragments and pieces of jewelry, the site of the lake Shawnee amusement park was built atop of a Indian burial ground!

The site had its share of troubles before it even was a amusement park. In the 1770’s Mitchell Clay and his wife Phoebe along with their children became the first English settlers in the county. In 1783members of the Shawnee tribe murdered two of the children and taken their son Ezekiel. Mitchell chased the tribe in to Ohio where he found his son, burned at the stake. The three children were buried in the grounds of the park with a small monument to remembered their tragic deaths. While these were the first recorded deaths, they certainly were not the last.

As for our own experience, we ended up going in the middle of the day. The first thing our guide showed us was the supposed area where they believed that the burial ground for the native Shawnee tribe is located. A small monument was placed as a sign of respect to those who where there before us.

As we were there nothing stood out as overtly paranormal to us, but was very interesting and uncanny in some parts. We started our small hike around the giant looming Ferris wheel which now creeks and moans in the wind, completely overtaken by vines. This was a beautiful thing to document and see first hand.

We then walked around what remained of the large concrete pond that was made in the center. This thing is much smaller than what it used to be at the height of the parks popularity. This is also the same pond where the young boy had drowned. It was a somber walk along the banks of the pond as it is now, to see this as it once was would be a special sight, although while speaking with the owner he did mention interest in expanding the pond back to what it once was. This however would be very expensive and labor intuitive.