Aaron Manke (12:31)
They moved into their new home. In August of 1783, Mitchell Clay went out hunting in. He left two of his sons at the farm to store that year's harvest while his daughters handled the laundry down at the farm's creek. It was a day of chores and laughter just like any other. But while the children were working, a party of indigenous Shawnee crept up on the group. And then they fired. Their bullet struck one of the boys, a young lad named Bartley. Hearing the gun go off, the others fled, running toward the safety of the house. But they didn't run fast enough. An attacker caught one of the daughters, Tabitha, and stabbed her to death. A third child, Ezekiel, was kidnapped from the farm. When Mitchell returned home, it was to a bloody scene. Two of his children were dead, their corpses scalped, and one was gone. Grief stricken, Mitchell gathered his neighbors, who formed a hunting party and furiously pursued the attackers. They caught up to the Shawnee in Boone county, and some of the indigenous men were killed during the altercation. But most got away, including the men who had been holding tight to Ezekiel. Mitchell wasn't ever able to recover his son. By the time he was able to track Ezekiel down at the Shawnee settlement In Ohio, the 16 year old had already been murdered and the Clay family was Never the same. As the years passed by, the remaining children slowly moved on with their lives, some of them even immigrating to Western territories as adults. But the pain of losing three children stayed with everyone, especially with Mitchell and his wife, Phoebe. Today, there is a statue of the two grieving parents outside the Mercer county courthouse titled Agony in stone. Because that kind of heartache doesn't just disappear. And some would argue that that anguish seeped into the very land where the children had been massacred. The Clay family land stayed largely unchanged for the next century and a half. It sat stagnant, a monument to tragedy until it was bought by an entrepreneur in the 1920s. His goal? To build an amusement park. Now, to be fair to him, he knew nothing about the land's violent history. He only knew that he wanted to create a space for local families to enjoy themselves. But some have said that despite his ignorance, his choice to build on top of the clay farm cursed his park. When it opened, the Lake Shawnee amusement park was a hit. It boasted a water slide, a swimming hole, a dance hall, and a speakeasy. There were even rides like a Ferris wheel and a circular swing. There was the perfect place for people of all ages to let loose and have some fun. Everything went smoothly for the first 20 years or so of operation. But then another child lost their life on the very same land where the Clay children lost theirs. In the summer of 1955, the park was crowded, and it was hard for anyone to navigate through it. Confused by the chaos, a delivery truck driver accidentally backed into the spinning swing sets, and a little girl's swing collided with the truck. She tragically died on impact. And if that wasn't enough, a second incident occurred only a few years later when one mother came to pick up her son from the park. At the end of the day, he was nowhere to be found. She frantically searched the entire premises until she found his body floating in the park's pond. Her little boy had drowned. The pool was filled with sand shortly afterwards. To prevent any more unexpected deaths, the park was eventually abandoned in 1966. Now, some sources say that there were financial issues, while others say that the closure was a result of those children's deaths. Honestly, though, so much of the park's history has been twisted by urban legends that it's hard to say for sure which version of the events is true. And then the Shawnee Lake amusement park sat empty until 1985, when it was bought by a man named Gaylord White. White wanted to turn the park into family friendly neighborhoods, but once his team broke ground. They were immediately forced to stop construction. The entire amusement park had been built on top of an ancient burial ground, and I know that sounds stereotypical and that is often used in folklore and urban legends to add some level of spookiness to his story, but in this case it was actually true. An archaeological dig in 1988 determined that the burial site had been abandoned hundreds of years before white settlers ever came to the area. Estimates put the number of graves there at around 3,000. Before deciding to leave the remaining bodies undisturbed, the team dug up 13 skeletons, most of which had belonged to children. Today, the Shawnee Lake amusement park is private property, but they do offer haunted tours for anyone who wants to have a look around. The park has been named one of the most haunted places on earth, with visitors reporting disembodied voices mysteriously locking doors and a swing that still moves on its own. But of course, the most common sightings.
