Thank you. There's a lot of creepy around here if you know where to look. Was hoping for some suggestions on things that could be at the other end in the Nevernever though...
Here's another creepy location from Western North Carolina: Mile High Ghost Town in the Sky
The photo is the only way to get to the theme park: A chair lift that soars straight up the side of the mountain (actually, there was a shuttle bus and an inclined railroad for the infirm or acrophobic, but that's no fun).
Ghost Town in the Sky was once a great amusement park. It was the anchor of the small tourist town Maggie Valley, population about 700. It had a unique wild west theme, with a cadre of actors and gunfighters who staged hourly shootouts at the major locations and the rest of the time walking around in character doing tricks or short sketches. Some popular characters included a dour female gunfighter with a grudge against lawmen and a penchant for shooting them in the back, and a greedy undertaker who would often distract gunfighters to increase the body count and thus his paycheck. And the Apache Kid-who was actually Cherokee and not much of a kid-the noble sheriff of the lawless Ghost Town.
Like all amusement parks, there were occasional accidents. At times the chair lift got stuck, sometimes for hours. The Red Devil roller coaster once got stuck on the upside down. The Old Mine Shaft haunted house was particularly poorly enforced and escorted and sometimes people got lost in there or separated from the groups.
There were also rumors. Most centered around the Black Widow, a Scrambler-type ride set in a dark room filled with multicolored strobe lights and blasting music. Everyone heard about the one time one of the arms fell off and some kids died, but that's not going to keep youth away from it. If anything, it draws them there. The fact that there was no proof that ever happened did nothing to deter the rumors. The Black Widow was eventually moved outdoors and renamed the Undertaker.
In 2002, the park shut down amid financial troubles. It reopened again in 2007 only to shut down again less than a year later. It was supposed to reopen this year for the summer, but again it's run into trouble. It's looking like Ghost Town may finally live up to its name.
Here we diverge from reality. In the Dresden Files, things could be even worse. I'm thinking the rumors of deaths on the rides, particularly the Black Widow, have some truth to them. Nothing as dramatic as an arm flying off, but perhaps some people just entered that dark room with the flashing lights and never came They simply weren't on the ride when it stopped. A few showed up later, without memory of their missing time (hours, or sometimes days later). Some are still listed as runaways.
Currently, renovation and construction is running into trouble with a high rate of accidents. The chair lift refuses to work. The road has been washed out by storms twice. And some construction workers have reported strange figures. A grim-looking woman of a certain age dressed in black. A tall man in a handlebar moustache and top hat seen around equipment before it malfunctions catastrophically. Some of the construction workers remember this place from their youth and swear up and down that they're the Black Widow and Undertaker. But those were just actors.
Characters in a violent dramedy repeating almost every hour every day for 25 years in the same location couldn't leave some sort of psychic impression on the area...could it?
Of course it could. Honestly, I'm again not entirely sure what is really going on, but really. It's an abandoned amusement park AND a wild west ghost town. There is no way I'm letting a fight not happen there.
