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M.A.P.I. Lake Shawnee Amusement Park Investigation

Date of Investigation: 10 & 11 November 2007

Sunset on the 10th: 5:18 pm

Moon Phase: Waxing crescent with 1% of the Moon's visible disk illuminated.

Sunrise on the 11th: 6:59 am

Attendees: Lee Jade Mark

Harris Joe Heather

Jaxon Ron Rick

Location: US 19 & WV 10, Princeton, WV 24740 Halfway between Princeton and Spanishburg, travelers can see the rusty tower of a Ferris wheel.

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History: At least two American Indian settlement sites are believed to lie on the tract. Professors and students from Marshall and Concord universities partially excavated one of them in 1988. They determined the settlement to have been a circular, fortress-like village surrounded by tree trunks anchored upright in the earth. The 100-yard-diameter interior of the fortress contained a central plaza and a number of circular wooden huts with mud and thatch roofs. Of the 13 skeletons found at the village during the 1988 survey, all but one belonged to an infant or toddler. Lake Shawnee’s current owner, Gaylord White, said subsequent surveys have produced evidence indicating that a field on his tract may contain as many as 3,000 American Indian burials.

Recreation of a Fort Ancient Village The Fort Ancient peoples lived along streams in southern Ohio, northern Kentucky, southeastern Indiana, and western West Virginia. Fort Ancient villages were located along terraces that overlooked rivers and sometimes were located on flood plains. Houses were arranged in a broad circle/oval shape around a public plaza. During the Early and Middle Fort Ancient period the houses were designed as single-family dwellings; however, after A.D. 1450 they became large multi-family dwellings. All houses were constructed so that the each faced the central plaza. The plaza was the center of village life and was a place where ceremonies, games, and other social events were held. Later Fort Ancient villages were enclosed by stockades. The addition of the stockades suggests an increase in the level of conflict; this could also account for the break down of the Fort Ancient culture.

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A map of a Fort Ancient village site Indians apparently abandoned the Fort Ancient-era village about 200 years before Mercer County’s first European settler, Mitchell Clay, arrived on the same stretch of the Bluestone in 1775. One day in 1783 while the men were away hunting, Indians rode down from the ridge and killed and began to scalp one of the boys who was working in the fields. When his sister came to his aid, the Indian killed her too. The Indian kidnapped another boy, Ezekiel Clay. A posse followed but the Indians split into two groups. The men followed them into Boone County and killed several Indians before realizing the Clay boy was not there. After they backtracked and pursued the second band who had fled to Ohio, they arrived only moments after the third child had been burned. (See full accounting of the story below.) C.T. Snidow opened the Lake Shawnee Amusement Park in 1926 and operated it until 1966. In addition to dozens of carnival rides, the park featured a spring-fed swimming pool — the biggest one in this part of the state — as well as log cabins, a row of concessions stands, a quarter-mile racetrack and occasional Wild West shows. White worked at the park in the 1950s as a youth, before moving to Ohio for a factory job after high school. He eventually returned to Mercer County and bought the long-vacant amusement park grounds in 1985, planning to use the acreage as the site for a residential development. As he began examining housing locations on the property, “all kinds of Indian artifacts and graves started turning up,” he said, and development plans went on hold. While White shelved residential development plans, he reopened Lake Shawnee Amusement Park in 1985, offering more than 30 rides, including a small roller coaster. Bumper-boat and paddleboat rides were also available. Insurance woes prompted White to close the amusement park three years later. He now operates a pay-to-fish lake on the property, open on Saturdays May through September.

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Clay Family Massacre: In 1774, Mitchell Clay acquired land at Clover Bottoms of Bluestone River, upstream from "the Bluestone settlement," and moved his family there in 1775. In 1778, the Indians wiped out "the Bluestone settlement" on their way to attack the settlers along New River. Families of the settlement are unknown. The Indians did not bother the Clay family, as it was not in their path to New River and, perhaps, they did not know that Clay had settled there in 1775.

Mitchell clay and his wife had fourteen children, seven sons and seven daughters. The sons were Mitchell, Henry, Charles, William, David, Bartley, and Ezekiel. The daughters were Rebecca, Patience, Sallie, Obedience, Nannie, Mary, and Tabitha.

In 1781, after the summer work was complete and before time for the fall hunt, probably mid-September, a neighbor, probably James Moore of Abb's Valley, and Mitchell went to buy salt in preparation for the fall hunt, leaving his sons to look out for the family, and to fence the wheat stacks so that the livestock could be turned into the field for late pasture. The older son, David, had left home at the time, and as no signs of Indians had been seen in the area, sons Charles and Mitchell Jr. decided that it was safe to go hunting, leaving Bartley and Ezekiel to fence the wheat stacks. Feeling safe, Phoebe started the day's activities, sending Tabitha down to the river to wash clothes with some of the bigger children, while the older sister, Rebecca, was in the house with the normal household chores and the younger daughter, Obedience, was in the yard tending to the smaller children and helping her mother. Unknown to the Clay family, an Indian had been watching the house for several days from the top of the ridge across the river, while the Indians, in two parties, were hunting for horses to steal, one party on the Guyandotte and the other in Abb's Valley. Watching the normal activities at the Clay house was the Indians method of knowing that their presence had not been detected, as anyone from either Abb's Valley or the Guyandotte going for help from the New River settlement would pass this way. The unsuccessful party in Abb's Valley had returned the night before and camped across the river from the Clay house, unseen due to the trees and brush along the river. The spy on the ridge had seen Mitchell and James Moore leave in one direction, and the two older boys then leave in the opposite direction when Bartley and Ezekiel went to fence the wheat stacks before joining the party at the river, but had not seen Tabitha and the children come down to the river directly opposite where they were camped.

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The Indians decided to take scalps or captives of Bartley and Ezekiel, so they moved down the north side of the river to cross, then back up the river bank even with the boys still not seeing Tabitha and the children. Tabitha, hearing the shot, started running with the children toward the house. The Indians having surrounded Ezekiel, saw Tabitha and the children, and two of them attempted to capture Tabitha while others tried to catch the children. Tabitha fought off the Indians while the children were climbing the hill to the house. Unknown to the Indians, Mr. Blankenship was on his way back to New River from a visit to a more remote settlement and had stopped by the Clay house at the time, and was in the yard talking with Phoebe, who asked him to shoot the Indian fighting with Tabitha. Mr. Blankenship would not shoot, knowing that he might hit Tabitha instead, and if he did kill the Indian, he could not save her from the other, and an empty gun would cause a rush on the house. He held the Indians at bay with his loaded gun until Phoebe and Obedience had all of the children into the safety of the house. After the Indians had taken the scalps and captive, they retreated to the river bank, and Mr. Blankenship told Phoebe that he would attempt to draw the Indians away from the house and go for help, so she and the children could get away undetected to James Bailey's on Brush Creek by going over Black Oak Mountain. He then left the house, first stopping by the body of Tabitha, then went on to the body of Bartley some three hundred yards from the house toward the settlement. The Indians, thinking he had gone to recover the bodies, moved upstream to intercept him on his return to the house about the same distance the path was from the river. With this extra head start, he then started running toward the settlement, the Indians giving chase, until he was some distance from the house. When he needed to rest, he would leave the trail and go some distance along the trail, thus causing the Indians to hunt for his hiding place where they saw him leave, thus giving him time to rest. Then he would step back onto the trail, letting the Indians see him and start running again, thus leading the Indians a sufficient distance from the house for the Clay family to get a good start for James Bailey's residence. He then left the trail for a sufficient distance until they could not see him re-enter the trail and continue on to the settlement.

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The Indians continued to follow him to about two miles of the settlement. After the Clays were to safety at James Bailey's, James started for the settlement for help, not knowing if Mr. Blankenship would get there or not. He arrived there shortly before daybreak to find the pursuit party had formed and were waiting for the Captain of the Militia to arrive. He had time for a breakfast and short rest before the Captain arrived and the party started out after the Indians. Mitchell and James Moore arrived back at the Clay house a couple of hours before sundown to find the two bodies and the family gone. They placed the bodies in the house, one on the bed and the other on the table. The two sons arrived shortly afterward, having wounded a deer and followed it some distance away from home. The four then set out for the settlement, thinking that the entire family had been taken captive. Some few miles from the settlement, they heard the Indians approaching in front of them and stepped to the side of the trail while they passed by. They met the pursuit party about a mile from the settlement and, after hearing the account from James Bailey and knowing that the rest of the family was safe, they joined the party to go after the Indians. They followed the Indians, and the next morning, they came upon where the Indians had met with another raiding party with horses and had camped for the night. The ashes of the campfire were still warm. The two parties had taken different routes, so they followed the horse tracks believing that the captive would be with the horses. When they overtook the Indians (I believe) Edward Hale shot and killed an Indian, as did Mitchell Clay, Jr. Charles Clay shot and wounded one (having "buck-fever"), which Mr. Wiley then shot and killed the one Charles had wounded. So incensed at the conduct of the Indians, both Edward Hale and Mr. Wiley then each took a strip of hide from the back of the Indian he had killed for a razor strap, Mr. Wiley taking two strips, giving one to Charles, who had wounded the Indian. The razor straps were kept in the family for many years as a souvenir of the battle. After taking up the other trail, it was decided that they could not overtake the Indians, so they returned to the house and buried the two children in shallow graves near the house, which Mitchell later moved to the hill behind the house, after he recovered Ezekiel's body and buried it there. After returning to James Bailey's home and a reunion with his family, Mitchell decided to go to the Indian town and try to ransom Ezekiel. Phoebe would not agree to let the two sons go with him. James Bailey, Phoebe's nephew, and James Moore, went with him. When they reached the Indian town of Chillicothe, Ohio, they saw the smoke from the stake still burning, so Mitchell left his two companions outside the town and went in alone, passing by the stake and seeing that Ezekiel was dead, and kicking away the remaining, still-burning sticks of wood. He recovered the body and, with the loan of a horse from the chief, he brought Ezekiel's

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body home and buried it on the hill behind the house and then moved the other two children to that location. Phoebe would not return to the homestead, so Mitchell moved his family to New River. The date of the Clay massacre has been given as the year 1781, 1782, and 1783. 1783 was the date that the Clays moved back to New River. When this date appeared on the historical highway marker, local residents of the area (who were well versed in the traditional account) strongly disputed this.

Many have assigned the year 1782 based on the building of the Bailey Fort in that year, completed in 1783, and the Clays living with the Baileys during the time and helped with the building of the fort before resettling at New River. Some assign the year 1781 due to the time of year that the wheat would have been harvested. August was assigned as the month as the wheat had been harvested, while September was more likely as preparations were being made for the fall hunt, which would start with the first frost, normally mid-October. After the destruction, in part, of the family of Mitchell Clay, on Bluestone, he re-moved to New River, purchased a farm which is now owned in part by Mr. J. Raleigh Johnston, opposite Pearisburg Station on N. & W. Ry. Co.'s railway line, and upon which he erected a dwelling house in 1783, which is still standing

There is a native sandstone sculpture representing Mitchell and Phoebe (Belcher) Clay standing on the lawn of the courthouse at Princeton, Mercer County, West Virginia. The sculpture has been referred to as a "Torment in Stone." It represents Mitchell Clay and his wife in a moment of agony over the massacre of members of their family in 1783.

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"Torment in Stone," Monument to Mitchell and Phoebe (Belcher) Clay, Princeton, Mercer County, WV

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Paranormal Activity: The abandoned amusement park’s eerie appearance and related stories of ghostly apparitions prompted a number of people to visit the site long after its closing in search of paranormal activity. Interest in the park as a site for paranormal activity peaked in October 2005 after the ABC Family network broadcast a segment of its “Scariest Places on Earth” series filmed here.

“A psychic they had under contract to come here wouldn’t stay — she said the spirits were too strong,” White recalled. A member of the production crew wanted to climb up on the swing ride to see if something had been rigged on it to produce ghostly noises or images, White said. “When he got halfway up, a big maple tree fell over, out of a clear blue sky, over by the highway, and he climbed back down,” he said. “When he started to climb up again, a car wrecked on Route 19 a short distance away, and when he went up for a third time, his cellular phone rang and he was told his film crew had been in a car accident. That was the last time he tried climbing up.” White said members of the production crew “wouldn’t come to the park at night unless they were all together.” White said he experienced “unexplained feelings” of some kind of a presence while working at the park as a youth. “But back then, you just didn’t talk about that type of thing, because you didn’t want people to think you’d gone off the deep end,” he said. After buying the park, he began sensing the presence of someone riding behind him, as he drove

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a tractor over the amusement park ground to cut grass and brush. “I could sense someone standing behind me and touching my right shoulder or holding on to my right arm,” he said. The sensations continued, off and on, for 14 years, White said, “before she revealed herself to me.” One hot summer day while mowing on the tractor, White said he turned and “saw her standing there, smiling at me, right before my eyes.” He described the apparition as a young girl wearing a pink dress with ruffled sleeves. “I said to her, ‘since you like the tractor so well, I’m going to give it to you.’ I parked it, and it’s still there.” White said he believes the encounter on the tractor involves the spirit of a girl who died on the swing ride in the early 1950s, when a soft drink truck accidentally moved into the path of the ride’s rotating swings.

White said he has sensed other presences at the park, and has occasionally heard what sounded like people chanting, although he could see no one.

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The M.A.P.I. Investigation: Lee, Harris, Joe, and I arrived at the gate shortly past 4. The signs from Halloween were still marking the entrance. It was cloudy, damp, and chilly. Gaylord, the son, took us on a walk around the grounds. I have to admit it looked much smaller in reality than I had imagined in my mind. Gaylord explained that when CT Snidows ran the place in the 20s and the 30s there was a saloon-like establishment on the grounds that had served as a speakeasy, high stakes poker parlor, and house of ill repute. According to stories, a man from Chicago came down to show hillbilly West Virginians a thing or two. Apparently the one game had a pot around $1M. The guy never made it back to Chicago. He showed us the old pool. He confirmed a story I had read on the Internet about a boy drowning. The mother had dropped him off for the day and when she returned at the end of the day, he was nowhere to be seen. They searched and eventually found his lifeless body in the pool. When the White family bought the place, they filled in the pool with sand.

How the pool looks today Gaylord walked us around the lake which supposedly has 70-pound catfish in it that he stocks. Beware if you fall in the water, he won’t save you. You must fend for yourself.

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As we came around the corner towards the Ferris wheel. Gaylord explained that the Clay headstone was over in the field. Mrs. C.T. Snidow had the marker moved to its present location even though the children were not buried there. As we stood in between in the Ferris wheel and the swing ride, Gaylord told “ghost stories.” People have seen a man in the car located in the 9 o’clock position. Then we headed over to the swings. When we were on the other side of the lake, we saw one of the swings moving. That was the swing he walked straight to. Gaylord explained that when the family bought the place in the 80s, none of the buildings remained of the original park. They bought the Ferris wheel and the swing ride from a carnival ride reseller. He suspects the swing ride is from the original park as a workman was able to describe exactly how it worked. He asked to conduct an “experiment” by hovering our hand over the seat of one of the seat not allowing the hand to touch. People doing this in the past have felt cold air hit their hand or seen the seat move. From there we continued around the lake swinging by the markers for the Clay family massacre and a memorial to C.T. Snidow. And then we made our way back to the cars to drive over to the area of the property where the survey of the Indian settlement/trading post was done. We drive through a tree line and Gaylord pointed out a yellow ticket booth seemed to attract paranormal activity. We then continued driving across a field and stopped our cars. By this time, the rest of the group showed up---Mark, Jaxon, Heather, Ron, and Rick.

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Gaylord told more ghost stories of people who tried to stay the night on the field, but were never able to stay through the whole night. The activity always seemed to be the most intriguing around 3 in the morning. With that, Gaylord was pretty much finished showing us around. He said he would try to find his camera and show us some of his photographs. From there it was time to make camp and figure out our plan. We got a fire going. I pitched my tent. Jaxon and Lee headed into Princeton to get supplies to include some pizzas for dinner. By the time all that was done, it was approaching 9. Lee took the newcomers back over to the amusement park section of the property to fill them in on what they had missed from Gaylord’s tour. Meanwhile, Harris, Joe, and I did our own thing. I wanted to go over the headstone. Unfortunately, the land we had to cross to get to the hill were it was located was far too swampy. Given how cold it was, I didn’t want to head back to base camp with soaking wet and freezing cold feet. We aborted that mission and focused on the Ferris wheel and the swing ride. I got one interesting picture when I tried to snap a picture of the Ferris wheel, but I’m the first to admit that the mist in the photo may very well be an outtake of breath.

Joe was having problems with the batteries going dead on several of his devices. He was able to get one of his digital voice recorders to work and we conducted an EVP session. While we were still near the Ferris wheel, Joe got an EVP. Mike processed the EVP and you can clearly hear, “Take the picture.” To me, it sounds like a male voice. Joe snapped a picture and caught an anomaly on the wheel. Joe snapped a picture of me when I was conducting my hand experiment

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over the swing and it had mist in it. About the same time Joe snapped the picture, I felt the presence of something in front of me and I made the statement out loud, “I know you’re here.”

Joe enhanced this to bring out the mist

Harris, Joe, and I headed around the lake and over to the blue concessions stand. On the Internet I had found stories of people seeing apparitions of Indians standing in the concessions stand. I didn’t note anything strange; however, there was something crawling around in the woods behind the concessions stand and that startled me a bit. It was probably a deer though based on the sound as whatever it was crossed the creek. Joe did have something strange happen with

his camera. It started changing function on its own. Later when he checked his camera, he found this picture with a weird light effect. From the concessions stand, Joe headed over to the house trailer. Gaylord’s brother had donated the trailer for the property and weird stuff happens. Now as we were walking around the lake initially, Joe thought he had seen a shadow move across the back window. Joe tapped on the front door which is padlocked from the outside. Joe thought he heard the scurrying of feet across the floor inside.

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By this time, my feet were frozen. I know the weather forecast said it was supposed to be in the upper 20s that night, but it felt much colder. We headed back to camp and Gaylord came down with photos from the 1988 survey of the site that was active in the 1700s. I wish I could get copies of some of those photos. There was a picture of the amusement park looked like when it was open in the 80s. One photo had the excavated skeleton of a man. Another had the excavated skeleton of an infant that had been wrapped in a blanket with shell beads. There was also a picture of Dr. Jones from Concord University doing his archeology thing. There was another picture that had the remnants of tools found in the site: a bow straightener and a fat scraper pretty much intact. Gaylord mentioned that they found some of the tools covered with turtle shells and then covered in sand which might indicated that the Indians had quickly fled the area with the intentions of returning but apparently never did. Now why would they do this? While this is mere speculation on my part, perhaps the white brought their white men diseases to the Indians who would have no immunities to fight off these sicknesses. According to a source Lee found, of the 13 skeletons found at the village during the 1988 survey, all but one belonged to an infant or toddler. Who would be most vulnerable to flues and disease? The old and the young. Perhaps a flu of some sort was brought to the village by the white men and thinking “evil/offended spirits” or “bad medicine” had come upon their village, the Indians fled hoping to return when the spirits had calmed down. And it doesn’t surprise me that the psychic from Scariest Places on Earth” would refuse to stay saying “evil was done here.” Many people not understanding Native American culture, religion, and spirituality and of deep Christian conviction might be tempted to call their rituals “evil” based on their cultural filters. Gaylord was long gone by the time Lee and his group arrived back. We all huddled around the fire trying to stay warm. As I sat there, I didn’t get any bad vibes from the site. In fact, it felt very peaceful to me. As it approached midnight, I decided to crash in the tent so I could wake up again before the magical 3 o’clock hour. It was a fitful sleep. I was carried away to another time—snapshots that moved too fast to remember but for one. I saw a man’s left arm with blood trickling down it from his shoulder. Lee got me up at a quarter till 3. I put on my third layer of clothing and made my way back to the campfire. As soon as I got there, I was bombarded with stories from a walk over to the amusement park while I was asleep. Apparently the little girl was killed on the swing wanted to make her presence known but on the side of the lake where the swing ride originally stood when C.T. Snidows owned the place and the little boy that drowned in the pool scratched Joe’s hand. I later learned, not only Joe was scratched. Lee had slashes all over his hand as well. A third investigator also had strange marks. We reviewed some of the digital film took and there were some strange things caught on tape that require further analysis. The impression I get if the stories Gaylord told about the boy drowning were true that he might be holding a little hostility in that no one helped him as he was drowning. The scenario that plays out in my head is that of a boy trying to fit in with the older boys and getting teased and harassed. The kid was in over his head, literally. The older boys didn't realize he was in jeopardy when he grabbed them trying to gulp for air..... Again I felt nothing but calm in the field with the exception of perhaps that someone was watching us across the field from the tree line back over where the amusement park section is. As we huddled around the campfire, we speculated about the place. For me, the only section of the field that generated any interested for me was the section where Gaylord said they had only

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found some pipes. Joe, being part Cherokee, said given where the settlement was located, it was possible given American culture that the medicine men of the village would separate themselves from the main part of the village and that patch of land by the creek would be a logical place for them to situate themselves. Around 4 everyone was ready to call it a night and by 4:30, it was lights out. I got up around 7:30 and came out of the tent and was shocked to see everything in white from a thick frost. Lee got the fire started and I headed over to the amusement park to catch the sun break through the mist.

This is the tree line where I felt someone was watching us from

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I must admit it was a beautiful morning and I enjoyed having the place all to myself. I tried to imagine what it looked like it its heyday. It must have been something.

By 9 we were back on the road for our 5 hour drive back to D.C.

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References: http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?disc=199735;article=7788;title=Ohio%20%26%20N.%20Kentucky%20Indian%20Issues http://www.wvgazette.com/webtools/email/Outdoors/Recreation/2007080416 http://www.pbase.com/kstuebin/hauntedamusementpark http://www.wvgazette.com/section/Outdoors/Recreation/2007080416 http://www.afterlifenews.com/a/1371.html http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~richmond/mitchell_clay.htm http://www.kinyon.com/westvirginia/midnewriver/appendixc3.htm http://www.geocities.com/allbelcher/articles/clayfamilyinfo.html http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~nylasgenealogy/clay.html http://www.nku.edu/~anthro/nkuanthromuseum/FAweb/AFortAncientVillage.htm