The owners of a UK water park have decided enough is enough as they make plans to move one of their popular attractions in the wake of a series of ghostly sightings. And while many visitors say the park is already thrilling enough, a few of the screams heard on the haunted attraction may not have been made by paying customers, but rather residents who have been around since the year 666 AD when a nearby path was installed.
The idea of a haunted theme park is one of those classical staples of horror movies. The long running motif that the most terrifying forces could be mingling amid the smell of cotton candy and the trill of carnival music is an image leading all the way back to Ray Bradbury’s “Something Wicked This Way Comes.” But in this latest story the characters are taking action before the plot takes a grisly turn. They say they want the upcoming theme park attraction known as Storm Surge to be moved. And they say the sighting of full bodied apparitions on the park’s waterslide is only one of the things leading them to make the move.
Among the ghosts seen on ride were a headless ghost and another figure that was harder to see. The owners, rather than dismissing the claims by workers, turned an attentive ear to the ground in the form of a paranormal investigations firm led by longtime researcher Jim Arnold. The firm found startling evidence that linked the park to paranormal phenomena in the form of Electromagnetic Voice Phenomena (EVP). Photographs were also taken of the site and when the crew assembled around a witch board and started receiving messages from the other side, they knew they had struck ghostly gold.
But the evidence gathering didn’t end there. After the paranormal investigators had concluded their search, the park owner decided to bring in a forensic geophysicist to stake out the land. What he found was perhaps the most disturbing evidence yet. Beneath the soil there were signs of something ancient that had been buried there. The forensic geologists suggest it might be an ancient building, but it bears a striking resemblance to what an ancient burial ground would look like.
In horror movies we’re always told developers will take this information and promptly toss it out the window leaving their buildings to eventually become the central focus of the final showdown between the forces of apocalyptic paranormal proportions. It’s nice to know in this case the developer had seen Poltergeist and, furthermore, knew his customers likely had as well.
Some future developers around message boards and chat rooms have been suggesting this step is entirely unnecessary. “They should have just given the ride a haunted theme,” one such user suggested. In the end the decision to move the ride has received overwhelming support, as potential patrons say when they’re jetting down a waterfall in their swim trunks the last thing they want to see is a headless monk reaching out at them from the darkness below.