Mr. Nightmare

Amusement Park Horror Story

-Edwin Williams

"Two of my closest friends Trevor and Kevin always love to go on late-night adventures. I have so many fond memories going on creepy midnight exploration sessions with them but I have some not-so-great ones as well, however, the worst experience was the night we went to Joyland amusment park in Kansas, an abandoned park surrounded by a somewhat typical suburban area. We lived only 10 minutes away from the park so we figured it would be our next late-night destination. We always brought our Phoenix flashlights, backpacks and boots whenever we went to places like this. Today mostly everything in Joyland amusment park has been torn down but this was back in like 2011 or 2012 and at that time most of the buildings and rides were still standing. We pulled up on a side road next to the parking lot since it seemed a lot less sketchy than pulling up into the parking lot itself, then we figured we should just pull up onto the grass next to the woods by the park because god forbid if a cop would come down the road. Kevin led the way while Trevor and I followed behind talking to eachother sometimes joking about how much more eager Kevin was to move ahead than we were. We kept our voices low however because we never knew if there might still be security in places like this. All the carnival shacks that once held concessions and games had now been ransacked, trashed with cans and bottles and sprayed with graffiti, it was basically the scene that you would expect to see in an amusement park that had been abandoned for years. Even though the park was surrounded by suburbs it was kind of encased in by woods in almost all directions so instead of late night traffic all we heard were crickets and other night creatures, it added to the experience because to be honest all three of us in a certain way liked being freaked out. We walked into another carnival game stand, this one with the paintings at top still not completely worn away or graffiti'd over. It had some smiling cartoon character holding a dart gun so I'm guessing it was some kind of target hitting game. Now it was just rubble and litter on the grounds, suddenly there was the sound of a glass bottle breaking not too far away, when we turned in that direction it became clear it definitely came from the bigger looking building. Perplexed and kind of shaken, the three of us went in that direction, we stopped probably two-thirds of the way there when we saw someone standing in the corner of what was once called the Wacky Shack Attraction. The person was legitimately just standing facing the corner wall of the entrance. I whispered at my friends to back away slowly, there was clearly something wrong with this person and we didn't want them to hear us. We backed away trying to avoid making any noise, it was almost like something out of a cliche horror movie when either Kevin or Trevor stepped on a beer can which made a really loud crunch. The person standing in the corner turned their head and looked at us but the speed in which they turned their head was what really scared me, it was almost like a deer. We can now see it was a man, he had a deranged look on his face. The three of us simply walked quickly away, we didn't run because that would only be more cause for this person to chase us. We made it to the woods where we would cut through to get to the car, halfway there Kevin looks back and mutters oh shit, we look back and see the guy just standing stiff next to a tree in the distance a few meter away. Running seemed like our only sensible option at this point, it didn't take long before we were at the car, we screamed at Kevin to unlock it as he fumbled for his keys. As we got into the car and looked out the windows, we could all see him again, this time once again standing stiff like a statue hunched over by the tree line to the woods. Kevin drove off and Trevor and I screamed out taunts to the man. That didn't mean we weren't still absolutely shaken permanently, it's scary to think that none of us ever actually saw that weird man move, he seemed to always be standing still whenever we saw him."