The carnival had hardly been open a week before it was deemed too unsafe and shut down for good. It had been built in the lower park grounds, just behind the old bandstand and music garden, where the old pond used to be. The owners filled it in with concrete and slapped a bunch of old circus-themed rides on top in the hopes that more people would visit the lower park as well as the upper grounds.
Nobody is quite sure exactly why they closed it off but it was commonly agreed that they'd botched the whole thing right from day one. For starters instead of emptying the pond and moving the fish to the lake in the upper grounds they'd just poured the concrete over until it looked vaguely smooth, covered it in a stone slab and poured concrete over that. Surprisingly it wasn't stable. Go figure.
They couldn't even afford to have the rides removed and they were too grotty to be sold for anything other than scrap at a fraction of their purchased cost. They covered what they could while they debated what to do with their failed project while the rest was left to rust for the next eight years when they turned it into a Halloween tour briefly. Five "incidents" and one fatality later they locked the gates for good.
For many years the only visitors to the lower park grounds were teens out to fix their boredom and scare one another. There's the odd accident but for the most part they were able to navigate it far better than any other age group. They avoided the old pond grounds as if it was just a game rather than a perpetually unset concrete trap that had been the cause of almost eight deaths to date.
Then, after a generation of rebellious trespassing, people stopped going there entirely. Not a single soul went near there and they never explained why. Not even their children went near, or their children's children for almost five further generations. By this point most of the old carnival was rust skeletons and vague shapes covered in mouldy cloth.
After almost sixty years later someone went in, alone and armed with nothing but their phone's light they looked around for traces of the park owner's grand carnival disaster. The first thing they noticed, aside from the metallic scent in the air from so many rusted rides, was the way the ground nearby rippled in the wind, moving far too fluidly for any kind of concrete. The flicker of a grey fish tail disturbed the near silence, sending tiny concrete droplets flying in all directions.
From there they carefully navigated around the old pond using a small branch from a nearby tree to trace the edge to the safety of the broken "amber brick road" which was now little more than orange flecks among moss and broken cobblestones. It took them towards a sheet-covered lump that, upon sheet removal, was an old statue of Frankenstein that had clearly been repainted a dozen or so times judging by the layers of paint that had peeled off. It's latest incarnation appeared to be Elvis.
The further in they went the stronger the scent of metal became. Passing by spinning cups (now plastic vaguely shaped like a bowl tilted over in a larger metal bowl) and by the Ferris wheel (long since fallen over, the chalk outline of the teen who'd been stuck underneath still visible) they headed for a ride they'd seen in an old newspaper clipping - the merry-go-round.
The paper said it was the only one in the world to be covered in velvet from top to bottom. This was probably what caused it to malfunction so often and eventually catch fire, killing a small child who was too scared to get down from the horse. Now all the horses were covered in cloth, the velvet was worn to nothing and the whole thing stank like a landfill.
As they lifted the corner of a sheet, hundreds of fat maggots dropped to the floor and the stench of decaying meat filled the air around them. Gagging as they stepped back, they forgot to let go of the sheet. As it fell they saw the rotting remains of someone about their age, body broken and bound to the old horse as if they were riding it. A quick runaround (followed by copious vomiting) showed that almost every horse had one of these riders.
Nobody is quite sure exactly why they closed it off but it was commonly agreed that they'd botched the whole thing right from day one. For starters instead of emptying the pond and moving the fish to the lake in the upper grounds they'd just poured the concrete over until it looked vaguely smooth, covered it in a stone slab and poured concrete over that. Surprisingly it wasn't stable. Go figure.
They couldn't even afford to have the rides removed and they were too grotty to be sold for anything other than scrap at a fraction of their purchased cost. They covered what they could while they debated what to do with their failed project while the rest was left to rust for the next eight years when they turned it into a Halloween tour briefly. Five "incidents" and one fatality later they locked the gates for good.
For many years the only visitors to the lower park grounds were teens out to fix their boredom and scare one another. There's the odd accident but for the most part they were able to navigate it far better than any other age group. They avoided the old pond grounds as if it was just a game rather than a perpetually unset concrete trap that had been the cause of almost eight deaths to date.
Then, after a generation of rebellious trespassing, people stopped going there entirely. Not a single soul went near there and they never explained why. Not even their children went near, or their children's children for almost five further generations. By this point most of the old carnival was rust skeletons and vague shapes covered in mouldy cloth.
After almost sixty years later someone went in, alone and armed with nothing but their phone's light they looked around for traces of the park owner's grand carnival disaster. The first thing they noticed, aside from the metallic scent in the air from so many rusted rides, was the way the ground nearby rippled in the wind, moving far too fluidly for any kind of concrete. The flicker of a grey fish tail disturbed the near silence, sending tiny concrete droplets flying in all directions.
From there they carefully navigated around the old pond using a small branch from a nearby tree to trace the edge to the safety of the broken "amber brick road" which was now little more than orange flecks among moss and broken cobblestones. It took them towards a sheet-covered lump that, upon sheet removal, was an old statue of Frankenstein that had clearly been repainted a dozen or so times judging by the layers of paint that had peeled off. It's latest incarnation appeared to be Elvis.
The further in they went the stronger the scent of metal became. Passing by spinning cups (now plastic vaguely shaped like a bowl tilted over in a larger metal bowl) and by the Ferris wheel (long since fallen over, the chalk outline of the teen who'd been stuck underneath still visible) they headed for a ride they'd seen in an old newspaper clipping - the merry-go-round.
The paper said it was the only one in the world to be covered in velvet from top to bottom. This was probably what caused it to malfunction so often and eventually catch fire, killing a small child who was too scared to get down from the horse. Now all the horses were covered in cloth, the velvet was worn to nothing and the whole thing stank like a landfill.
As they lifted the corner of a sheet, hundreds of fat maggots dropped to the floor and the stench of decaying meat filled the air around them. Gagging as they stepped back, they forgot to let go of the sheet. As it fell they saw the rotting remains of someone about their age, body broken and bound to the old horse as if they were riding it. A quick runaround (followed by copious vomiting) showed that almost every horse had one of these riders.
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