The visage of the train pictured above could be laughing or screaming, or maybe it's caught somewhere between the two. Its garish grin—frozen into a wrecked amusement park ride in Tanzania, calcified by rust and time—contains all of what makes abandoned amusement parks so mysteriously entrancing.
Abandoned amusement parks embody a primal kind of fear. They're relics of glittering carnivals where ecstasy once reigned supreme, where thousands threw their hands up as they rode roller coasters toward the sun. But those brief crests of euphoria were always unsustainable; The fall came, as it must.
Now the coasters stand among the tall grasses, the clown faces have been washed clean by rain, and the only screams left are the howls of the wind. If that's not a metaphor for the decline of human civilization due to unchecked greed and desire for limitless distraction, what is?
From decaying miniature Israeli villages to parks that cannot be found on any maps, here are eight abandoned theme parks, each sure to work its way into your nightmares.
Located in the unassuming suburb of Waterbury, Connecticut, this park was inspired by the Bible—and now it looks like something right out of the Book of Revelations. The creepy attraction contains miniature replicas of Israelite village, faceless Marys, and towering crosses, among other sacred imagery that has been left to rot and return to the land. It was popular in the 60s and 70s but was closed in 1984.
Today, ironically, the site boasts a fair amount of Satanic graffiti.
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2. Nara Dreamland (1)
Nara Dreamland was supposed to be paradise, but now it's dust. Located in the Fukushima district of Japan, it opened in 1961 and closed in 2006. The park was demolished in 2007, but the haunting photos remain.
This southern attraction was completely decimated by Hurricane Katrina, and it never recovered from that disaster. Today, the city's mayor has been discussing a potential demolition, but just a decade ago, this park was a thriving harbinger of life, a purveyor of thrills that now only exist in the back rooms of memory.
Little is known for sure about this park, but Internet legends abound. According to its Creepypasta page, no one even knows exactly where the park is—the coordinates listed on Google actually match to somewhere far away from the province of Japan that the park is supposed to be in. According to the urban explorers who claim to have found it, the park is always covered in a thick layer of mist, and it's genuinely haunted. One of the photographers, a man named Bill Edwards, claimed that when he stumbled on the park, it was completely intact; he also claimed to have taken a photograph of a ghost on the premises.
Information is scarce all around, and not much is known about how the park was founded or why it closed. Official records state it was shut down due to a lack of funds, but the reigning rumor is that it was closed due to a series of deaths that happened on the rides.
This park drew 400,000 guests when it opened in 1970, but it struggled to recover from a 1975 fire that started in the Emerald City and damaged its amphitheater and surrounding attractions. In the summer of 2019, however, the park reopened for a few days at a time, offering tours led by Dorothy, the Tin Man, Scarecrow, and Cowardly Lion.
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Land of Oz, North Carolina (2)
If you're so inclined, you, too can encounter these unbelievably creepy tree-people.
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6. Umoja Children's Park, Tanzania
This park could be the source of what's genuinely the scariest abandoned amusement park photo of all time. The image of that rusty train, with its one yellow eye and mad smile, is enough to torment you in nightmares for years. The park is quite small, but what's left of it feels distinctly cursed.
This park was only abandoned 10 years ago, so it maintains a vestige of its lively glow. Located in North Berlin, the park went through a couple owners and experienced several tragedies before disaster befell owner Norman Witte. In 2003, Witte was arrested for trying to smuggle $15 million in the form of 181 pounds of cocaine into Germany, which he carried in the masts of a new ride. After Witte had to declare bankruptcy, the park began to rust and crumble, and it never recovered. Today, the remnants of its many exhibits and rides creak and groan in the wind, and Witte's daughter, Sabrina, still leads tours through the slowly decaying grounds.
This park was one of several opened to capitalize on the fame of a TV show called Noel's House Party, which was popular on the BBC in the 1990s. Known as Blobbyland, the park was quickly abandoned, and it soon became a popular destination for urban explorers. Though it was eventually demolished, the photos of its pink, childish houses all in ruins remain, and the contrast between innocence and detritus makes them some of the creepiest theme park images in existence.
