Takakanonuma Greenland Park — Miyagi, Japan
If there’s one thing this world has an abundance of, it’s abandoned amusement parks. Seriously, there are dozens of them scattered all around the world, likely in varying states of decay that range from ‘Oh, that’s creepy’ to ‘Enter my gates, Mortal, so I can swallow your soul‘.
You would think that knowing they border on common would make their otherworldly imagery substantially less effective, but instead all I can think about now is the distinct possibility that there’s an abandoned amusement park hiding under my bed.
One of the creepier parks we abandoned long ago, leaving it to Mother Nature to consume, is the Takakanonuma Greenland park in the Watari District of Miyagi, Japan — just a two and a half hour road trip if you leave from Tokyo. The park opened its doors in 1973, ready to spread cheer and smiles faster than the black plague, only to be closed two years later.
Want to know the weird part? I mean, the weird-er part, since I’m sure we can all agree that the concept of prematurely shutting down a source of happiness for all in a world that’s filled to the brim with horror, pain, and Justin Bieber is already pretty goddamn weird. It’s that there are essentially no records to explain why the park was closed.
This means we’ll have to rely on local legend mixed with my wild imagination to explain its closure. Rumor has it the park was shut down after some folks died there. I imagine an evening in 1975 played out something like the opening to Final Destination 3, which forced them to close it down. After that bloodbath the park, which had just gotten its first taste for human blood, was closed. It then had to wait for those who survived to either forget about that night or die off so it could reopen — which it did, in 1986 — and make up for lost time by claiming even more lives before being shut down for good. Shut down, but not vanquished.
There are no official reports, so that’s the story I’m going with.
That’s it, folks! I’ve shown you mine, now it’s your turn to show me yours. If you have a place you’d like me to list next time — assuming I do this again — then I recommend you share it in the comments below. But before you do, remember that this is actually the fourth article in a series, so that place you fancy may have already been covered. You can find the previous three lists below.
If you do decide to look back at a previous list and you notice some wonky images or formatting, that’s because this series started back in 2010, and the handful of site redesigns Bloody Disgusting has seen since then has very likely beaten all of the article’s initial beauty right out of it.
