Editorials
5 Creepy Real Places Horror Games Should Visit
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.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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