Though it was mostly before my time, I did a little reading on the history of Six Flags amusement parks and made some interesting discoveries. For example, the first park opened in Texas and at one point, different sections of Texas were owned by six different countries: Spain, France, Mexico, the now-defunct Republic of Texas, the United States, and the also obviously defunct Confederate States of America. This is evidently going back to the 1800’s.
As we all know, the United States eventually bought/fought the other countries out. But that was how Six Flags got its name.
Another discovery I made was a haunted house ride that operated at the park in Jackson, New Jersey, during the late 1970’s. Though I’ve been to that park a million times, I was born in the mid-eighties and this haunted house was long gone by then.
It wasn’t even a house. It was a series of wide trailers that were plopped together and had all these elaborate “haunted” decorations draped over them to make it look like a house. To get through the ride, you had to progress from trailer to trailer.
The ride had several black curtains scattered all over to help give it a dark and spooky vibe. Each trailer had a bunch of dim lights above so you could at least somewhat see in front of you. However, the lights in one of them were broken to make it pitch-black, unbeknownst to the staff.
The story I heard is about a teenager going through the ride, flicking on a cigarette lighter to help him see after reaching the pitch-black room. The lighter made contact with a black curtain. This tragically caused an enormous fire that ended up killing seven people.
A few months and a few lawsuits later, the remains of the haunted house were scrapped and a bumper cars ride was built there in its place. I remember watching a chilling interview with one of its employees.
Part of a ride operator’s responsibility is to neatly arrange all the bumper cars into one corner of the track after closing the ride. This makes the rest of the track easier to clean and maintain. The employee being interviewed had just finished doing all this when a bumper car randomly sprang to life and started driving around the track on its own. Between this and hearing children quietly laughing despite the park being closed, that was all he needed to see.
In the interview, he said, “If a ride doesn’t work when it’s supposed to work, that’s something I have to deal with all the time. But if a ride works when it’s not supposed to work, that’s f’n scary.”
He wound up quitting the next day, and I don’t blame him. I haven’t been to Six Flags in a while, so I’m not sure if the bumper cars are even there anymore. That place seems to go through rides faster than I go through my socks.
I just can’t help but shiver at the irony of how a haunted house ride is now actually haunted.