Previously: The Mystery Of Hoer Verde.
It’s said that in the Canadian province of Manitoba, just outside of Winnipeg and close to the border between the United States and Canada, there was once an amusement park called Pennyland. I say “once” because it’s no longer operational, according to those who still speak of it — in hushed tones, typically, and with an air of secrecy befitting of the place’s seemingly tragic past. And that seemingly tragic past? That’s the reason Pennyland became abandoned in the first place, they say.
And it’s also how Pennyland became haunted.
Or at least, that’s what the stories and those who tell them would have us all believe. The thing is, it has since become clear that that’s all Pennyland is — a story. Not unlike the supposed Congelier Mansion in Pittsburgh, Himuro Mansion of Fatal Frame fame, or Hoer Verde, Brazil, Pennyland, you see, never existed in the first place. It cannot, therefore, have been abandoned; nor can it have become haunted.
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So why do the stories persist? How did they become so widespread?
The answer, it turns out, is twofold: The Pennyland tale occupies a highly specific era in both internet history and reality TV history.
Let’s take a look, shall we?
The Many (Supposed) Tragedies Of Pennyland
The story of Pennyland — the saga of it, really — comes in three parts.
First, there was the accident.
Details are scant on this portion of the tale; it seems mostly to exist as background information — something to set the scene for the horrors to come. The accident in question supposedly occurred on or around the Ferris wheel; precisely what happened is never described, but it’s always said to have resulted in the deaths of several parkgoers. In the aftermath of the accident, Pennyland was forced to close its gates.
In some tellings of the story, Pennyland did try to reopen, but suffered from low attendance due to the stigma still clinging to the place from the accident. In these tellings, the park closed once more after just a short while, this time for good. It’s sometimes said that at this point, the rides were all removed, leaving only the boarding station for the rollercoaster — with “PENNYLAND” emblazoned across its entrance in oversized, eye-catching letters — standing.
In any event, the park was abandoned, it’s said, with what little that remained of it left to rot.
Next came the serial killer.
One night, it’s said, police were called to Pennyland: A body had been discovered on the park’s abandoned grounds. The remains, which were found in the wreckage of what had been a restroom, seemed to be of a man, possibly unhoused, perhaps living with mental illness potentially having suffered an overdose of some kind. (This is the part of the story I dislike, for the obvious reasons: The stigmatization of homelessness, mental illness, and addiction, along with the erroneous suggestion that all unhoused people or all people dealing with addiction or mental illness are inherently violent.)
In any event, upon locating this first set of remains, a search was carried out over the rest of the park — a search which turned up two more sets of remains. These remains, discovered beneath the Ferris wheel, were said to have belonged to two young women, both whom had been missing for some time. It’s believed that the man who was discovered first had abducted and killed both women.
Then, finally, there was the haunting.
The haunting of Pennyland may make itself known in two different ways (or so the stories say).
You may, for instance, catch sight of a young woman dancing — twirling, like a ballerina — in a decaying pavilion that still remains on the premises, surrounded by an otherworldly light. This sight will be the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen.
Or, you may see something… else.
You may see a building — falling down, like everything else on the grounds of Pennyland — with its windows mysteriously illuminated. But should you approach this building — and should you peer into those oddly lit windows — you may be confronted with the face of a young woman, bloodied and bruised, smashing up against the glass without warning.
Should you move towards the door to the building, thinking there might be some way you can help, you may find your way blocked by a menacing man holding a knife.
Should you, at this point, turn and run, you may find yourself plunged into darkness, the lights illuminating the building from which you’ve fled suddenly going out.
And should you — once the lights come back on — turn back to face the building once more, you may find both the young woman and the menacing man to have vanished without a trace.
Creepy Canada And The Construction Of A Legend
None of this, as it so happens, is true. There was no amusement park in Manitoba called Pennyland; there was no Ferris wheel accident at the non-existent amusement park in Manitoba called Pennyland; there was no discovery of serial killing or remains found at the abandoned non-existent amusement park in Manitoba called Pennyland; and there is no haunting occurring at the abandoned non-existent amusement park in Manitoba called Pennyland.
So why — if the story is false and the place itself a fiction — did it become so widely spread?
Because of Creepy Canada.
Creepy Canada resides among the pantheon of early-to-mid-2000s paranormal reality television, aka the only variety of reality TV I have ever reliably followed — not necessarily because I believed it (indeed, I… generally did not, and still do not; see also: The supposedly missing man in the Paris catacombs), but because it was, y’know, schlocky and fun.
I missed Creepy Canada, however, due to the fact that it was, well, Canadian. It originally aired for three seasons between 2002 and 2006 on OLN, known at the time as Outdoor Life Network — a network to which I did not have access, being based in the United States. (For the curious, the rebrand to OLN occurred in 2008.) Creepy Canada did eventually air in the United States in 2014, when it appeared on the network Destination America under the title Hauntings And Horrors; I had jettisoned cable by that point, however, so again, it wasn’t on my to-watch radar.
Creepy Canada followed a similar format to many of the other paranormal reality shows of the era — the ones that were meant more as docuseries than, say, ghost hunting shows: The episodes of Scariest Places On Earth that took viewers to several allegedly haunted destinations to talk about the history and hauntings of those places (rather than the ones that centered around families spending the night in a single haunted location); the earlier seasons of Most Haunted; those kinds of shows.
Each episode generally consisted of a number of different segments — sometimes three or four, but other times as many as six or seven — which introduced viewers to local legends in various spots in Canada. The very first episode, which originally aired on Oct. 23, 2002, featured a supposedly haunted youth hostel in Ottawa, the story of the Teazer Light in Nova Scotia, and two Ontario tales, the ghost of Ann Crosby in Manotick, Ontario, and the ghosts at the Brockamour Willow Inn in Niagara-on-the-Lake. The final episode, meanwhile, aired on July 16, 2006, and told the stories of Fan Tan Alley in Victoria’s Chinatown in British Columbia, of Keefer Mansion in Thorold, Ontario — and of Pennyland Amusement Park, supposedly located in the southeast corner of Manitoba.
Although I didn’t catch Creepy Canada on actual television, a solid number of episodes and clips are available to watch on YouTube, if you get a little intrepid with your searching, so I’ve had some time to familiarize myself with the show now. It’s hilariously hokey in the way that early-to-mid-2000s paranormal reality shows almost always are, with overwrought reenactments and stories so outlandishly unbelievable they’re comical to look back on now. And yet, at the time — a full 20 years ago (wow, do I feel old!) — audiences, not yet fully clued into the manufactured nature of reality TV as a whole, were eager to believe that what we were seeing was true. The camera, we had been told, doesn’t lie, and at that point, we had no reason to believe that it would.
The Creepy Canada episode that featured the Pennyland story contains all of the elements that are now passed around as legend. You can watch it here, if you’re curious — the Pennyland segment starts at around the 28-minute mark — and from there, it’s quick work to line it up with the story as told here (a source with Wayback Machine archives dating back only to 2013, well after the Creepy Canada episode’s 2006 airdate), and here, and here, and so on. Sometimes the retellings have a few embellishments, but never many, and never the same ones; as such, it’s likely these embellishments are the result of the tellers exercising a little artistic license.
In many ways, the story has become a creepypasta; these days, it’s even frequently passed around in the exact same form, as seen here and here. (Both use the same text that probably originated here.)
So how do we know that none of this actually happened? That Pennyland is not, in fact, real? A few ways, it turns out — which, taken together, form a pretty thorough debunking.
The Facts In The Case Of Pennyland Amusement Park, Part 1: The Email
First, we should start with a website that is, in amusement park industry parlance, standing but not operating: The Coaster Enthusiasts Of Canada website. In its day, it was a premier online destination for, well, Canadian rollercoaster enthusiasts to gather and talk about their interests together. It featured extensive catalogs of Canadian amusement parks, rides, manufacturers, and more — including a catalog focused on defunct amusement parks.
I’m not entirely sure when the CEC website was first launched — it seems to be hosted by a hyperlocal online provider, and its URL accordingly brings up only WHOIS records for the network itself, not the individual site — but the earliest Wayback Machine capture for it is dated 2002.
It’s mostly defunct now; starting in about 2014, its homepage has displayed a variety of messages indicating that it either isn’t currently being updated or is only being updated occasionally, and as of 2022, the CEC had “disbanded,” per the home page. But someone is still doing occasional maintenance, and the site still stands and remains accessible today, so, y’know, that’s not nothing.
In any event, there’s been a page for Pennyland in the Closed Parks section of the CEC website since at least 2006, at which point it was spoken of as extant, although with its precise location unknown. By 2011, however, Wayback Machine captures reveal that the possibility that the park had never existed had begun to emerge; and then, in 2018, the page for Pennyland was updated once again with something that cemented that fact.
Creepy Canada was created by Canadian production and post-production company Epona Films Ltd., headed up by William Burke (who is now primarily an author). Based in Toronto, Epona Films seems to have specialized in paranormal programming and, uh… things of a more mature nature (sometimes at the same time!).
In 2018, a CEC reader — one Cherylee Black, from Ottawa — wrote in to say that she had reached out to Epona Films about the Pennyland segment of Creepy Canada, and had learned some… interesting things about it.
The first thing she noted — after stating point-blank that an amusement park in Manitoba called Pennyland had never existed — was that she was told the production obfuscated names and geographic locations for many of the stories and legends in order to protect the sites against vandalism and trespassing. This, for what it’s worth, was not an uncommon practice at the time; eight of the 16 total episodes of MTV’s Fear, for instance, famously utilized renamed locations. (MTV’s Fear ran from 2000 to 2002 — a time at which I did still have cable, and yes, I ate that show up.) Indeed, this practice is still in use now, as well, although these days, the convention is for a show to be transparent when a name or a location has been changed for privacy purposes. Back then, that wasn’t the case; we were meant to take everything we were being told as true.
So: Even if there had been an amusement park with a history like Pennyland’s that had served as the inspiration for the episode, it wouldn’t have actually been called Pennyland; nor would it have been located in Manitoba.
And, by the same token: If Creepy Canada told us there was an abandoned and haunted amusement park in Manitoba called Pennyland, we were meant to believe there was an abandoned and haunted amusement park in Manitoba called Pennyland.
Black also stated that the original source of the story was located at an Angelfire website that’s no longer live, and that it had been sent in as a viewer suggestion for the show to cover. The source was dubious at best (oh, to be on the internet during the days of Web 1.0!), and the story wasn’t verified independently before it was chosen for the show.
Alas, we can’t assess the original source now, either; the precise URL has been lost to the sands of time, and without it, we can’t even check any archival captures via resources like the Wayback Machine. I’ve also been unable to determine how long tales of Pennyland have been circulating; it’s possible the Angelfire page was the original source, but it’s equally possible that it merely documented something that had been around for some time, passed around sleepovers or the playground in the way so many legends are. It isn’t well-documented otherwise, so we’re at a bit of a dead end here.
But there’s one last piece to talk about here: Black noted was that she was told the Pennyland segment’s shooting location was in Kentucky, and that the crew had seemingly been informed that shooting in the “actual” Pennyland location was “too difficult to get to.”
This complicates things somewhat, due to the fact that a number of photos have resurfaced over the years of another, actual former amusement park that feature, without question, buildings and structures seen in the Creepy Canada episode. The amusement park in question is Rocky Springs Park, located in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
The Facts In The Case Of Pennyland Amusement Park, Part 2: The Photographs
Rocky Springs Park had quite a long history. In its very first incarnation, it was simply a hotel and picnic ground, operating under a handful of different managers between 1860 and 1876. It was purchased in 1882 Samuel Demuth, who expanded the park by 14 acres and renamed it after himself. It operated as Demuth Park until the 1890s, when, having been leased to John B. Peoples, it became Rocky Springs Park.
This incarnation, which began welcoming visitors in 1894, was an amusement park in the way we commonly think of them today: It had carnival games, rides, and concessions, along with swimming to be had along the nearby Conestoga River. When it began being serviced by the trolley line running from Lancaster City in 1903, it became a full-fledge trolley park.
Rocky Springs Park continued expanding under numerous owners and operators for more than 70 years — although during the last two decades, it was definitely on the decline. Its downward ascension began in 1947, when the trolley line running to Rocky Springs from Lancaster was shut down; soon, with fewer crowds and less money coming in, the park began to fall in disrepair; and in 1965, its owner at the time died, leading to its closing in 1966. An attempt was made to rehabilitate and reopen in 1970, but it operated for only one year before shutting down again in 1980. Many of the rides and much of the land was sold at auction a few years later.
In 2001, however, what remained of the place was purchased yet again — and today, it’s a bed and breakfast. The remains of Rocky Springs Park itself are off-limits to the public, but guests staying at the B and B are welcome to stroll the grounds.
Here’s the important bit: Those grounds include both the restroom building and the building labeled “Pennyland” — which, apparently, was once an arcade (hence its name) — seen in the Pennyland segment of the Creepy Canada episode.
This building?
…is absolutely this building, as seen in a 2010 post on Theme Park Review’s forums. You can also see a photo of the building clearly on the Rocky Springs Bed and Breakfast website, and another photo on Flickr here.
And these restrooms?
…are absolutely these restrooms, seen in the same forum post.
The buildings are unmistakably the same.
So: Does the fact that these distinctive buildings indicate that shooting occurred in Pennsylvania, not Kentucky, invalidate everything Cherylee Black learned? Not necessarily. It’s possible, for instance, that parts of the Creepy Canada segment were shot in Kentucky, while other parts — the parts featuring those two highly identifiable buildings, and perhaps the carousel house as well (I’m less clear on that, as the sections that I suspect might have been shot there are dark and hard to see) — were shot at Rocky Springs.
It’s also worth noting that, as was the case with Congelier Mansion, a number of other photos that have popped up over the years claiming to depict Manitoba’s non-existent Pennyland amusement park also show different locations. This one, for instance, seen on the Ghosts Hauntings Wiki and in this YouTube video? That’s Glen Echo Park in Montgomery County, Maryland, circa 1920. Additionally, a number of YouTube channels use images of the Ferris wheel in Pripyat, Ukraine in their under-narration montages or thumbnails for videos retelling the story of Pennyland.
The Lasting Legacy Of The Amusement Park That Wasn’t
These days, it’s pretty widely acknowledged that the Pennyland legend is a complete fabrication; indeed, most mentions of the Creepy Canada episode referring to it are followed by a note that Pennyland does not and did not ever exist.
But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have any value. On the contrary: When something becomes legend, that’s when it really starts to get interesting.
Indeed, the Pennyland legend served as the inspiration for author Joel A. Sutherland’s 2021 middle grade novel Screamers. In an interview with Inside Ottawa Valley in December of that year, Sutherland recalled having heard the Pennyland story, only to find after looking into it that Pennyland had never existed and the legend was just that — legend. But it was a legend that stuck with him; he told the outlet, “I had this idea in my head. I thought, well, let’s use this as an inspiration for a fictional story and Screamers was born out of that.”
Pennyland may yet go on to scare generations of would-be ghost hunters and paranormal enthusiasts — and that, I would argue, is the real power of the tale.
Never underestimate the worth of a well-told story.
They have a habit of… sticking around.
Of haunting us, you might say.
And once those ideas have a hold on us? `They can be hard to exorcise.
But those of us who are fascinated by them wouldn’t have it any other way.
***
Follow The Ghost In My Machine on Bluesky @GhostMachine13.bsky.social, Twitter @GhostMachine13, and Facebook @TheGhostInMyMachine. And for more games, don’t forget to check out Dangerous Games To Play In The Dark, available now from Chronicle Books!
[Photos via tmeier1964, kjhd0405, Kühlungsborner, Peggy_Marco, DueterziNET, Ma_Frank, NataszaBlack/Pixabay; Creepy Canada (4, 8, 9)]
