AJ's Family Water Park
Robbie, MI, USA
June 2004
Isuppose I should start my story off in the late to mid 1990's, when AJ's Family Water Park was in full swing, attracting waterpark goers and people of all kinds. I used to go there in the summers with my family and friends, enjoying things like "The FLASH Flood Slide," and the speed slides. There was also a restaurant type building on the park grounds, where kids would go for their birthday parties, I myself had one there when I was younger.
Anyways, AJ's lost its populace of waterpark visitors, and went out of business, leaving eerie remnants of water slides and go-cart tracks alike. But what is even more eerie is the building that never got torn down, the old restaurant.
One winter night, my friends and I were quite bored and decided to do a little exploring on this abandoned water park. We had never previously been there before this time. But, we parked the car and approached the old boarded-up restaurant that was covered in graffiti and the like.
We ascended the stairs of the building, to be met with a dark hole in one of the boards covering the main doors. This left me with a feeling of uneasiness. Peering into a dark, gargantuan hole in which I could see nothing but black, was bound to leave me feeling a little more than nervous. Then, we heard a loud scraping sound coming from deep inside of the building. We looked at each other, then shrugged it off. It only took one more time for the noise to echo inside the hole to urge us to run back to the car. Of course, in my blind panic I slipped, but quickly picked myself up. We threw ourselves into the car, shaking and coping with our fears.
We left in a haste, but returned in greater numbers. The second time we came back to the building was not the best idea I believe we have had.
This time we all climbed into the hole. The building was tall and deep, with cathedral large panes of broken glass, and a old plastic balls from the ball pit that once lied there. We saw a number of things that shook our senses of sanity. From broken toilets, broken glass, and the empty elevator shaft, we realized how dumb and idiotic we were at this point to have climbed into a building such as this one. We all branched off, some of us went downstairs, and the others went upstairs. I looked down the elevator shaft, and shuddered. The one of the girls we came with screamed and we ran downstairs into the darkness. We grabbed her in her shaken condition and we ran. For whatever reason she screamed, I do no know, but what I do know is that her scream was the only thing that made us realize we needed to leave that place. We ran back to the hole, running over the broken glass and thrusting ourselves back into the real world.
On our retreat back to the car I spied something that perhaps shall never leave my mind. I saw a bright blue light far away, at the top of the old water slides. I gave a double-take, and saw it start to move. I grabbed my friend Ben and told him to look at that. We started yelling profanities as the light began to move down the slides. Then we scrambled into the cars yelling and shaking.
As we sped away I looked out of the trunk window of the SUV. I could see the light clearer now that we were leaving the park. The blue light continued moving down the hill, and towards the empty building that we had explored that night.
In my nightmares, I am haunted by lights.