Boardwalk Tales: The Specters of Neptune's Kingdom

It was the summer of 1910 when the Plunge Natatorium had its first death. It occurred suddenly and unexpectedly. An twelve-year-old boy climbed to the third story of the Plunge building and settled himself into the three-story slide. The slide was not meant for such a small child but the lifeguards were still inexperienced and no one was paying attention. The boy pushed off, but immediately leaned to the left and plummeted into the cement side of the ladies' pool. His death was instant but significant. Within a year, the slide was removed and the lifeguard corps were founded. But the boy never found peace.

Two decades later, during a 1936 practice of the Water Carnival, a second tragedy struck the Plunge. A male performer in his early twenties, swinging on the high trapeze above the current site of the Buccaneer Bay Clubhouse, fell two stories and crashed into the pool bottom. Although he was pulled out after only two minutes, he was unconscious and had inhaled too much water. He died and the Carnivals continued, like nothing happened. Safety was not improved, and it took a court order to halt the use of children  as performers five years later in conjunction with the start of World War II to put a halt to the Carnivals. Again, the man was never given proper rest. The pool was emptied, his body removed, but his soul remains disturbed.

Finally, in the dog days of summer in September 1963, a woman with her family went to the Plunge for a relaxing afternoon. The days of slides and carnivals were over, but risks were always present in large pools. After diving from the board on the second story, her toe got stuck in the outtake piping that lined the bottom of the pool. None of the lifeguards saw her struggling in the crowds of children hanging out in the pool. Her body was discovered nearly an hour later, when another adult swimmer brushed against her and screamed. Lifeguards removed the body and the pool was closed indefinitely. It never reopened and became a miniature golf course the next spring. The days of the Plunge were over, but the spirits of those who died in the building will never forget.

Today, the trio of haunts populate the three accessible stories of the building. The boy, who died so tragically in 1910, passes his time around Hole #15 of the golf course, messing with the wiring on the security camera, and causing Guests to miss their holes-in-one even when they putt perfectly. Sometimes, he can be heard giggling on quiet evenings. The performer who fell from the trapeze in 1936 generally hangs out in Smugglers Arcade, moving the "no food or drinks" signs around and casually flipping the "course closed" sign over. Those performers were always clowns, and its no surprise that this one loves to stop balls at the top of the hump on Hole #18 or right before they go in the center hole. The woman who died in 1963 generally is in the basement, floating around the Arcade Tech Shop, Games Maintenance & Stock shops, and Technical Services, though sometimes people have seen her messing with the lights in the employee restrooms or in the breakroom. But when she's bored, she will swim up to the first floor and pass through the golf course as a cold breeze on a warm night, sending chills down the spines of golfers and employees alike. Even though the Plunge left us in 1963, these three swimmers will continue swimming until they find peace in safer pools...

Boardwalk Tales: The Tale of the FrightWalk Operator

October 31st, 2005 — FrightWalk
There was once a tradition that on Halloween, FrightWalk was open to the public, regardless of which day of the week the holiday landed on. In 2005, Halloween fell on a Monday, which was fine with me.

With so many employees afraid of the little haunted house, I agreed to work it that night without hesitation. FrightWalk never really scared me. I remembered the place from when it was the 3D FunHouse, and that attraction seemed much scarier. FrightWalk was just a dark path with a bunch of loud noises. Or so I thought.

That Halloween, I dressed up in a very simple cloak with dark clothes underneath. I pretended I was some Sith lord from Star Wars, but I really was just lazy. The outfit worked for the location, though, as I seemed more like some grim reaper without a mask or scythe. The evening progressed as it always did for FrightWalk. Most of the guests were teenagers or middle schoolers out for a scare. Many were dressed in costumes. Frankly, I was bored.

FrightWalk was supposed to close at 7:00 that night and it was nearing six o’clock when the first sign of trouble arrived. Watching the cameras, I noticed a pair of teenagers making out in the tunnel. In a sense, it was surprising that it took that long for trouble to arise, but it was inevitable. In any case, I had to break them up. 

I headed into the employee access corridor, opening the door beside the second trigger gag, and popped out at the end of the tunnel. I glared menacingly at the two, who didn’t notice me at first since I was wearing all black. I coughed, and they looked at me, startled. The two scurried past down the ramp, setting off the gag as they departed. I returned to my station mildly annoyed. The two teens ran out the exit shouting, not turning to look at me for a moment. The night wore on...

At a quarter to closing, another group of four teenagers entered. The team was made up of two guys and two girls. The guys were not dressed in any costumes while the girls wore skimpy princess outfits. The two guys opened the door and entered, with the girls hanging off their arms. 

Two minutes after they entered, I heard the first scream. It was not the usual excited shout nor the typical frightened wail, it was the primal guttural scream of someone in peril. As I checked the camera, I realized that they were not visible anywhere. That meant the guests were in the hall of mirrors somewhere, probably on the other side of the drop gag, though I hadn’t noticed the four pass by it.

I grabbed the nearest flashlight and logged out of my register, heading down the employee corridor in a rush. I reached the door to the hall of mirrors and darted inside, forgetting to keep the door opened behind me. It clunked shut, locking itself.

Running around the corners, I passed the drop gag which shouted at me belatedly. In the next corridor, I found the four teenagers. One of the girls had collapsed on the ground and was breathing extremely hard, terror reflected on her face. I squatted down beside her and calmly asked what happened. She didn’t speak.

Her friend answered in a deadpan voice behind me, “She said she saw a ghost.”

“You just saw the eyes behind the mirror,” I calmly replied. “These are all one-way mirrors with props behind them. The eyes glow. That’s it.”

The girl on the ground turned her gaze upon me, but her eyes were shallow and cold. Her lips moved robotically: “She was on fire...” 

Standing back up, I turned toward the other three teens. “Did any of you guys see anything strange?”

A guy wearing a dark-green hoodie to my left responded: “Nothing. We walked around the corner and she just stopped and began screaming. Then she fell backward against the mirror and hasn’t said anything except what she told you.”

Confused, I contemplated returning to the front counter and calling security for help. But I didn’t want to leave the guests in the hall of mirrors. I asked, “Do you want me to escort all of you back to the entrance?”

“She was on fire...” the girl on the floor repeated, her eyes searching the room for something no one else could see.

“Maybe that’d be best,” the guy in the hoodie replied. The two boys reached down to pick up their friend, but without any warning at all, she screamed again, causing everyone else to take a step back away from her. She stopped just as suddenly.

“She was on fire...” the girl said to no one in particular.

As I gazed down at the disturbed girl, I heard the gag behind me go off again. Figuring some guest came into the attraction while the front desk was unattended, I turned to confront the people. Two eyes the color of fire glared back at me. And then all the lights in FrightWalk turned off.

Flicking my flashlight on, I turned back to the teens and stated, “I saw something behind us just before the lights went out.”

“What’d you mean?” asked the girl who was squatting beside her friend.

“I don’t know, eyes or something! They...looked at me,” I sputtered in reply.

“Let’s get out of here,” the guy in the hoodie said.

“Yeah...” The two guys tried to help their friend up again, and this time she let herself be lifted without resistance. I decided that heading further into the maze would actually be the easiest way out because of the emergency exit out back. I planned to let the guests out there and then make my way back to the front desk via the employee corridor. But plans change.

As we made the last two turns toward the emergency exit, we came to the gyrating zombie gag. With the power off, he stood silent, no music motivating him to jiggle. Yet as we walked by, I couldn’t help noticing how bright his eyes glowed. Almost as if they were on fire. They didn’t follow us as we passed by, but the heads dangling above us rotated slowly even though no breeze permeated this area.

At the emergency exit, I was depressed to find the door wouldn’t open. Perhaps it was due to some electric fault—the door was accessible with a card reader so maybe power was required to run it. Pounding my fist on the door, I turned to the four teens and let them know that we’d have to go out the front. Resigned, I headed toward the employee access door down the hallway.

I was dismayed to find that door also blocked. Since a ladder was often stored nearby on the opposite side of the door, it had probably fallen across the path. I pushed the door, but it wouldn’t budge. Sighing, I resigned myself to finishing the FrightWalk with my four teenage guests using only my flashlight. A moment later, the flashlight flickered out, plunging us into total darkness.

FrightWalk was never designed to be long-lasting and had no emergency backup lights in case of a power outage. It was always assumed that the employee would just collect all of the confused guests and escort them out of the attraction. In practice, this concept worked. In actuality, it left both the guests and the employee scared beyond belief.

As I stood with the four teenagers in FrightWalk, I returned to the many times I’d walked through the attraction in the past, hoping beyond hope that through memory and groping along walls, I could find the way back to the entrance. I turned to my left, and informed the four huddled youth that we’d have to continue without light. They had no choice in the matter and scuffled behind me down the hallway.

We rounded the turn toward the beast’s lair and passed the dungeon. Groping along the walls, I noticed faint lights flickering around us. I looked to my left to find eyes again staring back at me, dimly illuminating the prop of a possessed girl climbing a wall in her nightgown. Our eyes locked, and I fell backward into the opposite wall. The teens could see it too, I discovered, as they stepped away from the girl. The eyes burned brighter, and then...she moved.

Very slightly at first, but then with determined steps, the little girl moved, her head twisting unnaturally toward us with eyes glowing with a constant fire. All at once, her nightgown flared up, and the prop fell to the floor enflamed, the head continuing to move. We scrambled into the beast’s lair, not looking back at the demonic child.

I ran headlong into the side of the wall even as I heard grunts from the others who had hit corners or smacked their heads on the low ceiling. Beastial noises emanated from the walls. I realized belatedly that the power was off; the sound effects were non-functional. These sounds were coming from elsewhere. Above us through the wooden slats, the fiery demon child was scurrying along the roof, marking our footsteps. We continued our mad dash up the ramp and out of the lair, toward the tunnel.

Around the corner, the screaming resumed. The girl who had first seen the eyes was facing the child on the ceiling, screaming for no particular reason at her. The sound was ear-splitting, destructive, horrifying, and the three of us fled down the tunnel, abandoning the girl.

But the child was already there, waiting for us at the end. The tunnel glowed faintly from her enflamed body, reflecting off of black canvas walls and blacklight paint droplets. She crawled along the canvas, and her weight caused the tunnel to spin very slowly as she neared us.

With her no longer overhead, the four of us took the opportunity to dart through the exit of the tunnel into the blackness beyond. The room returned to its pitch, and I grabbed the sleeve of the nearest guy and turned us down the ramp and around the jump gag. The girl in the other room continued to scream. As we rounded the corner at the bottom of the gag, it jumped out unexpectedly, but instead of a mundane, poorly-painted prop head, the demon child appeared, flying between our group and into the mirror, laughing hysterically all the while.

We ran around the next bend, into the drop gag room, where faces glowed orange all around us, reflecting off the light of the cursed being who possessed this hell on earth and glared at us menacingly from the top of the bust of Graves. The wailing from the other room continued ceaselessly, adding a panicked note to all our movements. We sprinted into the next room, the last before the exit, with renewed fury.

She was there, awaiting our arrival, the ghost of fires past. Blocking our way from salvation. The teenage girl, now half-way back into FrightWalk, finally stopped screaming. The demonic cherub smiled down at us from a low-hanging limb that decorated the last gag before the exit.

She was on fire. Every part of her body was charred black except her eyes, which glowed like furnaces. She cocked her head slightly to assess us. All four of us were sweating heavily; fear consumed our us, and adrenaline drove us. But we were spent. 

As if she were content with our condition, she smiled with a childish grin and vanished. 
The power turned on and the large swamp monster rose out of the water, growling heavily at us. We ignored it and collapsed in a pile beside the picket fence. A supervisor appeared around the corner, looking at me with a quizzical expression.

“Why are you still open?” she asked. “It’s 7:15! I said you can close at 7:00. And what did we say about hanging out with friends at your workstation? If I find out that you let them in for free, you’ll be in major trouble.” She hurried us out of the exit and closed the door halfway, leaving me in the half-light of the front counter to cash out.

I suddenly remembered that there was still a girl from the group who was inside FrightWalk. I shouted into the back, but no answer came. Cursing myself, I grabbed the other flashlight, the one that still worked, and walked the entire length of the course again, leaving all the white lights on and keeping all the black lights off. When I came out at the end, I couldn’t find any guest left inside.

I grabbed my money and my lunch bag and closed the door behind me. Outside, I ran into the three teenagers from the group: two guys and a girl. I asked them if they had seen their friend come out, the other girl that went in with them. All three of the teenagers looked back at me confused, admitting that only three of them had entered the attraction.

I stared at them dumbfounded, confused, angry. “But,” I began to stutter, “she entered with us, and she was the one who saw...”

“Saw what?” the guy in the green hoodie asked. The three teenagers looked at me with strange expressions and walked away.

I watched them go, muttering to their shadows, “She was on fire...”

Boardwalk Tales: The Tale of the Laser Tag Operator

January 13th, 2009 at 8:45 p.m. — Laser Tag Arena, Casino Arcade

Winter was upon us. With token madness, the stream of guests had continued through the autumn after the Boardwalk had mostly closed for the season. Rains had come and periodically thundered on the roof of the hundred-year-old edifice that was the 1907 Casino Arcade. As usual, I worked at Laser Tag that cold January evening, hoping for even a small group to arrive and want to play just to pass the time.

At around eight o'clock, such a group arrived. Three teenagers—two guys and a girl—and one of their little brothers. They were garbed in the usual style of the time: dark-colored clothing with bright colors flaring through intentional tears in the fabric. They paid their fares and I waited the prescribed time before we all entered for a ten-minute game.

As we entered, I took their tickets and directed them to the briefing room as I had done hundreds of times before. The video started and the guests talked over it, as they always tended to do. I walked into the vesting room and pulled out my cell phone, texting a friend that I would be off in a couple of hours. A creak upstairs forced me to turn my head toward the ceiling. I waited a moment but didn't hear anything more. The sound of the video ending returned me to my duties and I quickly went back to the briefing room, told the guests the rules, and brought them into the vesting room.

Things remained as usual. The four guests vested up and we all went upstairs to the Laser Tag arena to play a typical ten-minute off-season game. That is when things got weird.

It was said that in the 1906 fire, three people died in the Casino building: a woman trapped in the staircase, her son crushed by an onion dome in the upstairs dining room, and his father killed by falling debris in a downstairs bathroom. Laser Tag was, therefore, not unknown to possess ghosts, though in most cases they were benevolent beings wandering aimlessly. Tonight, they were something else.

I was acting as marshal, wearing a red vest more for effect than for authority. About a minute into the game, as I walked around a corner, I spotted a small boy running down the corridor near the stairs. I shouted after him and then grabbed the microphone and repeated the "no running in the arena" rule. A few seconds later, the same kid ran by me on the opposite side. It was at that moment that I realized he wasn't wearing a vest.

Great! I thought to myself. The kid dropped off his vest somewhere in here and now I've got to find it. I began retracing the steps of the little boy in the hope that he dropped off his vest near the Cocoanut Grove access door. I reached the end of the hallway and turned right to find a woman in a white floral dress staring up the old roof access stairway. Like the boy, she wasn't wearing a vest and hadn't joined the game.

I stopped dead in my tracks. A prickle of fear ran down my spine as I followed her gaze. Ahead up the stairs, the boy was hanging from his neck from the metal cage, a blinking green vest dangling from his feet. He rotated slowly in circles. I fell back into the wall, staring eyes fixed at the specter. I shot a glance left at the woman, but she was gone. Returning to the boy, he too was gone. A player jumped past me, the teenage girl following, shooting each other with their lasers like nothing strange had just happened.

Two minutes had passed.

Catching my breath, I resumed my pacing of the arena. The air, which usually smelled of a musty sweat mixed with dry powdery talc from the fog machine, reeked of smoke. But it was an old smoke, like the smoke from embers lingering from a fire long extinguished. The smell permeated my sinuses and followed me as I walked. I entered the large arena room and bumped into a half-wall, not paying attention to where I was going. Turning left, I circled the sentry pod to stare directly into the eyes of a man. He was middle aged and wearing a business suit. He looked down at me with a mustached grin. His sports coat was torn in various places and his hands dripped blood where there should have been fingers. The sight was terrifying.

The man broke our locked gaze and turned to walk away, disappearing into the wall behind him as he turned. I hesitated a minute, and then ran around the corner to confront the spirit, but no one was there. The ghost had vanished into the surroundings. The teenagers continued their game.

Three minutes had passed.

Cautiously continuing my walk, a cold chill passed through me and lingered around me. The building seemed to creak as I walked, which was normal for the arena but seemed suspicious now. The loud Goldeneye music gave way to a generic techno beat, and I continued, casting furtive looks at every shadow and corner.

As I entered the red-lit room of one of the old bases, I couldn't help remember the recent report of a man—a man in a suit—appearing in this very room a month before. But no visage appeared, only I, the frightened operator of a fearsomely haunted attraction. The other players knew nothing of this location's history; they only wanted to play the game. But I knew. I knew with every walking step that three people died here, and they were following me.

Four minutes had passed.

I stood upright and reasserted myself as I walked around the corner, and then my brain went on vacation. Instead of entering the open crossfire room that acted as the center of the Laser Tag arena, I was teleported back in time to the balcony of a different place—a different Casino—a different time entirely.

A boy walked hand-in-hand with his mother and father. He wore a sailor's outfit with a small blue and white tie. His father was dressed in a business suit while his mother wore a white floral dress. They slowly walked along the promenade overlooking the ocean, which was much nearer than it is now. The boy talked but I could not hear what he said. The arena's music still dominated my hearing. The boy suddenly darted away toward a bridge that crossed over to another outdoor patio. A soft breeze wafted across my face, but I couldn't smell the lovely salty air—all I could smell was ash. The boy turned around and circled his parents and myself. I followed at a distance, observing, confused.

The scene faded away into flames. Fire surrounded me and ate away at the building, though I felt no pain. The floor beneath me collapsed and I fell with it, falling into a heap on the arena's black light floor. One of the players, a teenage boy, stopped and knelt down beside me. He looked at me and I at him. Something about his expression told me that my recent horrors were transparent. The teen asked if I was alright, to which I answered with a simple "yes." I took his hand and he ran off, leaving me in my delirium.

Five minutes had passed.

My wanderings continued, as I was no longer even paying attention to the players or the game. All my thoughts were to exiting the arena as quickly as possible. I walked over to the phone and called downstairs to the cashier, but no one picked up. I let the phone ring for nearly a minute, but with no one answering, I gave up my quest. They must have been sent home early. I decided I needed some fresh air and crossed the arena to the small hatch window, unlocking it in one quick flick of my wrist.

The cool night air flowed in, and for the first time since I saw the boy, I could smell clearly. I opened my eyes to look through the narrow slats of the window, only to see the woman in white falling off the edge of the building into the sands below.

Six minutes had passed.

I leaned against the barrel beside me, and again the walls fell away in my mind, being replaced with a long balcony. The father and son looked over the edge at the woman, and then each followed her in turn. I shouted to them and ran to the ledge, thrusting my arm out, but they lay in heaps on the sands, no longer bodies but burned corpses. I screamed in terror, and awakened from my reverie.

Above me, the teenage girl stared terrified. I had a large bump growing on my forehead from hitting the wall. She stared for a moment longer, then turned to shoot a friend with her laser rifle.

Seven minutes had passed.

The music faded to the idle song of astronauts taking off in their Saturn V rocket, recorded back in the 1970s. I forced myself upwards and leaned against the wall. Surely, I was hallucinating. None of this was real. But with my waking eyes, I saw the boy run by again, more alive than any person I had ever seen before. He even wore a laser tag vest. I chased after him, no longer thinking about rules. I wanted to catch him to prove I wasn't crazy. As I rounded a corner, I found the boy. I grabbed his vest and got down to his level, looking him squarely in the eyes. He stared back at me fearfully. A teen ran around the corner and stopped.

"What the hell is going on here?" he shouted at me.

"He…wait…um…" I mumbled in reply.

"Let go of my brother!" he demanded. I obligingly released the boy. He turned then ran down the corridor beside the roof access stairs. The teen shoved me against the wall as he followed his brother, muttering an expletive as he left. Above him, the boy in the sailor outfit swayed softly from the ceiling with a noose around his neck.

Eight minutes had passed.

Terror took me and I ripped open the roof access gate and turned the light on. The light in the upstairs room turned on, illuminating blood stains across the painted window. They formed a message directed at me: "We can never leave."

I sprinted up the stairs, past the phantom of the hanging boy, and shoved open the door. It was stuck on something. I shouldered it open anyway, and it finally gave. Large tubes of plastic fell on me, as well as something squishy and cold. I fell backwards and hit my head on the wall, sliding to the ground. A pair of empty eyes gazed up at me, and I screamed.

Nine minutes had passed.

I kicked all the debris off of me, and the body thumped hard on the ground. I stepped back outside toward the stairs and slipped, riding my butt every step of the way to the bottom. My rear was sore but my drive to get out of the arena was more pressing. The boy no longer hanged from the ceiling, but his father was standing in the corner as I sprinted down the corridor to the top of the stairwell. I checked the spare vest and there were only 20 seconds left in the game. I stood by the stairs for the rest of the game until the vest told me that the game was over.

The sounds of four vests deactivating across the arena was the most wonderful sound I had heard in the past ten minutes. I called everyone to the stairwell over the PA system with a panicked tone to my voice. The four players came quickly, assessing me with questioning expressions.

I took them downstairs and was happy to see them exit the vesting room quickly. I walked over to the computer and reset all the vests, just for good measure. Upstairs, I could hear footsteps again in the arena, as well as a pair walking down the stairs above me. Shivering, I began to turn toward the door, when all of the vests activated without provocation. I twirled as they lit up, every one of them red…except one. I hesitantly looked back at the Laser Tag computer's monitor to see what had happened. A new game had been started using a rarely-used mode:

Elimination.