Mammoth Books presents Out and Back

My cousin-by-marriage Sean Lavery, knowing my love for weird and outré websites, sent me a link to the Dark Roasted Blend site (www.darkroastedblend.com), reveals the author, where I found several pages featuring photographs of abandoned places. My imagination was fired by pictures taken at Chippewa Lake Park in Medina, Ohio, which opened in 1878 and was abandoned in 1978, with the buildings and rides left to rot where they stood, and I began looking around for some information about the park. I've always had a fondness for amusement parks, ever since I was a child visiting Vancouver's Pacific National Exhibition with my father and my brother: an annual trip which was one of the red-letter days on my childhood calendar. The photographs of Chippewa Lake Park were equal parts eerie and sad, for anyone who has ever thrilled to the sights and sounds of a midway, and the story sprang, almost fully-formed, into my head; one of the few times that's happened. To see some of the pictures that inspired the following story, visit: www.defunctparks.com/parks/OH/ChippewaLake/chippewa-lake.htm.