Xindian Bitan - Happy Amusement Park

Nestled amidst the verdant mountains of the 1970s, the Happy Amusement Park, situated atop Bitan Mountain in Xindian District, New Taipei City, was once a joyful paradise for the childhoods of countless old Taipei residents. Built along the mountainside, the park boasted then-rare attractions like a cable car, a Ferris wheel, and various rides. It was bustling with crowds and vibrant energy every weekend. However, due to changing times and poor management, the park abruptly closed in the late 1980s, its brilliant lights instantly extinguished. Since then, its former glory has been swallowed by weeds. The rusted Ferris wheel creaks eerily in the wind, quietly ushering in the chilling prelude to 'Taiwan's most haunted ruin.' Folklore suggests that this mountainside was once the site of the 'Happy Coal Mine,' which saw heavy casualties during the Japanese colonial era. The lingering resentment from numerous mining accidents is said to have reawakened with the park's abandonment. The most famous urban legend tells of young explorers who venture there late at night, only to witness the cable car, long de-energized and with snapped cables, slowly moving through the dark woods in the pitch-black wilderness. Even more bizarrely, it's rumored that some daredevils who took photos under the abandoned Ferris wheel were horrified to find, upon developing their pictures at home, a pale, vacant giant face plastered to the window of an empty cabin. Though this abandoned mountainside, sealed for nearly forty years, has since undergone gradual development and reconstruction, the spectral image of the derelict amusement park, hidden within the Bitan mist and ancient trees, remains to this day one of Northern Taiwan's most spine-chilling forbidden zones.