An Amusement Park, a Forgotten Cemetery, and a 1942 Munitions Disaster
6300 Kings Island Drive, Mason, OH 45040
Research updated May 2026
Age
All Ages (some rides height-restricted)
Cost
$$$
Single-day general admission typically runs $40 to $80 depending on date and season; Haunt season add-on pricing varies. Check the park's current ticketing page.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved theme park midways with some inclines
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1972 · Cincinnati Tourism · Pre-Park Cemetery · King Powder Company / Peters Cartridge Era History
Kings Island opened to the public on April 29, 1972 on roughly 364 acres in Mason, Warren County, Ohio. The park was developed by Taft Broadcasting Company as a successor to the older Coney Island park along the Ohio River, and it has operated under several corporate ownerships since then, most recently as part of the Cedar Fair chain.
The land underneath the park has a long pre-amusement history. The Kings Mills area hosted both the Peters Cartridge Company (founded 1887, an ammunition manufacturer) and the King Powder Company (a gunpowder manufacturer) on adjacent properties. It was the King Powder Company site that Taft Broadcasting purchased and used to build Kings Island. A major explosion at the King Powder Company occurred in 1942 — newspapers reported the shockwave shattered windows as far as 30 miles away. The exact relationship between those industrial sites and the modern park footprint is sometimes overstated or conflated in folklore.
The most concretely historic feature on the property is the small cemetery in the guest parking lot. The graveyard predates the park. Warren County Genealogical Society records document burials including Missouri Jane Galeenor, age five at death in 1846. Local accounts trace the earliest burials to the 1840s; some reporting cites a Hoff family farm cemetery dating to 1891. The Warren County tourism office has acknowledged the cemetery as one of the area's quieter historical features.
Around seventeen tombstones have gone missing from the cemetery since 1980 according to local historical reporting, a pattern attributed to vandalism rather than to any single event.
In 1983, a teenager fell to his death from the Eiffel Tower attraction inside the park. That incident is documented in news archives of the period.
Sources
The most-repeated ghost story at Kings Island involves a young girl with blond hair and a blue dress seen near the Water Works area and in the parking lot at closing time. Local folklore connects her to the small graveyard in the guest lot, sometimes specifically to Missouri Jane Galeenor, the five-year-old buried in 1846 whose marker is documented by the Warren County Genealogical Society.
Tram drivers shuttling between the parking areas and the park entrance have reported the girl appearing alongside them as they make their final runs of the night. The accounts typically describe her as friendly rather than alarming — playing hide-and-seek with crew rather than confronting them.
A second well-circulated story attaches to the Eiffel Tower attraction. After a 1983 incident in which a teenager fell to his death from the structure, employees reported sightings of a figure on the observation deck after closing. Later accounts say the activity has subsided.
Third-party ghost claims about the Racer roller coaster and other rides circulate within park enthusiast communities. These appear to be primarily oral tradition rather than documented investigation.
The Peters Cartridge connection — particularly the 1942 explosion — is often grafted into the legend cluster to give the parking-lot apparitions a broader historical frame. The factual relationship between that disaster and the modern park footprint is loose; the cemetery itself substantially predates both the disaster and the amusement park.
Notable Entities
A full operational amusement park about 24 miles northeast of Cincinnati, opened in 1972. The dark-tourism interest here is contextual rather than central — the park stands on land that previously hosted the Peters Cartridge Company munitions operations, and a small historic cemetery survives in a corner of the guest parking lot.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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Mason, OH
Kings Island opened in April 1972 after Paramount Parks relocated from flood-prone Coney Island on the Ohio River. Construction of the 364-acre site in Mason, Warren County, required working around a pre-existing pioneer burial ground — Dogstreet Cemetery, dating to at least 1803 — which remains at the north end of the parking lot to this day.
Sandusky, OH
Cedar Point opened in 1870 on a Lake Erie peninsula in Sandusky, Ohio, and is one of the oldest continuously operating amusement parks in the United States. The 1912 Midway Carousel, built by carver Daniel Muller and moved to Cedar Point in 1946, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982 and remains the oldest operating ride in the park.