The games company was named MRB Games and is/was based in New Rochelle, NY. MRB stood for Mel, Ronnie and Beatrice. They were contracted by the park to run the games department. They also managed some of the slot machines at Foxwoods and other casinos.

A great story is that when the games commission came through to do an inspection they were reviewing the various games to decide if they were fairly run or not and whether or not they were games of chance. Games of chance were not allowed. Games of skill were the only ones permitted. The inspector was going to nix the milk jug toss where the object was to put a softball through the top of an old time mik jug. Games inspector said it was too difficult and therefore a game of chance - that no one could do it as a developed skill (the clearance on the milk jug top was very very narrow to the size of the ball). The games manager escorting the inspector around disagreed and picked up a softball right on the spot and tossed it directly into a milk jug. The inspector then relented and the game stayed.

....the games manager had never before been successful in tossing the ball and was never able to replicate the shot afterwards...

Part 2: In other words: Yes, an employee did die as I described on the Skyliner...and yes the ride continued to operate, although I believe it was closed the rest of that season.

I doubt that there are any rides hidden on the property. There may be ride parts such as the Skyliner cars that are possibly located in the tunnel. There is also a small possibility that some damaged Cyclone cars that were stored in the bottom of the Shore Dinner hall are still there. It was pretty well documented where most of rides went subsequent to the auction.

There is no federal agency regulating amusement parks. Nor is there any federal rule that if someone gets significantly hurt or even killed on a ride the ride must be dismantled. Some states do have inspectors but what one state chooses to do has nothing to do with what another may choose. As a result most regulation comes by way of the insurance companies. They may simply refuse to insure a particular ride after a certain point. The law of a particular state may require insurance. Even if a particular state's insurance rules do not mandate insurance coverage (I suspect every state requires it now) an amusement park owner would be insane to operate a park without it.

All amusement parks have deaths. This includes super-parks like Disneyland/Disneyworld. Anytime you have humans using heavy-duty machinery you have the opportunity for people to get hurt. Be it a car, train, backhoe, plane, trash-compactor or amusement park ride. When parks are open long enough things do happen. RP was open over 145 years and had more than one incident.

Some amusement parks do have policies regarding the liquidation of rides in the event of a major accident. This does not mean disassembling or destroying the ride. It usually means reselling the ride to another park. Six Flags Chicago for instance has a policy that if a ride has significant bad publicity they get rid of the ride. Six Flags freefall which was built for them (at the time there were only 10 in the world) had an accident where a car fell back down the lift and people got hurt. The freefall was then sold to Rocky Point and is now in Ohio.

Someone did attempt to surf down the big hill on the log flume ride. They made it to the bottom of the hill and, when the log hit the slow down brake, got flung over the front of the log and run over. Logs were 600lbs empty. He did survive due to the heroic work of a crew chief of the ride who stormed through the trough and pulled him to safety before the 2nd log came along. The newspapers got the story wrong though. So...JMayoh if you read that particular story in your research I assure you there was no 'lifeguard' who swam through the trough and saved the guy. That part was totally fabricated by the newspaper. You may be interested to know that the crew chief in question was also one of the artists who re-drew the monsters on the House of Horrors ride several years later. His name was Robert Cubellis.

They also had an embarrassing incident where they posed a lot of people on the log flume deck for a photo-op and the deck collapsed.

I respectfully disagree. While I cannot say whether or not a similar incident occurred in PA I do stand by my previously posted story.

Here are some articles on eye implants. The 2nd article is a reprint from the Wall Street Journal.

http://mednews.stanfor...r/shorttake_let.html

http://www.atvcapital.com/news.php?id=96

And here is an article on a device, as Dr. Sketch said, that was developed in Switzerland.

http://www.swissinfo.o...=511&sid=4415302

My memory regarding the surgery taking place in Scotland must have been inaccurate.

Working from memory here. There was an experimental surgery performed where a chip was inserted somewhere along the path of the optic nerve. The patient in question had been blind for several decades. The doctors had determined that the back end of the optic nerve was functional but that the point somewhere between where light enters the cornea and then gets tranlated into a signal that the brain understands was not functioning. The chip provided rudimentary translation of these light signals for the brain.

The patient was able to identify letters of the alphabet when they were 6-8 inches tall on a monitor. Color perception was nil and the patients perception was sharpest when it was bright white letters on a black screen. Truly remarkable given that the patient had been 100% blind.

As it was experimental surgery the chips were eventually removed. I do not know what has transpired since in this area. I was thinking that the surgery took place in Scotland rather than Switzerland but again, I'm working from memory here.

This place bears a superficial resemblance to my home - mostly because of the smoke stack. I live in an old factory more than 100 years old that was renovated into living space. For 10-15 years the building I now live in was abandoned and although it is not huge (unlike this picture) it was the type of place that Motts might have explored.

I have now read through the articles that Lynne provided. The articles, generally speaking, affirmed that ECT treatments provided beneficial results to the patients that received them, that the effects were temporary and that there were some negative side effects associated with the treatments. There was also an acknowledgement that there was a lack of studies regarding the long term effects of continued application of ECT.

Among the negative side effects mentioned were short term memory loss and a temporary impairment to learn new things (no examples were given. Inability to learn a new skill? Inability to learn new knowledge?? These are two different types of learning. There was no clarification on this point).

For anyone who wishes to read the articles on their own I would describe them as brief and reasonably easy for non-health pros to read with the exception of the Cochrane technical review. In the Cochrane technical review the main results section was harder to follow. However the intro and conclusions were easy to understand.

Registration at Medscape is free.

I will also state that I neither support nor oppose ECT usage (more info would be required to form a conclusion). I am only summarizing the articles as I understood them.

What is the status of ECT today? About a year and 1/2 ago I was listening to NPR and they were interviewing someone who was receiving ECT not for psychiatric treatment but as a short term solution for epilepsy. The person in question was experiencing seizures multiple times per week. Subsequent to ECT they were seizure free for months at a time, when seizures eventually reoccured they repeated treatment. Before anyone's imagination runs away with them the patient was receiving ECT voluntarily and was not an inhouse patient of the facility. The downside was that the treatment eventually ceased to be effective for some of the patients.

I am working from memory here so some of the details may not be exact. I think that the treatment was in limited usage back at the time of this article. Has the use of ECT gained momentum again? Do the doctors know why it has a temporary curative effect? Is it being used for other conditions?

Based on scale I doubt that Mass was ever said here. It looks like the altar would be at knee height. I'm thinking this was more ornamental than anything else.

This could be a distant relative of Robbie the Robot from the 1950s movie Forbidden Planet.

The Corkscrew coast was purchased by SixFlags Enchanted village in Washington State and is operating under the name "Wild Thing".

The Cyclone Roller Coaster is now operating on Prince Edward Island in Canada at Sandspit Cavendish Beach.

The Freefall was renamed to Mr. Hydes Nasty Fall and is now located in Ohio (Cedar point perhaps...).

This specific unit was manufactured in 1949 and was the 66th one made that year.

The JH Emerson company is still in existence today. Here is a pdf published by the company that talks about the life of John Emerson. John Emerson passed away in 1997.

http://www.jhemerson.c...Emerson%20(1998).pdf

Incidently, this particular collection of Motts is both my favorite and how I found my way to opacity. I had heard about an old abandoned school in the area and google brought me here. Hooked ever since.

A yesteryear picture of Bennett along with a brief description of the school.

http://mhs.vh.net/bennett.htm

Apparently the school was not actually founded there - it was actually in Irvington NY first. For those of you a little further away - Irvington is close to NYC but probably about 50 miles south of this location.

Hrmmph...Its a carousel folks. Nothing is amiss here. If anything you could make an argument that the horse is pursuing the lion! Since they are both carousel animals and the horse is behind the tiger. Way too much is read into what are simple pictures. In this case a common carousel combination...elephants, horses, tigers, and perhaps...in the background a Kangaroo.

snopes.com is a pretty cool site that investigates urban legends. Here is what they have to say on the 'killer' dress.

http://www.snopes.com/...ors/poison/dress.htm

Its still used in the resort/spa context in
the Russian language. Pronounced the
same in Russian as in English.

There's an interesting effect if you take
photo and blow it up 400% (I used the
basic Microsoft Photo Editor). It IS just
coincidence so don't everyone go crazy but the pixellation makes it look like there are two eyes and a mouth below the brim of the hat...in a cartoonish sort of way.

One possibility is that its a lamp shade and there is something on the wall behind it that creates the 'brim'.

I strongly doubt that a name by itself represents a privacy violation. There are undoubtedly many Ann Hansons in the world. i.e. There is nothing uniquely identifying about the name and no medical history presented.

Hey Terry Donovan. If you got there in 63 It looks like you were a student here when another boy died in a fall from the tower. What were the rumors that undoubtedly ran through the students at the time? Wnat are your own opinions?

Also, if you know, why was the boy on the property in August? A little bit before the school term, no?

I like this. Very intense. Shooting architecture and shooting potraiture are two differing photographic disciplines. I'm curious - who chose the poses? Motts or model?

Observation: Cool stuff - but I think you increased your risk level. Being caught trespassing, if you are, is one thing. Being caught trespassing with a compound bow complete with arrows yet another.

In the event of an emergency can a patient who is otherwise ambulatory able to open the device from the inside?

No gravity involved. Cars moved through the ride on electricity.