Tower Johnny

It’s been four years since I worked at King's Island, but the stories of ghost that haunt the park are even older and still going strong. There are probably half a dozen legends, maybe more, but I am going to talk about two of the most prominent.

First there is Racer Boy. I had never actually heard of this one, but my old boss at the park, who is now my best friend, worked there for six years and told me with 100% certainty that it’s bogus.

Apparently, the train cars on the Racers roller coaster ride originally belonged to a ride at Coney Island called the Shooting Star. A long time ago a young boy was found dead on the tracks of the Shooting Star, killed by the train cars. The question is did the ghost of this young boy travel with those train cars all the way to King’s Island?

I logged onto the King's Island Central website and created an account so I could find out what the obsessive theme park fans had to say about the ghost of King's Island. I figured if anyone knew the stories and their origins, it would be those nerds.

I don’t mean to offend anyone by calling them nerds, but after working at a theme park I learned there is a specific type of person who spends all day at a theme park then goes home to talk about it on a theme park forum. Just as there are computer nerds and video game nerds, there are roller coaster nerds. It’s just a fact of life. Anyways, here’s what one person had to say about Racer Boy.

"Last year I was on the racer in the back right seat on the blue racer. All of a sudden we stop, almost to the top of the lift hill. About three trains pass us and I decide I will look behind too see if anybody was coming. So I turn around to see a little Boy around eight or nine in white pajamas (looked to be).

He starts climbing up the lift hill, on the sides of course, and I was very curious. As he gets about halfway up, he almost seems to start disappearing, and as a matter of fact he was! He was walking level up the stairs, slowly disappearing until he disappears just as he gets to our car.” ~ CincinnatiCyclone

I have a few other close friends who are managers at the park, and they all agree. This story is nothing but folklore.

The second ghost story is originates from a true story, but has branched off over the past 20 years into a few different versions.

Back in 1983, on Friday the 13 as ironic as that may seem, John Harter was enjoying King's Island grad night. After a little too much to drink he decided to climb up the Eiffel Tower. All of that is fact. Now here is where the story takes two turns. One version says he fell down the elevator shaft, while another claims that the elevator wires decapitated him. Either way, John did in fact die that night.

To this day, people say Tower Johnny haunts both the Eiffel Tower and the Beast rollercoaster. Why the Beast? Well, that’s where the elevator cables that are said to have beheaded Johnny are stored.

“Well, I was riding The Beast when it was completely dark, there was even some fog in the woods and it just had a kind of creepy feeling. When we went through the second tunnel, you couldn’t even see your hand right in front of your face, but then I saw a whitish/clearish hand right in front of me that came from the left side where I was sitting. Even my friend saw it and it was downright creepy. The only explanation we could come up with was that it had to be Tower Johnny.” ~Anonymous

“I can’t remember a time when Johnny would reveal himself in a way that guests would be aware of him; he certainly wanted the crew to know he was around. His favorite tricks were closing/opening the elevator doors. Sending elevators up/down on their own, elevators stopping during transit. Mostly just the ride performing operations that no one instructed it to and no explanation-even from maintenance.” ~Unknown

I remember my boss taking me for a walk out in the woods behind The Beast to show me the Tower Johnny cables. The cables, just lying in the grass beside the maintenance vehicle roadway, were covered in rust, not blood.

And as for the tower haunting, I worked on the Eiffel Tower a few times and never saw anything unusual. My friends and I have decades of combined years working at the park, and not a single one of us has ever observed anything to put any truth to these stories.