On a lonely windswept hilltop in New England lies the bleached remnant of what was once a thriving industry
religious theme parks
Like holy land had their heyday decades ago and many now are nothing more than a memory
The Forgotten theme park we explored today was the brainchild of John Baptist Greco a lawyer who in
1955 began to build the park as a collection of dioramas the village of Bethlehem and a city of Jerusalem
Stations of the Cross and other scenes of the Bible
While open it would attract up to 50,000 visitors a year, but closed due to a renovation in 1984
however
John died in 1986 and the park afterwards stood abandoned
After many years of vandalism trees began to grow around the monuments creating a scraggly forest of vandalized statues
On first entry an area of new paving and some new paint suggests minor repairs having been done
I know I saw
Security or a
Car pulls up and two men watch us as we ascend the hill or just somebody else check in now
The stair leads through tiny scene after tiny scene
That's fine
The wind whips through the miniature abandoned streets
Tangled vines mixed with thorns blind hoot windows and doors of each house
I will put
Enmity between these and the woman that I seed and her seed
she shall crush thy head in the National eye and we or
Oh
There was a sphinx, it's gone Ella I went another pyramid
Yeah, yeah, he's gonna face
It's just a lump
Notably the Jesus statue that once stood near this area is completely gone and the Sphinx's head has been removed
We head further up towards the top region
The grouping of crosses sits at the summit with the largest cross looming in the distance we head upwards
The things all like that stuff it's like prison
It was here at this very spot
Near the end of the murkiest period of holy lands history that a horrific event occurred on the site in July
2010 a local teen Chloe Otteman agreed to meet a friend of her boyfriend named Francisco Cruz at Holy Land
She was fond of exploring and going on what she called epic adventures
Francisco pitched the idea of going on a new one by walking to the top of holy land
Once they reach the metal cross at the top they began to drink hands of the alcoholic beverage juice
Francisco secretly had a crush on Chloe and began to make passes and grabbed her according to his testimony
She resisted as they lay on the ground and eventually she elbowed him in the face screaming for help in the dark in abandoned Park
He then strangled and raped her and strangled her again
Finally stabbing her in the neck cutting an artery and leaving her dead in the overgrown brush
They had been friends for years
He admitted the crime two days later in
2011 he was sentenced to 55 years in prison
Chloe's nearby grave reads simply we love you forever
Holy land has been changing slowly since the shocking crime awoke a new interest in the abandoned site
Surely after the crime efforts were made to cut back the brush and tree cover
Exposing the bleached skeletons of the dioramas
Other field efforts since my first visit here
to revive the park have made minor changes with pavement repair of the
dioramas and more recently the erection of a larger floodlit cross at the top a
Statue sits high above
At the entrance on the hillside where once stood a huge Bible of the Ten Commandments still stands the iconic
hillside sign
in a new and perhaps final chapter
The park was recently bought by the city's mayor who has plans to revamp and possibly reopen the site anew
They may sense a change is in the air as new sites such as Ark Encounter and Holy Land Experience
Appear across the u.s
Only time will tell at this timeless miniature landscape of decay
Join us next time as we explore an abandoned and crumbling mansion
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