Lincoln Park N.Dartmouth MA Dark Rides and Funhouses

When I first visited Lincoln Park at age 5 in 1959, the first impression I got was that everything there was larger than life.
There was a giant head peering over Kiddieland – the giant from “Jack and the Beanstalk”.

There was a huge wooden roller coaster, the likes of which I didn’t recall seeing before, that hovered alongside Kiddieland like a mammoth white serpent. Even the runaway trolley car (the Toonville Trolley to be exact) I saw zig-zagging its way over the greenery, was bigger than any kiddie ride vehicle I’d ever seen.

There was a huge two-story building with the wooden letters spelling the word “Fun Huose” on the façade. Obviously, at age five, I wasn’t a top-notch speller, but something seemed amiss with the word “Huose.” And to that point, I saw people walking into the Huose and not riding in metal cars. And the folks walking into the Huose were later emerging briefly into daylight via a second-floor cutout window.

Strolling down the midway, I immediately recognized an attraction where people did indeed ride into a building in small cars. The sight of it instantly raised my comfort zone because I too, had ridden the very same way at Crescent Park. The building seemed enormous, so much so that I imagined it had to be a two-story ride like the Huose. The facade had bright bold colors, but no name splashed across it as the dark ride at Crescent park did. There was a long word painted over the entrance that I couldn’t read. When I asked, my grandmother told me it read “Hell is a Popping.” Much later I saw an old photo that showed the spelling as Hel za poppin.

The boarding area façade wall wasn’t very threatening. There were some large painted portraits of four angry men; one of them attired in a fedora and chomping on a cigar. The portraits were spaced evenly over the wall, and below them was a cutout window where the cars emerged and disappeared. Inset into the window was a witch stirring a pot protected by a sheet of glass.

That’s how I saw things when I was five years old. Here’s what I learned much later in life. What I didn’t know in 1959 is that, in two years, Hels Za Poppin was to become the Mystery Ride, later receiving a name change to the Monster Ride.

To some patrons of the former Lincoln Park it was all about the thrilling Comet roller coaster. To some others, it was more about the Roller Rink and the Ballroom. But for a good segment of Lincoln Parkers it was the Monster Ride – a two-story dark ride that seemingly never ceased to please, even in its tired years of the mid-1980s, just before the park closed. But the Monster Ride, for all its popularity, didn’t just show up on the midway one day. It evolved.

What I remember about the interior of Hels Za Poppin is seeing two huge cats perched on a fence, and locked in mortal combat. There was also a large mule that kicked his unsuspecting kneeling handler. Of course, decades later I learned that these were two stunts associated with a Laff In the Dark ride made by the Traver Engineering Company, of Beaver Falls, PA. I also learned that Hels Za Poppin’s real name was Laff In The Dark. In the early 2000s, well before today’s social media platforms, I read in an amusement park forum that Lincoln Park purchased Laff In The Dark from Riverside Park. I have yet to be able to verify this. However, in his book “Amusement Parks of New England”, author Bob Goldsack states that Edward J. Carroll, Sr., former owner of Riverside Park (now Six Flags New England) sold his “Laugh In The Dark” ride in 1938 for a whopping $400 in an effort to meet expenses. Given the proximity of the two Massachusetts parks, it certainly seems feasible that the ride could have gone to Lincoln Park. Someday I hope to validate it. No date has been given as to when Laff In The Dark opened but all evidence points to 1941 – that’s when Lincoln Park was purchased by John Collins & Associates for $40,000. They invested $150,000 installing a fourteen-lane bowling alley, updating the existing dance hall, and adding a full complement of amusement park rides.