Creepy Shark Discovered In Abandoned Building
Right Out Of A Horror Movie
It's the start of just about every horror film you can think of. Picture it: you've broken through the gate of an abandoned wildlife park with your friends. It's night time and the only light is from your phone flashlight. You're laughing and playing around, certain that nothing frightening can actually happen. This is the real world. The scariest thing you might encounter is a stash of needles and used condoms in one of the rundown buildings.
You open a door and step inside a dark room. There is a funny smell in the air. It reminds you of science class, or a hospital, but you can't really explain why. You and your friends take some steps inside, giggling and daring each other to go just a bit further. Someone runs into glass. A window perhaps? It's tall and when you knock on it the sound is heavy. Must be a giant tank? You turn your phone flashlight forward toward the mystery object and that is when the screaming starts. Because looming out of dark, green, murky, fluid, is a gaping mouth with immense teeth.
A Very Real And Very Scary Shark
Did you just stumble into your worst nightmares? Or did you find something much more real, and therefore much creepier?
Well if you were breaking into the old Wildlife Wonderland Park in Bass, Victoria, Australia before 2019, chances are what you stumbled across was the very real, and very dead, form of Rosie the Great White Shark. Humanely killed in 1998 after being caught in fishing nets, Rosie was purchased by Wildlife Wonderland to go on display at the park. It took her a bit to get there though. Like a scene out of a killer shark film, first Rosie had to be autopsied by the Government of South Australia to make sure she wasn't the cause of a woman going missing in the same area she was found.
Once the frozen shark had been proven innocent of man, or woman, eating, she was shipped to Wildlife Wonderland and placed in a custom tank full of formaldehyde. And there her story may have ended, if the park wasn't shut down in 2012. All the live animals were seized by the RSPCA Australia and the Department of Sustainability and Environment Victoria.
What Happened To Rosie The Shark?
But poor Rosie was left behind, to sit in her tank and collect dust and debris, and scare unwitting trespassers to her building. A 2018 YouTube video showcasing the lonely Great White corpse caused an influx of visitors to the abandoned park, but they didn't all have good intentions on their minds. Soon Rosie was vandalized and graffiti-ed, and it was decided she couldn't stay there unprotected anymore.
In 2019 Crystal World and Prehistoric Journeys took guardianship of Rosie and moved her to a place where she could escape naughty trespassers with destructive tendencies. She won't be scaring urban explorers much anymore. But keep in mind, just because Rosie has been moved away, doesn't mean there aren't other creatures lurking about in the darkness of abandoned places.