The Return of Atlantis (A creepypasta in the tradition of “Abandoned by Disney”)
You remember that story Abandoned by Disney, right? Well, I’ve got my own scary story. And I wish I could tell you it was just a story.
Back in 2009, I did something really stupid. I broke into a theme park called The Return of Atlantis.
It was built by the Holmes-Griffin Initiative—one of those massive corporations that seems to have their hands in everything. Construction started a few years earlier on a small island off the coast of Florida, dredged up and reshaped into a tourist paradise. Billboards went up everywhere: Atlantis Rises Again! Commercials promised underwater rides, crystal caverns, and a living history of the greatest myth ever told.
But the day before it was scheduled to open, the gates slammed shut. Just like that. No refunds. No explanations. The company went silent.
And I wanted to know why.
The park’s version of the Atlantis story wasn’t the same as the one you find in schoolbooks or on the History Channel.
According to Holmes-Griffin’s mythos, the Atlanteans weren’t aliens, and they weren’t gods. They were mutants. Ordinary humans born with extraordinary brainpower. Their intelligence let them shape crystals that glowed with their own energy. The crystals lit their cities, powered machines, even stored memories.
The Atlanteans believed the gods had blessed them. They built temples to every possible force and trait—love, anger, wind, stone, wisdom, greed. Nothing was left un-worshiped. But their arrogance grew. They expanded across oceans, enslaving weaker peoples, and ignoring their own warnings.
Then came the punishment.
An underwater volcano erupted. Lava split the seabed, tsunamis rose higher than temples, and Atlantis sank beneath the waves. Centuries later, according to the legend Holmes-Griffin printed on every brochure, a second eruption forced the island back to the surface—this time right next to Florida.
They even gave it a name: Adrar, from the Berber word for mountain.
I remember protests in the weeks before the park’s closure. Seminole leaders stood with environmentalists and old Floridians, demanding the land back. The island had been seized generations earlier under the Indian Removal Act. Some even said a shaman cursed the project.
When Holmes-Griffin canceled the grand opening with no explanation, people whispered that the curse was real.
That was all I needed to hear.
I went in at 4 o’clock in the afternoon. I cut through the razor wire and dropped down hard on the sand inside the fence.
At first, it was silent. Dead silent. Then I heard them: drums. Slow, steady, like a heartbeat. Flutes joined in, high and hollow. The sound came from everywhere and nowhere at once.
And then I felt it—the sensation of being watched.
I wasn’t alone.
A low growl made my stomach drop. A mountain lion stood crouched ahead of me, muscles tense, teeth bared. It lunged.
I scrambled up a palm tree, knowing damn well they can climb. My foot slipped, claws slashed for me—and then it was gone. Not running. Not fading. Just gone.he deeper I went, the worse it got.
The place looked like it had been abandoned for decades, not days. Vines strangled statues of Atlantean gods. Dust and cobwebs covered benches. Whole murals peeled off the walls.
I found a buffalo carcass lying in the middle of the plaza, ribs split wide. The stench made my throat seize. That’s when the coyotes came—snarling, circling, their eyes reflecting moonlight. One leapt, and I swung a trashcan lid at it. The lid connected, there was a pop like a balloon, and it vanished.
More came, dozens of them, teeth gnashing, bodies snapping—and one by one, when I struck, they popped out of existence.
I staggered into a building just as the coyotes disappeared, only to be attacked again. This time it was owls. A whole storm of them, slamming into the glass door I shoved closed behind me. Their wings battered the frame. I covered my ears, waiting for the glass to shatter.
And then—silence. Nothing.
In the control room, the lights flickered weakly. That’s where I saw it: a lizard-man, hunched over a console, orange eyes glowing in the dark. It turned, hissed, and charged. I stumbled back, crashed through a broken window, clung to a railing—and when I looked back, the room was empty.
In the boiler house, things got worse. Steam hissed through broken pipes. The air was wet, choking. And then the shadows shifted. A cloaked figure stepped out, skeletal hands gripping a scythe. The Grim Reaper.
That wasn’t part of the Atlantis myth. That was my fear.
It raised the scythe, and I threw myself to the floor. When I dared to look again, there was nothing.
I found the record office by accident. Papers were still on the desks. Files open mid-sentence.
Employees had seen the same things I did. The mountain lion. The coyotes. The owls. Different faces, different forms, but always something. Whole crews had walked off the job in panic.
They hadn’t abandoned the park. They’d fled from it.
That’s when I heard it—
THUD.
The ground shook. Dust rained from the ceiling. Another THUD. Something massive was moving outside.
I looked out the window and froze.
A tarantula the size of a delivery truck crawled into the plaza. Its fur bristled, its eyes glowed like embers, and its fangs dripped.
It saw me.
I ran.
The spider chased me through the ruins, each step shattering tiles and rattling walls. Adrenaline took over. I sprinted to a palm tree, ran straight up the trunk, flipped onto another, then vaulted onto the roof of a building.
The tarantula climbed after me, screeching. I ripped a metal pole from a railing, hefted it, and hurled it with everything I had.
The pole plunged deep into one of its glowing eyes. Blood and gore sprayed out, hot and foul-smelling, splattering across the roof.
The spider screamed, stumbled—and then vanished into thin air.
I didn’t wait for more. I jumped from roof to roof until I reached the perimeter. My hands bled as I climbed the fence. When I hit the sand on the other side, I didn’t look back.
It took me days to calm down enough to think straight. And that’s when it finally hit me.
Holmes-Griffin didn’t shut the park down just to keep people out. They knew they couldn’t stop trespassers like me forever. What they really feared was the opposite—people walking out with something else.
The hallucinations. The curse. Whatever it was, it clung to you, followed you, left its mark.
Even now, I sometimes catch glimpses—shadows that look like coyotes, the sound of wings outside my window, a flash of orange eyes in the dark. But they’re faint, like echoes or residue, not the full-blown horrors I saw inside those gates.
Eventually, I went to Holmes-Griffin headquarters. I needed answers.
The receptionist didn’t look surprised when I mentioned the park. Neither did the executive they ushered me into a spotless office to meet. He didn’t deny what I’d seen.
“Yes,” he admitted calmly, “our employees began reporting… incidents. Hallucinations. We don’t know if it was a curse, or simply the power of suggestion. The human mind is remarkably susceptible to fear.” He smiled thinly, as if it was all very academic. “We didn’t know what was happening. And that uncertainty was dangerous.”
He folded his hands. “We couldn’t allow it to spread. So we closed Atlantis. Immediately.”
And that was it. No apology. No comfort. Just a corporation quietly confirming the nightmare was real, and treating it like a line item in a risk report.
I walked out shaken. Because they were right. Even if it wasn’t a curse, even if it was just suggestion—the images had followed me. Weaker, yes, just echoes or residue. But still there. And I shudder to think what would have happened if the park had stayed open—if thousands of tourists had carried those visions home, scattering them across the world. The chaos, the madness… society wouldn’t have survived it.
Holmes-Griffin didn’t close Atlantis out of kindness. They did it out of fear. And maybe greed. But whatever their reason, the truth is simple: they didn’t save us because they cared.
They saved us because they had no choice.
After I published my account, reporters descended on Holmes-Griffin headquarters, demanding answers. They wanted to know if my story was true, if the hallucinations were real, if their employees had suffered the same fate.
The company gave only a three-word statement: “No comment.”
They’d admitted it to me, but never to the world. And maybe that’s worse. Because if they won’t even acknowledge it happened… how can we ever be sure it won’t happen again?
Back in 2009, I did something really stupid. I broke into a theme park called The Return of Atlantis.
It was built by the Holmes-Griffin Initiative—one of those massive corporations that seems to have their hands in everything. Construction started a few years earlier on a small island off the coast of Florida, dredged up and reshaped into a tourist paradise. Billboards went up everywhere: Atlantis Rises Again! Commercials promised underwater rides, crystal caverns, and a living history of the greatest myth ever told.
But the day before it was scheduled to open, the gates slammed shut. Just like that. No refunds. No explanations. The company went silent.
And I wanted to know why.
The park’s version of the Atlantis story wasn’t the same as the one you find in schoolbooks or on the History Channel.
According to Holmes-Griffin’s mythos, the Atlanteans weren’t aliens, and they weren’t gods. They were mutants. Ordinary humans born with extraordinary brainpower. Their intelligence let them shape crystals that glowed with their own energy. The crystals lit their cities, powered machines, even stored memories.
The Atlanteans believed the gods had blessed them. They built temples to every possible force and trait—love, anger, wind, stone, wisdom, greed. Nothing was left un-worshiped. But their arrogance grew. They expanded across oceans, enslaving weaker peoples, and ignoring their own warnings.
Then came the punishment.
An underwater volcano erupted. Lava split the seabed, tsunamis rose higher than temples, and Atlantis sank beneath the waves. Centuries later, according to the legend Holmes-Griffin printed on every brochure, a second eruption forced the island back to the surface—this time right next to Florida.
They even gave it a name: Adrar, from the Berber word for mountain.
I remember protests in the weeks before the park’s closure. Seminole leaders stood with environmentalists and old Floridians, demanding the land back. The island had been seized generations earlier under the Indian Removal Act. Some even said a shaman cursed the project.
When Holmes-Griffin canceled the grand opening with no explanation, people whispered that the curse was real.
That was all I needed to hear.
I went in at 4 o’clock in the afternoon. I cut through the razor wire and dropped down hard on the sand inside the fence.
At first, it was silent. Dead silent. Then I heard them: drums. Slow, steady, like a heartbeat. Flutes joined in, high and hollow. The sound came from everywhere and nowhere at once.
And then I felt it—the sensation of being watched.
I wasn’t alone.
A low growl made my stomach drop. A mountain lion stood crouched ahead of me, muscles tense, teeth bared. It lunged.
I scrambled up a palm tree, knowing damn well they can climb. My foot slipped, claws slashed for me—and then it was gone. Not running. Not fading. Just gone.he deeper I went, the worse it got.
The place looked like it had been abandoned for decades, not days. Vines strangled statues of Atlantean gods. Dust and cobwebs covered benches. Whole murals peeled off the walls.
I found a buffalo carcass lying in the middle of the plaza, ribs split wide. The stench made my throat seize. That’s when the coyotes came—snarling, circling, their eyes reflecting moonlight. One leapt, and I swung a trashcan lid at it. The lid connected, there was a pop like a balloon, and it vanished.
More came, dozens of them, teeth gnashing, bodies snapping—and one by one, when I struck, they popped out of existence.
I staggered into a building just as the coyotes disappeared, only to be attacked again. This time it was owls. A whole storm of them, slamming into the glass door I shoved closed behind me. Their wings battered the frame. I covered my ears, waiting for the glass to shatter.
And then—silence. Nothing.
In the control room, the lights flickered weakly. That’s where I saw it: a lizard-man, hunched over a console, orange eyes glowing in the dark. It turned, hissed, and charged. I stumbled back, crashed through a broken window, clung to a railing—and when I looked back, the room was empty.
In the boiler house, things got worse. Steam hissed through broken pipes. The air was wet, choking. And then the shadows shifted. A cloaked figure stepped out, skeletal hands gripping a scythe. The Grim Reaper.
That wasn’t part of the Atlantis myth. That was my fear.
It raised the scythe, and I threw myself to the floor. When I dared to look again, there was nothing.
I found the record office by accident. Papers were still on the desks. Files open mid-sentence.
Employees had seen the same things I did. The mountain lion. The coyotes. The owls. Different faces, different forms, but always something. Whole crews had walked off the job in panic.
They hadn’t abandoned the park. They’d fled from it.
That’s when I heard it—
THUD.
The ground shook. Dust rained from the ceiling. Another THUD. Something massive was moving outside.
I looked out the window and froze.
A tarantula the size of a delivery truck crawled into the plaza. Its fur bristled, its eyes glowed like embers, and its fangs dripped.
It saw me.
I ran.
The spider chased me through the ruins, each step shattering tiles and rattling walls. Adrenaline took over. I sprinted to a palm tree, ran straight up the trunk, flipped onto another, then vaulted onto the roof of a building.
The tarantula climbed after me, screeching. I ripped a metal pole from a railing, hefted it, and hurled it with everything I had.
The pole plunged deep into one of its glowing eyes. Blood and gore sprayed out, hot and foul-smelling, splattering across the roof.
The spider screamed, stumbled—and then vanished into thin air.
I didn’t wait for more. I jumped from roof to roof until I reached the perimeter. My hands bled as I climbed the fence. When I hit the sand on the other side, I didn’t look back.
It took me days to calm down enough to think straight. And that’s when it finally hit me.
Holmes-Griffin didn’t shut the park down just to keep people out. They knew they couldn’t stop trespassers like me forever. What they really feared was the opposite—people walking out with something else.
The hallucinations. The curse. Whatever it was, it clung to you, followed you, left its mark.
Even now, I sometimes catch glimpses—shadows that look like coyotes, the sound of wings outside my window, a flash of orange eyes in the dark. But they’re faint, like echoes or residue, not the full-blown horrors I saw inside those gates.
Eventually, I went to Holmes-Griffin headquarters. I needed answers.
The receptionist didn’t look surprised when I mentioned the park. Neither did the executive they ushered me into a spotless office to meet. He didn’t deny what I’d seen.
“Yes,” he admitted calmly, “our employees began reporting… incidents. Hallucinations. We don’t know if it was a curse, or simply the power of suggestion. The human mind is remarkably susceptible to fear.” He smiled thinly, as if it was all very academic. “We didn’t know what was happening. And that uncertainty was dangerous.”
He folded his hands. “We couldn’t allow it to spread. So we closed Atlantis. Immediately.”
And that was it. No apology. No comfort. Just a corporation quietly confirming the nightmare was real, and treating it like a line item in a risk report.
I walked out shaken. Because they were right. Even if it wasn’t a curse, even if it was just suggestion—the images had followed me. Weaker, yes, just echoes or residue. But still there. And I shudder to think what would have happened if the park had stayed open—if thousands of tourists had carried those visions home, scattering them across the world. The chaos, the madness… society wouldn’t have survived it.
Holmes-Griffin didn’t close Atlantis out of kindness. They did it out of fear. And maybe greed. But whatever their reason, the truth is simple: they didn’t save us because they cared.
They saved us because they had no choice.
After I published my account, reporters descended on Holmes-Griffin headquarters, demanding answers. They wanted to know if my story was true, if the hallucinations were real, if their employees had suffered the same fate.
The company gave only a three-word statement: “No comment.”
They’d admitted it to me, but never to the world. And maybe that’s worse. Because if they won’t even acknowledge it happened… how can we ever be sure it won’t happen again?
31-35, M