Gandini’s Circus

Heading down busy Kelly Ave in downtown Edmond, passing an Arby’s and a gas station, you wouldn’t think anything of the obscure dirt road blocked off by a yellow fence.

At first you may just notice a barren field and nothing else, but it doesn’t take long to realize the full history of this strange, abandoned plot. Concrete foundations checker the tan grass while rusty metal poles protrude out of the bushes and trees. There are several houses that have

long since been vacated and later vandalized by passers-by. Further into the acreage, hidden behind some thick brush, you’ll start getting an idea of what this place used to be.

Gandini’s Circus went on for some time between the 1900′s and 1930, touring across various parts of the states. Fragments of the circus still linger around including 4 or 5 trailers where the clowns, acrobats and animals were housed. 
Even the cages, large and small, are still there– discarded when the circus apparently disbanded. Although many of the trailers are burnt from the inside out by either arson or a terrible accident, you can still find fliers, popcorn bags and soda cups along with assorted pieces of memorabilia throughout the area.

What makes the area so spooky is not the place’s background, but it’s lack of obvious history. I’ve tried to search the Internet for information on the circus but could only find a few pages vaguely relating to what it was. Digging through the ashes in and around the trailers I was able to find a few old fliers in tact that shed some light on the place, but still not enough to make this area any less frightening.

The real scare comes at night, walking through this barren place, maybe tripping over an old cougar cage or deflated clown ball, when the full scope of what ‘haunted’ really boils down to. 


Afterall, there may be nothing more dreadful than a haunted circus burned to the ground. A place does not necessarily require ghosts to be haunted, but if it’s scary enough, maybe we’re the ones who create them.

-Written by Robert Cole

Images and Words from Source