Halloween ride promises ‘taste of the afterlife’ in Chinese theme park

We all like a good scare for Halloween, with the ghoulish and the ghastly coming out to play for one night of the year. It's something that attractions the world over have seized upon, with even the likes of Disneyland having dedicated Halloween periods and rides that are opened only at this time of the year. 

However, for visitors at one theme park in China, this theme of the truly terrifying may be going a little too far for most people's tastes. At the Window Of The World theme park in Shenzhen, China, guests are being invited to try out the all new 4D Death Simulator.

Sounds scary, right? Well it only gets worse. According to reports, the simulator is also colloquially known as the cremation ride, and as a part of the experience, visitors are asked to climb into a coffin. Once they are within their make-believe final resting place, the coffin is shoved into a simulated furnace, where temperatures can reach as high as 40C.

The brief encounter with such temperatures is, of course, mercifully short, and while the ride is deemed completely safe by owners of the park, visitors say that it really gives them an experience of what cremation just might be like. 

"You really feel like you’re being burnt alive," said 22-year-old Ting Shen. "I feel like I died and came back."

A spokesman for the park said that the ride is one that plays on people's morbid curiosity with death and the afterlife. 

In other Halloween news, a group of sinister clowns has been arrested in France after taking the recent craze just a little too far. 

Across the UK and US, mysterious pranksters have been dressing as clowns to scare the public for months, but the 14 French jesters were serving time in jail this week after they were caught chasing members of the public with weapons while laughing maniacally. 

"Symptomatic of the impact of the internet, this phenomenon can lead to damaging individual acts and disturbances to public order," A French police spokesman said.