By Mark Moran

In 1896, Essex County purchased 325 acres of farmland on the border of Verona and Cedar Grove to establish what was then being referred to as the Essex County Asylum for the Insane. Upon its opening, the facility came to be known as Overbrook, due to its positioning just above the Peckman River. Buildings quickly sprang up as part of this complex in close proximity to Fairview Avenue, which was then a dirt road that served as the main thoroughfare of Overbrook.

In1907 the Newark City Sanitarium or the Newark City Home for Consumptives was established just up the hill from the asylum on the border of Caldwell and North Caldwell. This was a facility aimed at curing tuberculosis, and was known mainly throughout its history as the Essex Mountain Sanatarium, or simply the Hilltop. In 1917 the county assumed control of the Sanatarium and constructed eleven new buildings on the property.

After advances in medicine made tuberculosis a treatable disease, the number of patients at the Essex Mountain Sanatarium decreased dramatically. Eventually, all of the buildings at the top of the hill would be left fully abandoned and would remain that way for almost to decades.

During those abandoned year rumors began to spread throughout the area of this isolated asylum at the Hilltop. It was rumored that the out-dated surgical implements, patient records, and medieval looking devices of restraint were still intact inside. Tales were told of the escaped or forgotten lunatics that roamed the grounds and hallways of the derelict buildings, and made their homes in the vast labyrinth of subterranean tunnels which permeated the facility’s foundations.

One warm sunny afternoon a few years back I decided to investigate this abandoned sanatarium for myself. I grabbed my camera, and bolted out the door toward my car. It was about 5:30 on a late-summer afternoon. Long shadows had already begun to lay down tracks across my path as I set out on my adventure.

When I arrived, I parked my car at the foot of the hill and began to walk up the long, arrow-straight road before me, Sanatorium Road, toward the top of the hill where the hospital was located. The pavement was old and cracked, with a single hopelessly faded yellow line running down its center. Densely overgrown weeds and thickets covered the rolling hills, and spilled out over the roadway. Overhead, large unkempt tree branches swayed in the warm breeze, throwing skittish shadows down to the sun-dappled asphalt.

After walking for what seemed like nearly a half mile I began to see the tops of buildings poking up through the forest ahead of me. The first one that I came upon was a three story, yellow brick structure. Every window was broken, and the parking lot behind it was piled high with dozens of administrative-looking pieces of office furniture. A little further down the road, I came upon another building, broken windows at all levels, and pigeons fluttering through the darkened attic dormers. The sun was sinking low in the sky behind me as I approached the open front door.   My shadow preceded me up the steps and over the threshold. Upon entering the cool, dimly lit shell of a building, I looked up to see the spray-painted greeting, WELCOME TO HELL, over an inside doorway.

The building had two wings that stretched out in either direction away from the main entrance. These shadowy hallways were lined with small rooms, each containing a bed, small dresser, and a stand-up locker. Paint and plaster was chipping from everywhere, and all of the windows were shattered. I was surprised though at how intact much of the furniture was. Most of the metal bed frames were still fitted with a fairly tidy mattress, and the dressers were still complete with their drawers. I made my way slowly down the hall, peaking in each room as I went, and listening for any sounds of life. At the end of the hall I found a pile of patient records strewn about the floor. I picked one up and read it. It was a night-shift watch report dated from New Year’s Eve 1978–“All Quiet,” it said. All quiet it was, I thought, perhaps too quiet, and that was starting to bother me.

Continuing my exploration, I started up the stairs to see the second floor. Turning around at the landing I was greeted by the disapproving gaze of a horned demon. Peering down at me from the top of the stairwell, the pig-nosed, spray-painted portrait seemed to harbor a genuine contempt for my presence. I begged its pardon and descended to the lower regions of the building. Below ground level the air was cool and damp. The plaster and paint that had fallen from the walls lay in powdery piles buttressed up against the baseboards.

I made my way down the long dim corridor, slowly pushing open one door after another. Some of the rooms had been torched and were charred black from floor to ceiling. I was becoming more and more aware of the intense quiet that surrounded me. I became conscious of each hushed step of my own feet. It was then that I saw it, there in the dust where I had not yet walked–a single footprint.

All of a sudden I began to feel very vulnerable. I froze for a moment. Then I heard my father’s voice inside my head, coming to me from when I was young and used to explore the forgotten corners of my hometown. “Someday,” he had said, “you’re going to disappear in one of those places, and no one is ever going to know what happened to you.” A shiver ran the length of my spine as I stood there in the diminishing light and realized that he might have been on to something there. I hadn’t told anybody where I was going when I’d set out for this place, and if in fact I did disappear, this was certainly not the first place that I would be looked for. I did not know who, or what, might call this dank place home. What if the lunatics had indeed taken over the asylum, as the rumors of the place had alleged? I decided to cut my visit short and get back out into what remained of the day’s sunlight.

Heading back down the hill toward my car I encountered another explorer on his way up to the sanatarium. I asked him what he could tell me about the old hospital at the Hilltop. “Well,” he said, “everything was left intact when it closed; beds, instruments, gurneys. There were even padded cells with leather restraints.”

I asked him if he knew anything about tunnels under the complex. “Oh, they’re there!” he replied.  “All of the buildings are connected by an underground network of tunnels. But I won’t go in them. I’ve been in every inch of this place, I’ve even been down to the old morgue and that was really frightening. But I won’t go in those tunnels. Some friends of mine wanted me to go down there with them once, bring all the lights and spelunking equipment, but you never know–there could be gas in there now, or God knows what!”

“Did you ever hear any stories of escaped lunatics roaming around up here?” I asked.

“I don’t know if they were escapees or not, but there were homeless people and vagrants living up in the sanitarium. They couldn’t keep them out. I heard rumors that they were former inmates that had been released, then came back after the place was closed and moved in. Anyway, between them, the vandals, and the satanic graffiti all over, the place was getting quite a reputation. One time, I heard that they even found a dead body up here somewhere!”

The main hospital of the Sanatarium at the Hilltop, a gigantic hulking six-story edifice, was demolished in the early 1990’s. The remaining outlying buildings were razed ten years later

Requiem for Essex Mountain Sanatorium

By Richard A. Kennedy

It was late summer 2012 when I first saw that letter from Arcadia Publishing in my inbox. They were putting feelers out, looking for someone to write a book about Essex Mountain Sanatorium for their “Images of America” series. Wow, I hadn’t thought about the old place in a while. Being that it had been more than a decade since the last of the complex’s outer buildings had fallen, the e-mail was completely unexpected. After a few days of thought, I initially attempted to brush it off, citing a lack of public interest, but it was too late. The seed had been planted and the hospital had already crept back into my head. I had to be honest with myself. If the story was going to be told, I wanted to be the one to tell it. It would be hard to fit writing a book into an already busy life, but it would be harder not to. The institution had been an obsession of mine, and how could I pass up the opportunity to become its unlikely historian?

After corresponding with Arcadia, I had my reservations. They weren’t too interested in the website I created on the sanatorium, or the facility’s abandoned years. Their books have a specific format that you must adhere to, and as to content, I was told they wanted “more history, less creepy.” After looking through my vintage photographs of the hospital, which totaled 38, I figured there was no way of meeting their minimum guidelines of 180 images. Despite my doubts, I signed a contract with them. I figured the writing would be a fairly simple process being that I had researched the institution before and already knew its history, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. It wasn’t simple, and as it turns out, I knew little of what had happened there. I had only scratched the surface with the website, and when I dug deeper, I found reports of sex scandals, murder mysteries, accidental shooting deaths, and learned the horrors of early 20th century tuberculosis treatment. The question of how to fill a whole book quickly became a question of how to fit it all in. It was a difficult endeavor––wanting to include the sensational, yet striving to stay historically accurate. The balance between interesting writing and just listing facts is trickier than you might think. Unfortunately, everything wouldn’t fit into the final draft, but the manuscript I submitted to Arcadia was approved, and an August 2013 release date was set to coincide with the 20 year anniversary of the demolition of the sanatorium’s main complex.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been over 20 years since I last walked those halls of the main hospital building. Time goes by so fast. I miss those days of my youth, and I miss my old playground. I know there are many people out there who don’t understand the allure of abandoned structures; the bond we form with them; or the sorrow of watching them fall to wreckers. In my opinion it’s their loss. I’m sure there are many other less fascinating pursuits than exploring urban ruins––relics from another time, eager to tell their story to anyone who will listen. As for myself, I feel fortunate to be of an age that allowed me to discover the abandoned Essex Mountain Sanatorium complex in all its glory, and, more importantly, that I listened. My life has been far more interesting having known the sanatorium. The book was a labor of love and my hope is that by writing it, I’ve done right by my old friend and that my memories of it will forever endure.

Read more about the book on the Arcadia web site.

Seeing sandcastles being built on the beach is nothing out of the ordinary. Finding a sand sculpture that’s the size of an actual three-story castle however, now that’s another thing altogether! That’s exactly what thousands of Jersey Shore goers got to witness being built right next to the boardwalk in Point Pleasant Beach this summer. The ornately sculpted tower is known as the “Sandy Castle” and it was created as a fundraising project to assist those affected by last year’s devastating Superstorm Sandy. The mastermind behind the castle is an artist named Ed Jarrett, who happens to be no newcomer to the medium of sand. In fact, he currently holds the Guinness World Record for creating the world’s tallest handmade sandcastle.

Ed Jarrett’s Guinness World Record holding tallest sandcastle in Connecticut.

In 2003, using nothing but sand and water, Ed built a sandcastle 29 feet, three inches tall in his home state of Maine, breaking the Guinness World Record and taking bragging rights away from Finland. In 2007, he broke his own record with another castle he dubbed “Castle to the Sun,” which stood 31 feet, six inches tall. Over a period of two months, more than 1,000 people volunteered to help build the castle, which required 40 dump truck loads of sand. The castle helped raise more than $100,000 for charity. Never satisfied, Ed sought to build a castle at least 35 feet tall and raise even more money for charitable organizations. In June 2011 Guinness World Records certified his next creation, Jarrett’s Castle at Winding Trails in Farmington, CT as the World’s Tallest Sandcastle with an official height of 37 feet, 10 inches.

This year Ed brought his castle building talents to Point Pleasant Beach on the Jersey Shore. Beginning in March he set out to once again break his own sandcastle record, and at the same time raise money for the relief efforts aiding Super Storm Sandy victims. He joined forces with an old college friend named Alan Fumo, a New Jersey resident, to raise awareness in support of NJ Hometown Heroes, a registered non-profit organization based in Toms River. 100% of all proceeds and donations from Ed’s “Sandy Castle” will benefit the charity.

“When I talked to my friend Alan after the storm, he couldn’t even get through the conversation when he tried to tell me about how the towns he grew up in were devastated.” Ed told Weird NJ when we paid him a visit on a hot afternoon this August. “So I said to him, ‘we always knew we’d get together to work on something, so let’s build one of the castles.’ We knew it was the time to do it, and we’ve been on it ever since.”

One side of the Sandy Castle is dedicated as the “Jersey Side” and depicts a number or iconic Shore images, such as: Asbury Park’s Convention Hall, Seaside Heights’ Star Jet Roller Coaster, which toppled into the ocean during the hurricane, the Barnegat Lighthouse, and the Ortley Beach water tower. At the base of the castle is a mermaid with a tear rolling from her eye. Other motifs around the castle include reliefs of a shark, a sea turtle, and serpents. On the side that faces the boardwalk there are carvings of lions, gargoyles, demons and dragons, and Rapunzel lets down her sandy hair to her waiting prince below.

But Ed’s Sandy Castle never did attain the lofty height necessary to break his own world record, and ironically it was the rebuilding effort itself which foiled his record-breaking attempt. A bulldozer that was clearing debris from the beach caused a vibration that shook the whole castle to its foundation. The shock wave opened a 25-foot vertical fault line down the center of the solid sand edifice.

“And then as they were rebuilding the boardwalk the bottom of the castle settled and we realized we’d never break the record with this castle,” Ed told us. It took six rebuilds to repair the damage, and the decision was made to leave the Sandy Castle at the height of 34 feet––roughly four feet shy of the height needed to break his own record. But Ed still continued to sculpt the castle and raise money through the $1 admission charged to see it, so far collecting about $40,000 for charity.

While Sandy Castle still stands tall on Jenkinson’s Beach and attracts hundreds of visitors daily, Ed has already set his sights on the next castle to be built just a few feet away from the current one. “Sandy Castle 2013, Second Edition,” will continue the effort to raise money as well as once again aspire to breaking the Guinness World Record.

“One side of the sandcastle will be haunted theme and the other will celebrate the upcoming holiday season – we’re going to have a costume party followed by a little bit of Christmas in November.”

Sandy Castle will remain intact and open to the public through Labor Day, then Ed will begin demolishing it at 5pm on Monday, September 2nd.  The very next day, Jarrett, along with a group of volunteers, will start removing sand from Sandy Castle and packing it into forms for the Second Edition. The sand packing process will continue through Sunday, October 13th. On Columbus Day (Monday, October 14th), Ed will begin sculpting the new castle. He plans to be finished by October 24th and open the sandcastle for a Halloween Haunt Weekend on October 25th.

Jimi Hendrix once sang, “castles made of sand, fall in the sea, eventually”––but not so with the Sandy Castle. You see, this sand didn’t even come from the sea in the first place; it’s lake sand that was quarried and trucked in from Kenvil. That’s right, they actually brought sand to the beach––lots of it! According to Ed, lake sand holds together much better than sea sand because the grains have not been ground down by the ocean. After the Sandy Castle sand is used to build the Second Edition of the castle it will be reused to build another castle somewhere else, so it will never “fall to the sea.”

We asked Ed if it’s going to break his heart after all the months of work that he’s put into this castle to have to take it down?

“No,” he said without hesitation, “I’m already into the next one.”

“Do you already have it all designed and drawn up,” we wondered.

“No, there’s no sketching, it’s all in my head. You can’t really design anything until you know what the sand is going to do. The holiday side is going to be a castle growing out of an evergreen motif which will be all lit up.”

“So will the next castle beat the current record for the World’s Tallest Sandcastle?” We asked.

“That one WILL be the record.” Ed said with supreme confidence.

To construct his castles Ed fills a wooden frame with sand then works his way down by removing one band of the frame at a time. He sculpts from top to bottom, never returning to the upper portion of the structure once it has been carved. So highest reaches of the castle are the oldest part of the sculpture…and the most worn by the elements. Over the course of the spring and summer the Sandy Castle has endured a lot of harsh weather. Heavy rains and wind has eroded away much of they intricately carved details that once adorned its façade. We asked Ed if having to deal with the elements frustrated him.

“I think this next castle will probably be my last outdoor venue. I’ve had so much trouble with the weather. The last two have been through record rain. The last one in Connecticut got hit by Hurricane Irene…I’ve had enough of the weather.”

As far a competition goes, Ed says there have been some pretenders to his thrown in Germany and South Carolina, but both of those castles were disqualified when it was discovered that machinery was used to aid in their construction. 4,500 volunteers have come out to assist Ed in his great endeavor of the past six months, packing sand in buckets by hand. As with the first Sandy Castle, the Second Edition will need thousands more volunteers to help pack the sand to a height of about 41 feet, tall enough to break his current record set in Connecticut in 2011. Those wishing to help can contact the Sandy Castle volunteer coordinator through the website at www.sandycastle2013.com. To date, Sandy Castle has raised about $40,000 and thanks to the generosity of sponsors, 100% of every dollar donated at the gate goes directly to Hometown Heroes for its Superstorm Sandy relief efforts.

For more information about Sandy Castle, please visit www.sandycastle2013.com.

On September 14, 2006, my friend and I were coming home from PNC Arts Center. We got lost on some back roads and ended up on Phalanx Road. There was a steady rain and we were paying close attention because we were not quite sure if we were heading in the right direction.

As we were driving, my friend started telling me about all the people that were killed on the road, especially at an intersection we passed through. We noticed the roadside memorials. Then we passed a farmhouse and she started telling me about how two young girls were killed in the house in an accident.

My friend asked me if I minded if she had a cigarette and I told her it was fine. She rolled the window a little less than halfway down and was trying to light her cigarette when she dropped the lighter. As she was searching for it, she slowed the car down and then eventually stopped it. The road was dark and empty. My friend heard a tapping at her window, and she looked over to see a young girl standing next to the car, motioning with her index finger to follow her. She said nothing to us. She just had a blank expression on her face. We started screaming and locked the doors, rolled up the window, and drove away.

We stopped the car after a few yards. I looked through the back driver’s side window and the girl was looking right into my eyes. She was a young, pretty, and in her late teens or early twenties. She had light brown hair that was pulled back. I thought she had a bandanna on, but my friend didn’t remember seeing that. She had on a brown, short-sleeved shirt and jeans—no bag or purse—and her clothes and hair were dry, even though it was raining. She stepped back from the car, a look of confusion on her face. We pulled away again, going about 100 yards. I looked back again and she was gone.

We got up to the light on Route 34 and ran though it without stopping. Once we got near the Colts Neck Inn, we called the police and explained what happened. They sent a patrol car there, but found no one. As my friend and I thought more about it we couldn’t get past the fact that we saw no one walking on the road and no broken down cars. She just appeared at the side of the car. It is a wooded road and an area with no houses.

We keep trying to tell ourselves it was just a young girl that needed help, but how come she didn’t speak to us? She just had this blank stare and was motioning us to come with her. Her reaction to us was not normal. Most people would say something like, “Oh, I didn’t mean to scare you” or “I just need help or directions”—anything but just standing there, even after she saw she scared us half to death.

It was close to midnight, very dark, and raining. Yet, we were able to make out her features clear as day. It was like a flashlight was shining on her face. We said a lot of prayers and did a lot of crying the rest of the ride home. This was the most terrifying thing that has ever happened to me and I just can’t shake it. The logical side of me keeps telling myself that it was just a girl in need of some help or some kids playing a joke, but then that little whispering voice in me keeps saying it was something else. –Jean

We are very proud to announce the release of Weird NJ’s very first true eBook, “Home State Hauntings: True Stories of Ghostly Places in New Jersey” for your iPad, Kindle and Nook tablets.

There’s a hotbed of paranormal activity in the tiny northwestern New York town of East Bethany known as Rolling Hills Asylum–an immense, abandoned looking former almshouse. The property was established on January 1, 1827 as the Genesee County Poor Farm, and through the years it has operated as an infirmary, orphanage, tuberculosis hospital and nursing home. Over 1700 bodies are believed to be buried here in unmarked graves, and a plethora of supernatural activity has been reported at the asylum, including; disembodied voices, door slamming, footsteps and full body apparitions. There are stories of shadow people, ghostly touches, and numerous EVP recordings.

Photo by Rusty Tagliareni.

Weird NJ was invited to tour Rolling Hills for ourselves this past winter by the current owner, Sharon Coyle and we just couldn’t pass up the opportunity for a paranormal road trip! We arrived at the Asylum on a bitterly cold day in early March. Rolling Hills is located near two of the Great Lakes, Ontario and Erie, between the cities of Buffalo and Rochester. There was about a foot and a half of snow on the ground and the lake effect winds swept it in drifts across the bleak frozen landscape. We met Sharon outside her house, which is on the Asylum’s property, and once served as a woodshop where inmates crafted coffins.

If there is anyplace that can be said to “look haunted,” Rolling Hills certainly fits that bill. The older four-story brick structure, with its broken windows and pockmarked slate roof, has the appearance of the classic institutions of a bygone era. The adjoining newer facility behind it has the stark unwelcoming look of an abandoned hospital.

Sharon took us inside, where the air was just as frigid as it was outside the building. We could hear the wind moaning through broken windowpanes as she escorted us down the long dim corridors of vacant rooms, which had housed thousands of inmates over the years. As we walked the echoing hallways she offered us a bit of history about the place.

Rolling Hills was originally the founded as the Genesee County Poor Farm in 1827 to house orphaned children, destitute families, widows, the elderly, physically handicapped, mentally unstable, morally corrupt, and even criminals.

In ’64 Rolling Hills became the Genesee County Nursing Home, but it the facility was only used in that capacity for ten years it was finally closed in 1974, mostly because of code issues. At that time, due to fear of vagrants moving in and vandalism, most of the old dorms were torn down as well as many of the outbuildings.

We asked Sharon to describe some of the paranormal “hot spots” that Rolling Hills is known for and to share some of her own experiences with us. Here are just a few…

Photo by Rusty Tagliareni.

Hattie’s Room: First floor of the East Wing. Sharon says she left a tape recorder running in the room and caught the distinct voice of an elderly woman calling out “hello”. She believes it to be the voice of a former patient of the nursing home who was blind and used to call out hello to get the attention of the nurses. Sharon played the EVP for a former employee who was shocked to her Hattie voice again.

Roy’s Room: On the day that we visited, Sharon told us that it would have been 123 years birthday of a former patient named Roy, and that all the RHA volunteers were going to be gathering later that night in his room for a celebration. Roy Crouse is a seven-foot tall “shadow man” and everybody’s favorite apparition at RHA. Roy probably had gigantism caused by a tumor in the pituitary glands, which messes with the growth hormones. He lived out his life here and died in 1942, almost seven and a half feet tall at the age of 52.

Sharon tells a story about running into a rat in the infirmary about two months after moving into Rolling Hills. Terrified by it, she screamed and ran away. The very next day she found the rat dead on the stairs, blood oozing from its mouth as if its neck had been broken. On the wall above the rat was a giant bloody handprint. Sharon believes that the ghost of Roy witnessed her distress and killed the rat for her.

Photo by Rusty Tagliareni.

Second Floor, East Wing: In the old men’s dormitory is a corridor referred to as the “Shadow Hallway”. Sharon told us, “This is where we see a lot of shadow people. When you look down toward the infirmary section you start to see shadow people, and they could look like you and I, solid, they can be light grey, medium grey, dark grey or pitch black. They could be normal human shaped or anamorphous shapes.  They come in and out of doorways, walk across the hall. Sometimes they’ll poke an arm or a leg out, sometimes they crawl on the floor, and that can be creepy, especially if you’re sitting on the floor during an investigation and one is coming at you––because you can actually see the shadow moving toward you.”

Many a strange and inexplicable shadow was captured by the Weird NJ video team while filming inside the “Shadow Hallway” on the day of our visit to Rolling Hills.

The Psych Ward and Solitary Confinement: Sharon showed us iron brackets protruding from the cement walls of a small dank room in the basement of the Asylum, which she believes were once used to shackle inmates. “Back in the day they didn’t understand that you probably had a medical issue: Alzheimer’s, epilepsy, turrets, Asperger syndrome…or, you were an unruly wife. Back then if a man couldn’t control his wife he’d say ‘I’m going to lock you up.’ There were many, many reasons why they’d lock you up. So this area was not good.”

Photo by Rusty Tagliareni.

The Morgue: Next to the embalming table there are two large walk-in refrigerators, with heavy latching doors, their original purpose was for cold storage of human corpses. Sharon says the morgue is still rife with supernatural activity, such as ghostly voices and thing being moved about by unseen forces. People have even been shoved and knocked off their feet here.

The Graveyard: Even the very land around the Rolling Hills is said to be haunted, because it is in fact hallowed ground. The County would bury those who had no family, and records indicate there was once a cemetery located on the property, but the exact location is no longer known.  The cemetery has faded away as the stones crumpled, the grass grew and the forest replanted.  No one was around to care for those who had so long ago been forgotten.  No actual cemetery register or plot map has ever been discovered.

Sharon has a lot of theories as to what makes Rolling Hills the haunted hotspot of paranormal activity that she believes it is.

“It’s the only home that a lot of these people ever knew, they felt attached to this place. Some of them lost their homes, there were widows and orphans, and they developed their own family and friends here.  So I think a lot of people felt comfortable here…they didn’t want to leave So we treat our spirits like they are really breathing, living people.”

 The preceding story is an excerpt from our article on Rolling Hills Asylum. For the full story of all the ghostly goings on at RHA, see Weird NJ issue #41.

Video by Antiquity Echoes.

We are very proud to announce the release of Weird NJ’s very first true eBook, “Home State Hauntings: True Stories of Ghostly Places in New Jersey” for your iPad, Kindle and Nook tablets.

(Please note: The last day to place an order for Christmas delivery is Friday December 20th. To place your Weird NJ order please go to our shopping cart or visit our Amazon Store. Thanks for another wonderfully weird year!)

Holiday Horrors in Kendall Park

Check out New Road in South Brunswick between Rt. 27 and Rt.1. You already know about the Rocking Horse House at New and Sturgis Rd, but if you pass it going towards Rt. 1 there is something even stranger. The second house past the fire station on the right is 141 New Rd. They have a sick Christmas display – skeletons and other grotesque figures dressed in Santa costumes! I caught sight of a sign but only read the word “Haunted” before I passed. It is definitely a Christmas display, not Halloween.

The Rocking Horse House looks even more bizarre right now with some Christmas stuff and old plastic crates mixed in. In between it and the display mentioned above is a house with hundreds of plastic Christmas figurines evenly spaced on the lawn. I guess it’s supposed to be Santa’s workshop, but it looks weird the way everything’s spread out and not grouped together.  –Lisa Burns

Monsters Like Presents, Too!

Tom and Carolyn Dardani sure know how to dress up the home for the holidays. And why not? Their home in Monmouth Junction is known affectionately as “The Halloween House.” The Dardanis run the annual Dardani Haunted Trail in nearby Woodlot Park. The event is run by over 200 volunteers during the Halloween season. This is a picture of a display the Dardanis did a few years ago. Who knows what will be lurking on their lawn this holiday!

Flag Waving Santa

While driving down Route 206 near the Morris/Somerset boundary, I saw what looked like a Santa Claus sitting on a bench on the opposite end of the pond. To make things stranger, the Santa was holding an American Flag on a pole. I pulled into the park and walked over. The Santa suit was stuffed full of snow, but the hat and boots, even the beard were there. As usual I had my camera with me, so I snapped a few shots of this weird winter display of patriotism. –Doug Keating

This Christmas Give the Gift of Weirdness with a 2014 Gift Subscription for someone of holiday shopping list. Give the gift of weirdness! Give your favorite weird friend or relative a 2014 Gift Subscription to New Jersey’s favorite magazine. Upon ordering, you will be emailed a Weird NJ 2014 certificate to present to this years recipient.

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Pitman Billboard Says “Keep the Saturn in Saturnalia”

WNJ reader DWS reports that, “In Pitman, a rivalry has been going on since 2011 between religious people who want to “Keep Christ in Christmas” and the Freedom From Religion Foundation who reminds people to ‘Keep Saturn in Saturnalia’. Where lats year the FFRF simply hung a banner at the ‘Welcome to Pitman’ sign, this year they escalated matters by purchasing a billboard at West Holly Avenue and Lambs Road.” Read the FULL STORY…

Sat·ur·na·li·a [sat-er-ney-lee-uh, -neyl-yuh]
1. The festival of Saturn, celebrated in December in ancient Rome as a time of unrestrained merrymaking.
2. Unrestrained revelry; orgy.

Santa of the Apocalypse

I spied this intriguing Yuletide decoration, which I immediately dubbed “The Fourth Santa of the Apocalypse,” while in my travels in the little burg of Spotswood.  My take on all of this is that it stays up year ’round and is dressed to fit in with the current holiday.  I’ll keep you posted with any additional information I come up with. –Tom, the gutless wonder

Ridgefield Water Company

Here are some pics from the Ridgewood Water Co. property in Midland Park, along Godwin Avenue. It’s a park-like atmosphere filled with about 100 painted wooden character cut-outs. They put it up every Christmas and it looks worse every year. Many of the characters are broken and in desperate need of a paint job. I took my kids to show them, and even they said, “This is weird, let’s get out of here!” –John Arehart

Skela Claus

Here is a picture of a Santa located on Berkshire Valley Road in Oak Ridge. –ldmarx

Mahwah: Where You’ll Never Have a Blue Christmas

This is one site everyone will have to check out. A fellow in Mahwah who makes his living as an Elvis impersonator puts on an of a Christmas House. It is rumored that so much energy is used for his Christmas lights (which cover every square inch of available horizontal and vertical space) that he has worked out a special deal with PSE&G.

The seasonal light display has become so popular that local cops are now posted in the area to direct traffic in and out of the complex where he lives, which is modeled after Graceland. Needless to say, the light display is orchestrated by recordings of elvis singing Christmas carols.

Neighbors attempting to keep up with him have tried their own garish displays but have not managed to outshine him. His display is unmistakably the loudest, in every respect.  –Jennifer Watts

Very close to Franklin Lakes, this house is on Victoria Lane off Campgaw Road in Mahwah.  We’ve been going there for at least ten years.  I understand his bill is over $2000. On some nights the Mahwah Fire Department collects donations simply by holding their helmets out to the line of slow passing cars. –RL Dean

There is a house in Mahwah, on the corner of Victoria Lane and Garden Court (off of Campgaw Road), that goes all out every Christmas. The house and property is covered in lights and there are also several lifesize figures on the roof––including Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe.  There is a constant caravan of cars driving through the neighborhood between Christmas and New Years…. stopping to snap pictures and catch a glimpse of this weird winter wonderland. –John Arehart

Elvis Has Left the Lights Off

The “Elvis” house has not been lit up for the last 2 years. I drove down Victoria Lane in Mahwah last Friday and the entire street had no decorated houses. I guess the recession has hit hard on that neighborhood too. –Teepag

A New Kind Of Devil’s Tree

This is a photo of our Christmas tree. We went for a whole new look. Check out the evil kids in the tree! –Michelle Lamroeaux

Satan Claus?

A friend of mine’s Daughter saw this sign a few Christmas’s ago and snapped this picture. The next day it was gone. I guess Santa isn’t the only one who makes visits in Pequannock. I grew up there and never saw anything but Santa driving around on a back of a fire truck. –Diane

The Glowing House of Elizabeth

This house is a few blocks away from my house in Elizabeth. What makes it even more absurd is that the neighborhood has predominately smaller and slightly shabby older homes. The owners demolished a run down Victorian to build this modern day vision. It’s a spectacular display of Weird NJ Xmas excess!  –Gina B.

100,000 Points of Light in Clifton

Our house is covered literally…leaving an opening for the door with over 100,000 lights and life-sized animated display figures! Most people think it is pretty darn weird! Please stop by and check it out! –Mark Carfora, 76 Arthur Street, Clifton

Santa’s Barn at the Land of Make Believe

The Land of Make Believe on Route 611 in Hope, Warren County was established in 1954 is really more of a kiddie ride and water park than it is a fairy tale theme park. Still, the site does possess enough quirky surprises to warrant its mention in this chapter. The first of these surprises was the big red barn and accompanying silo with Santa’s face painted on it. This was called (appropriately enough) “Santa’s Barn.” Mind you, we visited here in the middle of August during a killer heat wave, so already this seemed out of place. Inside the barn visitors are encouraged to crouch down and walk through a “magic fireplace,” then up the chimney to visit Santa Claus himself. My daughter was petrified and would have no part of this, so I went up the flue alone.

When I emerged on the second floor of the barn I found myself in a dark, cavernous, dream-like winter wonderland. The loft of the barn was all decked out with cotton snow, fake elves and reindeer, Christmas trees and candy canes. The only light came from the tiny colored Christmas bulbs, which were strung along a walkway, and the whole place was eerily quiet. The temperature was well over 100 degrees.

As I made my way across the nightmarish North Pole landscape I came to a full-sized log cabin, and peaked around its corner. There, sitting all alone on the front porch was Santa, the big man himself, all done up in his red suit, white beard and shiny black boots. At first I thought that he must have been a mannequin or maybe some sort of robotic Kris Kringle, but then I saw the portable fan on the floor blowing full force to cool the not so jolly guy off. I didn’t know what to say, I felt really creepy being all alone in a sweltering barn loft in August with some guy dressed as Old St. Nick. “Hey Santa,” I said, “mind if I take your picture?”

Just then I heard the terrified screams of a small child echoing through the gloomy recesses of the barn. As it turned out, my little girl decided to come looking for me and freaked out during her journey up the chimney. “Gotta go Santa” I said, then rushed off. –Mark M.

GHOSTS OF CHRISTMAS PAST: HOLIDAY DISPLAYS FROM DAYS OF YORE

GONE: Away in a Manger in Belleville

This holiday season don’t forget to stop by Charlie Auriemma’s Christmas display on Mt. Prospect St. in Belleville. Charlie, an electrical contractor by trade, decorates his side yard each year with a manger scene complete with live sheep, calves, and even a camel. There is also a Santa’s workshop where robotic elves toil away powered by an electrical on/off switch that you control!

Visit the Weird NJ AMAZON STORE for all of your holiday gift giving needs – with just one click!

GONE: Still Dreaming of a Pink Christmas in Metuchen

Gracie Knox, the “Pink Lady of Metuchen” has been enjoying her pink paradise for over 70 years. Weird NJ visited Ms. Knox Gracie she invited us into her century-old home, where we sat ensconced in pink pile carpet and pink plastic-covered furniture. On that day she was preparing her outfit and convertible Cadillac El Dorado (one of her two luxury pink and white rides) for the town’s annual Memorial Day parade. Christmas is the time when Gracie’s Sheridan Road estate really shines though—shiny pink, of course! Gracie died in 2009 and her house was torn down this past year.

GONE: The Robot Elves of the Fountains of Wayne

Dear Weird NJ: I’ve been visiting Totowa on business about once a month since August. While there last week I saw something that was really weird to me. I stopped at the Fountains of Wayne aka Christmas Emporium on Route 46 for something to do on my lunch hour. As I was shopping, I saw that they had a Christmas Animitronics Display upstairs. Of course, I had to go up and take a peek.

They have various vignettes set up such as Santa’s Pizzeria, Santa at the Jersey Shore, Santa in the Rain Forest, etc. The display looks like it was set up in the 50′s and has never been changed. Each vignette is full of the animated dolls that are all moving in the same hypnotic way. They look like they are possessed and were truly creepy. You really need to see it. Then when I told someone about it, they told me to go up 46 to Fairfield Gardens and see the Ice Caverns. Off I went. This one was a bit newer, but there was one Santa that looked like a blow up sex doll. –Vivaletta

Do you have a story of a weird holiday display that you’d like to share? If you do then please e-mail us at: Editor@WeirdNJ.com

Remember, this year, give the Gift of Weirdness to someone you love with a Weird NJ, subscription, T-shirt, back issue or book. Happy Holidays everybody from your friends Mark & Mark at Weird NJ!

READ THE FULL STORY HERE: http://www.app.com/article/20140308/NJNEWS/303080070/Weird-NJ-remembers-forgotten-faces-Palace-Amusements-Asbury-Park

Sandy Hook is a 6-mile long peninsula jutting from the New Jersey coast into the Atlantic Ocean at the northern tip of Monmouth County. Now a major recreational destination, Sandy Hook was for many years anything but that. It has served in many capacities during its long history, most of them military operations at Fort Hancock. The Hook’s close proximity to New York City and her waterways makes this spit of land an ideal point from which to defend the metropolis and its harbors.

These days people flock to the Hook to enjoy activities like swimming, sunbathing, fishing and surfing. But years ago the activities on those same beaches would have been army drills and target practice with heavy artillary. Today, vestiges of Sandy Hook’s military past, including mortar batteries, amunition trasport tracks and other reminders of the old base, can be found thoughout the area. One very strange remnant is a particularly weird concrete bunker that Weird NJ readers have wondered about for several years now. But first, before we tell you about that, a little bit of history…

From 1874 until 1919, Sandy Hook was used as a proving ground for the military’s latest experimental weaponry. During the Second World War, a nine-gun battery was constructed to keep an unblinking eye on the waterways leading to Manhattan.  This enormous fortification was intended to keep the harbor area safe from attack by enemy ships and German U-boats. During the Cold War the Hook was the site of a surface to air Nike Missile base.

The Hook was demilitarized in the mid-1970’s and handed over to the National Park Service. Unfortunately, with only enough funding to maintain isolated corners of the facility, most of the complex has fallen into a state of dire disrepair.  The once stately houses of Officers’ Row now look like a delapidated ghost town.  The battlements of the old fort, now merely a labrynth of concrete ruins, lie crubling along the shoreline sanddune, bearing silent witness to a battle that was never fought here.

Vines of poison ivy climb the rusting radar towers of the former missile base, where the control rooms, once a buzzing hub of state of the art military technology, are now as quiet as a tomb, the switches and knobs of their control panels covered in a layer of dust.

Perhaps the strangest and most curious sights to be seen among these post wartime military relics can be discovered along the beach on the western side of the Hook, where the waters of the bay lap against an area of seldom visited shoreline. Here you will find enormous arch-toped concrete structures, each with a single doorway leading inside. They rest askew at the water’s edge, foundering in the soft sand that cradles them. Though you’d never guess it to look at them today, these massive oddly shaped structures were once a vital part of the Fort Hancock’s arsenal. This is where the dynamite for the gun batteries was stored, far enough away from the batteries themselves that in the event of an explosion, the guns, shells and other ordnance would not be destroyed. The massive munitions bunkers were once buried beneath tons of sand with only their single doorway exposed. But time and innumerable tides have changed the Sandy Hook shoreline over the years, patienly wearing away at the western beaches. Now, these huge concrete storage bins, which were once underground, lay prostrate like beached leviathans, fully exposed to the open air and ebb and flow of the salty bay.

Crossing over the darkened threshold and entering the bunker you are transported into a dark cavernous space, its sandy floor littered with the flotsam of decades of high tide debris. As your eyes adjust to the darkness of the cave and begin to trace the curve of the high arched ceiling down to the waterline you will see that the concrete walls are adorned throughout with brightly colored, primitive looking murals reminiscent of ritualistic tribal artwork. These eerie amorphous characters, spray-painted in bright primary colors, depict a variety of human and animal hybrid creatures; there are canine bodies with human heads, and vice versa, winged birdmen, and three-headed deer-like creatures. Many of the characters display other living creatures trapped within their bellies, as if having been recently devoured.  Several of the images bear a striking resemblance to primitive tribal ceremonial masks, while other seem more reminiscent of the abstract work of Pablo Picasso.

It is definitely a weird scene! But what do all these anthropomorphic pictograms mean? Are they symbolic of something spiritual or metaphysical that we just don’t understand? The fact is that we don’t really know––perhaps the only person who does know is the artist who emblazoned these works on the walls of this isolated place. Many readers of Weird NJ magazine have speculated that the painting are voodoo related and were perhaps created in this lonely location for the secret rituals that could be conducted here. What we do know for sure is that the murals have been here for many years, and they are certainly not the handiwork of some common graffiti tagger or vandal. They are unquestionable the work of an accomplished artist, whether he or she is naïve or trained is a matter for artistic debate.

Weird NJ first published photos of this strange gallery nearly ten years ago, and to date nobody has yet stepped forward to claim credit as the creator of this bizarre menagerie. Until they do these unusual paintings will remain a mystery. But their presence here, in this odd historic structure on an isolated windswept Sandy Hook beach, make this bunker one weird place indeed––both inside and out!

For the past few years now motorists driving along Route 9 in the New Gretna/Bass River area have reported seeing strange, some might even say downright bizarre, things popping up along the roadside. Dragons, religious icons, cannons, dinosaurs and even the Statue of Liberty herself have all been witnessed. But that’s not all! Add to that odd amalgamation of sights; brightly colored 7-foot tall Transformers, and spear-toting Roman centurion knights on stallions. All of this and more can be seen adorning a single piece of 6-acre property located just east of the Garden State Parkway, near the border of Ocean and Atlantic counties. The homestead, which is really more of a compound surrounded by a high salmon-colored stucco wall, is festooned with a weird menagerie of fanciful beasts and other figures. Emblazoned on the wall are painted proclamations like, “We are responsible for our own children…” and “God Bless America!!!”  Beyond the pink metal gates that block the driveway entrances leading into the main house, across a large yard decorated with even more statuary, a three-story stone and stucco mansion can be seen. There are three tall flagpoles in front of the home––two flying the stars and stripes of Old Glory, the third flying the flag of Korea.

Needless to say, many people passing this unusual residence are quite curious and wonder whose property this is, and just what is the story behind this strange spectacle. The outlandish display doesn’t date very far back, just a few short years in the property’s 150+year history. In the mid to late 1800’s the property was once the farm of a man named Benjamin Franklin Headley. There was a large but traditional wood frame farmhouse on the land which is actually the underlying structure of the mansion you see today. The Headley family sold the property to a family named Bush, who kept the house looking pretty much the same as it had when the Headley’s lived there. In 1970 a Brigantine, NJ man named Eddie Sims bought the property with money he had made by selling his supposedly worthless bay front property for a fortune to Harrah’s Casino when gambling was legalized in our state. Mr. Sims told locals that his intention was to restore the old Headley/Bush farmhouse to its original historic appearance. Instead though, he transformed the old house into what one local journalist described as “a cross between a Greek diner and the Playboy mansion.”

Mr. Sims eventually moved on and the property stood abandoned for about 15 years. Then in 2010 it was purchased by a Mr. Byung Taek Kim of Fort Lee, NJ. Mr. Kim, who is Chairman of the Taekwondo Association of Greater New York, bought the property for the sole purpose of renovating and remodeling the estate into a summer shore retreat for his family. It’s kind of like their own private family fun park. Since 2010 Mr. Kim has been adding buildings, changing around the landscape, and stocking the ponds with bass and koi. The property now boasts a horse barn and riding path, a large swimming pool with a footbridge over it, fountains, waterfalls, vegetable gardens, and lighted tennis courts. And that’s not even mentioning the more offbeat decorations that can be found around the grounds, like the 400-year old statues of Buddha, the 20-foot tall giraffe sculpture, or the bright red winged dragon! Mr. Kim himself is the mastermind behind all of this madness and décor is all placed according to his own specifications.

We have received dozens of letters and emails about Mr. Kim’s creation here at Weird NJ, and as far as we can tell, the locals all seem to be pretty amused by the whimsy of it all. Most have told us that they enjoy watching the progress of Mr. Kim’s undertaking and look forward to spotting new and even more outrageous decorations, which are constantly being added. So the next time you’re traveling down Route 9 in the vicinity of Little Egg Harbor, Bass River and New Gretna, keep your eyes peeled for what just might be the most uniquely personalized property in all of Weird NJ…and that’s really saying something!

Fill a garden with carnivorous plants and you’re likely to raise Weird interest, though there usually has to be more to keep our attention. In the case of Lord Whimsy—long-time South Jerseyan; rider of highwheel bikes; raiser of moths and orchids; and an overall enthusiast of art, clothing, literature, botany, and aesthetics—meat-eating vegetation was tip of the dandy iceberg. We found plenty more of interest as we perused his book, The Affected Provincial’s Companion: Volume One (Bloomsbury, 2006) and website, lordwhimsy.com. It would be easy to call the content of both an über-literate guide on how to be a dandy, but it’s much more than that. With references to such diverse subject matter as Lucy the Elephant, serious facial hair grooming, and man antlers, a trip to the Whimsy bungalow in Mt. Holly was in order.

Lord Whimsy greeted us outside, and true to affected provincial form he was dressed in a summer suit, with a tie and a pocket square in shades of green that didn’t exactly match. Inside, we met his wife, Lady Pinkwater, and the two invited us to have snacks and tour their home and yard (complete with the aforementioned carnivorous garden) before the interview. And we talked about many topics, including a few we had to leave out for space: local characters who live in New Egypt and along the Rancocas River, the Metz Bicycle museum in Freehold, emotionally needy flora, and the dying breed of piss troughs.  What follows is a whimsical distillation of an interview with a self-described “Weirdo Advocate.”

Joanne Austin: The Affected Provincial’s Almanac started as a column in the Philadelphia Independent?

Lord Whimsy: Yes, it was. Well, it started before that, as an exercise that I was doing on my own just to amuse myself. I’m a designer and illustrator by trade: I’m not trained as a writer. I’ve had the same rudimentary English Literature classes that most people who go through high school have so beyond that I haven’t had much background other than my own independent reading. So I was basically too ignorant to know any better, I suppose, and I went ahead and played with the form anyway. I had ideas that I’d been playing around with for some time but I was really taken by eighteenth and nineteenth century pseudo-authoritative charts: Moral thermometers and things like that. The sort of thing you would find in texts like Poor Richard’s Almanack.

JA: In reading the book and your website, I felt there are a lot of things going on that Weird NJ readers would enjoy, which is why I put the wheels in motion to talk with you. But in having done that, I now see there’s a lot more to it than what I originally came across.

LW: That’s the whole idea. I’m throwing up this obvious mask that people discount as a gimmick. And if that’s what they want to take away from it, that’s fine, but someone who wants to dig a little deeper can do that. I like throwing it out there and tripping people up a little bit with their preconceptions. They think I’m going to be rolling my “Rs” and running around being overly theatrical and basically putting on an act.

There’s artifice there: don’t get me wrong. But the mask I wear fits the contours of my own personality. In a lot of ways I’m more real than, say, the professor, the doctor. Everybody has to wear their professional masks. I’m just being a little more overt about it. I get to create my mask. Not everybody has that luxury. And I get to keep the parts of my personality that way, where other people have to shear off of themselves or tuck behind the masks that they’re forced to wear daily to get by in life. So for me, it works out pretty well.

JA: The book is more of a personal folklore?

LW: Yes. I’m building up this sort of little constellation of personal emblems of mine. It’s like a mytho-poetic little ecosystem that I made for myself. There are points of references that I keep revisiting, there are constant themes in what I’m doing and it’s grown an awful lot since the book was put out. It was being put together between 2002 and 2005 and is a bit of a time capsule in that regard. I don’t think I’d be able to write the same book again. The book I’m working on right now isn’t going to be like that at all. It’s not necessarily me inhabiting this little world or persona and never venturing outside of that. It’s more of an ongoing thing. The mask just allows people into the world and then they have to travel along. But that’s not the sum of the thing. The mask is a door that lets you and then you realize, “Oh, okay.”

JA: We’ve never gotten a letter or an email from anyone saying “Oh, there’s this guy in Mt. Holly, he rides around on a velocipede, he wears these clothes that not everyone wears. You mention in the book about how it’s more of a subtle thing you seem to have mastered, as opposed to Underdog Lady, who’s not subtle.

LW: Yes, but don’t get me wrong. I love Underdog Lady. I remember seeing her in the parades in Ocean City when I was a little kid.

Ryan Doan: She’s an icon.

LW: God bless Underdog Lady. I think she’s wonderful. And all of those people out there—the Tiny Tims of the world—I would fall on my sword in defending any of them. I think they’re all wonderful things. Unfortunately I’m a little more normal than that. I wish I was that interesting, but those people are true eccentrics. I’m just a little weird, that’s all. I’m a functioning eccentric: I can still get along in the world.

In some ways, I feel like I’m the intermediary between the straight world and my eccentric friends. If I’m walking down the street with them and they’re outright freaks and I’m a relatively normalish person, it almost creates a buffer, like a metaphysical bodyguard. People won’t say anything if I’m there, they won’t be unkind to them. I have a real soft spot for people like that. I may not partake in the theatricality, but I’m very much on their side.

RD: They make life interesting.

LW: Someone like Underdog Lady, she’s a gift to the world. She may do it for her own reasons but at the end of the day, would you want to live in a world without her? I wouldn’t. Or live in a world where people like her aren’t possible? That’s the world were veering toward right now. That’s the scary thing. I’m a fairly average person…almost more of a weirdo conservationist rather than a weirdo myself. I’m like, “Leave these guys alone, let them do their thing, the world needs them, too.”

(Getting back to Whimsy) It started out in jest, but over time you grow into it and over time what happens is that you can’t get the mask off or people get upset if you take the mask off. They want a little cold star in the firmament that says, “You can go there if you want to.” It isn’t about me as a person, it isn’t because I’m so wonderful or anything like that. It’s just that people need that little emblem. They’ve invested in that and what happens is something that started as a joke or a little bit of a prank becomes an office.

JA: It’s not fun anymore.

LW: Well, it isn’t so much it isn’t fun as it isn’t about self-aggrandizement or entertainment any more. It becomes about service. I’ve done weddings for people, and people are always asking me advice on clothes and plants. I’m going to do talks out at Bartram’s (Garden), I’m giving tours of the Pine Barrens, and all these things have come my way because of the “Whimsy” thing. But people are always asking things of you and you don’t want to let them down. They seem to need this witch doctor element that’s lacking right now, that the priests and shamans used to do. This weird little manifestation of the prankster god. They need some sort of creature that’s outside of the realm of normal, mainstream experience that they can still not feel weird about contacting or interacting with. Someone who can come in and hopefully enrich their lives, if you want to get grandiose about it. But that’s the whole idea, bringing people into a larger sphere.

RD: It’s similar to what the magazine does.

LW: Yes, it’s basically the same mission as the magazine. That’s exactly what you guys are up to. You’re trying to coax the miraculous out of the everyday. That’s basically what I do too, except I’m off doing it on my own in my own little way, and there’s a little bit more of a narcissistic element in it. In not being aligned with any particular institution, I have to become the institution. That’s how it works for me.

JA: You mentioned something about how folklore seems to be dying out, or people don’t necessarily pass stories orally like they used to.

LW: That’s what Weird NJ does, too. It’s a vernacular folklore. Of course, all folklore is vernacular. It’s exactly what I’m up to, really. It’s a strange little tightrope: you don’t want to be too overmediated, because if you become too exposed you just become another person and no one really benefits from that. You try to cultivate a little bit of distance between you and other people, and the Internet is becoming an ideal way of doing that. Text is the same thing, but even more distant. If I were on T.V., it would all break down.

Giving yourself a ridiculous persona allows you to do the things you would otherwise do and get a black eye for. If I were just some guy walking around, riding a highwheel around, people would want to know who I thought I was. But put a playful veneer on it, people say, “Oh, that’s just Whimsy.” It invites them in to play with you.

That’s where I make the narcissism element known. The healthier kind of narcissism is more out in the open and more at your own expense. I’m out there in a loud suit walking around, but you know what, your life is more colorful because I’m doing this, even if I do get a black eye for doing it. It’s got to be done by someone. It’s a shame that it has to be done by a middle-aged guy like me. It should be some 22-year-old kid doing it, but they’re playing it safe. They don’t want to be thought “uncool.”

JA: I’m sure Weird NJ readers generally know what a dandy is, but some might not look at it in the most positive way.

LW: I think a lot of it is just the American puritanical reflex toward any kind of affectation or pretension, which is funny when you hear people in the most developed nation on earth having a hard time with the idea of pretense. That’s the whole point of civilization: pretense. The guy who thinks he’s not being pretentious is the most self-deluded person on the damn block.

I like toying with dandyism, but I take from dandyism what I need and I leave the rest alone. A real dandy probably wouldn’t say please or thank you or smile. A real dandy probably would want to be a toffee-nosed prick who makes you feel small.

As far as the class thing, it’s meant to please other people, not to make other people feel small. I’d feel bad if what I did made other people feel less about themselves, or if it gave the impression that I was trying to make myself. These are the things that I like; these are the textures that I like. This is the context in which I like to put my life.

You don’t have to select from the pre-set archetypes that are out there, like the “Bad Boy” or the “Solid Citizen.” But of course, if you try to build yourself up from scratch, there’s a price to be paid for that…it’s a dangerous thing and people don’t understand because it doesn’t fit any of the preconceived little archetypes floating around out there. Those little brackets…it’s just lazy thinking. When you’re doing this, you’re forcing people to create a new context around you.

JA: And they don’t want to think.

LW: There are no quotation marks around you: I’m a “rock guy,” an “academic,” a “politician,” a “hipster,” an “artist,” a “leftist.” I parody those things, and that’s what gets people upset, because it’s a wrench in the gears. But I don’t try to be. It isn’t something that you set out to do; it’s something you wind up observing just through your own…

RD: It just happens.

LW: It just happens. I didn’t sit back in the year 2000 and plot all that out. It isn’t that calculated. I’ve just had enough guts to do what I wanted to do. When I was doing the normal guy thing, I felt like I was normal guy drag, just to get along. I got to a point where I didn’t feel like doing it any more. It didn’t feel like me. These textures are missing from society right now.

I can’t go to the bar at the end of the block. I get stared at, and they wonder what the hell I’m doing there. I don’t belong there. So it’s a little more of a selective existence that you have to go about.

Now I’m finding that there’s a whole subset of people who are into this dandy thing. I’m just as guilty as the next person, it’s just that there’s less of me. So I can’t get on my high horse about this all too much now, can I? I guess it’s just human nature after a certain point. Not to be defeatist but even if that happens, those brackets growing out there allow me to do what it is that I do. I don’t really identify with any of that. I’m off on my own thing. I’m not like some steampunk kid.

I’m not into nostalgia. I use something because I like its textures. I have a highwheel not because it’s old, but because there’s something interesting about its qualities. The fact that it’s a sculpture: It’s got ribs, it’s got arcs, it’s quiet, it has a certain restrained beauty to it. It’s something that a human being can use to propel himself through a landscape. Just the fact that it’s old isn’t enough. It’s an interesting context, but it’s just not compelling enough.

It’s the same thing with my parlor out front. That’s pop art, that’s not me trying to live in an earlier time. I think a lot of people look at the book and misconstrue it as that. I’m playing with the forms but the conceit is very modern.

JA: Lucy the Elephant was somewhat of a beacon in your childhood?

LW: She was something. In South Jersey she was a totem. Here was something that shouldn’t even be around any more. There were originally three: one—the Light of Asia down in Cape May—burned down, and then there was the Elephantine Colossus up in Coney Island that was twice as tall as Lucy. Ten years after they built it, it just burned down to the ground. Lucy was the first one, and the only one remaining. It’s a much-beloved totem now—but can you imagine anyone trying to build something like that today, in that neighborhood, with those property values? There’s no way in hell. “Oh, it’s tacky, it’s tasteless”: But what the hell does anyone with vinyl siding on their house know about taste? It’s amazing that something so expensive can look so cheap. I’d rather live in Lucy than in one of those God-awful things.

It’s interesting to see people who have problems with those kinds of things… Exuberance is being so suppressed right now. Unless it’s beige or grey, people don’t want to have anything to do with it.

Photo by Mark Moran

RD: I think that’s why so many “Personalized Properties” pop up.

LW: Sometimes rarity can make things tasteful, can give things that otherwise are overstated and completely out of proportion a kind of grace. We’re in one of those periods right now. Back in the ‘70s, would the Pink Lady of Metuchen really be standing out that much? There were Pink Ladies of Metuchen everywhere then. It was a wonderful time to have been a tacky person. But now we’re in a time when people like that are very much rare beasts, kind of like unicorns.

Lady Pinkwater: Pink unicorns.

JA: There are two pink ladies.

LW: Yes, there are two pink ladies, aren’t there? They’re like a Sith. You should ask which one of them is the master.

LP: They could have a pink cage match. That’ll settle everything.

LW: You have the Pink Ladies, but you have the opposite. There’s always the town witch. At least there was in the ‘70s. Back in the ‘70s, there was a woman in Somers Point…

LP: You were afraid to go by her house.

LW: Yes, she had a black Victorian house.

LP: He ducked every time he went by in the car.

LW: Turns out they had dogs and cats and animals in there, there were feces all over the floor, it was actually a really serious thing. But I think their daughter wore a black cape to school every day. Her name was Marsha. People would go (in creepy voice) “Hellooo Marsha…” They were messed up. But kids would ride by, just looking at the black house.

JA: How about local color from a long time ago: Hezekiah Smith.

LW: Oh, Hezekiah Smith. He was originally from Vermont. He actually married while he was there, but he came down here, bought the mansion (now within the Historic Smithfield Park in Eastampton Township – Eds.) and set up a factory, a compound. He was a bigamist: he never fully divorced his wife and kids up in Vermont. He just went back, started an account in their name, put in a lump sum, and said, “Let’s just call it a day.”

He came down here and married a woman named Agnes, who from the photos I’ve seen was a dead ringer for Sherilyn Fenn. He put her through school, she became a medical doctor, and a good one by all accounts, but she died of cancer, I think at the age of 41. He erected a little shrine to her, a statue out there.

In his later years, he got a little bit more eccentric. He had a garden and about five or six young women out there that kept him company and engaged in conversation with him all day. He had a full-time violinist playing, and they would sit there and hang out.

He taught a bull moose to pull a carriage. I think the name of the moose was February, and he would take him into town and cows would leap out of the road and I think people crashed into buildings. He’d scare the hell out of everybody with that bull moose. There are pictures of it out there that you can see.

JA: Are there? Because I was wondering about that and the…

LW: The bicycle railway? The Hotchkiss Bicycle Railway was basically a way for his workers here in Mt. Holly to take the two-mile trip out to his factory. He built bicycles out there. A fellow by the name of Hotchkiss who worked for him devised this rail system. It was basically a rail fence with an iron rail on the top that ran through pastures, creek beds, creeks, woods, all the way through over to where the Mt. Holly firehouse is now. People got on and went gliding over the landscape to work. Could you imagine that as your morning commute? People copied it: there was one down around Ocean City, and I think there were some other ones down by the shore. I don’t know how long they stayed. But it was up for about ten years and then they ripped it out. There’s some talk about trying to get that land corridor back to rebuild it.

There’s an existing rail bike that they have out there. Go out to the main door and there’s a rail bike right there. They found a bunch of the old rail bikes in a barn or attic somewhere here in town a couple of decades ago. There’s somebody out there with a collection of rail bikes.

RD: You’ve got your foot in both worlds. You could say we’re all kind of normal, but we love things, we have a fascination with them. So we’re in both worlds, too. Everyone who’s part of the magazine is.

LW: I’m an enthusiast. I participate in and cultivate people like that but I feel I’m more of a weirdo advocate than a weirdo. Real advocacy in our time: Weirdo justice. It isn’t like I’m one of those people who doesn’t realize that what he’s doing is strange. And I’m not necessarily saying that it’s a better thing or a worse thing, I’m just saying it is what it is.

Author’s Note: This interview was conducted in July 2008 and never published in the print version of Weird NJ. Since then, Lord Whimsy, whose real name is Allen Crawford, has gone on to do many more things, most recently the book, Whitman Illuminated: Song of Myself (Tin House, 2014), in which he painstakingly and beautifully illustrated the poet Walt Whitman’s most famous work. Whitman lived for a time in the Garden State and is buried in Camden, so anyone with an appreciation of lovely words and illustrations, the increasingly rare and heady aroma of new book ink, and the New Jersey connection should enjoy it. Article by Joanne Austin, photos by Ryan Doan.

There are two particularly isolated roads that wind their way through the rural farms and forestlands of Middletown that have attained legendary status over the years as places of mystery, mayhem and fear. The unlit, unpaved expanses of Whipporwill Valley and Cooper Roads, which are located adjacent to each other, meander over wooded hills and through deep cuts as they wind their way into the local mythology as the most scary roads in Monmouth County.

Some roads just seem to possess the aura necessary to put people in touch with their own most deep-rooted fears. In this respect they might be seen as passageways to the unknown, or a window into our own subconscious. It seems undeniable that many of the tales told of such roads reflect archetypal nightmare imagery such as ghosts, wild and ferocious animals, and evil hooded cultists or KKK members huddled around sacrificial bon fires. Tales of witches, and even the Devil himself wandering these roads are told without even a hint of disbelief. Maybe there is really nothing scary to be found on such roads at all. It could be that the road merely serves as a conduit, a pathway to our own innermost demons. If that is in fact the case, then a trip down one of these legendary byways may for some be a journey of profound self-discovery.

Of course there is a case to be made for the people who enjoy traveling such roads purely for the opportunity to revel in the thrill of scaring the wits out of themselves and their friends. Who among us can say that at sometime, perhaps in their teenage years, they didn’t pile their friends into an overcrowded car and set off to some allegedly haunted night spot. Jaunts such as these usually build to a fevered pitch before you ever reach your intended destination, due largely to the en route retelling of the site’s legends during the road trip. Nightriders on excursions like these are often so jacked up to witness something out of the realm of the ordinary, that over-anticipation alone might cause their eyes to play tricks on them. Perhaps a stray dog becomes a “Hell Hound,” or an innocent jogger transforms into a ghostly running apparition.

Whether these roads are actually the epicenter of hyper-mystical activities, merely favorite destinations for rowdy nocturnal joyriders, or perhaps a little of both, is open for debate. In any case, the abundance of historic and modern folklore they can conjure mark them as culturally unique and intriguing localities. They have proven their potential to strike fear into people’s hearts, as well as inspire personal reflection and revelry in those who visit them. Whatever the reason may be, one fact is indisputable: there are some roads less traveled throughout New Jersey, which possess some kind of indefinable, yet undeniable power.

Here now are some letters Weird NJ has received from its readers regarding two particular roads in Middletown that loom large in the local lore: Whipporwill Valley Road and Cooper Road.

Whipporwill Valley Road and the Baby’s Cries

I’ve lived down the street from Whipporwill Valley Road for 17 years and have heard numerous stories about the road. The weirdest thing I’ve heard about the road is that if you travel along it at night and stop or shut your car off, you’ll hear a baby cry (or what sounds like a baby crying) somewhere in the distance, and your car will not start up again. –Sunday

Cooper Road and the Cry Baby Bridge

My friends and I “ghost hunt” and look for weird places every chance we get. On Friday the 13th we decided to take a ride on the infamous Cooper Road in Middletown. Legend has it that a baby drowned in the water under the bridge that is now known as “Cry Baby Bridge,” and at 1:00 AM you can hear the baby cry. It also says that if you stop on the bridge and turn your car off, it won’t start up again. So at 12:45 AM we decided we’d stop on the bridge and see if the legend held true.

Two of my friends got out of the pick-up truck while I stayed inside, my back towards the right side of the bridge and my window tightly rolled up. Unexpectedly, I felt a cool breeze on my neck. The driver’s side window was open, with my friend standing outside of it. I told him to look behind me; when he did so, his mouth dropped and we all heard what sounded like a 400- pound man running through a foot of water.

We all screamed and my friends immediately leaped into the bed of the truck. I got behind the wheel and sped off without even turning on the headlights until I reached the end of the road. To this day my friend still swears he saw a man’s shadow behind me. –Kelli and Lisa

Whipporwill Car Jump

A kid on my floor here at Rutgers has gone to Whipporwill Valley Road many times. He’s actually witnessed people in Ku Klux Klan uniforms patrolling the road on horseback. A classmate of his in high school once went to the road and had the entrance of the road blocked off by a man on horseback. Luckily, the girl was driving one of those SUV’s and knocked over a fence to escape.

The most incredulous story he told me about this road involved his cousin. He was driving a van down the road, and someone actually leapt out of a tree and landed on top of his car! –Improve

The Witches Beneath Whipporwill Valley Road

Back in the 1800’s there were seven farmers who accused 15 women of being witches. They had a town trial and decided to burn these supposed witches at the stake. They were burned, then buried six feet under.

Before the witches were burned they put hexes on all of the farmers who had accused them, and ten months later they all died of a strange disease.

The farmers were buried ten feet away from the witches, who were buried outside of the cemetery. Supposedly when you drive down Whipporwill Valley Road today (which is still a dirt road), you will feel 15 bumps under your wheels, and on the way back you will feel 7 bumps. We all know what or who those bumps are supposed to be.

The really scary part of Whipporwill Valley Road is the fact that when you drive down the road there is a truck that appears out of nowhere and they will try to corner you. The people are dressed in KKK robes. This, my friend, is the truth. I experienced it myself in 1992 and that was the last time I went down Whipporwill Valley Road. –Moonbaby

The Cooper Road Phenomenon

Cooper Road is also situated in Middletown not far from Whipporwill. Down along this road asphalt pavement ends leading off to a bumpy dirt and gravel road. Surrounding this area are various farms and dense forestland. The farms date back to when most of Middletown was rural farmland.

The ghost story involving Cooper Road dates back to this time period. As the story goes, following an affair with a neighboring farmer, a farm wife gave birth to a child, dying in the process. Her husband, enraged at her infidelity and saddened by her untimely death, hated the child both for it’s bastard heritage and the death of his wife. A few months after her death, the husband killed the infant and threw its body into a local river in the Cooper Valley.

Many Middletown residents swear to the fact that during the night a car parked and turned off on the bridge over the river will be pushed across away from the river’s water. These residents will also swear that it is the ghost of the dead infant pushing them away from its watery grave. While it has become a right of passage for many Middletown teenagers to experience this phenomenon, accounts of this occurrence are not limited to the young. Teachers as well as older members of the community can also account for the mysterious ghost infant pushing them to safety. –Nina

The Ellis family plot as it appeared in the early 20th century.

For the past 186 years Mary Ellis has resided on what she probably thought would always be a stately piece of property overlooking the scenic Raritan River. In actuality though, Mary had really just been monopolizing a prime parking space for the better part of the Twentieth Century. The legend of how poor Mary came to rest beneath the asphalt of the Loews Theater parking lot on Route 1 in New Brunswick is a romantic, and ultimately tragic story, not unlike a Bronte novel.

As the story goes, Mary Ellis came to New Brunswick in the 1790′s to stay with her younger sister Margaret. It was around this time that she met and fell in love with a man who was a sea captain, and former Revolutionary War officer. The Captain sailed down the Raritan and out to sea one day, vowing that when he returned he and Mary would be wed. He even left her his beloved horse to look after in his absence.

Every day after her captain’s departure, Mary would ride his horse from her sister’s house, on what is now Livingston Avenue, down to the banks of the river to eagerly await a glimpse of her lover’s returning ship. In 1813, she purchased a parcel of farmland overlooking the river from which she would maintain her daily vigil. Mary died there fourteen years later in 1828, still faithfully anticipating her captain’s return. She was buried on the property, and was eventually joined by with her sister and other family members, and according to local lore, the captain’s horse.

The plot, which was originally surrounded by an ornate wrought iron fence, lay in a rural, wooded setting well into the mid-20^th Century. Over the years the ownership of the land changed hands several times, and the neighboring area has given bloom to a blight of strip malls, and discount outlets. Mary’s farm was paved over, and for many years was the site of the Route 1 Flea Market.

Mary’s grave at it appeared at the time of the Route 1 Flea Market demolition, circa 1993. Photo by Mark Moran.

Stranded high and dry in the Market parking lot, Mary’s four-foot-high grave remained adrift in a sea of tarmac and bargain hunter-mobiles. For most of that time the small, grassy island was enclosed by a chain-link fence and sporadically maintained by Mary’s descendants. Often though, the weeds on the plot were so tall that one could park right next to the grave without even noticing the two-and-a-half-foot tall marble head stone inside.

After the demolition of the Route 1 Flea Market some twenty years ago the property was redeveloped and became the Loews Cineplex. The parking lot was re-graded, making Mary’s grave stand even taller than before. Still parked in a prime spot, Mary’s grave has been given a new retaining wall, and a few small trees have even been planted close by. The final resting-place of Mary Ellis seems to have been given an extended lease. It’s just too bad the theater isn’t a drive-in.

Mary’s grave during Loews Theatre construction, circa 1994. Photo by Mark Moran.

A curious side note to the story of the parking lot grave is that it was believed by many to be the inspiration for the 1972 AM radio smash hit “Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl)” by the band Looking Glass. The local rumor was that the band, which was formed at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, wrote and recorded the song as an ode to Mary Ellis. “Brandy,” according to the song’s lyrics, was in love with a ship captain who could not leave his true love, the sea, to marry her. Sounds like a familiar tale, doesn’t it? Look Glass band members have denied there is any connection between “Brandy” and Mary.

A Weird NJ reader shares his memories of Mary…

There was Something About Mary

I read your Mary Ellis article and was intrigued. I grew up in New Brunswick and spent many hours playing in the woods along the Raritan River around the gravesite. In the 60s, the property was owned by the J.E. Burke Company. Their factory was close by Route 1 South and they had not bothered to clear or level the rest of the land.

As you came down river from New Brunswick through old growth trees, you entered a clearing that was on a down slope from the highway. This sheltered it from highway and factory noise. On three sides were woods. The grave itself was on a mound about ten feet up from the clearing floor. Surrounded by the remains of an iron fence, the mound was swathed in thorny wild rose bushes. At the top the tombstone lay flat, and the epitaph was very clear. This may have been because the canopy of trees overhead formed a portico that covered the stone.

The top of the mound offered a panoramic view of the Raritan, which must have been truly magnificent in Mary’s day before the Route 1 Bridge was built. The area had a dreamlike, fairy tale quality to it. It was never creepy or scary even to a little kid like myself.

Sadly, construction of the Great Eastern department store that eventually became the Route 1 Flea Market destroyed the site. Far from being up on a mound viewing the river, Mary’s grave was down in a culvert often strewn with garbage. At least the latest property owner, Loews Theatre, has put the tombstone up on high ground again with a commanding view of the river. –Andy B.

Dempsey House in the Leonardo section of Middletown (Monmouth County) sat quietly in the woods for many years as the legends about it grew. Really nothing more than a large pump house, the dark and rustic looking stone building is one of the last remnants of the vast Dempsey estate which once occupied the surrounding grounds. The building is made of a rare peanut stone native to the area that is a mix of quartz and other pebbles embedded into an iron-oxide rock. According to an article published in the Asbury Park Press in 2004, no one ever lived in the building. William S. Dempsey built the house in 1926 over an artesian well that provided water to a few local families, according to his grandson, Bob Dempsey, 55. The elder Dempsey planned to turn the upstairs of the pump house into a residence but never followed through. The family stayed in a white Colonial house across the street, built in 1895. Locals recount how the Dempsey children used to use the building as a playhouse.

Today, with suburban neighborhoods encroaching all around the wooded lot on which the Dempsey House stands, locals wonder what this unkempt relic from another age is still doing in the middle of their well manicured community. Those who have grown up in those suburban neighborhoods know a different history of the house, and why no one dares disturb it. Here now are just a few versions of the house’s story as told by Weird NJ readers:

Death at the Dempsey House

There is an abandoned house in Leonardo. It is right off of Route 36 by the bus depot. I know the house is known as The Devil’s Whorehouse.

There was an old couple living in this house years ago. They were the Dempseys. The old man was quite ill. He was bedridden in their second floor master bedroom. The old woman tended to her husband, bringing him food and water, bathing him, and nurturing him. She would run up and down the stairs twenty plus times a day. Then one day she went downstairs to begin the same daily tasks, but never returned upstairs. The old man waited helplessly for his caregiver to return, but she never did. He slowly died of starvation and dehydration.

Apparently after a while a call was received by the local police. I am not sure who tipped them off, but nevertheless a response was made. An officer went to investigate. He entered the house. As I recall, the story goes that whatever he had observed or experienced inside drove him to come outside and immediately hang himself on a tree in an embankment not far from the house.

The noose was cut down at the time that they took the officer’s body away, but the remains of that rope still sways in the breeze to this day. –S. Gold

Mr. Dempsey’s Ghost Still Roams Leonardo

There is a weird, evil, scary house in the Leonardo part of Middletown, in the middle of a residential area. It is known as the Dempsey Estate. The house has been condemned for years and the reason it’s standing is still a mystery to me and my friends that are constantly going at night to get a scare.

Supposedly a Mr. Dempsey and his family lived there. One Halloween, Mr. Dempsey lost it and killed his whole family. After realizing what he did, he hung himself from a tree in the middle of the street at the end of his property. All the kids on Halloween thought his body was just a decoration. Little did they know until daylight that it was his corpse. Some say at night, you can still see the noose hanging from the tree.

I personally believe Mr. Dempsey still roams his property. An evil feeling comes over everyone who sets foot on the property. The front of the house is guarded by a spooky looking rusted gate with a stone wall bordering the outskirts of the property. In the back of the building, there is a part that is opened and leads to the basement. There is also a stench that smells like a rotting corpse.

Another legend about the house was that after he killed his wife and three kids, Mr. Dempsey buried the bodies in the basement. Maybe that explains the stench! I have yet to go inside the house, nor would I really want to.   –George G.

Exploring Dead Dr. Dempsey’s House

In Leonardo, there is a house in a wooded area. It’s been boarded up as long as I’ve been alive, nineteen years. Legend has it that an old doctor lived there with his wife and young daughter. One night the doctor took his daughter and killed her in the basement, then when his wife came home he murdered her too, then drank acid to kill himself. –Greg A.

The Dempsey House – Where Wise Men Fear to Tread

My father used to keep a boat in Leonardo State Marina two blocks down from the Dempsey house. The place has been abandoned since the late 60′s or early 70′s. I took an adventurous friend with me there one night and this is the type of guy that isn’t afraid of anything. He got as far as the second step to the cellar and turned around and hoofed it back to the car where I waited on cop watch. –Ron D.

Today the Dempsey House sits on one of the last parcels of undeveloped land in the Leonardo section of the township. The township plans on preserving the house and the stone wall around it, because it considers it to be historically significant, but there are no other definite plans for the property. Township police Chief John F. Pollinger told the Press that none of the stories about a murder at the house are true. “There were all kinds of rumors, it spiraled out of control. But there was never a murder there.” Nevertheless, the legends still live on.

There’s a local cemetery attraction in Middletown known as the Dancing Jesus. It is said that if you visit the Mt. Olivet Cemetery at night (which is probably illegal) and shine your cars headlights on the statue of Christ, then stare at it long enough, it will begin to shimmy and shake for you.

Sam, from Middletown, wrote of his experiences with the dancing symbol of one of the world’s major religions at a cemetery along Chapel Hill Road. Pull into the main driveway and you’ll see its centerpiece: a life-size statue of Jesus.

Sam elaborated: “The statue, when stared at long enough, begins to dance, mostly moving its outstretched hands and undulating slightly. It’s a sight to see, and something you should check out. I’ve seen it, as have many of my friends, and always sober.”

Hey, sobriety is key.

A reader who goes by the initials CWC also had an experience with some friends in front of the Jesus statue:

“We all looked up at it, kind of laughing at the fact that people think statues dance, and then we all just stopped at the same time. Now, I’m not gonna tell you that the statue danced, but I’ll be damned if it didn’t move. It mostly seemed to move up and down slightly and move its hands from side to side a little. We didn’t know what to make of it and got the hell out pretty fast. We ended up waking our friends, calling them at 2:00 AM to tell them we just saw a statue of Jesus moving. Needless to say they had their doubts, but we’ll always know what we saw.”

And wait: Jesus doesn’t just dance in Middletown. Bob tells us of another dancing Jesus statue in a cemetery, “somewhere by or in Hazlet.” Here, the statue is located on top of a high gravestone, and according to Bob, “You are supposed to look at it for awhile (at night) with your car’s headlights on and then after like 10 seconds, you shut them off. If you do it right, the Jesus should do a little dance or wave. I saw it and it kinda looks like it’s waving to you. Whatever it’s doing, it’s damn strange.”

Amen to that.

Photo by Ryan Doan

The Hindenburg disaster took place on Thursday, May 6, 1937, as the German passenger airship LZ 129 Hindenburg caught fire and was destroyed during its attempt to dock with its mooring mast at the Lakehurst Naval Air Station, in Lakehurst, New Jersey. Of the 97 people on board (36 passengers and 61 crewmen), there were 35 fatalities. There was also one death of a ground crewman.

The disaster was the subject of spectacular newsreel coverage, photographs, and Herbert Morrison’s recorded radio eyewitness reports from the landing field, which were broadcast the next day. A variety of hypotheses have been put forward for both the cause of ignition and the initial fuel for the ensuing fire. The incident shattered public confidence in the giant, passenger-carrying rigid airship and marked the end of the airship era.

Though the disaster took place 77 years ago, some say that reverberations of the tragic event, of a paranormal nature, can still be felt around the Lakehurst Naval Base to this day––especially in Hangar No. 1.

Weird NJ readers share their stories…

The Haunting of Hangar No. 1

I was stationed at Lakehurst Naval Base, and let me tell you, Hangar No. 1 is indeed haunted. They used it as a morgue after the Hindenburg explosion, and there is a tunnel leading from the adjacent hangars where it was cooler to stow the bodies there. As adventurous as we were, no one would explore No. 1 after dark. There were serious bad vibes in that place!

Anyone in the hangar would get the “Let’s boogie now!” feeling. There were always footstep sounds up in the rafters. Something happened there to us, where a bunch of burly SEABEES all ran out screaming like girls, but for the life of me I can’t recall what it was. We were in one of the classrooms, doing MOPP training and we all ran out in the fishboots and charcoal suits, and it was high noon in the 90 degree mark! –Glen F.

Weird Lakehurst

My childhood in Toms River (’70s and ’80s) brought me to some fascinating places, namely Lakehurst NAS (Hindenburg crash site), where my father was stationed with Helicopter Squadron 75 in those days. The history of this facility is fascinating and really hasn’t been adequately chronicled for its unique place in New Jersey’s history.

Growing up in and around the base, I was given “free reign,” and allowed to wander and explore what was mostly abandoned, even back then. My father would take me around the base to see different parts of the facility, and it still intrigues me today. The Cathedral of the Air, which served as a base chapel for fallen aviators, sits quietly nestled in the pines. To me, it has an aura all its own. I once attended a funeral mass there for my father’s best friend, who was killed in a crash in the early 1980s. What makes that even more poignant to me, is that the man they buried that day took my father’s spot on the aircraft in which he and two others lost their lives.

The sites that I knew as a child still exist today, and have stories all to themselves. In short, I guess that Lakehurst still haunts me today. I think the dynamic history alone makes it “weird” enough. –Chris Richardson

Weirdness in the Skies Over Lakehurst

I’m an air traffic controller at Lakehurst Tower. We always get calls from concerned civilians and local police because people swear they are seeing dark triangles or large, round craft that are completely silent. Truth is, the triangles they’re looking at are really C17s conducting NVD (Night Vision) Ops with all their collision/landing/configuration lights off. Those huge, glowing spheres are actually test airships (blimps) that have an internal light that when lit makes the whole airship appear to glow a dull white. That being said, there are times we see things in the tower that we can NOT explain and do NOT match up with our radar, but when it’s your job to watch the sky all night, you have to get used to seeing weird things. On another note, the base is old as the hills and haunted as hell. –Yankee Oscar

Photos by Weird NJ/Mark Moran

This year marks the 86^th anniversary of the fatal crash of Captain Emilio Carranza, the “Mexican Lindbergh,” deep in a remote area of the New Jersey Pine Barrens. It was in the early morning hours of this day, July 13, 1928, that local residents of the town of Tabernacle heard the engine of a small plane stuttering over the vast and lonely wilderness of the during a terrible electrical storm. Piloting the struggling aircraft was a young Mexican captain en route from New York to Mexico City, guided by nothing more than a hand held flashlight. Soon the sound of the engine was heard no more.

Weird NJ reporter Kate Philbrick shares the story of her first discovery of the lonely monument to Carranza, located on a sandy road which bears the name of the fallen flyer in the heart of the pines. Kate writes:

A bright October day found me driving through the Pine Barrens. I was out to find the Carranza Monument in Burlington County. Marked in red on my map as a point of interest, I had no clue what it was. Some long forgotten settlement? A Catholic shrine? It would turn out to be more interesting than that.

The turn off Rt 206 had the only marker for “Carranza Monument.” Carranza Road cut through the village of Tabernacle and into Wharton State Forest. The trees flanking the road turned from oak to pine, and white sandy ‘roads’ veered off to the left and right, snaking through the scrubby brush.

I stopped occasionally to take photos, not pulling off the road. Three in the afternoon, gorgeous day, not another soul in sight. I passed no hikers, no other cars, saw no animals, and heard only crickets. Eventually, I saw signs for “Batona Camp Site” and “Batona Trail” (which is 50 miles long and tracks through several State Parks and Forests. Suddenly, the pavement ended and I was headed down a washboard road of packed dirt. After mile or two of bouncing around, I turned around, figuring I missed a turn.

By accident, I looked to the left after passing the Batona Camp. There was a wooden barrier along the road, bordering a sandy clearing. Standing in the middle of this space was a monument surrounded by yuca plants, looking like a chunk of Aztec or Mayan Temple. The Carranza Monument stands in the center of this open space, like a monolith from a National Geographic article about Middle and South American ruins. The sort associated with having your heart ripped out by priests, who then eat it and toss your body down the steps. The face of the stone depicts an ancient looking carving of what turns out to represent a dying bird, with footsteps leading away. The back of the monument had a cleanly incised arrow, pointing to the heavens. There were inscriptions on both sides, one in Spanish, the other in English. The stone itself was erected in 1930, and a number of pennies were laid out as tokens along the edge of the monument.

The weatherbeaten English inscription reported that the monument was erected to the memory of Captain Emilio Carranza. A metal historical marker on the road informed me that Emilio Carranza was ‘Returning from a goodwill flight, back to Mexico, when he fell to his death in 1928.’ The pennies of Mexican children financed the monument to their hero, the stone quarried from Coauila, his birthplace.

Captain Emilio Carranza, age 23, was considered the ‘Lindbergh of Mexico.’ He is still regarded as Mexico’s greatest aviation hero and was befriended by Lindbergh. He was the grand nephew of a Mexican president and the child of a Mr. Carranza and a Mrs. Rodriques.

Dedicated to his country, and idolized for his ideals and bravery, he had come to America in the summer of 1928 on a goodwill flight, in response to Lindbergh’s flight to Mexico City. During his visit he was nationally honored and greeted in Washington by President Coolidge. 

He was to return to Mexico in July, but several bad storms kept him grounded, and the American press and public urged him to put off departure. On July 12th, while dining at the Waldorf Astoria in NY, he was called away by a telegram. Immediately he contacted the airport and told them to ready his plane. 

Captain Carranza’s Mexico Excelsior left Roosevelt Field, Long Island, at 7:18pm, in the middle of a terrible electrical storm, against warnings by the weather bureau and airport officials. Residents of the Pine Barrens, near Sandy Ridge, recalled hearing the sputtering of an airplane engine during the storm. The next afternoon, the wreckage of his plane was discovered by a family out picking blueberries. Emilio’s body was found, still clutching a flashlight in his hand. It was believed he was flying low, looking for a clear place to land, when he hit the treetops, causing the plane to flip. In a day when small planes often lacked windshields, it is amazing to imagine someone using a flashlight in order to attempt a landing.

In the pocket of his partially destroyed jacket they found the telegram that had prompted his ill-fated departure. It was from his superior officer, General Joaquin Amaro, who reportedly wrote, “Leave immediately without excuse or pretext, or the quality of your manhood will be in doubt.”

The Carranza Monument, in its desolate clearing, marks the place where Captain Carranza’s body was found. Every year on the anniversary of his death, represenatives from the Mexican Consulate in New York come out to honor him, and on the weekend closest to the date members of American Legions Post 11 hold a small ceremony. It was Post 11 who took charge of Carranza’s remains until they were returned to Mexico.

On this lonely spot a Mexican hero was ‘martyred,’ as some say. But the uniqueness of the monument and the tragic tale it tells is worth the long trip deep into the Pine Barrens, where Emilio Carranza crashed landed into New Jersey history.

Carranza’s Ghost Will Get You

I haven’t found any explanation for the strange footprints embedded in the Carranza Memorial. No one seems to know when they appeared or why. We also can’t find any explanation for the pennies people leave all over it.

As the local lore goes, if you park your car at the gate, flash the headlights on the memorial three times and yell “Emilio” out the window, you will see his plane. Of course we had to try it.

We followed the instructions and about 10 minutes later my friend’s car stalled for no reason. We threw it in drive and began rolling out of there. She kept asking us what the lights were behind us. My other friend and I turned around and saw nothing! She swore she saw lights in the rearview mirror! We figured she was just trying to scare us, but suddenly we saw them too. They were too high to be car lights and too low to be a plane. Needless to say, she dropped the hammer and we got out of there as fast as a possible. —LokoKitty

Encountering Ghosts at the Carranza Memorial

There is an intensely frightening place not too far from South Hampton. It has been called Carranza for as long as I remember for reasons I don’t know. It is a long road, and there is a juvenile detention center that is about 1/2 way down the road. After that there is nothing. Just woods. All the way back there is a memorial site for a fallen military pilot. It is so haunted. There is something in the back trails that has left us running to our car faster than we even thought we could run. If you stand on top of the memorial site it is even more creepy. It is about 7 or 8 feet off of the ground. I have pictures from people with a fog around them on top of the stone. I was once up there. After taking some pictures I went to get off. I slipped and fell. I grabbed on by the tips of my fingers. I felt someone catch me though no one did. I shouldn’t have been able to hold myself up but I did. –Albert B

Photos by Weird NJ/Mark Moran

Story  and photos by Ryan Doan for Weird NJ

A couple of years ago, I was pulling an all-nighter at the Brick Kinko’s. Despite the steady injection of stale coffee and the occasional buzzing of other zombie patrons, I could not wake up––that is, until the atmosphere changed around me.

Where moments ago there had been the doldrums of everyone keeping to their business, suddenly there was a thunderclap of presence, a new burst of electricity in the air. Steamrolling into the place with her arms full of photos and documents, her flaxen hair fluttering behind her, was the smiling celebrity the Kinko’s staff knew all too well. Some call her Miss Football, others Miss Liberty, Miss Millennium, former Miss Super Bowl, Miss World Series, Miss NFL, Miss Body Beautiful U.S.A., Miss Opening Day. But Sondra Fortunato is something beyond her many titles; she is bigger than life itself.

Chances are, if you live or spend any time in the Brick/Toms River area you already know of Miss Liberty (my favorite of her titles), or have crossed paths with her before. If you are a sports fan or frequenter of any local New Jersey parade, you are sure to have seen her.

Miss Liberty, a New Jersey socialite and one-time Playboy bunny, is not your typical debutante. A mascot of sorts for almost everyone’s teams, she spends her time frequenting professional sporting events throughout New Jersey and even nationwide, holding up signs rooting for the players, hoping to get camera time, and making a general spectacle of herself. According to Miss Liberty, many professional teams have even hired her to “cheer” for them and help fire up the crowd. And if you haven’t seen her at a local arena, don’t worry––she also drives a well-known car around NJ that touts her many titles from cardboard signs that have been carefully Scotch-taped to its exterior.

I recently had the chance to meet up with Miss Liberty, which was not an easy thing to do. She is very busy, and her schedule is as full as the top half of the red, white, and blue gown she often wears to her appearances. I would’ve visited with her earlier, but as her voice message clearly stated, she “had that thing with De Niro.”

When I went to meet with her, Miss Liberty opened the door of the Sondra Estate in full regalia ––a green dress with a train and a Statue of Liberty crown. Several sashes were wrapped around her and many, many more were strewn over the floor. Laminated signs––literally hundreds of them––were piled everywhere. Here are some of my personal highlights from our conversation.

Sondra Fortunato: I’ve got to fix this dress. There is a malfunction. Well, you can airbrush it if you see anything you are not supposed to see. This is ridiculous. Vera Wang isn’t used to big busts, and these are real, too.

Good Lord, really?

I’m different. But that’s a good thing.

You have many titles––you are known by many names.

My titles, they’re all legit. I was honored by the National Football League Players Association in 2003; I’m the first and only female in the world [to receive that honor], so, I am very proud of that.

You’re the only one that holds that title?

Yes, that is correct. I am also in Who’s Who of American Colleges. I graduated from Trenton State College. I’m always a VIP guest at the NFL Draft and I go on the media and TV and I am the only female they chose. It’s fun. Fun life.

Do you live here alone?

Yeah, but I have a groundskeeper in the back upstairs. I have a girl that stays and cleans who comes one or two days a week. I also have family. My niece married the owner of Viacom. I love them, but don’t get to see them that much. I have a brother who is a heart surgeon. Then I have two sisters who are much, much older than me. I came after 25 years and they thought I was a tumor, my mother was so elderly when she had me.I was born with a veil. One out of a million babies are born with a veil. It means you are a little psychic, and I am. I do usually predict things. I thought Saturday would have been better for our shoot and look at all the rain today [Sunday].

You mentioned you know O.J. Simpson.

I’ve been friends with O.J. for over 20 years. I stood up after the press conference in New York with the 5,000 cameras, and I said, ‘Hey, everyone, don’t you think it’s about time now to bury the hatchet?!’ And he went, ‘Oh, my God! Bury the hatchet!’ Everybody just stopped. I didn’t mean it that way. Typical blonde, right?

You meant well.

I didn’t mean it, but I judge a person how I know them. But who knows? Only God knows and God is our judge with everything.

You are friends with Donald Trump too, aren’t you?

I like Donald Trump, he knows me, and he is a very nice man. Well, he knows who I am and would say hello to me. I’ll tell you what though, his girlfriend didn’t say too much. She didn’t look too happy when she saw me, I don’t know why.

You have been at this for such a long time. When did you first develop this persona?

Well, I’ll tell you what. When I was very, very, very, very young, I was on the beach. I must have been about 14, and this gentleman who was a former Mr. New Jersey came up to me and said that I should be on magazine covers. I said, ‘Oh, sure.’ And I started being on muscle magazine covers. That’s kinda how I got started. And then I won Miss Body Beautiful USA and then this and that. It kept going and going. It just kinda dominoed.

Let me show you all my baseballs. This was when I was Miss World Series. I hate to tell you what year it was. And I was featured on the World Series in 1983. The Phillies played the Baltimore Orioles. I was featured on there with my sash and everything. And Super Bowl ’82 was Miss Super Bowl City. It was so people would come to Detroit. I was also on TV there, on the Super Bowl.

Many years ago, at one game, all I did was walk in and literally stop the game. Everybody stood up and clapped. That’s how I got started; that and Giants Stadium. I don’t know what it is that I have, but the people like me. My name means good luck in Italian. I’m not all Italian though; I am Swedish and Italian. But sometimes I don’t know about my luck; look at today. We had rain.

I was Miss Kentucky Derby, that was a while ago, and the funny thing was [a horse named] Swell put his head on my chest, and this is terrible to say, but he died of a heart attack after that and I never heard the end of it.

He died from putting his head on your ample bosom?

Yeah, he died happy. What a shame. What a beautiful horse. That was fun too. I have done so many things. I don’t know––New York Post, Daily News; I’ve been in probably every publication throughout the country. The press printed my address once and 90,000 people came. We had to call the police. My ex-mother-in-law said to me when we were guests of Bill Clinton that there is no sense telling people these things because they won’t believe them.

Once when I saw Tug McGraw, I said, ‘Tug, what do you think, I’m an oldie but goodie!’ He said, ‘I only see the goodies.’

You are most noticed around central New Jersey because of your sign-covered car.

It’s like Starsky and Hutch with that car. People see that car––they know I am behind it, I’m down the street, or I am next to it. It’s a little interesting that I do drive the car but, you know, to take all the pictures off and put them back on, with so many parades and appearances; it would take hours. I want to keep the car as an heirloom. Plus, I couldn’t sell it with all the tape on it.

The police are very nice and everybody honks, everybody toots their horns, waves, or blows kisses. They leave me love notes on the car. Of course there are one or two that maybe don’t like it. But you can’t please everyone, and I have a very good heart and I never get angry with anyone, because everyone is entitled to their opinion.

It’s amazing because the New York Giants are very conservative people and they do welcome me whole-heartedly, with all their heart, and they are a wonderful organization. I am ‘Miss Big Blue’ for the Giants’ road show. It’s run by Byron Hunt of the Giants, former Super Bowl Giant. Now they want me to be part of another Giants road show. Jets, Eagles, it doesn’t stop there. Ravens out west. The Raiders; I was a Raider girl.

Obviously, you travel a lot.

Yes, I do. I take the car everyplace because I feel better lower on the ground. When I do have to fly, my clients pick me up in a helicopter.

Tell me about the Sondra Estate.

A little history…My grandparents hail from Johnson and Johnson. I put a lot into this house and this house has been on the cover of so many newspapers and featured in so many magazines, like Home Magazine.

By the way, this dress is about three thousand dollars and I have about 32 of them. I just like people and they don’t have to be famous. I don’t fit in with everybody, but most people kinda understand me once they get to know me. I was born and raised in New Jersey. I have it in my blood, I guess. I love Weird NJ––so colorful, so different. Different! That’s why I think I would belong in it.

Where would we be without people like you?

What a boring world this would be!

By Vince Chesner for Weird NJ

During a highly publicized round-the-world flight many believe that aviator Amelia Earhart was captured by the Japanese, possibly as a spy commissioned by President Roosevelt after crashing on Saipan Island, and soon after was executed. While others believe her plane might have ran out of gas and crashed somewhere in the South Pacific, which is the most widely accepted explanation for the disappearance. Yet there was also some that believed she may have lived out the rest of her life in a small town in New Jersey under the name Irene Bolam, whose name “appeared to be a code which spelled out in degrees and minutes of latitude and longitude the precise location of a tropical beach where Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan crashed after being shot down.” The belief that Mrs. Bolam was Amelia Earhart isn’t as far fetched as one would believe, in fact a book was written on the subject by a respected Earhart researcher. A book that was pulled from the market after Bolam ridiculed it as a “poorly documented hoax,” and filed a $1.5 million dollar lawsuit against publisher McGraw-Hill, submitting a lengthy affidavit refuting the claim. Although she loudly professed that she was NOT the famous aviator, still it was said that this mysterious woman from New Jersey had enough huge “gaps and holes” in her biography for some to believe she very well could have been Amelia Earhart.

Irene Craigmile Bolam (1904–1982) was a businesswoman and resident of Monroe Township, New Jersey. In 1970, a book called Amelia Earhart Lives set forth an allegation that she was Amelia Earhart. Bolam denied the claim and took legal action against the publisher, resulting in the book being withdrawn. The book, which was written by Joe Klaas with help from his associate Joe Gervais, a former Air Force major and an avid and respected Earhart researcher, was widely discredited. Gervais had first met Irene Bolam during a meeting of the Long Island Early Fliers Club in Long Island, NY. The moment Gervais met her he was stricken by how much he believed she resembled Amelia Earhart, or at least believing how much she looked like an older version of Earhart who would have been already in her 60s at the time they met. Besides the physical similarities between Bolam and Earhart, he was surprised to see the Distinguished Flying Cross ribbon and miniature major’s oak leaf that Mrs. Bolam wore that day, awards that were said to have been presented to Amelia Earhart during her career. From then on Gervais focused his research on proving that Irene Bolam was in fact Amelia Earhart and gathered enough information for the book. After the book’s release Mrs. Bolam furiously denied the book’s thesis stating: “I am not a mysterious woman, I am not Amelia Earhart—this is nonsense!”

In 1937 Amelia Earhart attempted to become the first female pilot to fly around the world. Flying a Lockheed Model 10E Electra, she followed a route that was close to the Equator. Along with her navigator Fred Noonan she began her trip on May 21, 1937, from Oakland, California. Flying east she attempted to stay over land as much as possible, touching down in New Orleans and Miami. From Miami she continued to the Caribbean and onto San Juan and then to Natal, Brazil, which gave her the shortest flight over the Atlantic Ocean. Soon they touched down in Senegal, West Africa and flew east across Africa to Karachi, India. From Calcutta they continued to Rangoon, Bangkok and then to Bandung in the East Indies. After making some repairs on the instruments and spending a few days due to monsoon weather and illness they continued onward to Darwin, Australia and then to Lae, New Guinea. From Lae they headed off for Howland Island, which was 2200 miles away in the Pacific Ocean. The two never arrived.

Some stories point to Amelia Earhart having survived through the years and that Irene Bolam could actually have been her, but closer investigation prove that it was all most probably untrue. Some see the two as looking very much alike but photo to photo comparisons showed they looked no more alike than any other two woman of northern European descent. Gervais went as far as seeking permission to fingerprint and photograph Mrs. Bolam upon her death to prove his beliefs, but was denied the opportunity. More recently National Geographic had hired a criminal forensic expert named Kevin Ricklin to study photographs of the two and had come to the conclusion that Earhart and Bolam were not the same person.

In 1981, it was said that a prominent Roman Catholic clergyman named Monsignor James Francis Kelley was telling acquaintances of having had an instrumental role in Earhart’s repatriation from Japan and helping create a new identity as Irene Bolam. In 1987 a book of Monsignor Kelley’s memoirs was published containing what’s said to be fictitious stories about his encounters with famous personalities, but it made no mention of Amelia Earhart. It was also said that in his later years the Monsignor suffered from dementia. Was there any truth to the Monsignor’s story or was it all just some tall tales from a mad priest?

Was Amelia Earhart trying to live out her life in privacy in New Jersey under the name Irene Bolam, or was it all just some poorly documented hoax concocted by a researcher trying to keep the legend alive? Some theorists believe that Earhart could have changed her identity to avoid the publicity, which would have occurred after her Japanese imprisonment, choosing instead to live out her life quietly in New Jersey. Although there was much eyewitness and hearsay evidence indicating that Amelia Earhart may have been around after her disappearance in 1937, there’s never been any solid evidence to support claims that Earhart had survived her trip around the world. Her disappearance remains one of the great unsolved aviation mysteries.

The preceding story is featured in #42 of Weird NJ magazine, which can be found on newsstands throughout the state and on the web at www.WeirdNJ.com.

Imagine it’s rush hour and you’re trapped in the bumper-to-bumper traffic hell that is Middletown. The grim procession of cars ahead of you lurches forward inch by inch in a herky-jerky crawl as pedestrian out pace you on the sidewalk. As you grind to a dead halt once more at an intersection you look to your left and then your right. There, laid out before you is a seemingly endless stretch of highway––without a single car on it! How could this be? You ask yourself as you crane your neck to gaze down its length in either direction. It spreads out as far as the eye can see to the north and to the south, car free, like an unbroken asphalt pathway to the promise land.

The ribbon of highway seems to lead in the general direction you want to go, though going anywhere seems better to you at that point than standing still where you are. So, you wonder, why aren’t any of the other drivers deviating from their present course and blazing a trail down this untraveled road? Have you just discovered New Jersey’s best-kept secret for avoiding the daily snarl of rush hour traffic? It is then that you notice a small sign posted at the entrance to this enticing escape route warning motorist and even pedestrian against venturing down this forbidden path. Still, you reason, what could the harm be? It’s just a little shortcut, maybe one that will cost you a minor traffic ticket, right? The temptation within you mounts as the other drivers around you begin to boil with frustration, banging at their car horns like angry caged primates. Should I go for it, you ask yourself, do I dare? DON’T DO IT, FRIEND!

Many roads in New Jersey could rightfully be considered treacherous. On some, drivers encounter traffic patterns organized in the most dangerous and inexplicable ways. Others are legendary for aggressive, unapologetic driving. As any Weird NJ reader knows, still others are treacherous for different reasons––they are the home of ghosts, strange unearthly creatures, and other things that go bump in the night.

But there is one New Jersey road that is arguably the most fraught will peril, and the least traveled of them all––Monmouth County’s Normandy Road. On the surface, Normandy Road is a peaceful wooded street with no traffic to contend with. In fact, it sees more animals crossing it each day than cars traveling on it. But those who dare drive on this road meet up with something far more frightening than bad traffic and rage-filled drivers. Drivers who travel down Normandy Road are set upon by the United States Military.

Beginning its journey at Naval Weapons Station Earle inthe sandy, piney wilds of the county, Normandy Road’s two lanes wind their way northeastthrough a peaceful rural setting at first. It then meanders undisturbed through fifteen miles of increasingly more congested suburban real estate on its way to the other Earle base in Middletown, occasionally crossing local traffic-choked arteries likeRoutes 520 and 35. Its vast car-less expanse seems to mock stagnant motorist whenever the byway has a chance encounter with another street, gliding beneath overpasses at the Parkway and Route 18. The road is completely off limits to civilians and is reserved exclusively for use by the military. But with dozens of unguarded entrances, the thing that makes Normandy seem so inviting is the fact that it is so accessible, yet so forbidden.

Naval Weapons Station Earle is a 10,000-acre area that on one end borders Colts Neck, Tinton Falls, and Howell. Normandy Road connects it to its other end, a three mile long pier at Sandy Hook, where Navy ships unload weapons or are outfitted with them. Half of the Navy’s weaponry on the East Coast is stored in over 240 storage units on this land. There are also many rumors that a large number of nuclear weapons are stored here. While this information is classified, some experts have theorized that at one point, over 100 nuclear devices were located in these woods in the heart of Monmouth County. It’s thought that most of them were removed by the early 1990s, but no official word has been offered on the matter one way or the other. Because of the weapons stored here, the area is highly guarded, and Normandy Road is off limits to unauthorized motorists.

A number of armed sentries regularly patrol Normandy Road, making their way through the woods, over a number of one lane bridges, patrolling both the road and the railroad that runs alongside it. On average, they catch one person a week who has attempted to use the road as a shortcut. Those motorists are set upon by armed military personnel and removed from the thoroughfare. Their punishment doesn’t end with a mere trespassing fine though. Anyone found traveling Normandy Road without permission is required to come before a United States Magistrate. They will pay a fine of between $100 and $500, and can face up to 30 days in jail for their transgressions.

There are many places one can go in New Jersey for a good scare. But there’s very few where one is forced to face off with the might of the United States military. Normandy Road is one such place––needless to say, it is a road best left less traveled.

By Michael J. Launay for Weird NJ

It was cold and rainy on the morning of May 23, 1701 in London, England; perfect weather for an execution. The convicted, William Kidd, was lead to the gallows, defiant to the end. The noose was placed around his neck and the wood block kicked out from beneath him. Although the rope broke and Kidd’s life was spared for a few moments, a second attempt put an end to the brief career of the one of the most famous pirates in history. The end of Kidd’s life was only the beginning of his legend though, for what most people remember him for is not his adventures, but his infamous buried treasure––which many believe is may still be waiting to be discovered right here in New Jersey.

Many people today are unaware of the role New Jersey, and especially the Raritan Bay shore, played in the lives of many pirate legends in the late l7th and early I8th centuries. The waters between Sandy Hook and New York City were infested with pirates and French privateers. Blackbeard raided farms and villages near what is today Middletown, and Captain Morgan often visited the area. A triad of politicians, businessmen, and ship owners who were either bribed by, or did business with the pirates, protected them. Many wealthy colonial families’ fortunes began by either investing in pirate expeditions, or buying plundered goods and reselling them at a large profit. Pirates were not only tolerated, but in many cases they were openly encouraged. The most famous pirate to ever trawl the Jersey waters was the notorious Captain Kidd.

Captain Kidd was a resident of New York City when he traveled to England in 1695 in search of a commission in the Royal Navy. He was born around 1645 in Scotland, and after commanding a privateer ship (a government sanctioned form of piracy against ships of enemy countries) in a successful expedition in the Caribbean, he established himself as a wealthy and politically connected colonist. Kidd then married a wealthy Monmouth County widow. Failing to gain a command in the British Navy, he was persuaded by political associates and schemers to seek a privateering license. With backing from many of the leading men of the time in England, Kidd was granted a license by the King to seize and capture French and pirate ships, and split the booty with the crown and his backers.

In May, 1696, Kidd set sail from England to New York City in his new ship, the Adventure Galley. On the way, much of his crew was impressed (forcibly drafted) by a British Navy warship. This forced Kidd to recruit a new crew when he arrived in New York and to pay them a larger share of the profit than he expected. He promised the crew sixty percent of the booty taken, but unfortunately he had already promised sixty percent to his backers. With this inauspicious start, Kidd left for the Red Sea to seek his fortune.

In the spring of 1697, the Adventure Galley arrived in the Red Sea. Kidd quickly forgot about his primary mission, and ignored various pirates he encountered. He even docked in the same ports with some, making no attempt to apprehend them, as he was commissioned to do by the license granted him by the King. Kidd did try to keep to his promise to attack only French ships at first. However, his crew quickly tired of allowing rich ships of other nationalities to pass unmolested, and attempted a mutiny. It was during this revolt that Kidd killed a gunner, William Moore, with a blow to the head, using a bucket as a weapon. The crew backed down, but Kidd was forever changed by the incident, and began to attack ships no matter what their nationality or origin. He had officially become a pirate.

After attacking and capturing several ships, Kidd made his name in pirate lore with the capture of the Quedah Merchant, a fabulously rich Indian ship traveling with silks, guns, spices and gold. He split some of the booty with his crew, scuttled the Adventure Galley, and sailed for the Caribbean on the captured Indian vessel, now renamed the Adventure Prize. Upon arrival, Kidd learned he’d been denounced as a pirate, and was wanted by the British crown. After scuttling the ship, he purchased a small sloop named the San Antonio and headed for Boston with a small crew and hoped to take care of the problem.

On the way to Boston, Kidd stopped at various locations in New Jersey, and dropped anchor off the coast of Monmouth County, in the Raritan Bay. From there he sent landing parties ashore to both New Jersey and New York City to fix his “pirate problem” by using his political connections and the proceeds of his captured booty. It was common practice for pirates to buy safety or pardons from corrupt colonial politicians. After bribing all the appropriate people, and hiding some of his treasure, Kidd left for Boston to meet with the governor.

Upon his arrival in Boston, Kidd was arrested by the new governor, a fairly honest man for his day, and imprisoned. He claimed to have hidden a treasure of 40,000 British Pounds, but rumors at the time put his missing treasure at 400,000 Pounds. Only 10,000 Pounds was ever recovered, and it was sent to England along with Kidd in early 1700. In order to protect prominent backers and associates, Kidd was given a quick trial before the Admiralty Court, with limited evidence allowed by the court, and some evidence suppressed by the prosecution. He was found guilty of the murder of William Moore and of piracy and was sentenced to be publicly hanged. He maintained his innocence to the end, and promised to retrieve his treasure to give it to his backers and the government if only they would release him and give him a ship. Whether he was telling the truth, or just trying to save his neck, we will never know.

After his execution, Kidd’s body was covered with tar, bound with chains, and hung over the Thames River in London as a warning to all future pirates. It remained there for years until finally it rotted completely away.

The Treasure Hunt in New Jersey

Soon after Captain William Kidd’s arrest, gold and other treasure worth about 20,000 pounds (more than $1 million in today’s value) was dug up on Gardiner’s Island off the coast of Long Island, NY. Kidd left it there in the care of Jonathon Gardiner, who cooperated with British authorities in retrieving it (amazingly, Gardiner’s Island is still privately owned by the Gardiner family after 400 years). The finding of this treasure, along with Kidd’s insistence of a fabulous treasure hidden elsewhere, began the never-ending search for the legendary buried treasure of Captain Kidd.

Although many places in New Jersey have been advanced as the site of Kidd’s hidden treasure, four have a particularly strong claim. One site is Cape May, where pirate and other ships often stopped because it was a source of fresh water. Another possible location is an island that was located at the mouth of the Toms River, an area that provided protection for pirates from the ocean elements. A third area is Sandy Hook, near where Kidd anchored on his final voyage in Raritan Bay.

Probably the most famous and plausible burial site was just north of Sandy Hook near Whales (Wales) Creek, which today is the southeast border of Middlesex and Monmouth counties. Just off the shoreline was a small island where some 17th century Spanish gold coins were found. This island became known as Money Island, and was located off the coast where Cliffwood Beach is today. It has long since disappeared under the eroding waters of the Raritan Bay, aided by extensive excavation over the centuries. Just inland from this location is a small body of water once called Duck Pond, but now known as Treasure Lake, where some additional gold coins were found.

What is not a legend, and cannot be disputed, was the existence of two gigantic elm trees, which were known as Kidd’s Rangers. One was at the mouth of Matawan Creek, in Keyport, and stood until the turn of this century. The other was located at Fox Hill, now known as Rose Hill. These trees, according to legend, acted as range markers to guide Kidd back to his buried gold, and Cliffwood Beach is centered between these two markers when sailing west from Long Island.

To this day, you can still see people occasionally searching for treasure at Cliffwood Beach using shovels and medal detectors. On occasion some tiny bits of gold and silver are sill found, but whether they are ancient or modern in age has not been determined.

Other Likely Places to Dig

The Raritan Bay is by no means the only place on the Jersey shore suspected to by the hiding spot for Kidd’s long buried booty though. In the book Down Barnegat Bay (Beachcomber Press, 1980), author Robert Jahn writes:

Another legend holds that Captain Kidd romanced a Barnegat farm girl by the name of Amanda, and buried a treasure chest near Oyster Creek, NJ. A different old story claims Kidd sailed up from Barnegat Inlet and landed on an island near Toms River, long since known as Money Island… Down through the years wandering beachcombers have occasionally found Spanish doubloons and pieces-of-eight, washed up on the beach at low tide…These rumors also say that Captain Kidd landed during his last voyage, and hid several chests filled with silver and gold near a pond behind a range of dunes by the shore, somewhere between Old Barnegat Beach and Sandy Hook.

In his book South Jersey Towns (Rutgers University Press, 1973), William McMahon relocates Captain Kidd’s coveted treasure a bit farther south in New Jersey. He writes:

In the late summer of 1698, according to Brigantine legend, the Barkentine which served as the flagship for the notorious Captain William Kidd…anchored near the mouth of Brigantine Inlet. Captain Kidd, his mate Timothy Jones, and several of the crew came ashore in a long boat, on the bottom of which rested a heavy leather and brass-bound sea chest which they buried among the dunes of the island. Later, according to the story, Kidd and Jones returned, dug up the chest, and re-interred it elsewhere. A fight ensued, and Jones was killed by Kidd, who buried his former mate beside the chest before departing. The alleged loot has never been found.

Will the ill-gotten fortune of the pirate captain William Kidd ever be found? No one knows. But the next time you’re strolling the shoreline along a New Jersey beach you might just want to keep your eyes open for a shiny souvenir in the rolling surf––because sometimes what glitters may actually be gold.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that Greek’s Playland in Monroe Township is the most unique park of its kind in the entire world. It would not be an exaggeration because to our knowledge there are no other parks of its kind anywhere else in the world! In fact, it’s such an unusual place that it actually defies definition, but certainly not description. Greek’s Playland is 87-acre theme park, without any real theme other than the fruitful imagination of a single visionary individual known simply as “The Greek.”

Greek’s Playland is only one of the names that this place had been called over the years, and there are no signs anywhere that actually bear that name. Some know it better as Display World or the Stone Museum. These days the moniker you will see when you enter through the vividly colored gates on Spotswood-Englishtown Road is “Garden Falls.” Around the grounds of the Playland you will find a hodge-podge of various “attractions” ranging from Cobra helicopter and M60 Army tank to a 30-foot tall brightly painted clown constructed from an old oil tank, a couple of telephone poles and assorted other refuse.

As a matter of fact, just about everything at Greek’s Playland has been recycled from something else, somewhere else. The Greek himself puts it simply enough when he tells us, “It’s all junk!” Around every corner of the winding Playland labyrinth there’s another unexpected sight to be seen, like a vast field of brightly painted truck tires, welded sculptures made from old bicycles and car parts, a miniature golf course that was designed so that the ball practically goes in each hole on its own, a disused driving range where the golf balls were once aimed at old satellite dishes, a paddleboat lake, a wooded trail festooned with hundreds of birdfeeders, a number of manmade waterfalls and other water features, pagodas and Japanese footbridges, cavernous exotically decorated banquet halls, including Mahal Gardens, a popular spot for Indian weddings, and enough parking to accommodate hundreds of cars and buses––there’s even a helipad!

The entrance to this mad world is watched over by Monroe the Dino, a ferocious dinosaur constructed from a old tractor backhoe, that roars and drools as you pass through the gates that it guards. The place looks like a fantastically amusing park––but Greek’s Playland is not an amusement park at all really—it’s not even open to the public and never has been.

So what exactly is Greek’s Playland then? That’s the question that we here at Weird NJ wanted to figure out, so we set out to find the only man who could really answer that question—The Greek himself. His real name is Spiro Drakoulakous, but nobody calls him that. Nobody even calls him by the name he shortened it to years ago, Spiro Drake. He is The Greek, or just Greek, to everyone who knows him. We visited The Greek this past recently to find out a little more about the man behind Greek’s Playland and to try figure out just what the place is all about.

There’s a stone museum at Greek’s Playland that displays an impressive array of gems, phosphorescent minerals and fossils from around the world, which the public can visit for free. That’s where you’ll usually find The Greek on just about any day of the week. He’s not a tall man, perhaps standing only about 5’5”, with a thick head of bright white hair that sweeps across his tan forehead. He is well into his 80’s and is dressed in the greenish-grey work clothes a janitor might wear as a uniform.

He told us that he build Greek’s Playland in 1970 as a place where handicapped children could come for the day and just have fun like any normal kids. Then he made the property available for no charge to state agencies that care for the blind, deaf, learning disabled and underprivileged.

The Greek says that his real mother abandoned him, leaving him in a coal bin during the Great Depression. “But listen, at least she liked me,” he says, with his a broad smile on his lips and twinkle in his eye. “If she didn’t like me she would have left me outside and I would have froze to death.” He was raised in a foster home in Middlesex along with a dozen other kids by a woman name Elizabeth Van Fleet, who he still refers to as “Mom.” While on her deathbed at the age of 105, The Greek made a vow to Mom, promising her, “I’m going to build something in your memory––something for the handicapped. I made an oath to her. The next day she died—the next day!” He also promised her that he would devote half of all the money he made in his life to charity.

So how does a poor orphan from Middlesex end up owning a 87-amusement park that nobody ever pays to get into? The answer to that question is a real rags-to-riches tale that The Greek clearly relishes in telling. As a young man he borrowed $500 to buy his first pick-up truck, a shovel and a rake and started his own landscaping business and over the years he continued to garner an increasingly wealthier clientele. Soon he became the landscaper of choice for the rich and famous, include customers like Jon Bon Jovi. His fortune made, The Greek set out in 1970 to make his solemn vow to his dying Mom a reality when he purchased 87 acres of what was essentially swampland in Monroe Township and began to transform the property into the wonderland that we see today. Then he set about building all the weird and wacky attractions that his whimsical heart desired. And every inch of the park was barrier free and wheelchair accessible.

Then he opened the gates to share his Playland with those less fortunate than himself––free of charge, taking in State and locally sponsored groups. Generally The Greek never participates in these events himself, preferring to revel in the joy he brings and happy faces of the kids from afar. To date more than 100,000 children and adults have visited the Playland, according to Greek.

The last two years have not been kind to him. He’s suffered two strokes, been diagnosed with diabetes, and had hip surgery. But while his physical challenges may have slowed his step a bit, they have done nothing to diminish his spirit. He’s been retired from the landscaping business for eight years now, and admits that money is sometimes tight, since the Playland was never open to the public as a recreational park and he has never charged his guests anything at the charity events. Private weddings now fund the place––there are three separate banquet halls, which can accommodate 120, 300, and 500 guests.

The Greek would like to see his Playland to go on forever, even after he’s gone, as non-profit enterprise. He was only married once, for a brief period of time in the early 1960’s, and has no children of his own. “This is my whole life,” he says. “That’s why I’m here everyday.”

It was great to see this enigmatic joy giver work his magic on the kids the day that we visited the Playland and we got the impression it was a day that they would never forget. And with that, we took our leave of Greek’s Playland and the kindly old elf who dreamt up this uniquely weird Technicolor wonderland all his own, and would generously share it only with the people who truly needed it the very most. Mom would’ve been proud.

Garden Falls and the Stone Museum are located at 608 Spotswood-Englishtown Road in Monroe Township. Visit them online at www.gardenfalls.com.

The preceding article is and excerpt of a full-length feature found in the current issue of Weird NJ magazine, #43, which is now available on newsstands throughout the state and on the web at www.WeirdNJ.com.

One of the newest additions to the Playland is the tent that Elwood Hires and Cynthia Berlinger lived in for five years during their occupation of Tent City community in the woods of Lakewood. (See Weird NJ issue #42.) When The Greek was told that the township planned to bulldoze the beautifully appointed makeshift residence, he had the entire home transported to Monroe where it was lovingly reconstructed inside and out and put on display for visitors to see.

All photos ©Weird NJ/Mark Moran