50 States of Wonder
7 Spots to Explore New Jersey’s Horrors, Hauntings, and Hoaxes

There’s no better place to become acquainted with the urban legends of New Jersey than this shrine to the supernatural. Along with a library and collection of curios that includes more than a few haunted dolls, its on-site museum displays the supposed skull of the Jersey Devil. 

The most popular legend about the local cryptid dates to the 1700s. In the time since, its image has evolved into something akin to a bipedal horse with wings, claws, and a forked tail. (The skull at the museum, meanwhile, looks a bit like a dog with ram’s horns.) Though a string of “sightings” in January 1909 were proven to be the work of a man trying to promote his sideshow, New Jersey still embraces its cryptid, most famously as the namesake of its NHL team. (Read more.)

Walk over the railroad tracks, behind the abandoned distillery, and you’ll hit what some consider the portal to Hell. Built as a series of storm drains, these subterranean tunnels are now covered in graffiti with warnings like “Turn back while you still can,” as the pitch-black paths are said to lead to the devil himself. Some say the winding tunnels were once used as meeting places for devil worshippers and the Ku Klux Klan, and that bones from human sacrifices lurk around every turn. While most supernatural dangers are unsubstantiated, visitors should still proceed with caution: In 2017, a rescue team pulled an injured explorer out of the tunnels after he fell 20 feet through a metal grate. (Read more.)

There are several competing origin stories when it comes to the name of this street in Warren County. Is it named after a series of murders that took place beneath its trees? A malaria outbreak attributed to the nearby swampland’s mosquitoes? Or was it named by a band of ruthless outlaws who once ruled the area? No one knows for sure. What visitors can say is that strange things seem to occur around the sinisterly named street, from the specters that reportedly rise from Ghost Lake to the haunting whispers that apparently echo in a cave known as the “Fairy Hole.” (Read more.) 

Shades of Death Road, Ghost Lake, and the Fairy Hole are all located within this oddly named state park. Most legends surrounding Jenny Jump center on a girl who supposedly jumped from one of its cliffs in the mid-1700s. Less-dramatic explanations suggest the name could simply be an Anglicized version of the original Lenape term for the area. No matter how it earned its moniker, the park boasts plenty of paths where modern explorers can hike up to the top of the mountain and appreciate the view. (Read more.)

Unlike Jenny Jump or Shades of Death, Tripod Rock’s name is pretty straightforward. The large boulder is precariously perched on three much smaller rocks. Scientists speculate that a receding glacier dropped the boulder in its current position. Others believe that early inhabitants of the area levitated it into place with magic, and the site now represents a powerful energy nexus. It is possible that Paleolithic humans used the geological oddity as a primitive sundial—whether they set it down magically or not. (Read more.)

On the night of October 30, 1938, a radio broadcaster announced that a huge cylinder had crash-landed in the community of Grover’s Mill. “From time to time I catch sight of a Martian above the black smoke,” a Professor Pierson reported from the scene. “Pierson” was actually the actor Orson Welles, and the broadcast was a radio play based on H.G. Wells’s alien-invasion novel The War of the Worlds. The dispatch was fake, but it caused a very real scare among some listeners (though early reports of widespread panic were later debunked). Today, a plaque in a Grover’s Mill park commemorates the site where the fictional alien arrival occurred. (Read more.)

In a rural corner of Bernards Township, a path leads to what locals consider an ominous oak. This is the Devil’s Tree, said to curse anyone who harms or touches its trunk. The tree’s sinister origins are said to date back to lynchings that took place on its branches, but these claims of on-site murders are unsubstantiated. The connection to a racist past is not without evidence, however, as there was a strong Ku Klux Klan presence in the area in the 1920s, with rallies, initiation ceremonies, and cross-burnings. (Read more.)