A cursed house? A stalker? This house garnished almost notoriety as the Amityville house. The new owners started receiving mail addressed to "The New Owners" that sent chills up and down their spines. There was someone called the "Watcher" that was...watching them from a short distance.
Clinton Road has been described as one of the most haunted roads in the United States. Many deaths, along with many legends occurred along this stretch of road. One of the legends include that of a boy who supposed was struck and killed by a car. His ghost hangs out under the bridge and will toss a coin back to you if you deposit one into the water.
Many people have raced down this road and have lost their lives.
A murder occurred on this road when the hitman known as the ICEMAN took the life of a victim and dumped the body in the woods.
"BURLINGTON COUNTY COUNTRY CLUB:
Burlington County, New Jersey
by Chris Chaos
***NOTE***: The partial article concerning the Country club itself is located at the bottom of this article and the top section deals strictly with the shaking knob.
The door knob in question
A few years back we investigated a country club that people thought was haunted. There are several spots and locations within the building and property that gave you a "weird feeling" but after the investigation we only came across two anomalies that could not be explained. The first was the door leading from the men's locker room into the boardroom vibrated and shook for no logical reason. It was late at night (after midnight) and no one other than our team members were present. The location is private and distant from any major roads and traffic. We timed the AC unit to make sure it was not vibrating the building and causing the knob to shake. This is one of the few and very rare occurrences that we came across that was not readily explainable.
The Bar area
The second anomaly was in one of the photos taken in the bar area appeared that a being was peering into the window from the outside. Humorously it curiously resembled Bigfoot, but once we analyze the photo in greater detail we will release it.
May 4th, 2012 the investigation was conducted. This is a building with a rich history and was built in 1929. Prior to it being a golf country club it was an old farm house. Throughout the years the owners added on to the original building and made it approx. four times as large. We can only speculate how many old timers must have had heart attacks on the golf course and keeled over. There are several spots on the property that you always "get that feeling" when you are there. The first location is on the second floor in the entrance way to the men's locker room. For some odd reason when you go through the door it always feels like someone or something is right behind you. The hairs on the back of your neck and arm stand on end and you feel a presence. In the same section there is a door that leads to the boardroom and on an occasion we filmed the door knob rattling for no reason (See above for the results).
More of the bar area
The second location that many people feel something odd is the hallway leading back from the ladies locker room and the administrative offices. It feels as if there is an unknown watcher creeping around the corner, the hairs on your neck stand up and the atmosphere makes you feel uneasy. When the normal lights are turned off the safety lights come on and they are tinted red and give an ominous glow to the surroundings.
The other creepy location leading to the admin offices and woman's locker area
We did a session and took many photos but all appeared normal except for one photo. It was in the dining room looking towards the windows, it looked as if a Bigfoot creature was peering into the window. With the naked eye you couldn't see anything and the photos from other angles didn't show anything out of the ordinary.
Other notable info concerning this property is that there are also approximately 20 feral cats that roam around on the property and deer also strut across the course being so near to the forests.
The video of the door knob
(Chris Chaos is a long time resident of South Jersey who once again resides in and writes from Gloucester City, New Jersey. He is a filmmaker, a business owner, writer, urban explorer and investigator of the odd and weird, has a black cat named Jynx, four rats: Phantom the Dumbo Rat, Abbey the Albino, Hopping Heath and Climbing Carol, a proud parent, happily taken and a connoisseur of hot wings. Chris can be reached at AxisVideo@aol.com)
Back on February 10th, 2010 we ventured off to find Martha's Furnace in Chatsworth, New Jersey. It was late at night and very dark, we did not have a jeep but we did have a car that was ill equipped for the terrain that we were to venture down.
The mysterious handprint on the trunk
Across the street from the Historic Harrisville Ghost Town Ruins,we started down Martha Road, the road is simply a dirt road but eventually graduates to a loose sand and grass path that should be traversed either by foot or by Jeep.
Atco New Jersey. There has been a story circulating in the area for decades, a ghost story, a fable, legend...but is it based in truth? Atco is named after the Atlantic Transport Company. Or was it named from an old Indian word for "Land of Many Deer"?
The Atco Ghost video (Axis Video)
Legend has it that many years ago, on Christmas night, a young boy was chasing his basketball into the street and was hit by a speeding car, whose driver may have been drunk, killing him instantly. The driver decided to run for fear of what he just did, he had to perform a U-Turn since this road is a dead end. The person in the car had to pass the body of the child that he just hit. Hence why it is part of the legend that you must drive to the gate of the sewer plant and then turn around.
[1]
Alternative stories state that a truck leaving the factory at the end of the road hit the child after he ran into the street chasing his ball he just received on Christmas.
On Burnt Mill Road in Atco they say that under VERY specific circumstances, you can see the ghost of this boy playing in the street. The legend states that if you go to Burnt Mill Road in Atco NJ at midnight and park three telephone poles away from the opening in the fence of the sewer plant (where a crack splits the road from one side of the road to the other) and face the area in front of the house (approx the 500/600 "block") and honk your horn 3 times, blink your headlights 3 times and wait....and IF the conditions are right, you may just see a little ghostly boy run into the road chasing the ball in slow motion. Some say that if you turn off your car and walk about 20 feet away you might see the boy appear and look into the car to see if it was the one that killed him. There supposedly have been many eyewitness accounts attesting to this over the years, but many of the people telling the story state that they have not seen anything but...their cousin, brother, uncle, or whoever has seen the ghost of this boy.
[2]
Burnt Mill Road comes off of the Old White Horse Pike and leads to a sewer plant and then promptly fades into a dirt road (that used to be traveled by horse and wagon) and now only an ATV could traverse, finally ending into Fleming Pike near Sandy Causeway. There are many interesting sounding names in the Pine Barrens, here we have Swamp Road Wild Cat Branch and the Sleeper Branch. If you follow the various soft sanded roads you could find yourself on Rt 206, along the Mullica River or on your way to Batsto.
Google map of Burnt Mill Road, star marks location of The Atco Ghost
Atco, in the middle of the Pine Barrens...Atco Raceway [3]..people like to drive fast. Burnt Mill Road is a long straight road that cars can build speed and maybe inspired by any of the race movies of the time, people were testing their mettle along this road and set the process into motion to create the legend of the Atco Ghost.
Despite all that is contained within the legend of the Atco Ghost, there was never any record of a little boy being hit by a car (or truck) on Burnt Mill Road, and killed.
"The only ghost around here is Holy!" from the sign in front of the Atco Assembly of God [4]
For my personal experience with the Atco Ghost...in the late 90's a friend of mine familiar with the story and with the area took me to Atco one late night so we could try and experience the legend ourselves. We followed the rules and waited...and waited...and waited...and waited....but nothing happened.
Ghsthunter's video on Youtube
Uploaded on Oct 15, 2006
"On Friday the 13th 2006 I went in search of The Atco Ghost on Burnt Mill Rd in Atco NJ. I didnt realize I had caught it on film until I reviewed the tape. The ghost is a little boy that was hit by a car when he was crossing the street chasing after a ball."
Stills supposedly of The Atco Ghost from Ghsthunter's video on Youtube
Stills supposedly of The Atco Ghost from Ghsthunter's video on Youtube
In an interesting sidenote..when I was doing research for The Atco Ghost I was using Google Maps to track down the exact location of where you are supposed to perform the tasks to get the little ghost boy to appear....can you guess what the address is for the exact locations? ha
In the coming weeks we plan on going back and investigating further.
REFERENCES:
[1] Artist rendering of Acto Ghost boy
[2] Screenshot of the Atco Ghost location from Google Maps
[3] http://www.atcoraceway.com/
[4] http://www.atcoag.com/
(Chris Chaos is a long time resident of South Jersey who once again resides in and writes from Gloucester City, New Jersey. He is a filmmaker, a business owner, writer, urban explorer and investigator of the odd and weird, a proud parent, happily taken and a connoisseur of hot wings. Chris can be reached at AxisVideo@aol.com)
Many opportunities can present themselves and it can be quite difficult to sift through them all and determine what is worth devoting your time to. This situation occurred to us back in 2008 when we were approached by a well known cable television channel to produce a "ghost hunting" themed show based on the work that we were doing with our Jersey Devil documentary and our plans to film a documentary and write a book series that eventually became known as "CURSED: An Explanation of the Unknown". An actress that we used in one of our shorts connected us to the producers and we were highly appreciative. Being approached by the producers of the channel was mighty interesting to us and this was also prior to the fad of all the current “ghost hunting” television programs. They wanted to follow us around as we conducted office and field investigations in the search for the Jersey Devil and also the various abandoned and supposed haunted locations that we were investigating at the time.
In initial meetings this project seemed promising until they starting dictating terms that would end up being misleading and false for the viewers. We wished to conduct legit investigations, research and provide the evidence backed by science that we collected, but they stated that if nothing was found that we would have to embellish it with "exciting“ insertions of E.V.P.s, orbs, sounds and other encounters that may have not occurred. using logic we countered back that there is no scientific based concerning orbs or E.V.P's and they have been disproven many times over. They countered with "It doesn't really matter, we wish to entertain the audience, not educate them." We rebelled and stated our points again on how we wished to conduct legit investigations and provide the results without embellishments. The producers restated their terms and said "Take it or leave it.“ They wanted me to sign a waiver that included following their script and give them permission to take creative liberties in the editing process to use as they see fit. I didn't want to go through all that we did and would just to have our findings distorted and manipulated.
The pay per episode with the addition of riders and perks were very enticing, but compromising and allowing the producers to manipulate the information would just defeat the whole purpose of the documentary that we have been working on for many years. For the most part each episode was almost as scripted out as a sitcom or a movie. There were certain points that we had to make and we had to find something "haunting" or "positive evidence" in each show, if not, it would be added in later.
We had one last meeting hoping that we could have our terms reconsidered and we could do a straight up investigative show without anything fake or misleading being inserted into the program. The producers wouldn't budge and stated that the clause would still be in effect that things might be added to spice the show up at their discretion. So we declined and moved onto the next project.
So here we are heading into 2015 with an awesome track record and much information for our Jersey Devil documentary called "THE SEARCH FOR THE JERSEY DEVIL" (along with 2 books on the subject) and the CURSED series which will contain 3 books.
Cursed: An Explanation of the Unknown:
http://www.amazon.com/Cursed-Explanation-Mr-Chris-Chaos/dp/1497537436/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1418922533&sr=8-2&keywords=cursed+an+explanation
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
https://www.facebook.com/Cursedbook
or
https://www.facebook.com/TheSearchForTheJerseyDevil
(Chris Chaos is a long time resident of South Jersey who once again resides in and writes from Gloucester City, New Jersey. He is a filmmaker, a business owner, writer, urban explorer and investigator of the odd and weird, a proud parent, happily taken and a connoisseur of hot wings. Chris can be reached at AxisVideo@aol.com)
How priming can set you up for failure. Priming is activating particular associations in memory. An example might be watching various paranormal shows on TV prior to investigating a location, or reading books concerning ghosts. Although popular concenses may state that the particular location IS haunted, consider all possibilities as to why and how people came to this conclusion about the location. Many locations get the attribute of being haunted for many reasons. Some may be for tourism reasons, others may be that it was a former mental hospital or prison where many atrocities have occurred. Some business owners have been known to start the rumor that their establishment is haunted to draw in interest and more business. For once you have a belief, it influences how you perceive all other relevant information. If you enter a location believing that it is haunted, then every noise you hear, every shadow that you see will convince you further that the place IS haunted. Most likely the noise that you heard came from another team member clumsily stomping around, or a mouse, a bird or possibly a homeless person that seeked shelter in the building that you are investigating. Entering a location with a neutral frame of mind will produce far greater and accurate results. For every piece of information that you gather that confirms your original thoughts and suspisions, try to find a piece that will disprove it. Opposing information is just as important as information that is confirming, if not even more important.
A healthy and appropriate amount of skepticism will usually yield correct results. With each piece of evidence that confirms your beliefs or what you suspected, please reserve some skepticism to test if the original theory is correct. Confirmation bias (a tendency to search for information that confirms one's preconceptions) is usually counter productive without "conflicting" evidence.
William Shakespeare said it best: "The error of our eye directs our mind: what error leads must err"
Usually when one has a solid belief in if a location is haunted or not they ignore all contridicting evidence. This is called Belief Perseverance (persistence of one's initial conceptions, such as when the basis for one's belief is discredited but an explanation of why the belief might be true survives). Many are enticed by the unknown and thrive on the thrill of the hunt, not really caring about the futilness of actually finding anything that is logical.
Amatuers fueled by the popular ghost hunting TV shows, riled up by the stories in Weird NJ and inspired by reading a ghost story may prematurly set off to a location and conduct an impromptu “ghost hunting” session having not properly conducted the research needed to come to any sort of logical conclusion. Usually this behavior is mirrored by individuals that feel the need to either vandalize, take souvenirs or drink and party at the location, disrespecting everything in the process.
"We hear and apprehend only what we already half know" Henry Thoreau
I never really liked the term “ghost hunter”, it always conjured up images of rednecks hopping into a pick up truck and heading off to an adventure. Also are you really hunting ghosts? Or are you investigating a specific location that was rumored to be haunted, using scientific measures to determine if the place is haunted or not? For us we do enjoy venturing to locations that even angels fear to tread. Many of the locations that we researched and documented are/were in danger of being torn down in the name of progress. As reported, after we walked through, took photos, did tests and noted the history and logged our experiences many of the locations have been torn down.
We have documented the history, researched why the location might have been deemed haunted, took photos/videos and conducted experiments to see if there were any spirits at the location. We consider ourselves urban explorers, documentors of historic architect, investigators of the paranormal, preservers of legend and lore. We preserve the various legends and lore of the place with the scientific research of the history of the location to come to our conclusions.
Sometimes this works backwards and the Misinformation Effect may marry Hindsight Bias. The Misinformation Effect is incorporating misinformation into one's memory of the event, after witnessing an event and receiving misleading information about it. Hindsight bias, also known as the knew-it-all-along effect or creeping determinism, is the inclination, after an event has occurred, to see the event as having been predictable, despite there having been little or no objective basis for predicting it, prior to its occurrence. What this means is that you may go out and investigate a location, gather all your information and then when the investigation is complete an outside source may tarnish the gathered evidence by interjecting information that was misleading or bad information. You may look back and figure that whatever was said might have actually happened.
Happy exploring and documenting!
(Chris Chaos is a long time resident of South Jersey who once again resides in and writes from Gloucester City, New Jersey. He is a filmmaker, a business owner, writer, urban explorer and investigator of the odd and weird, a proud parent, happily taken and a connoisseur of hot wings. Chris can be reached at AxisVideo@aol.com)
This green house is located on Kings Highway in Mount Ephraim NJ has been historically dubbed as "creepy". Why you ask? Well for one this house has all its front windows lined with dull eyed porcelain dolls. The other fact is that no matter what time you drive past this house you will NEVER see a person outside nor do you ever see a light on at night time. Who lives here? How come you never see a light on or a sign of a person on the property? And most importantly, what is going on with all the dolls??? We can only speculate (based on info pulled from the tax records and Zillow) that an older couple or widow lives here.
UPDATE: Recently the house has been painted white, the dolls have been removed and the house is up for sale. We can only make assumptions as to what happened to the dolls and the previous owner(s).
But why speculate when we can find hard data through real estate transactions, tax records and death certificates. For privacy reasons I will leave out the previous and current owners info but public record states that the previous owner (1919 - 2011) passed in 2011 and the house was sold in 2012 to a new owner.
UPDATE: 7-17-14 We drove past fabled location last week and noticed that The Creepy Doll House of Mount Ephraim was painted/remodeled for a third time.
Pulled from Zillow:
DATE EVENT PRICE
12/06/12 Sold $99,900
04/11/74 Sold $33,000
(Chris Chaos is a long time resident of South Jersey who once again resides in and writes from Gloucester City, New Jersey. He is a filmmaker, a business owner, writer, urban explorer and investigator of the odd and weird, a proud parent, happily taken and a connoisseur of hot wings. Chris can be reached at AxisVideo@aol.com)
This trip was a long time coming, for about 2 months we kept making plans to go back for the update but weather and circumstance kept getting in the way. But on this 4th of July during Hurricane Arthur we experienced a cool down with the temperature so we decided to go.
We pulled up the Prospect street, a hidden little road nestled next to THE MOUNT in Mount Holly, New Jersey. All looked the same at the onset, but we did notice quite a few of the larger older trees have collapsed. We entered the trail and we see they did make it a bit more accessible by adding wood beams every few feet to help with footing. Some of the trails were a bit more wide also.
The WITCHES WELL was to the left of us and up a hill, it appeared that they put up a more heavy duty fence along with more security cameras. More on this shortly.
We continued up the path a few more feet and saw more trees that fell over. The main path that leads to the HOLY HOLY HOLY ALTAR also had a few wooden beams inserted to help in the climb. About halfway up I saw what appeared to be a white dog laying off to the side..upon approach I saw that it was actually a goat....about 20 of them behind an electrified fence! Bonus! They were there to clean up some of the rogue vegetation that is
present on THE MOUNT. The coolest one was the solid black horned goat.
Passing the goats a few more feet we came upon The Altar where in previous times many supposed witches met their doom by hanging. The Judgment Table is still there but the only the base of the pole that was used to hang the witches remains. On my 1st visit here most of the pole still stood. About a year ago they added the benches here in an attempt to make the location a little more family friendly and to take away some of the mystic that has been associated with these grounds. I noted that sex magik rituals still take place here due to the paraphernalia behind the Altar along with condom wrappers.
Proceeding up THE MOUNT we came across the 2 Geodetic survey sites on top that are positioned all across the USA to measure earth quakes and tectonic plate movement. One of the 1st settlers of Mount Holly also used to have a house up here. Many of the bricks and masonry rubble can still be found spread out across the land here.
Venturing down THE MOUNT we passed The Holy Holy Holy Altar again and preceded to the Mount Holly Cemetery which has a tribute site to a witch that could not be buried within the property of the cemetery. Sadly many vandals destroyed the gifts left here and they could be found smashed and scattered all over the grounds.
After visiting the Witch Tribute site we headed back to the beginning and ventured up the huge hill to the left of THE MOUNT. At the top of the hill is a big barb wired fence with several security cameras that take photos of anyone attempting to vandalize or trespass onto the property were THE WITCHES WELL is. There are quite a few legends associated with this location, but 2 stand out. The 1st is that a witch was thrown down the well but did not die, instead she lived for a few days and cursed the land. The townspeople then built the brick building over the well in an attempt to seal her in. Legend states that if you knock on the huge metal door you will hear 3 knocks come right back at you from the witch. The 2nd legend is that a witch summoned the Jersey Devil and then he killed her, then the Jersey Devil was cast in the well and the brick structure built over him.
(Chris Chaos is a long time resident of South Jersey who once again resides in and writes from Gloucester City, New Jersey. He is a filmmaker, a business owner, writer, urban explorer and investigator of the odd and weird, a proud parent, happily taken and a connoisseur of hot wings. Chris can be reached at AxisVideo@aol.com)
This ominous tree stands sturdy in Oaklyn NJ, on a small peninsula jutting out from a public park in this quiet suburb. This location is used by teens as a party spot and you can see beer cans and other evidence of partying on the ground near Newton Lake right off of Manor Ave.
Stories range that anywhere between 6-12 people took their own lives by hanging themselves from this tree over the years. It was on a bright and sunny Sunday we went to visit the tree beside the lake. Upon inspection of the tree we noticed the swastika was stripped from the tree and appeared it might have been painted over several times and 2 of the main branches that were used in previous suicides were cut down to "prevent" future attempts. A rope that was used by the last person that hung themselves can still be seen on an upper branch after they cut the person down. This tree is also in close proximity to the notorious location known as Haddon Lake. Rumor also has it that on Manor ave someone committed suicide in one of the houses.
For more writings of Chris Chaos visit: http://allthingsweird88.blogspot.com/ (Chris Chaos is a long time resident of South Jersey who once again resides in and writes from Gloucester City, New Jersey. He is a filmmaker, a business owner, writer, urban explorer and investigator of the odd and weird, a proud parent, happily taken and a connoisseur of hot wings. Chris can be reached at AxisVideo@aol.com)
