This evening I was reading this story (http://news.yahoo.com/clinton-road-jersey-most-terrifying-road-u-194000764.html?bouchon=504,pa) about the "most haunted road in America" which according to the author is in West Milford, NJ. Apparently when one drives down the road, headlights appear out of nowhere and follow the car aggressively, only to disappear upon reaching a main thoroughfare or another car showing up. Reading this story triggered some very fond (and scary!) memories I have of ghost stories and the fantastical tricks they can play on your mind and shape your opinions of certain places.
West Chester, PA and the surrounding area is quite historic and, if one is inclined, it's not hard to believe in ghosts. My roomates and I even believed our own house was haunted for a little while, following a drunken viewing of Donnie Darko, and then an even more drunken viewing of The Shining. The doorbell doesn't ring itself people. And balloons dont' just float up stairs on their own. Well... okay maybe they do. But the point is we were convinced we had a ghost named Frank, inspired by the creepy rabbit on Donnie Darko. Once the word got out that we might be believers, all manner of ghost-story-telling weirdos showed up at our doorsteps - mainly my boyfriend-at-the-time and his creepy friend who lived in a "haunted" mansion up the street.
Two ghost stories that stuck with me are the "The Twin Tunnels" and the "Gates of Hell" (which I will forever remember as the road that is so evil that trees grow away from it.
Too many times, our morbid little group packed ourselves into a car and traveled to "The Twin Tunnels" - a remote road in an industrial area where for some reason the road become a tunnel for a couple hundred yards. Supposedly, a girl was once walking home from work through this tunnel and was attacked and hanged from an exposed pipe in the middle of the tunnel. The story was if you stopped your car in the tunnel, it would turn off (thanks to the ghost!) and you would not be able to turn it back on. Being the brave adventurers we were, of course, we would gun it through the tunnel - not stopping - and occassionally turn off our headlights as we went through, for effect. I don't think we ever mustered the courage to actually test the story and turn the car off in the middle of the tunnel. Oh - and part of the story as it was told to me was that this was the location where a very popular 80s band recorded one of their very popular songs, where one can supposedly hear the very same woman being murdered in the background. Really - a multi-million dollar rock band chose a rundown industrial site in Southeastern Pennsylvania for their insanely popular song recording and were lax enough about security that a deranged killer and a lone young woman could just be walking through it while they were in the middle of recording? Doubt it. Still can't believe I bought that one - but worse still is that to this day I listen for screams in the background of the song whenever I hear it on the radio. At any rate, I don't care if it's haunted or not - driving through that tunnel in the dead of night, especially with no headlights, was downright terrifying. Add to it the element of a few 20-something girls who are predisposed to drama and excitement, and you have the perfect "haunted house" vibe without having to do anything but fill up your gas tank.
On to the next... - the road that's so evil the trees grow away from it, also known as the Gates of Hell. What a foolish notion to believe and yet we soaked it up like the truth it clearly wasn't. Supposedly the reason the road was so evil is that at the end of it was an estate where a murder/suicide had occurred, and where frequent murders and cult gatherings occurred after the house was abandoned. I was also told a baby had been stuffed into an opening in one of the petrified trees, and that the original murdered family had been dumped in the lake on the property and were still there. The game was to drive the entire length of the very creepy and out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere road (which was only wide enough for one vehicle), pass the "gates", get to the house, walk up to the house, and then run back to the car. Supposedly if you even got past the gates your car would stall and you would have to run up the haunted driveway and back. Oh - and let us not forget the band of satanic motorcyclist killers who would be waiting in the woods to come after us on our way in and out (also part of the story).
Considering we wouldn't even turn our car off in the middle of the Twin Tunnels, it's a wonder we ever tested this story. But we did - one October night we piled in and headed off to drive the evil road and visit the evil gates of hell. Naturally it had to be October and was likely a day or two before or after Halloween. What were we trying to prove I wonder? Of course it was fun. Nervous giggles were about all that could be heard the entire way there and back. The road was narrow, with a steep drop off on one side and a forest on the other. You had to make a 3-point turn to change direcction. We didnt' even make it halfway to the supposed house of horrors. Halfway there, I got nervous and decided I had to pee - right there in the middle of a road so horrifying that even the trees were actively trying to get away from it. (take note - the trees did actually grow away from the road but of course that doesn't mean the road is evil - but you can see how it lent some credibility to the story and gave us all a cheap thrill) We used that as our excuse to turn around and book it on out of there (after I peed of course). We never even saw the rumoured blood red gates at the entrance of the murderous property.
What's astonishing to me is that I was willing to put my life into actual danger by traveling all manner of seriously dangerous roads in order to get the thrill of a haunting, but was too scared to go to a publicly sanctioned haunted house like the Eastern State Penitentiary?? Explain that!
Ghost Hunters we were not, but they sure were fun times and a good way to pass the cold fall evenings. I cannot foresee a time in the future when I will drive through certain areas of southeastern PA without recalling the ghost stories we exchanged that fall.
What ghost stories will you remember (fondly, I hope) forever?
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