Strange sightings, ghosts, and paranormal activity is often reported in this road of New Jersey. Is it a haunted road?
***
Clinton Road is located in West Milford, Passaic County, New Jersey. It runs in a generally north-south direction, beginning at Route 23 near Newfoundland and running roughly 10 miles to its northern terminus at Upper Greenwood Lake. The road, like the reservoir and stream in the area, gets its name from the now-vanished settlement of Clinton, which was located about where the road crosses the brook.
Apparently, this road has been reported haunted quite a few times by many people. The road and the land around it have gained notoriety over the years as an area rife with many legends of paranormal occurrences such as sightings of ghosts, strange creatures and gatherings of witches, Satanists, and the Ku Klux Klan. It is also rumored that professional killers dispose of bodies in the surrounding woods—with one recorded case of this occurring. It has been a regular subject of discussion in Weird NJ magazine, which once devoted an entire issue to it. In the words of a local police chief, "It's a long, desolate stretch and makes the imagination go nuts."
There are very few houses along the road and much of the adjoining property is undeveloped publicly owned woodlands and the road itself is a narrow two-lane highway that receives little maintenance, is not part of New Jersey's county route system and was until fairly recently unpaved for some of its length, connecting two areas of minimal population and growth and thus having little traffic even at the busiest times of day.
It is also notorious for having the country's longest traffic light wait.This occurs at a double intersection where Route 23 crosses the road. The two lights can cause motorists to wait for 5 minutes in total. The lengthy wait was a result of traffic planners giving increased priority to Route 23 to reduce backups during rush hour.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
At one of the bridges over Clinton Brook (Dead Man's Curve) near the reservoir, if you put a quarter in the middle of the road where the yellow line is, at midnight it will supposedly be promptly returned by the ghost of a boy who drowned while swimming below or had fallen in while sitting on the edge of the bridge. In some tellings an apparition is seen; in others, the ghost pushes the teller into the water if he or she looks over the side of the bridge in order to save him from being run over as he was in life.
Besides the ghost boy, there have been other ghosts described by Weird NJ readers. One claims to have seen a ghost Camaro driven by a girl who supposedly died when she crashed it in 1988 (any mention while driving the road at night is supposed to trigger a manifestation). Another claims to have encountered two park rangers one night while camping with friends near Terrace Pond, a glacial tarn on a ridge accessible from the road by hiking trails, who in the morning turned out to have been the ghosts of two rangers who had died on the job in 1939. Other Weird NJ readers claim to have seen people dressed weirdly at odd hours who simply stare at those who see them and do not speak, who either disappear or are not seen by others present.
A conical stone structure just east of the road south of the reservoir was said to be a site where local Druids practiced their rituals, and horrible things might come to pass for any intruder who looked too closely or came at the wrong time. The building is actually an iron smelter left over from the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 when the United States was forced into creating an economic independence to complement its political freedom. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as Clinton Furnace in 1976. It is currently fenced off by the Newark water department to prevent any entrance and the liability for injury that might result.
There are accounts of phantom vehicles: pickup trucks or even floating headlights not attached to any vehicle that supposedly appear from nowhere in the middle of the night and chase drivers to the end of the road, then disappear.
Strange creatures, from hellhounds to monkeys and unidentifiable hybrids, have allegedly been seen at night. If not of supernatural origin, they are said to have been survivors of Jungle Habitat, a nearby attraction that has been closed since 1976, which have managed to survive and crossbreed.
As we can see, people have a lot to say about this place. But the real questions is, are all of what these people say true or just gossip that is meant to frighten us? Is it really a dangerous road or is it nothing? Are all the legends true? Have they actually occurred?
Unfortunately, nobody really has found an answer. Do you think all of this is true?
