Fear and Loathing in Morris Plains

If I had to sum up today’s Odyssey experience in one word, it would be “unsettling.”  It’s not that I didn’t see any cool stuff—I did.  In fact, I saw one thing that I kind of think I hadn’t.

It was also a day for interaction with really dumb employees.  When I asked the front desk person at tonight’s hotel if the Charlie Brown’s was still here (as the GPS insisted it was), she said, “Yes, but they tore it down.”  Well, then, it’s not still here, is it?  At dinner a few moments ago, the waiter came to my table a few minutes after I had ordered and said, “Your food will be ready in just a few minutes!  Would you like me to bring it out?”  I was so tempted to tell him that that wouldn’t be necessary—I’d eat it out back by the dumpsters with the winos and the junkies.  (I also got "ma'am"ed to death again).

I had a late start today because I misplaced my Bluetooth in the hotel, and by the time I actually got on the road it was time for brunch.  For some reason, I decided that ribs at Applebees would be a good first thing to put in my stomach.  As I was licking the sauce out from under my nails (being sure to leave enough for a midnight snack), the waitress noticed my copy of The Guidebook and all of my maps.

“Oh!  Are you a researcher for Weird NJ?” she asked, very excited.

“Well, not officially,” I explained, and told her about The Odyssey.  She thought this was just the coolest idea she had ever heard and asked me where I was headed next.  When I told her I was bound for Shades of Death Road in Warren County, she delightedly told me that it was very near her house, and, because it was still terribly foggy, it was the perfect weather in which to visit it:

   She called her brother over (who was also a waiter there) and the two of them drew a shortcut on my map.  I was psyched—it was only about eight miles away.

Shades of Death Road is so named because there have been a lot of…well, deaths there.  The trouble allegedly started in the 1920s, when squatters, defending their “home turf,” killed anyone and everyone who came down the road, in a very Sawney Bean-type fashion.  Other rumors say that a vicious pack of wildcats (in New Jersey?) attacked and killed a group of people camping there.  Still others say that in the 1930’s, a man was murdered by his wife, who then buried his head on one side of the road and his torso on the other—I have no idea what she did with his other bits.  In any case, the whole thing is supposed to be haunted, and more than a little spooky.

Thanks to the waitress and her brother, I was able to find it with no trouble.  They had warned me that there wouldn’t be a street sign because local teenagers kept stealing it, but that there would be no doubt what it was…and they were right.

The road wasn’t so much spooky as it was horribly depressing.  I can absolutely understand why there would be rumors of ghosts and other unpleasantness.  The very first thing on the road is this abandoned cottage:

 Things got even more gloomy and dismal about a hundred feel further down the road:   

Even without the shambling remains of farm buildings, the road is pretty miserable.  It’s a one-lane road with an alarming 8-10 foot embankment on either side and absolutely no place to turn off.  If another car had been coming the other way, I’d have been screwed.

Halfway down the road, I found this “bridge” going across one of the embankments leading to…whatever that thing is.  It’s approximately as wide as two balance beams, and I wouldn’t trust it with the weight of a nine-year-old, let alone mine:

 And the water you’d fall into is particularly nasty looking:

 And only a few yards away from a sewer pipe:

 There was a very lovely collection of ancient and rusty industrial oil barrels on the other side:

 The whole thing was so unbelievably sad that I headed out as soon as I saw a viable exit.  Of course, there were some more abandoned shacks on the way out:

 Man, this was depressing.  Just as the road was about to end,  I came across this:

 For some reason, this was the creepiest thing on Shades of Death Road for me.  I think it’s because it reminds me of the movie Don't Be Afraid of the Dark in which Kim Darby ignores the advice of The Wise Old Caretaker and unbricks a fireplace in her new house which, of course, is filled with tiny, monstrous, demonic creatures.  There’s a long, related story I could tell you here about a time when I was ice-skating with Timothy Hutton at Rockefeller Center in 1984 and wound up helping a paramedic cut off his pants after he sprained an ankle after falling, of which you will be mercifully spared at this time.

Having had enough of the depressing awfulness that was Shades of Death Road, I chartered a course for The 300 Stone Steps of Morris Plains.  There are two opposing stories regarding the origin of the steps.  The first is that George Washington’s army constructed them in order to establish a lookout on the top of Watnong Mountain.  Another theory is that they were actually the work of local Native Americans, possibly hundreds of years before Washington did any sleeping there.

What I didn’t know is that Watnong Mountain, particularly the park in which the steps are located, is also the site of Greystone  Psychiatric Park, at which Ed worked as a Department of Human Services police officer in the 1980’s.   He knows a lot about the history of the building, which he’ll tell you apart in the comments section.  So fixated was I on finding the 300 Stone Steps that I literally didn’t notice the monolithic former administration building looming out of the fog at me until I was right on top of it:

 I have to do something here that I don’t do very often, so therefore I’m not very good at it; I have to not be funny.  When I saw that building—the size, the design, the color, the effect of the fog—I got an overwhelming sensation that the place was somehow “wrong.”  I wouldn’t go as far as to say it was actually malevolent or evil, but I can only think of a line from Pet Semetary—“the ground has gone sour.”  I felt a presence—several presences—and I didn’t like it one bit.  It was macabre and frightening, and suddenly all I wanted to do was get out of there.  I no longer had any desire to see the 300 Stone Steps, or anything else in the vicinity.

Because of that weird psychic thing I have going on with my friends, Ed called at the precise moment I finished taking pictures.  He knew exactly where I was, and was able to navigate me to the old police station.  I was so freaked out by this point that I mindlessly snapped pictures of other buildings, which I assume Ed can identify:

And another unsettling shot of the main building:

 Nothing—absolutely nothing—has affected me this way in a very, very long time.  It was actually physically distasteful.  All I could think about was what must have gone on on the premises.  Even though logic was telling me that the vast majority of the patients had gotten treatment, recovered, and went home, I thought obsessively about the others who had spent decades trapped in their own mental prison and subjected to things like electroshock and hydrotherapy and experimental drugs and procedures.  I’ve been close to more than one person suffering with a mental illness, and the idea that if they had lived only fifty years in the past they would have been entombed in such a place just makes me shake.

I told all of this to Ed as I tried desperately to get off the grounds, and he told me that not only did he understand, but he also experienced similar feelings when he went back to the grounds.  Trying to shake it off, I set off for Split Rock Road in Rockaway. 

Not that Split Rock Road has a necessarily more cheerful history.  It is, however, more colorful in that it’s supposedly the location of a gang of albino cannibals (see what I did there, with “colorful” and “albinos?”  Nothing?  Okay).

Here’s where Ed made not one, but two albino cannibal jokes that he wrote off the top of his head, and which I grudgingly admit are pretty hilarious.  You might want to skip directly to the comments section and read them before I continue, because, really, you need a laugh after dealing with my Greystone experience.

Aside from the presence of the albino cannibals, there also had supposedly been several murders on the road.  I’m not sure what I was expecting, considering that the murders were decades ago and it was highly unlikely that the police would have left the bodies there.  However, I did have to pass Ghost Lake on the way.  Ghost Lake, as the name suggests, is a small lake over which ghosts supposedly float.  No one allegedly died there, nor was there any legend of foul play, but it was still supposedly haunted.

Due to the fog, I wasn’t able to see any ghosts particularly, but I did get a nice shot of its gloominess.  Notice how I didn’t line up the third frame of the panorama:

  

I proceeded to follow Split Rock Road to its end, but, alas, there were no albino cannibals.  Honestly?  I’m sort of relieved nothing happened, after the emotionally draining Greystone visit, and hope that tomorrow is less disturbing.  I really, really need a shower.

Odyssey out.