The Devil's Tree, Mountain Road, Bernards. The legend goes that a local farmer killed his wife and kids, then hanged himself from the tree.
Anyone who cuts down the tree, the legend continues, will come to an untimely end. Apparently many have tried; the tree is covered with ax marks.
Dave Hochman, who grew up in Bridgewater and also shared his story on Twitter, remembers a Halloween trip to the Devil's Tree with buddies when he was 17, "when the area was much less developed.''
"Pitch black, nothing around,'' he says. "A friend of ours had an ax and was going to chop the tree down. We get to the tree, and walk up to it, the guy takes a big swing, ax head breaks off as soon as it hit the tree.
"The ax
head went flying back,'' he continues, "and missed the neck of the ax swinger by about 3 inches. "The tree trunk was unscathed. We left very quickly.''
The Gates of Hell, Clifton. Need any more proof Jersey is a spooky state? The very Gates of Hell are located here! It's a name given to a passageway leading to a series of underground tunnels and storm sewers in the Passaic County
Thoughtfully marked by a "Gates of Hell'' spray-painted sign, it's still a popular urban exploration outing.
From the outside, the Gates of Hell, located behind the old Black Prince Distillery in Clifton, New Jersey, look like any other collection of drains. But once you climb inside you’ll see that the drains,—the home of the devil according to an old urban legend—are covered with satanic graffiti and murals from generations of those who have dared to enter.
The Gates of Hell drain stands out from others nearby because it is square in shape and dry, while all others drains in the area typically have streams of water flowing from them. A ladder allows visitors to climb inside the drain, actually a series of connecting drains. Reportedly, the drains go on for hundreds of feet underground, layered seven times just like the circles of hell, and are filled with the remains of satanic sacrifices—bones and decaying carcasses, crosses, and more.
According to the legend, there is a room deep underground that can only be entered by those possessed with the powers to lift giant axes that weigh thousands of pounds and block the doors. The room is filled with a glowing human skull that is the last sign before you encounter the devil himself. Other, slightly more plausible legends, tell of people drowning in the drains, while trying to explore them and the rooms underground being used as meeting places for devil worshipers and members of the KKK.
