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13-JUL-2003 Dan Chusid

Shades Of Death Road

Warren County, NJ



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Resident of Great Meadows 13-Jul-2010 04:19
In an address to "ethulsgetsdown"
Hackettstown can't have any good ghost stories because everybody there is either stoned out of their minds or running around screaming "CALL OF DUTY!"

In fact, one of it's nicknames if I remember right is "Crack-ettstown." because of the bad drug problems there. And that crappy high school doesn't help disprove that since more then half the students are either stoned every weekend or ranting about how they got drunk at Seaside and woke up with their dick in their best friend's mouth, and their best friend's dick in their mouth. And somehow... That's awesome, right?

Hackettstown will never have the sort of Ghost Stories that Liberty and The Muck have, so forget it or go make some yourself. Chainsaws will help.
Sanguine 13-Jul-2010 04:13
I used to live right on Shades of Death road, and almost EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THESE IS KAPUTNIK! That's right, Kaputnik, I don't even know if that's a real word or not but it's all lies.
As examples, here's some of the fun stories I've heard.

MS13 (A Street Gang) killed a cop who then was butchered in a satanic and ceremonial way, all underneath a bridge on Shades of Death road. There were no details on this one, just a general "Hey! Did you hear about this!" at school kind of thing.

Another good one is that at any point on Shades of Death, you can stop your car, turn it off, take off the parking brake, and you'll roll slowly backwards down whatever lane your on.
It's Complete Crap, and has gotten many people in fender benders and nothing else.

My personal favorite though comes from a friend of mine's dad. Appearently they were driving home and saw "A Bunch of Satanists doing some kind Ritual off the side of the road in a clearing."... So they "...Ran those devil-lovers off in the truck, but then found every tire on the truck had been popped with knife-marks and the sides keyed!"
That might have had something to do with the fact that had gotten smashed playing Beer Pong at Bar 46 (On Route 46, nice place.)

All in all it's good fun I guess, but for the love of god don't try that turn your car off crap, IT WILL NOT WORK AND YOU CAN GET HURT BADLY. Nice and simple.
lea 28-Jun-2010 16:00
i live by there and i saw a deer disappear right i front of me!!!!!!
amber 03-Jan-2010 10:06
so tonight, we decided to take a trip to shades of death, and there is a bunch of snow on the ground. we heard that if you stop underneath the overpass, something weird would happen. well, we of course, being idiots, stopped. honked the horn three times.. and then heard three footsteps crunching the snow shortly after. we didnt want to stick around and see what the hell it was, so we quickly took off. after a few minutes of driving back towards ghost lake, we decided we wanted to go back and try it again. so once again, we stopped, still being idiots, and honked three times, again. and still, heard the footsteps soon after. fuckkkkk that. he took off after that and didnt turn back to check again, all were scared shitless. we are kind of wondering what we would hear if there was no snow, but im not sure if any of us want to try that again...
ethulsgetsdown 28-Jun-2009 16:53
shades is beat

d00d jeni first off haha shades is fuckin stupid as hell

i live two seconds away in hackettstown and i go there almost every night

ive been there all different times of day n night and the worst thing ive ever seen is fog

but great meadows always had fog

...thats besides the point

lol the only person ive ever seen scared on that road is my friend who we kicked outta the car once a little after the overpass.

we turned around and left him there for like twenty mintues and he called and called thinkin we really left


so we went back for him and that fucker tried to scare us by hiding in the bushes along the road as we were drivin along doin 50 trin to find him lol

anyways he jumped out into the middle of the road, my friend who was driving slammed on his brakes so hard, and almost hit him


he hit his brakes so hard he broke them...yea thats right he had no brakes after that

they were totally fucked.

sooo we had to drive all the way back downshifting to break and goin at like 5mph hahahah

and the fucked up thing is after we got dropped off in hackettstown and he left.. he called me at three in the morning in sparta where he crashed his car cuz of those fuckin breaks.

now he is carless. shades of death ruined his brakes and its mad gay

lol and dont shut off ur lights under the overpass

its a good way for stupid ass teenagers to barrel into ya doin 60 tryin to freak people out lolololol


why cant we have a better haunted place in hackettstown??
aj 17-Apr-2009 00:55
i really like this story,but this might be hard to belive but i`m a phycic kid.i can see,here,fell a certin feeling when there is a ghost around and i`m 12 yrs old i started seeing things when i was 3 yrs old. now my grandfather haunts my house.
jeanne 05-Mar-2009 20:01
anyone know of the "elephant crossing" sign on shades of death road
JP 28-Sep-2008 22:17
Too bad they decided not to get another sign after the last one was stolen. Now it's just spray painted on the pole...as is the other road's name...Hope Road.
Nicki Thurgar21-Sep-2008 08:28
Spooooky... not a road I'd like to live on!
kate 20-Sep-2008 03:42
its sept. 18th. 2:56AM. my boyfriend mike and i decided around 12:00 that we should go visit shades. i used to live off of it on heller rd but i never took the time to drive down the entire road at night. well, we got there at around 1am which, from the research we did after we got home, seems to be the time when things are most likely going to happen. anyway, as soon as we got onto shades, we hit some really heavy, short patches of fog. it was strange because, tonight was rather clear. we continued on and we passed lenape rd. i shared what little knowledge i had about that road at the time and we decided that it wouldnt be a good idea to go down it. i wanted to show mike my old house so we made the sharp right down heller rd. the farther down we drove... the worse our vibes became. shortly after passing my house, we turned around and started heading back towards shades. our vibes only got worse. we went under the rt 80 overpass and came to ghost lake. i
didnt even need to tell mike we were passing it. he already knew. each patch of fog we hit, made our horrible vibes stronger. we started to think that something was in our backseat. there were no other cars on the road. we started freaking out and our stomaches dropped for no reason and we agreed that we needed to get the hell off that road. mike sped up and i told him that my legs were completely numb. they were tense, numb, immobile and burning hot. his upperbody was numb. there was a pressure on his chest that he couldnt seem to explain. as we continued down the road, i saw a figure. just a white thing, i dont know what, dart from the side of the road down a small hill. i flipped and mike admitted to seeing the same thing about 5 minutes before i did. i tried to explain it away as a reflection until mike told me that it definately was not. shortly after, on the same side of the road, the left, i saw a black solid mass slide across the side of a near
by house. that was it for me. my heart had sunk and my stomach was churning. we agreed that we felt horrible. we had vibes that we couldnt shake even after we were far from the road. we came into the middle of hackettstown and we saw a cop car. we decided that we wouldnt be upset if he pulled us over. at least we would know that someone besides us was alive. the whole ride home we couldnt stop talking about how horrible of a vibe we had. we got home and did more research. we found ourselves nodding our heads to the other posts about mysterious thick fog, being there at 1am and having unexplained feelings of complete dread. thats our shades of death story. we'll be going back soon.

kate & mike
cits_4_pets15-Sep-2008 00:58
where is Dead Man's Curve? Or was that only Jan & Dean's imagination. Nice find, but according to all the folks it is well know road in NJ...Thanks for sharing
martin 28-Jul-2008 19:07
i was told that there are many whore houses on this road
Guest 26-May-2008 00:17
Ah got my own theory on ghosts, Dan ... and it should be of interest to photographers!
You know how we capture an image on camera? - well, ah reckon that the image a folks long gone are "captured" in the atmosphere. Then when the same atmospheric conditions come about again, you see the image that has been preserved.

That's why you see "ghosts" floatin bove the ground - the levels and the buildins were different in the days when those folks lived!

Just a theory!
Happy hauntin!

Mike :o)
Andrew 24-May-2008 23:05
Does anybody know where at ghost lake the abandoned cabin is located? the one with the piano in it
Jeni 20-May-2008 04:33
FIRST AND FOREMOST:

There are two kinds of people who tell you that nothing happens on this road- the people who live on it, and the people who don't believe in ghosts.

Residents of Shades of Death Rd. obviously hate the fact that so many thrill seekers go on the road all the time, and i've seen the road after stupid teens TP-ed and littered all over the place as a "joke." It's no wonder why these people are claiming that nothing bad happens on this road.

The people who post things like "you guys are pussies, it's a legend and people just are scaring themseleves..." really make me angry. These people are either too scared themselves to go on the road, or they are too closed-minded to appreciate a good thrill. Also, what these people don't realize is the time of the night can make a difference in your experience of the road. You don't go at 7pm and expect to see anything... you go anytime between 1:00am and 3:00am to see the creepy stuff.

With that aside, let me share with you my experience on Shades of Death Road, because the majority of you guys who actually have manners and believe in this stuff deserve to know!

My friend and I went on Halloween night, which is supposed to be the scariest time to go on the road. We got on the road sometime after 1:00am, and turned off the air/heat and the radio.

We drove down the road in one direction, but because there was someone in front of us driving really really slowly, we didn't feel like we got a good enough experience. When we got to the end of the road, we turned around and went back down the road again.

Halfway down the road, I (while driving) heard what sounded like someone in the back seat was faintly breathing out. I remember checking the mirror and i didnt see anything, and i checked to make sure the radio and the air wasn't on. I was too afraid to mention anything to my friend, so I just turned on the radio and drove to the end of the road.

On the way home, my friend turned to me and was like, "Dude, did you hear anything in the back seat? It sounded like someone was breathing really lightly."

As soon as I heard her say that I got so scared. We both were too afraid to mention it to the other one for fear that we would scare eachother and cause an accident.

To make things scarier, when we got back to our college dorm, we went online and checked the internet sites on Shades of Death to see what people's experiences were on the road, and breathing in the back seat was something very common in our findings.

My friend went on the road, and when she reached Jenny Jump Park she and her friends saw a little girl in a dark blue dress with white sleeves and light hair with her back turned to them. When they looked back, she was gone. All of a sudden they heard a high pitched scream, like someone was getting murdered.

They got so scared that they turned around right there and left the road. When they got out of their car, they found scratch marks on the trunk of the car and hand prints on the outside of the back window, which is a common thing to come across when passing Ghost Lake, almost right across the road from Jenny Jump Park.

To prove that it's NOT fake, my friends didn't know ANYTHING about the road before they went on it because they didn't believe in it and didnt want to imagine anything. They saw and heard very common things on the road, so as far as I'm concerned, what people see on that road can very well be real.

Please be careful if you're going to go on that road- beware for cops, residents with shotguns (haha), and most importantly ghosts. Be sure to go on the road with an open mind and good intentions. Negativity only attracts the negative, and the last thing you'd want is a dangerous spirit drawn to your car.
Kevin D 10-Feb-2008 05:42
Truly FASCINATING and REMARKABLE. My family and I took a drive down SOD and noticed some interesting experiences. 1st of all our car was turned off as we walked along the road at 800 at night. Once returning, the vehicle was started and sudddenly stalled which it never did before. Once re-starting it, the vehicle reved up suddenly. I looked at my mother and asked her the reason for reving the engine in which she attests that she never touched it. 2nd you can hear voices and see numberous flashing orbs in the sky as well as fog within certain areas of the road. And 3rd I took pictures and came across one that has a ghostly side figure of a person in it in the road. This picture was taken with a high quality kodak camera in a night-view setting and the camera itself costs about $560.00. Also you can see the orbs in the picture as well surrounding the ghost. I will send you the picture when possible. Also check out wierd new jersey because they will be getting a copy too.
Daniella 02-Feb-2008 16:04
This freaking road is so daamnnnnnnnn scary dont lisen to ne one this road is deff a good road to travel down!
Courtney 11-Jan-2008 13:26
i went there last night....around 7ish pm.I went with 4 friends...we didnt see any ghost or anything,Me and my one friend didnt want to walk through the woods so we drove down to the end of Shades of death..We saw alot of deer, A bunch of cats ran out in front of me....we think we saw a badger but we dont know it was weird...then a fox...and then a owl flew over windsheild....the guys didnt find anything they were looking for the house in the woods??does anyone know about it?
Tim Sullivan 11-Nov-2007 21:05
I live a few towns over from Shades, and I've been down it multiple times. It's a cool
road, but Ghost Lake (right off the side of the road) is much more interesting. It's man-made, and if you walk out accross the lake at night on the dam you can trick yourself into thinking that you're walking in space. The reflection of the stars on the surface of the water appears to be further down than it actually is, and gives you the impression that the inifinte it on either side of you.
Steve 31-Oct-2007 14:30
I live there. Right there. On the lake. STAY AWAY!!
Guest 10-Aug-2007 02:14
i heard about that and drove with a couple of friends and i was with maybe 10 or so and my one good friend said he saw something a guy and the next second he was gone it remains a mystery so beware.
Guest 09-Aug-2007 00:49
I was told by locals that one of the reasons for the name of the road was the amount of attacks on farmers that used the road on their way home from selling their products at market. There used to be a lot of produce farms/or we used to call them truck-farms and it was a well travelled road way back.
Nena 27-Jun-2007 14:18
Yes me and my friend r going to shades of death sometime lets hope i dont go @ night...........
Cheryl Burket 10-Jun-2007 04:03
Yes, I lived on Shades of Death Road on Ghost Lake in Haunted Hollow in the 60's. It is a special place, The State of NJ condemmed the property and joined it with Jenny Jump State Forest. Too bad the State did not have the for sight to preserve the unique buildings with their own history and develope a visitors center.
The area is rich in history for the brave, an Indian Cave and Burial Ground, old mines and homesteads. The ghosts are the mist of vapors that comes off the lake early in the morning, the souls of Indians floating up the mountain to join with mother nature. They are dear friends unless you dishonor their space. If you dare to explore the wonders the spirits can reviel to you, than do it with an open mind and spirit. You will be changed for the better or forever be haunted. But, be for warned, in the summer bring lots of bug repeliant, unless you have backup transfusions and if you fear snakes think twice.
Nicholas 21-May-2007 00:54
hahaha i was with Matt W and i so yea i second thatt bitchss
matt w. 20-May-2007 05:16
me and my friends went to the "shades of death road" tonight (after getting lost numerous times coming from Bridgewater, NJ) and we found it to be creepy..there was fog only in some spots on the road, after we left there was no fog. and 2 of my friends say that they saw a face pressed up against the window of the car!
amx 18-May-2007 17:29
hi.. i live less than a mile from the legendary "shades of death road"...there is nothing there...just a quiet old country road..dont listen to the stories...move on to more important things...
claudeine 12-Mar-2007 13:48
hi there my names claudeine im from sydney australia doing a little research on shades of death road ...i have a few questions that i would reallly appreciate the answer to so if u dont mind here they are...

do u travel down it often?
is it haunted?
have you ever had any wierd experience there?
is it really as dark as night during the day?
do u reckon u could post a pick of when it gets really dark even during the day?
have u got any stories about it?
what is the history of it?.....ive read a bit but i derno if its trust worthy or not...
do u noe of any murders or deaths that have taken place there?

lmao sorry to be a ball breaker but id really appreciate it!
Jen Bixler05-Jul-2006 13:08
hope it isn't a dead end
alexa 09-Mar-2006 00:18
i live like right next to shades of death road. everyone thinks that it's supposedly 'haunted' but that's all a big legend. it's nothing but a road with a funny name and history... i usually ride my bike down shades and it's really cool, the scenery i mean. nice pic.
Linda Alstead08-Oct-2003 17:48
Dan this is so cool - I love it!

BTW - I didn't realise you'd joined the PotD crowd! Fab.
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