Shades of Death Road Rich In Folklore
By Susan Koomar
HOPE, N.J. – Don’t be deterred by the sinister name of a lane that’s not far away. Just grab your favorite ghost buster and go for a drive. Shades of Death Road – imagine having that for your street address – is seven miles of winding, woodsy scenery just south of Interstate 80 in Warren County, N.J. Named “One of America’s Creepiest Roads,” the former cow path is far less desolate and dangerous than reports on the Internet indicate. You’ll see farms, livestock and ghosts made of white sheets dangling from trees outside houses that don’t look haunted.
It’s worth the trip to have your photo snapped by the ominous street sign, explore the mysterious shores of Ghost Lake and ponder the many theories of how Shades of Death Road got its shady moniker.
A researcher at Warren County Public Library tried in vain to find official documentation of the many stories put forth in a book called “Weird New Jersey.” The book’s entry on Shades of Death does an entertaining job of combining local legends. The research librarian cited one of the least fanciful, but truly a horror – the story that swamplands along the road bred swarms of mosquitoes that spread a malaria plague to settlers and Native Americans.
“(The road) has a big reputation,” she said. “Teenagers will go there at night.”
Plague was the topic of the first ‘Shades’ story that Willa Reilly heard when she came to the area 39 years ago. Then she consulted a publication produced for Liberty Township’s 75th anniversary in 2001 and found the bloody tale of Iroquois Indians who came down from New York state and massacred Lenni Lenapes. The story says it was one of the last Indian battles in New Jersey. If the massacre victims haunt the site of their grim demise, who can blame them?
Reilly, who is clerk/administrator of Liberty Township, is used to getting queries from incredulous callers who ask, “Do you really have a road called Shades of Death?”
“Yeah, we do,” she said with finality. “Our road foreman lives on that road. It’s just an old area. There’s not much to it. I think more people travel it just to say they were on Shades of Death Road.”
Reilly did not confirm an online report that every section of the road with reflective guardrails is the site of a fatal vehicle crash. There are curves and reflectors on guardrails – and the potential to wreck if you’re speeding over wet leaves on a chilly autumn night. But the library and township had no accounts of deadly accidents or, as “Weird New Jersey” states, three murders along the road in the 1920s and 1930s.
That’s where a stop at Ghost Lake, at the foot of Jenny Jump State Forest, led to another theory. An old-timer was there feeding corn to some ducks as his beagle sniffed through the woods. He chuckled when asked if he thinks the lake is haunted.
“I come here every day and I’m not being haunted,” he said. The spot has a man-made lake with a hiking trail, cave and glacial rock formations. Legend holds that an Indian burial ground was flooded to create the lake. Floating mist enhances the folklore. When asked about the road’s name, the old-timer said it stems from several “incidents” of decades gone by. When pressed for details, he said a woman shot her husband. The old-timer mentioned the name “Cummins” and hinted that there were other bad doings at some cabins down the road.
But his version isn’t quite as colorful as the one in “Weird New Jersey,” which tells of a woman who beheaded her husband, then buried his head and body on opposite sides of the road. Other stories feature vicious wildcats that killed residents and highwaymen who robbed and slayed travelers.
Shades of Death Road has a ghost story for everyone. So take a ride and take your pick.
