Community Corner

Good Night For Creepy and Weird Tales in Basking Ridge & Nearby

We can be mysterious and weird here in the Basking Ridge area even with Trick or Treating put off for another night, and many of the festivities planned for last weekend snowed(!) out.

By now, the official word is that Trick or Treating is required to be held another night — Friday — in Bernardsville due to the dangerous condition of walkways and even some streets in that hilly borough, where power outages and downed wires persisted into Monday.

Here in Bernards Township, officials and the police are "strongly" urging parents to wait until Saturday to take their kids out trick or treating.

So where does that leave us, as darkness falls on Halloween night?

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Well, I've handed out some candy, so there are trick or treaters out there in Bernards Township. Including some extremely scary teenage boys, who swiped my white garbage bags as their only "costume."

Of course, we don't really need a special holiday to remind us that we all live in a creepy and weird area, every day of the year.

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After all, we have , my personal favorite of our allegedly haunted spots.

Weird N.J. captured the essence of the tree's story, and helped spread it around. The main legends are that a farmer killed his family and hanged himself on a long horizontal limb which, until recent years, gave the tree its characteristic shape. Others spoke of lynchings, voices from within, and a nearby portal to hell.

Local teens (including some I know) say that a dark shape will follow you home if you irritate the spirits within.

However, while the town fathers and mothers in decades past rushed to save our historic white oak by the Presbyterian Church of Basking Ridge, The Devil's Tree is looking a little forlorn these days. The tree's most characteristic "hanging" branch was removed for some reason. I propose that as we sit here in the cold, (and some in the dark) let's think of ways to preserve our other famous tree. Or at least many residents might be happy to hang their JCP&L bills from its branches, and test if its curse does indeed have power.

The book "Weird N.J.: Your Travel Guide to New Jersey's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets" mentions our outwardly sedate little town in several chapters, more often than you might think if you were just driving through.

With what I think is a bit of a jaundiced eye, (after all, he had his admirers) the book even includes information on the late Irwin Richardt. The holdout against 20th century civilization lived at the gateway to the semi-urban Hills development in his own version of an 18th century libertarian farm. He was nice enough to give local school children tours of his maple syrup making operation.

And the book even mentions, (although I would consider this is a bit speculative), rumors of Big Foot in the Somerset Hills area of Great Swamp.

The New Jersey Big Foot Reporting Center, a website dedicated to tracking Big Foot sightings in New Jersey, also includes this account of a reported encounter with a big hairy creature in the Bernardsville area, reported July 1, 1977. You can believe it or not — maybe taking into account that, hey, it was the '70s.

While some may scoff at such nonsense, other perfectly legitimate historians were scientific and organized enough to come up with an exhibit, held four Sundays in October, of

The exhibit was at the 200-year-old Brick Academy on West Oak Street, and includes the sale of a book that investigates many local tales of hauntings.

"Ghosts of Central Jersey," written by Gordon Thomas Ward, who has ties to Bernardsville, provides details and accounts of numerous local hauntings, such as perceived sightings of the headless Hessian on Old Army Road. There are also stories about supposed hauntings at The Gladstone Tavern and the "Devils Den" in the Great Swamp.

, a popular restaurant off Route 202 in Basking Ridge, also supposedly has its share of guests who long ago should have checked out, but maybe didn't, according to the book. One is supposedly a little girl.

Another part of the exhibit was devoted to our most famous ghost in the Somerset Hills area — Phyllis, the lovely but sad lady whose husband was supposedly hanged as a spy for the British during the Revolutionary War. Phyllis Parker supposedly lived in what was then The Vealtown Tavern along Route 202 in Bernardsville. The building later served for many years as a cozy Bernardsville Library. Now, Phyllis' section of the building is occupied by the shop, Meli Melo.

And, although I've forgotten the particulars, our charming Oak Street Elementary School has the "haunted phone booth." How did that come about?

So next time you meet someone from somewhere else, who may just assume you're conventional and tame because you're from Basking Ridge or elsewhere in the Somerset Hills, just give them the hint of a ghostly smile. Or maybe you can channel your inner swamp devil.

SEE MORE HALLOWEEN-RELATED STORIES BY CLICKING ON THE HALLOWEEN 2011 TAB AT THE END OF THIS STORY.


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