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"It’s like a dark highway into people’s innermost fears.”

That’s how Mark Moran, publisher and co-creator of the Weird NJ magazine and website, sums up Clinton Road, a quiet and twisty stretch of road roughly 55 miles northwest of New York City.

Moran, along with Weird NJ co-creator Mark Sceurman, knows a thing or two about the strange, the mysterious and, well, many things that are just plain weird.

Clinton Road is all of those things and much, much more.

This eerie 10 mile stretch of road sits in a quiet corner of the Garden State. Clinton Road isn’t far from the hustle and bustle of Manhattan, but it’s not exactly near much of anything.

Beginning at the fairly well-trafficked NJ Route 23, Clinton Road winds its way north, before terminating at Upper Greenwood Lake. Other than trees, picturesque Clinton Reservoir, a few bridges and the very occasional house set back from the road, there isn’t all that much to see.

Unless you happen to see a sofa in the road, or the pack of blood-thirsty cannibals lurking in the shadows, hoping you’ll stop your car to investigate.

Before meeting the two Marks from Weird NJ, I’d finally dared to travel down Clinton Road at nighttime. My traveling companion for this drive into the unknown was the stout-hearted Michael Schuy, the 13-year-old-son of a neighborhood friend.

My job was to keep an eye on the road, and remain vigilant for ghosts and, perhaps, even a visit from the Jersey Devil himself. Mike, meanwhile, kept careful watch on the woods, along with our survival gear which included, in order of importance: two bottles of soda, licorice, a pair of flashlights and, just in case, a rosary his mother had given him before setting out.

 “Let’s see, what did we get in trouble for last time,” joked Sceurman, as he steered his SUV right, off Route 23 and onto Clinton Road. There are several locations you can park along the road, but venturing deeper into the surrounding woods requires an official hiking permit.

After a mile, the houses become scarcer and the woods begin to loom over the roadway. The weather was brisk and the trees bare of leaves but, in the daytime, Clinton Road feels lonely rather than unsettling. A rickety abandoned house with warning signs to “Keep Out” at least added a hint of danger and mystery.

“People definitely play on the legend [of Clinton Road],” said Mark Moran. He mentions the menacing black truck that lurks on the road.  Appearing out of nowhere, the truck gets extremely close to your rear bumper, flashes its lights, and then suddenly disappears into the night.

Sure enough, during my earlier Clinton Road visit, I’d noticed a black truck traveling in the other direction each time I drove down the road. The truck’s blazing fog-lights and loud exhausr made it stand out, though I’m positive there was nothing ghostly about this grumbling pick-up.

“We don’t really expect anything paranormal,” explained Mark Moran. “We explore folklore, we’re not interested in proving if a story is true or not. We believe in ghost stories, they tell us a lot about the human psyche. We’ve never said any place was haunted, we’re just sharing people’s stories.”

Having visited and chronicled countless bizarre tales and legends, Moran says this unassuming stretch of road remains unique. “Clinton Road kind of wrote itself.”

Reports of strange occurrences continue to bring the Weird NJ team back to Clinton Road. “We hear about the strangest things…lights over the water, UFOs, snow in July. It keeps us coming back,” adds Sceurman.

The first bridge we cross, a sturdy stone affair with rushing rapids beneath it, is famous amongst Clinton Road fans for the tale of the mischievous ghost of a boy who drowned there. Legend has it, if you toss coins over the bridge and into the water below, the boy’s ghost will throw them back, or place them in the middle of the road.

We attempted to conjure the spirit world with several dimes and quarters but, in this instance, the ghost boy opted to keep the change.

The Clinton Ironworks is even stranger, and the structure is often mistaken for being some type of Druid creation, or a temple to the occult. Built in the early-1800s, this pyramid-shaped structure was part of a short-lived iron making community which faded away in the 1850s. Today, it’s surrounded by chain link fence, but is easily visible from the road.

 Next is a visit to the aptly-named Dead Man’s Curve. This bend in the road lives up to its name, if only because it's the sharpest corner on Clinton Road and could easily catch out the unwary. Ghosts, the occult and even KKK rituals have all been linked to this particularly menacing corner. The graffiti-covered barriers were put up fairly recently, according to Mark Sceurman.

Yet nothing comes close the wild stories linked to Cross Castle, a former mansion that was left to rot in the woods after being gutted by fire. For years, the decaying remains of this once grand estate served as the unofficial epicenter of Clinton Road folklore.

Some stories are more than tall tales, however. Before it was demolished in the 1980s, many people reported being physically affected by the site, or coming across unexplained rock formations and eerie writing on the building’s walls. One visitor snapped an image of perplexing graffiti at Cross Castle, and on a plank of wood placed nearby. These odd ramblings turned out to be from the official Lex Satanicus,’ the La Veyan Church of Satan's code of conduct.

Cross Castle is long gone, but the site remains accessible via hiking paths. I opted to stay closer to the relative safety of Clinton Road, thank you very much.

“What’s strange is that Paradiso Road, which runs about parallel to Clinton Road, is even lonelier,” says Mark Sceurman. “But it has nothing, no legends or stories connected to it.”  

Clinton Road remains one-of-a-kind as the strangest, most mysterious and, yes, the weirdest road you’ll ever encounter.

Source: NY Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com/autos/creepy-cursed-curvy-new-jersey-clinton-road-frightening-road-america-article-1.1803331

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The Slenderman. This tall, faceless figure, its frame disturbingly thin in its black suit, stalks children, and abducts them for its demonic pleasures. The Slenderman is fiction, created in 2009 for the humor website “Something Awful,” but sometimes fiction can become reality, at least to those who believe.

Two twelve-year-old Waukesha, Wisconsin, girls stabbed their twelve-year-old friend nineteen times 31 May, so they could gain the favor of the Slenderman. The girls, Morgan E. Geyser and Anissa E. Weier, began reading about the Slenderman online and became obsessed. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Weier claims the Slenderman is the “leader of Creepypasta, and in the hierarchy of that world, one must kill to show dedication.” Weier and Geyser wanted to kill their friend to show they were “worthy” of this demonic entity. Both the girls were aware most people knew this creature was fictional, but wanted to prove them wrong. Creepypasta is a website dedicated to horror and the paranormal.

According to the criminal complaint, Weier told an investigator they began planning to kill their friend in December. Geyser told police they decided to kill their friend so they could become “proxies” of the Slenderman, who would let them live with him in his mansion in a national forest in northern Wisconsin. They had backpacks ready, and planned to hike to the forest after the killing.

During a Saturday morning game of hide-and-seek in a park, Geyser produced a knife and began stabbing the victim while Weier yelled, “go ballistic, go crazy,” according to the Journal Sentinel. Then they just walked off, leaving the girl bleeding in the park. The victim, who was not named, crawled to a road and bicyclists called authorities. The girl is in hospital in stable condition.

The “proxies” of the Slenderman, who had planned to run away from home to join this fictional being, are being charged as adults, and face first-degree attempted homicide.

Pastor Robin Swope, of St. Paul’s United Church of Christ Erie, Pennsylvania, is author of the book “Slenderman: From fiction to fact.” The book explores real encounters people claimed to have with the Slenderman, and if these manifestations may be an ancient demonic force that have taken the appearance of the fictional entity. Although Swope has never heard of someone being a Slenderman proxie, he said it’s difficult to understand why someone would chose to kill their friend for any reason. “If it was Slenderman or a demonic entity then why didn’t they go for help?” Swope said. “It could be they were in such a hysteria from an actual demonic encounter that they were not thinking, but I think in reality it is either a mental health issue or they used Slenderman as a scapegoat.”

According to an Associated Press story, one of the girls (unnamed) claimed the Slenderman watched over her in her dreams, and communicated with her.

Although the reality of the Slenderman in the Wisconsin case is from the words of two twelve-year-olds, there are documented cases that claim to have brought fiction into the realm of reality. The most famous of which is The Philip Experiment.

A Canadian doctor, Dr. A.R.G. Owen, conducted the Philip Experiment in 1972 to test his hypothesis that ghosts are simply created by the minds of whoever sees them. Owen formed a group that would regularly meet to think about a fictional spirit named Philip Aylesford. Philip was given a complete biography to help the group form an image of the spirit. Months into this study, Philip began to communicate with the group with knocks; once for “yes,” twice for “no.” Many consider the Philip Experiment a hoax.

However, the question remains, can the human mind turn fiction into reality?

Source: Mysterious Universe
http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2014/06/a-fictional-character-come-to-life/

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- LOOK, UP IN THE SKY DEPARTMENT -

Cryptozoologist Mulls Theories on "Big Bird"

Hidden in the shadows outside of civilization, monsters are believed by some to exist.

According to folklore, a large primate stalks the Pacific Northwest and a giant reptile lurks in the depths of a Scottish lake.

And in South Texas, people carefully watch the skies for Big Bird, a flying creature that terrorized the area in 1976.

“This bird’s got a habit of going after people,” said Guadalupe Cantu III, an eye witness. “This is strictly a nighttime bird, though. ... From 11 o’clock on, everybody’s bait.”

While most scientists would write off a man-hunting bird as pure myth, a group of researchers takes such accounts seriously. The researchers are called cryptozoologists.

“It’s considered a pseudo science,” said Ken Gerhard, 38. “I like to call it a frontier science.”

A Houston-based cryptozoologist, Gerhard is researching a book that will focus on the Big Bird. He will speak about his research before the Brownsville Enlightenment Society at 7 p.m., Tuesday at Shoney’s Restaurant. The meeting is free to the public.

While other zoologists might consider the existence of such a large unknown species impossible, Gerhard and others keep an open mind.

“Cryptozoology is the search for animals that have not yet been verified by science,” Gerhard said. “Most people are familiar with the marquee animals – Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster and Big Bird. ... The less glamorous side would include a new species of beetle.”

In 2005 several new birds, plants and other species were discovered in the Foja Mountains of Papua, New Guinea. Scientists announced 27 new species earlier this year, discovered in California national park caves. Large creatures have also been revealed recently, with the first photographs of a live giant squid taken in 2004.

“New species are discovered all the time, a lot of people don’t understand that,” Gerhard said. “Cryptozoologists feel that those ‘real scientists’ aren’t doing a good enough job.”

Don Farst, executive director of the Gladys Porter Zoo, remembers the excitement in January 1976 when people would ask about giant birds and livestock-attacking beasts. He said nothing was ever proved, but he can understand why some believe in unknown animals.

“Nothing is impossible,” he said. “But I usually believe that either I or somebody that I trust has seen, and preferably photographed next to something of a known size.”

There’s always more to learn, according to Lynn David Livsey, president of the Brownsville Enlightenment Society, a group that discusses new discoveries and unknown phenomena on a weekly basis.

“We pretend like we know but really we don’t,” he said. “I remain open-minded on the subject.”

The Big Bird has been compared to local owl-witch legends, but Gerhard said many real creatures began as myths.

“A lot of animals discovered in the last century were original folklore animals,” he said, adding this was true of the gorilla. “They were giant hairy wild men and back in the late 1800s were considered to be folklore. ... It made the transformation from folklore into reality.”

Gerhard said certain areas of wilderness remained unexplored by men, which obviously provided the potential to discover new species of animals.

“I can’t say these animals are there, but I can say the potential is there,” Gerhard said.

Aside from the Big Bird sightings in Brownsville in 1976, there were sightings in Robstown and Rio Grande City in 1975, Swinney Switch in the 1950s and San Benito in the 1940s. McAllen, Harlingen and Los Fresnos also claimed witnesses.

San Benito in particular seemed a hotbed for Big Bird reports. Many residents of the La Paloma Colonia have heard of the creature they call the demon bird.

“As a child I heard it one Christmas eve, really Christmas day at 1 o’clock in the morning,” said Cantu, now 50. “It made more and more noise so my grandfather went out and cussed it. ... It was a strange noise, like a couple of cats, like one voice mixed with another voice.”

As a child in San Benito, Cantu had heard of the bird, but he was surprised by its size and that it showed no fear of guns or dogs.

The bird Cantu saw seemed to stand about 8 feet tall and was solid black, although parts of its body seemed to reflect more light. It was stood vertically with stooped shoulders.

“With the face I thought I was looking at a skeleton, but it was the eyes and nose (of a skull),” he said. “It did not flap its wings, it just glided.”

Alex Resendez, 66, saw the creature three times in the 1970s. Twice he caught fleeting glimpses of the beast over Brownsville, and the third time, he saw it in broad daylight near his rural McCook area home.

“I never seen a bird that big,” he said. “He was brownish, like dirt. ... He does not have long legs and does not stand like other birds.”

What struck him most were the bird’s large eyes that shone like black glass, with red markings underneath. The beak was also peculiar.

“You have to look close because his beak is very transparent,” Resendez said. “If you see it real fast, you’re going to think he ain’t got no beak.”

In all, the brown bird seemed to stand over 4 feet tall. After being spooked by a charging bull, the bird spread its large wings and pushed off the ground with its feet.

“He was very swift, very nice, like a glider,” Resendez said. “This bird, he never flaps his wings.”

The wing underside was surprisingly colorful to Resendez, appearing with blue and white stripes.

“It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

Descriptions of Big Bird often follow the same pattern: it is dark in color, featherless or smoothly feathered, has a long thin beak or no beak at all, short legs and long tail.

Farst took a pragmatic approach.

“At certain times of year we have wood storks here, which are large gangly birds, about 4½ feet tall,” he said. “They are more black and white than brownish and have a long curving bill.”

He offered alternative possibilities such as a sand hill crane or brown pelican, but said the distinctive features described by witnesses don’t always match with known animals.

As several cattle mutilations were reported in 1976, Resendez believes they might be related to the Big Bird sightings.

“I thought maybe this bird goes after these cows, drives his beak in there, takes samples, then goes upstairs where maybe there is a UFO,” he said. “It’s so well made, nobody could tell it was a robot, but I don’t know.”

Gerhard has heard theories ranging from a giant owl to a giant bat, but he has his own ideas.

“The other theory that I’m pursuing with my book is probably a little more out there,” the cryptozoologist said. “That’s the possibility of living pterosaurs.”

Winged reptiles and contemporaries of the dinosaurs, pterosaurs are believed to have met extinction more than 64 million years ago, but some cryptozoologists see the creatures as possible Big Bird explanations.

“It seems to jibe with most of the reports I’ve collected,” Gerhard said, adding that the Kongamato of Africa and Ropen of Papua, New Guinea, both supposedly mythical creatures, are said to have reptile-like features.

Farst doubts a large flying reptile could go undiscovered, but said there are some birds that behave similarly to the Big Bird.

“The best and biggest flying birds that we have would be like the Andean Condor from South America,” he said. “They can jump and launch themselves into the air to take off, but usually they do this off the side of a cliff.”

Gliding without a cliff, or preliminary flapping, would be highly unusual, he said.

“That would indicate that it would be something that we don’t have in this world at this time,” he said. “If I had to bet any of my hard earned money, I would be willing to bet odds of a 1,000-to-1 against there being a critter like this. .... I wish you’d prove me wrong. I’d love to see something like this.”

Livsey believes Big Bird to be an actual bird, albeit one not known to modern man. The extinct Teratorn is believed to have wingspans over a dozen feet.

“This does have to be a monster or a giant flying reptile,” he said. “I believe we’re talking something terrestrial here. I do believe in UFOs, and I was a witness to a UFO event, but I do not believe this was some kind of extra-terrestrial.”

Source: The Brownsville Herald
http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/ts_more.php?id=70671_0_10_0_C

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- LITTLE RIVER CHILD DEPARTMENT -

'Remains' of Mythological Kappa to be Displayed in Japan

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