Haunted New Jersey

172 haunted destinations cataloged across New Jersey, spanning 29 counties. The collection features museum, outdoor, and cemetery — every listing verified with family ratings, accessibility info, and practical visit logistics.

172 locations 29 counties 13 classifications 69 wheelchair accessible

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Top 6

Old First Presbyterian Church at 820 Broad Street, Newark, New Jersey — 1787 Georgian Colonial sanctuary with 204-foot steeple in the Four Corners Historic District

Other Dark Tourism Site

Old First Presbyterian Church and Burying Ground

Newark, NJ

Newark's First Presbyterian congregation was organized in 1666 as the founding church of the city. The current Georgian Colonial sanctuary was built in 1787 by architect Eleazer Ball and added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 2, 1972. The site includes an old burying ground; many additional First Presbyterian burials displaced from the former Mulberry Street cemetery were exposed during the 2005 Prudential Center excavation.

$ All Ages Family: High

Ghost Tour / Walking Tour

Tuckerton Seaport Legends & Lore Boat Tour

Tuckerton, NJ

Tuckerton, New Jersey occupies a stretch of coastline with documented history from the early colonial period. The area was a theater of the Revolutionary War's Loyalist-Patriot conflict, and local privateer John Bacon led raids against coastal settlements in the 1780s. The Tuckerton Seaport opened in 2000 as a 40-acre working maritime village recreating the baymen culture of the Jersey Shore.

$ All Ages Family: High

Prison / Reformatory

Burlington County Prison

Mount Holly, NJ

Burlington County Prison was completed in 1811 to a design by Robert Mills, one of America's first native-born trained architects and later the designer of the Washington Monument. Operating for 154 years until its closure in 1965, it was the oldest continuously operating prison in the United States at the time it closed. Designated a National Historic Landmark in 1986, it operates today as a museum managed by a local nonprofit.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Museum / Historical Site

Ayers-Allen House

Metuchen, NJ

The Ayers-Allen House at 16 Durham Avenue is the oldest standing house in Metuchen, New Jersey. Jonathan Ayers built the structure in 1740, and the property functioned as a tavern in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on September 5, 1985, and is operated today by the Metuchen-Edison Historical Society.

$ All Ages Family: High

Outdoor / Natural Site

Clinton Road

West Milford, NJ

Clinton Road is a roughly 10-mile rural road in West Milford, Passaic County, running from Route 23 near Newfoundland north to Upper Greenwood Lake through dense, undeveloped woodland. Its eerie reputation dates back over a century to when the area was called the 'five mile woods.' Landmarks include the ruins of Cross Castle, the 1905 Tudor stone mansion of English-born railroad banker Richard James Cross, demolished by Newark's water department in 1988.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Mead Hall at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey — an 1833 Greek Revival mansion photographed from the campus grounds

Museum / Historical Site

Drew University (Mead Hall)

Madison, NJ

The land that is now Drew University was purchased in the 1820s by William Gibbons, a Savannah-based plantation owner who built the Greek Revival mansion now called Mead Hall as a Northern country residence in 1833. The property was purchased by Methodist interests after the Civil War and opened as Drew Theological Seminary in 1867. The institution renamed the mansion Mead Hall to honor Roxanna Mead Drew, wife of principal benefactor Daniel Drew.

$ All Ages Family: High

More in New Jersey

Cape May — 19

Haunted Hotel / Inn

Angel of the Sea Bed & Breakfast

Cape May, NJ

William Weightman Sr., managing partner of Powers & Weightman and the man who introduced quinine to the American market as an anti-malarial, built a summer cottage at the corner of Franklin and Washington Streets in Cape May around 1850. In 1881 he had it moved to an ocean-view lot, but the farmers he hired discovered the structure was too large to move intact. They cut it in half, moved the sections separately, and found they could not reconnect them. The two buildings were enclosed separately, creating the two adjoining structures that now house the B&B.

$$$ All Ages Family: High

Haunted Hotel / Inn

Bedford Inn

Cape May, NJ

Charles Page built the home at 308 Stockton Avenue in 1883 as a family vacation property while also maintaining a Philadelphia business. He was shot and killed in Philadelphia that same summer while his family vacationed in Cape May without him. The house was eventually converted to the B&B now operating as the Bedford Inn.

$$$ All Ages Family: High

Haunted Hotel / Inn

Chalfonte Hotel

Cape May, NJ

The Chalfonte Hotel was built in 1875–1876 by Henry Sawyer, a Union Army colonel who was a prisoner of war at Libby Prison during the Civil War. Sawyer operated it as a boarding house before it became a hotel; it is now described by the National Park Service as 'the oldest and most ornate large hotel in Cape May.' The hotel is a contributing property to the Cape May Historic District (NRHP 1970) and has been operated since 2008 by Robert and Linda Mullock.

$$$ All Ages Family: High

Haunted Hotel / Inn

Congress Hall

Cape May, NJ

Congress Hall opened in 1816 as a boarding house on the Cape May beachfront, becoming one of the earliest seaside resorts in the United States. The original wooden structure burned in the Great Fire of 1878 and was rebuilt in brick the following year. Four sitting presidents — Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Ulysses S. Grant, and Benjamin Harrison — vacationed here, with Harrison using it as an informal summer White House in 1890 and 1891.

$$$$ All Ages Family: High

Haunted Dining / Bar

Elaine's Haunted Mansion

Cape May, NJ

The Victorian mansion at 513 Lafayette Street was built in the 1880s and is now operated as a combination boutique hotel, restaurant, Victorian pub, and dinner theater under the Elaine's Haunted Mansion name. It has been rated one of the top 5 dinner theaters in America by Food Network Magazine.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Haunted Dining / Bar

Elaine's Haunted Mansion Restaurant

Cape May, NJ

The building at 513 Lafayette Street dates to the early 1800s and predates much of Cape May's Victorian-era construction boom. It operated in various commercial capacities before Elaine's established it as a dinner theater and Victorian pub, a format it has sustained for several decades as one of Cape May's recognizable heritage dining establishments.

$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Emlen Physick Estate at 1048 Washington Street, Cape May, New Jersey — Frank Furness's 1879 Stick Style Victorian mansion

Museum / Historical Site

Emlen Physick Estate (Physick House Museum)

Cape May, NJ

The Emlen Physick Estate is an 1879 Victorian mansion in Cape May, New Jersey, designed by Philadelphia architect Frank Furness for Dr. Emlen Physick Jr. and his household. The 18-room Stick Style house remained in the Physick family until the 1930s and was saved from demolition by the Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts and Humanities (MAC), which has operated it as a museum since 1970. The estate is a contributing structure to the Cape May Historic District and has appeared on the television series Haunted Towns.

$$ All Ages Family: High

Outdoor / Natural Site

Higbee Beach Wildlife Management Area

Cape May, NJ

Higbee Beach takes its name from Thomas Higbee, an 18th-century landowner who held this corner of Cape May peninsula. The state acquired the land as a wildlife management area; it encompasses Delaware Bay shoreline, freshwater impoundments, and coastal dune scrub. Coastal erosion and storm activity have periodically uncovered remnants of narrow-gauge railroad lines laid in 1918 to service munitions loading during World War I.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Haunted Hotel / Inn

Hotel Macomber

Cape May, NJ

The Hotel Macomber has stood at 727 Beach Avenue in Cape May, New Jersey since 1916, making it one of the oldest continuously operating hotels in this historic shore resort. Sarah Davis, who built and owned the hotel, died by suicide in the 1930s inside the building. Her daughter Cannell contracted encephalitis from a mosquito bite and died in the 1920s, as a young child.

$$$ 16 years and older Family: Moderate

Carroll Villa, 19 Jackson St. , Cape May, New Jersey. IN the Cape May Historic District an NHL since 1976.

Haunted Hotel / Inn

Inn at 22 Jackson

Cape May, NJ

The Inn at 22 Jackson occupies an 1880s Victorian mansion in Cape May, New Jersey's historic seaside resort district. The building served as a private residence before its conversion to a bed and breakfast at 22 Jackson Street, half a block from the beach. Local accounts suggest the property had a prior history as a bordello and gambling parlour before the conversion.

$$ All Ages Family: High

Haunted Hotel / Inn

The Inn of Cape May

Cape May, NJ

The Inn of Cape May was built in 1894 as a Victorian summer resort hotel, part of the wave of construction that made Cape May one of the oldest seaside resorts in the United States. The building sits one block from the ocean in Cape May's National Historic Landmark district, surrounded by Victorian-era architecture that survived a 1878 fire that destroyed much of the original resort.

$$$ All Ages Family: High

Haunted House / Historic Home

John F. Craig House

Cape May, NJ

The John F. Craig House was built in 1866 on Columbia Avenue in Cape May's Victorian historic district. The cottage was the home of John Fullerton Craig, a Philadelphia sugar merchant who used Cape May as a summer residence. Craig died in 1926. The property was subsequently operated as a bed and breakfast and is now available for full-house rental.

$$$ All Ages Family: High

Haunted Hotel / Inn

Peter Shields Inn

Cape May, NJ

Peter Shields, president of the Cape May Real Estate Company, built the Georgian Revival mansion at 1301 Beach Avenue in 1907. That same year, his teenage son Earle died in a hunting accident when a loaded gun discharged as he stepped between boats. Shields never fully recovered from the loss; the building bears his name and the weight of that documented grief. The property was later featured on the Great American Country television program 'Ghost Stories.'

$$$ All Ages Family: High

Haunted Hotel / Inn

Queen's Hotel

Cape May, NJ

The Queen's Hotel building was constructed in 1876 on Columbia Avenue, originally operating as a pharmacy on the ground floor. Upper floors housed a gambling den and brothel. The building is now a bed and breakfast in Cape May's National Historic Landmark district.

$$$ All Ages Family: High

Italianate Southern Mansion (George Allen House) at 720 Washington Street in Cape May, New Jersey

Haunted Hotel / Inn

The Southern Mansion

Cape May, NJ

The Southern Mansion at 720 Washington Street in Cape May was built in 1863-64 by Philadelphia industrialist George Allen as a seaside estate, designed by nationally known Philadelphia architect Samuel Sloan. The Allen family used it as a country estate for 83 years. After mid-twentieth-century decline as a boarding house, the property was restored in the mid-1990s and reopened as a bed and breakfast in 1996.

$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Haunted Dining / Bar

Washington Inn

Cape May, NJ

The Washington Inn building was constructed in 1846 in a plantation style designed to evoke George Washington's Mount Vernon. It is one of Cape May's older surviving structures, predating the 1878 fire that reshaped much of the resort town. The building has operated as a fine-dining restaurant — one of Cape May's most established — for decades under the Craig family.

$$$ All Ages Family: High

Cold Spring Presbyterian Church and its cemetery near Cape May, New Jersey, on Seashore Road

Cemetery / Burial Ground

Cold Spring Presbyterian Cemetery

Cape May, NJ

Cold Spring Presbyterian Cemetery, on Seashore Road near Cape May, was established in 1714 as a ministry of Cold Spring Presbyterian Church and has operated continuously for more than three centuries, making it one of the oldest active cemeteries in the United States. It holds the graves of early Cape May County settlers, including descendants of Mayflower passengers. The present brick church beside it dates to 1823.

$ All Ages Family: High

Haunted Dining / Bar

The Ugly Mug

Cape May, NJ

The Ugly Mug opened in 1946 on the Washington Street Mall in Cape May. Its signature feature is the Ugly Mug Club, whose members each keep a personal numbered mug hung from the ceiling. The tradition traces to local fishermen who, when out at sea, left their mugs hanging facing the harbor; today the mugs of club members who have died are turned to face the ocean.

$$ All Ages Family: High

Haunted Hotel / Inn

The Virginia Hotel & Cottages (The Ebbitt Room)

Cape May, NJ

The building at 25 Jackson Street opened in 1879 as the Ebbitt House, one year after the great fire of 1878 that destroyed much of Cape May's commercial core. Its original owner is recorded in local histories as Alexander McConnell. The property was later restored as the boutique Virginia Hotel, whose restaurant, the Ebbitt Room, keeps the original name.

$$$$ All Ages Family: High

Princeton — 8

Haunted House / Historic Home

Drumthwacket

Princeton, NJ

Drumthwacket is the official residence of the Governor of New Jersey, a Greek Revival mansion built around 1835 for Charles Smith Olden, who served as governor of New Jersey during the American Civil War. The property was acquired by the State of New Jersey in 1966 to serve as the governor's residence, replacing Morven.

$ All Ages Family: High

Theater / Performance Venue

McCarter Theatre

Princeton, NJ

McCarter Theatre opened February 21, 1930, built as a permanent home for the Princeton University Triangle Club with $250,000 contributed by Thomas N. McCarter, class of 1888. The building was designed by architect D.K. Este Fisher Jr. in a Georgian style with Gothic accents, constructed of native New Jersey shale and red brick. McCarter Theatre Center is now an independent not-for-profit and two-time Tony Award winner.

$$ All Ages Family: High

Nassau Hall at Princeton University, the 1756 colonial stone building facing Nassau Street and Cannon Green

Museum / Historical Site

Nassau Hall, Princeton University

Princeton, NJ

Nassau Hall was completed in 1756 as the first and, at that moment, the largest building in the American colonies. It was the headquarters of the College of New Jersey — later Princeton University. During the Revolution the building served as British barracks and then as Continental Army headquarters, and it was struck by Alexander Hamilton's artillery battery during the Battle of Princeton on January 3, 1777. The cannonball dent in the south wall is still visible. Nassau Hall also served briefly as the seat of the Continental Congress in 1783.

$ All Ages Family: High

Haunted Hotel / Inn

Nassau Inn

Princeton, NJ

The Nassau Inn traces its Princeton presence to 1756, when a tavern on the site served the community during the colonial era. The Committee of Safety met at the property during the Revolutionary War. The current building on Palmer Square dates to a 1937 reconstruction. Albert Einstein was a regular visitor; Princeton mathematician Kurt Gödel reportedly favored a set of red chairs in the lobby. The inn was named to the 2025 Historic Hotels of America Top 25 Most Haunted Hotels list.

$$$ All Ages Family: High

Cemetery / Burial Ground

Princeton Cemetery

Princeton, NJ

Princeton Cemetery was established in 1757 under the auspices of Nassau Presbyterian Church. It contains the graves of Aaron Burr Jr., who killed Alexander Hamilton in their 1804 duel; Grover Cleveland, the only U.S. president to serve two non-consecutive terms; John Witherspoon, signer of the Declaration of Independence; and Jonathan Edwards, president of Princeton College. The cemetery covers approximately 16 acres in central Princeton and has been an active burial site for more than 260 years.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Haunted House / Historic Home

Rockefeller College Quad (Princeton University)

Princeton, NJ

Rockefeller College was built in the northwestern corner of Princeton University's main campus in the early 20th century. During excavation, Italian stonemasons reportedly discovered skeletal remains belonging to the FitzRandolph family, whose members had been among the earliest landowners and donors to Princeton (then the College of New Jersey). The remains were reinterred within the wall of the college's archway.

$ All Ages Family: High

Theater / Performance Venue

Theatre Intime (Hamilton Murray Theater)

Princeton, NJ

Murray Hall was built in 1879 at Princeton University with a $20,000 bequest from Hamilton Murray, a Princeton graduate who drowned when the French ocean liner SS Ville du Havre sank after a collision in the North Atlantic on November 22, 1873. Murray had written his will the night before the voyage. The building has housed Theatre Intime, Princeton's student dramatic organization, since the 1920s. The lobby displays a brass plaque inscribed with the latitude and longitude of the sinking.

$ All Ages Family: High

Battlefield / Military Site

Thomas Clarke House (Princeton Battlefield State Park)

Princeton, NJ

The 1772 Thomas Clarke House served as a field hospital for both sides after the Battle of Princeton on January 3, 1777 — one of Washington's most consequential victories during the New Jersey campaign. Brigadier General Hugh Mercer, who received multiple bayonet wounds when his horse was shot from under him during the battle, was brought to the Clarke House and died there nine days later on January 12, 1777. The house is preserved as a museum within Princeton Battlefield State Park.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Asbury Park — 6

Asbury Park Convention Hall photographed in 1978 by John Margolies, showing the Art Deco facade on the boardwalk

Theater / Performance Venue

Asbury Park Convention Hall and Paramount Theatre

Asbury Park, NJ

Convention Hall was designed by Warren and Wetmore — the firm behind Grand Central Terminal — and completed in 1930. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. On September 8, 1934, the cruise ship SS Morro Castle caught fire returning from Havana, lost power in a nor'easter, and drifted to a sandbar directly in front of Convention Hall. All 137 crew and passenger deaths were processed through the Convention Hall complex, which served as both a temporary morgue and staging area. The wreck remained visible from the boardwalk until it was towed for scrapping in March 1935.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Museum / Historical Site

Paranormal Books & Curiosities / The Paranormal Museum

Asbury Park, NJ

Paranormal Books & Curiosities opened in Asbury Park, New Jersey, in 2008, operating as a combination paranormal bookshop and museum. The museum above the bookshop was New Jersey's first dedicated paranormal museum, housing a collection of documented haunted objects, historically significant artifacts, and paranormal research materials. The operation also runs the Original Asbury Park Ghost Tour.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Aerial survey view of SS Morro Castle Memorial Site

Aerial survey · USDA NAIP

Outdoor / Natural Site

SS Morro Castle Memorial Site

Asbury Park, NJ

On September 8, 1934, the Ward Line cruise ship SS Morro Castle caught fire off the Jersey Shore returning from Havana, killing 137 passengers and crew. The burning hulk drifted ashore and grounded directly in front of Asbury Park's Convention Hall boardwalk — so close that sightseers could walk up and examine it. The wreck remained a morbid attraction through the winter before being towed for scrapping in March 1935. The Asbury Park Historical Society installed a commemorative black marble monument at the site in 2009.

$ All Ages Family: High

Haunted House / Historic Home

Stephen Crane House

Asbury Park, NJ

Stephen Crane, born in Newark in 1871, grew up in this Victorian house at 508 4th Avenue in Asbury Park. His father Jonathan Townley Crane was a Methodist minister and presiding elder; after his father died in 1880, Stephen and his mother Mary remained in Asbury Park through his adolescence. Crane worked as a stringer for his brother's news agency on the Asbury Park shore beat before moving to New York City and eventually writing The Red Badge of Courage, published in 1895.

$ All Ages Family: High

Haunted Dining / Bar

Asbury Lanes

Asbury Park, NJ

Asbury Lanes is a vintage bowling alley in Asbury Park that became a punk and indie music venue in the early 2000s, closed in 2015, and reopened in 2018 after Madison Marquette restored it as part of the neighboring Asbury Hotel.

$$ All Ages Family: High

The Berkeley-Carteret Hotel along Ocean Avenue in Asbury Park, New Jersey, in a vintage postcard view

Haunted Hotel / Inn

Berkeley Oceanfront Hotel

Asbury Park, NJ

The Berkeley Oceanfront Hotel, originally the Berkeley-Carteret, opened on Asbury Park's oceanfront in 1925. During World War II the U.S. and British militaries took it over; it served as a receiving station for the British Royal Navy, designated HMS Asbury, and later as a hospital for naval officers. It stands near the spot where the SS Morro Castle ran aground and burned in 1934.

$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Morristown — 6

Museum / Historical Site

Ford Mansion (Washington's Headquarters)

Morristown, NJ

Jacob Ford Jr. completed construction of the Georgian mansion at 30 Washington Place in 1774. Five years later, Washington's Continental Army arrived in Morristown for winter quarters and Washington requisitioned the house as his command headquarters. He occupied it from December 1779 to June 1780, operating from the mansion as his army endured the most severe winter of the war at Jockey Hollow four miles away.

$ All Ages Family: High

Museum / Historical Site

Historic Speedwell (Vail House)

Morristown, NJ

Stephen Vail acquired the Speedwell property in 1814 and built it into one of the most significant ironworks operations in northern New Jersey, producing anchors, chain, and machinery. His son Alfred became the collaborator who helped Samuel Morse develop the practical electromagnetic telegraph, and on January 6, 1838, Morse and Alfred Vail demonstrated the device publicly for the first time at the Speedwell Factory building.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Battlefield / Military Site

Jockey Hollow (Morristown National Historical Park)

Morristown, NJ

In November 1779, Washington's Continental Army established winter quarters at Jockey Hollow in Morris County, New Jersey — what would become the Army's most catastrophic winter encampment of the Revolution. More than 10,000 soldiers occupied the site through March 1780, enduring the most severe winter of the eighteenth century with inadequate food, clothing, and shelter.

$ All Ages Family: Low

True Crime Site

Morristown Green (Site of 1833 Public Hanging)

Morristown, NJ

Morristown Green has served as the civic center of Morris County since the colonial period. On September 6, 1833, it was the site of the last public execution in Morris County when Antoine LeBlanc was hanged before an estimated 12,000 spectators for the ax-and-club murders of his employer Samuel Sayre, Sayre's wife, and their servant Phoebe. The crowd that gathered was one of the largest public assemblages in New Jersey's early history.

$ All Ages Family: High

Cemetery / Burial Ground

Presbyterian Church Cemetery (Morristown)

Morristown, NJ

The burying ground behind the First Presbyterian Church on Church Street in Morristown is the oldest cemetery in the county seat, established in 1733 alongside the first church building in the area. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The churchyard gained wartime significance in the winter of 1777 when Washington's army encamped near Morristown and the church building served as a hospital; soldiers who died of smallpox that winter were buried in unmarked graves within the churchyard.

$ All Ages Family: High

True Crime Site

Sayre House (217 South Street)

Morristown, NJ

On the night of May 11, 1833, French immigrant Antoine LeBlanc murdered his employers — Samuel Sayre, Mrs. Sayre, and their servant Phoebe — at the Sayre farmhouse on South Street in Morristown, using an ax and a club. LeBlanc was arrested, tried, and publicly hanged on the Morristown Green on September 6, 1833, before an estimated 12,000 spectators. What followed his execution became nearly as notorious as the murders: his body was used for a public anatomical dissection, and his skin was reportedly tanned into leather and fashioned into purses, a wallet, and a lampshade — objects that circulated as curiosities for decades and were discovered in a nearby shed in 1995.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

New Brunswick — 6

Haunted House / Historic Home

Old Queens Bell Tower (Rutgers University)

New Brunswick, NJ

Old Queens is Rutgers University's oldest and most symbolic building, completed in 1809 in the Federal style. It served as the original college hall of Queen's College (renamed Rutgers in 1825) and has remained the university's administrative center. The bell tower is visible from across the College Avenue campus.

$ All Ages Family: High

Museum / Historical Site

First Reformed Church of New Brunswick

New Brunswick, NJ

The congregation formed in 1717. During the British occupation of New Brunswick in the winter of 1776-77, troops took over the church, removed the pews, and used the building as a hospital and later a stable. The current church on Neilson Street was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1988.

$ All Ages Family: High

Haunted House / Historic Home

Henry Guest House

New Brunswick, NJ

Henry Guest Sr., a New Brunswick alderman and tannery operator, built this Georgian stone farmhouse in 1760. Guest is documented as an associate of John Adams and the writer Thomas Paine. The house was moved up Livingston Avenue beside the New Brunswick Free Public Library in 1924 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.

$ All Ages Family: High

Theater / Performance Venue

Little Theatre (Rutgers, Douglass campus)

New Brunswick, NJ

The Little Theatre on Rutgers' Douglass campus is associated with Jane Inge, a theater director active from the 1920s to the 1950s who, by the university's own account, lived in an apartment above the theater until her death. The building remains a working campus performance space.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Haunted House / Historic Home

Miller Hall (Rutgers University)

New Brunswick, NJ

Miller Hall on Rutgers' College Avenue campus was once the site of a mortuary run by the McDede Burial Company; a stone in the building still carries the company's name. The building is now in university use.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Cemetery / Burial Ground

Willow Grove Cemetery

New Brunswick, NJ

Willow Grove Cemetery on Morris Street began in the early 19th century as a graveyard for New Brunswick's Baptist and Presbyterian churches. It sits behind the Henry Guest House and is a contributing property to the Livingston Avenue Historic District. Those buried there include Rutgers student Taro Kusakabe and territorial military governor John Munroe.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Newark — 4

Outdoor / Natural Site

Branch Brook Park

Newark, NJ

Branch Brook Park was formally established in 1895 as the first county park opened for public use in the United States, created by the Essex County Parks Commission. Frederick Law Olmsted, designer of Central Park, visited Newark and recommended the site. The park opened on approximately 60 acres of former Civil War Army training ground, with construction beginning in 1896. Today it remains Newark's largest park and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Aerial survey view of First Presbyterian Church Cemetery (Prudential Center Site)

Aerial survey · USDA NAIP

Cemetery / Burial Ground

First Presbyterian Church Cemetery (Prudential Center Site)

Newark, NJ

The First Presbyterian Church of Newark established a burial ground near its original location in the city's colonial core, eventually accumulating more than 2,000 interments including many of Newark's founding families. In 1959, the church's last structure on the site was demolished and the cemetery was paved over as a parking lot, with remains left in place. When the Prudential Center arena was built in 2005, construction crews discovered the parking lot concealed the cemetery — including two intact, sealed cast-iron Victorian coffins containing mummified remains.

$ All Ages Family: High

Cemetery / Burial Ground

Mount Pleasant Cemetery

Newark, NJ

Mount Pleasant Cemetery opened in 1844 on the west bank of the Passaic River and was designed by Horace E. Baldwin as a leading example of the New Jersey Rural Cemetery Movement. The grounds were listed on the New Jersey Register of Historic Places in 1987 and the National Register of Historic Places on October 28, 1988. Notable burials include Prudential founder John F. Dryden, inventor Seth Boyden, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Joseph P. Bradley, Governor Marcus L. Ward, and actor Ray Liotta.

$ All Ages Family: High

Other Dark Tourism Site

Newark Broad Street Station

Newark, NJ

The current Newark Broad Street Station was designed by Frank J. Niles and built 1901-1903 by the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad as part of a grade-separation project. It replaced an 1873 depot on the same site and is the successor to the original 1836 Morris & Essex depot. The station was added to the National Register of Historic Places in June 1984 and remains an active NJ Transit hub serving the Morristown Line, Gladstone Branch, and Montclair-Boonton Line.

$ All Ages Family: High

Hoboken — 3

Haunted Dining / Bar

Arthur's Tavern

Hoboken, NJ

The building at 235–237 Washington Street in Hoboken has housed various eating and drinking establishments for well over a century, including a precursor known as the Hoboken House. The Arthur's steakhouse brand, founded by restaurateur Arthur McGreevy in 1957, opened at this Hoboken location in the late 1970s or early 1980s. The location was sold to David and Wanda Jacey in 2011 and permanently closed in 2022 after a brief renovation-related closure.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

True Crime Site

Sybil's Cave

Hoboken, NJ

Built in 1832 as a spring-fed tourist attraction on the Hoboken waterfront, Sybil's Cave became a national landmark of American crime history after 20-year-old cigar-shop clerk Mary Rogers was found beaten and strangled in the Hudson River nearby on July 28, 1841. The case was never solved.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Haunted Dining / Bar

The Brass Rail

Hoboken, NJ

The building at 135 Washington Street has housed a restaurant since approximately the turn of the 20th century, making it one of Hoboken's oldest continuously operating dining establishments. The Brass Rail name and its current identity developed over the 20th century in a city with strong Irish and Italian immigrant communities and a dense commercial corridor along Washington Street.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Jersey City — 3

Aerial survey view of 629 Grove Street Industrial Building

Aerial survey · USDA NAIP

Other Dark Tourism Site

629 Grove Street Industrial Building

Jersey City, NJ

The 629 Grove Street warehouse was constructed between 1929 and 1930 as a modern reinforced concrete freight terminal and dry storage facility for the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad Company. The eight-story structure spans a full city block (approximately 1.5 million square feet) and features 23 freight elevators and 22 loading docks for rail operations.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Cemetery / Burial Ground

Old Bergen Church Cemetery

Jersey City, NJ

Established by Dutch settlers in the 17th century alongside the Bergen Church — the oldest congregation in New Jersey — Old Bergen Church Cemetery in Jersey City contains over 1,200 confirmed burials, many identified by ground-penetrating radar during a 2021 restoration project. Dutch tombstones from the late 1600s and early 1700s are among the oldest surviving European grave markers in Hudson County.

$ All Ages Family: High

Asylum / Hospital

The Beacon (Margaret Hague Maternity Hospital)

Jersey City, NJ

Built in 1931 as part of Mayor Frank Hague's Jersey City Medical Center complex and named for his mother, Margaret Hague Maternity Hospital was one of the largest maternity facilities in the country. At its 1923 operational peak the infant mortality rate approached one in five live births. After the maternity ward closed in 1979 and the hospital went bankrupt in 1988, the Art Deco building was converted to The Beacon luxury apartments.

$ All Ages Family: High

Pennsville — 3

Cemetery / Burial Ground

Finn's Point National Cemetery

Pennsville, NJ

Finn's Point National Cemetery in Pennsville Township, Salem County, holds the common grave of 2,436 Confederate prisoners of war who died in captivity at Fort Delaware, on Pea Patch Island across the river. Burials began during the Civil War in 1863, and the site was formally designated a national cemetery on October 3, 1875. It also holds 135 Union soldiers who guarded the prison and, after World War II, 13 German prisoners of war.

$ All Ages Family: High

Battlefield / Military Site

Fort Mott State Park

Pennsville, NJ

Fort Mott is a former coastal-defense fort on the Delaware River in Pennsville Township, Salem County. Built in the late 1890s as part of a three-fort system — with Fort Delaware on Pea Patch Island and Fort DuPont in Delaware — to defend the river approach to Philadelphia, it was named for Major General Gershom Mott of New Jersey. The fort was decommissioned and became a state park in 1951.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Ghost Tour / Walking Tour

Salem County Ghost Tour

Pennsville, NJ

The Salem County Ghost Tour is run by the Jersey Unique Minds Paranormal Society (JUMPS), a Salem-area group that conducts paranormal investigations of historic sites in southern New Jersey. The annual tour departs from The Engine House in Pennsville and visits locations the group has investigated, including the Old Salem County Courthouse, Johnson Hall, and several local cemeteries.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Somerville — 3

Haunted Dining / Bar

Hotel Somerset (McCormick's Pub)

Somerville, NJ

The Hotel Somerset building at 65 East Main Street in Somerville traces its origins to 1748, when it opened as Tunison's Tavern. It served as a waypoint for colonial travelers and, during the Revolutionary War, for Washington's troops moving through the Somerset area. The building has operated continuously as a hospitality venue under various names.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Museum / Historical Site

Old Dutch Parsonage

Somerville, NJ

Built in 1751 in the Six Mile Run area of Franklin Township, the Old Dutch Parsonage served Dutch Reformed minister John Frelinghuysen and later his widow and her second husband, Jacob Hardenbergh, co-founder of Rutgers University. In 1913, the structure was relocated to Washington Place in Somerville, where it stands adjacent to the 1775 Wallace House. Both sites are part of a NJ State Historic Site.

$ All Ages Family: High

Museum / Historical Site

Wallace House

Somerville, NJ

The Wallace House at 38 Washington Place in Somerville is an eight-room Georgian-style home built in 1776 by John Wallace, who named the estate Hope Farm. It served as the headquarters of General George Washington during the second Middlebrook encampment from December 11, 1778 to June 3, 1779, hosted the first official reception of foreign representatives by an American Commander-in-Chief, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1970.

$ All Ages Family: High

Atlantic City — 2

Museum / Historical Site

Absecon Lighthouse

Atlantic City, NJ

Construction on the Absecon Lighthouse began in 1854 under Major Hartman Bache and was completed by Lieutenant George Meade — later commander of Union forces at Gettysburg — who solved a groundwater flooding problem by running steam pumps around the clock to keep the foundation dry. The light was first lit January 15, 1857. At 171 feet, it was the tallest lighthouse in the United States when completed and remains the tallest in New Jersey. It was deactivated in 1933 and restored and reopened to the public in 1999.

$ All Ages Family: Low

Other Dark Tourism Site

Chicken Bone Beach (Missouri Avenue Beach)

Atlantic City, NJ

From roughly 1900 through the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Missouri Avenue Beach — the section of Atlantic City's beachfront at Missouri Avenue — was the only area where Black visitors were permitted by social enforcement, though no formal ordinance existed. Boardwalk restaurants and hotels refused service to Black guests, so Black families brought their own food, giving the beach its derogatory nickname. The beach became a cultural center anchored by nearby Club Harlem on Kentucky Avenue, where performers including Sammy Davis Jr. and Louis Jordan appeared. The Atlantic City Council designated it a historical landmark in 1997; a commemorative marker was installed in 2015.

$ All Ages Family: High

Boonton — 2

Theater / Performance Venue

Darress Theatre

Boonton, NJ

The Darress Theatre opened in 1919 as a vaudeville stage on Boonton's Main Street, designed by local architect and inventor Clair Darress to be fireproof and to use a unique reverse-entry plan where audiences walk uphill into the auditorium from beneath the stage. The theater hosted vaudeville, silent film, and magic acts in the 1920s (including a performance by Harry Houdini's brother) and reopened as the 'State Theater' for movies in 1934. Boonton purchased the theater in February 2021.

$$ All Ages Family: High

Outdoor / Natural Site

Lost Village of Old Boonton

Boonton, NJ

Old Boonton was an iron-refining and nail-making village established in 1747 about 1.5 miles downstream of present-day Boonton. It was systematically demolished in the 1890s and submerged when the Jersey City Water Supply Company dammed the Rockaway River, creating the reservoir that began service in 1904. The village now lies roughly 60 feet underwater.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Bordentown — 2

Museum / Historical Site

Clara Barton Schoolhouse

Bordentown, NJ

The building at 142 Crosswicks Street dates to around 1740 and served various functions before Clara Barton — then 31 years old and not yet known as a Civil War nurse — opened New Jersey's first free public school here in 1852. Barton taught at no salary for the first year; enrollment reached 600 students before the city took over operations and, within months, hired a male principal at higher pay. Barton's departure preceded her Civil War nursing career by a decade.

$ All Ages Family: High

Aerial survey view of Point Breeze Estate (Joseph Bonaparte)

Aerial survey · USDA NAIP

Other Dark Tourism Site

Point Breeze Estate (Joseph Bonaparte)

Bordentown, NJ

Joseph Bonaparte, elder brother of Napoleon and former King of Naples (1806–1808) and Spain (1808–1813), arrived in the United States after Napoleon's final defeat and purchased approximately 1,800 acres in Bordentown Township around 1816. He built a substantial mansion he called Point Breeze and lived there until 1839, hosting American political figures and European exiles. The mansion burned in 1820 and was rebuilt; a second fire later destroyed the rebuilt structure. Nothing from the Bonaparte period survives above ground.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Burlington — 2

Museum / Historical Site

Captain James Lawrence House

Burlington, NJ

The Captain James Lawrence House is a brick rowhouse built around 1742 at 459 High Street in Burlington, on the campus of the Burlington County Historical Society. It was the birthplace and boyhood home of James Lawrence, born in 1781, who rose to command the frigate USS Chesapeake. Mortally wounded in an 1813 engagement with HMS Shannon, Lawrence gave the order 'Don't give up the ship,' which became one of the U.S. Navy's most enduring mottoes. The house is now headquarters of the Armed Forces Heritage Museum.

$ All Ages Family: High

West elevation of the General Grant House at 309 Wood Street, Burlington, New Jersey, photographed for the Historic American Buildings Survey in 1937

Museum / Historical Site

Ulysses S. Grant House

Burlington, NJ

The house at 309 Wood Street in Burlington was where General Ulysses S. Grant settled his wife Julia and their children in 1864, away from the dangers around Washington. On April 14, 1865, Grant declined Lincoln's invitation to Ford's Theatre and instead set out for Burlington to see his family. He learned of Lincoln's assassination when his train reached Philadelphia and turned back toward Washington. The house is privately owned and marked with a state historical marker.

$ All Ages Family: High

Flemington — 2

Hunterdon County Courthouse, Flemington, New Jersey — 1828 Greek Revival exterior where Hauptmann was tried

True Crime Site

Hunterdon County Courthouse (Lindbergh Trial Site)

Flemington, NJ

The Hunterdon County Courthouse in Flemington was completed in 1828 in the Greek Revival style and has served continuously as the county's seat of justice. Its significance in American history is primarily the 1935 trial of Bruno Richard Hauptmann, convicted here for the kidnapping and first-degree murder of Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr., the 20-month-old son of aviator Charles Lindbergh. The trial lasted six weeks and drew international press coverage, earning the 'Trial of the Century' designation.

$ All Ages Family: High

Haunted Hotel / Inn

Union Hotel

Flemington, NJ

Neal Hart built the first Union Hotel on this Flemington corner in 1814 as a stagecoach stop and social hub. The current French mansard brick exterior dates to 1878. When the trial of Bruno Hauptmann for the kidnapping and murder of Charles A. Lindbergh Jr. was held across the street in early 1935, the Union Hotel served as press headquarters for the national media covering the proceedings. The building was demolished internally in 2022, with only the 1878 facade preserved; it reopened in July 2026 as a 100-room Marriott Tribute Portfolio hotel.

$$$ All Ages Family: High

Hackettstown — 2

Museum / Historical Site

Centenary University (Tillie Smith Haunting)

Hackettstown, NJ

On the night of April 8–9, 1886, 18-year-old Matilda 'Tillie' Smith, a kitchen worker at the Centenary Collegiate Institute (now Centenary University), was found raped and strangled in a field behind the campus. Campus janitor James Titus was tried, convicted, and eventually confessed to the crime. The case attracted national press attention and remains one of the most documented violent crimes in 19th-century New Jersey.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Aerial survey view of Union Cemetery (Tillie Smith Grave)

Aerial survey · USDA NAIP

Cemetery / Burial Ground

Union Cemetery (Tillie Smith Grave)

Hackettstown, NJ

Union Cemetery was established in 1859 on East Avenue in Hackettstown, Warren County. It holds the grave of Matilda 'Tillie' Smith, the 18-year-old kitchen worker murdered at Centenary Collegiate Institute on April 9, 1886. Her headstone — bearing the phrase 'She died in defense of her honor' — was placed by community members and has become one of the most recognized grave markers in New Jersey's paranormal landscape.

$ All Ages Family: High

Haddonfield — 2

Museum / Historical Site

Greenfield Hall (Historical Society of Haddonfield)

Haddonfield, NJ

Greenfield Hall stands on land first granted in 1728, making it central to Haddonfield's colonial heritage. The current Federal-style structure was built in 1841 and later expanded. The Historical Society of Haddonfield has operated from the building since 1914, preserving records tied to the borough founded by Elizabeth Haddon in 1701.

$ All Ages Family: High

Ghost Tour / Walking Tour

Haunted Haddonfield Walking Tour

Haddonfield, NJ

Haddonfield, settled by Quakers in the early 1700s and incorporated as a borough in 1875, keeps an unusually intact colonial streetscape along Kings Highway. The Historical Society of Haddonfield, headquartered at Greenfield Hall, runs a seasonal ghost walk that uses the town's documented buildings and burial grounds as its stage.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Manalapan — 2

Battlefield / Military Site

Monmouth Battlefield State Park

Manalapan, NJ

On June 28, 1778, Continental Army forces engaged the British column retreating from Philadelphia across New Jersey. The battle involved nearly 30,000 soldiers and ended in a tactical standoff after the war's largest field artillery duel. Over 600 men were killed, wounded, or went missing. The 1,818-acre state park preserves the core of the battlefield and has been a National Historic Landmark since 1961.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Old Tennent Presbyterian Church at the edge of the Monmouth Battlefield, Manalapan, NJ

Cemetery / Burial Ground

Old Tennent Church and Revolutionary Cemetery

Manalapan, NJ

The Old Tennent congregation was founded in 1692 by Scottish Dissenters who fled persecution under James II. The current building was completed in 1751 and named for pastors John and William Tennent. On June 28, 1778, the church became a field hospital during the Battle of Monmouth — one of the largest engagements of the Revolutionary War. The cemetery holds more than 70 documented Revolutionary War veterans, including Continental Congress delegate Nathaniel Scudder and American Revolution patriot Joshua Huddy.

$ All Ages Family: High

Montclair — 2

Aerial survey view of Montclair State University (Hawk Crossings)

Aerial survey · USDA NAIP

Other Dark Tourism Site

Montclair State University (Hawk Crossings)

Montclair, NJ

Montclair State University was established in 1908 as the New Jersey State Normal School at Montclair. The campus at 1 Normal Avenue expanded substantially through the twentieth century; the Clove Road Apartments, later renamed Hawk Crossings, were built as student housing and have been in continuous residential use since the 1970s. The university now enrolls over 21,000 students and is classified as a doctoral research institution.

$ All Ages Family: High

Haunted Dining / Bar

Tierney's Tavern

Montclair, NJ

Tierney's Tavern on Valley Road in Montclair has operated since the 1930s as a neighborhood institution. The bar became locally famous for the 'Death Chair' — the jukebox-side seat where Frank 'Finn' Tracey, Seton Hall Prep's pioneering basketball coach, suffered a fatal heart attack during Super Bowl XVI on January 24, 1982.

$ 21+ Family: Low

Mount Holly — 2

West elevation of the 1811 Robert Mills-designed Burlington County Prison at 128 High Street, Mount Holly, New Jersey

Prison / Reformatory

Burlington County Prison Museum

Mount Holly, NJ

The Burlington County Prison Museum occupies an 1811 jail designed by Robert Mills, one of the first American-born trained architects and the later designer of the Washington Monument. When it closed in 1965, it was the oldest operating prison in the United States. The building was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1987.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Ghost Tour / Walking Tour

Mount Holly Haunted History Walking Tour

Mount Holly, NJ

Mount Holly, the historic seat of Burlington County, was founded in 1677 and retains a dense colonial and Revolutionary-era streetscape. Mount Holly Tours runs guided walks through the historic district, including a seasonal haunted-history version that draws on the town's documented past and landmarks such as the Burlington County Prison.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Nutley — 2

Haunted House / Historic Home

Kingsland Manor

Nutley, NJ

Built circa 1768, Kingsland Manor is one of Essex County's oldest surviving colonial structures and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. During Prohibition, the property hosted a speakeasy run by Bernard 'Bus' McGinnity. On December 9, 1936, McGinnity, 37, was found shot in the head outside a barn on the property; the circumstances of his death were never fully explained.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Haunted Dining / Bar

Old Canal Inn

Nutley, NJ

The Old Canal Inn was built in 1908 at 2 East Passaic Avenue in Nutley, New Jersey, just steps from the former Morris Canal towpath. Originally operating as JoJo's Tavern under the Skorupski family from 1934, it was renamed the Old Canal Inn in 1948 to honor the canal that once ran through Nutley. The building has been a neighborhood institution for over a century.

$ 21+ Family: Not Recommended

Ocean City — 2

Haunted Hotel / Inn

Flanders Hotel

Ocean City, NJ

The Flanders Hotel opened in 1923 at the corner of 11th Street and the Ocean City Boardwalk. It was named as a tribute to the World War I battlefields of Flanders, Belgium, and quickly became the social center of the Ocean City resort community. The building is listed on the New Jersey Register of Historic Places.

$$$ All Ages Family: High

Museum / Historical Site

Ocean City Historical Museum (Sindia Collection)

Ocean City, NJ

The Sindia was a 329-foot, four-masted steel bark built in Belfast in 1887. On December 15, 1901, during a nor'easter, she ran aground 300 yards off Ocean City's 16th Street beach while inbound from Kobe, Japan to New York City. All 33 crew members reached shore safely. The ship carried porcelain, silk, and camphor oil; portions of the hull remained visible on the beach for over 80 years before the wreck sank completely beneath the sand, where it still lies.

$ All Ages Family: High

Ringwood — 2

Museum / Historical Site

Ringwood Manor

Ringwood, NJ

Ringwood Manor was first built as an ironmaster's house in 1740 and grew into the 51-room summer estate of Peter Cooper and his son-in-law Abram S. Hewitt, beginning in 1853. The Hewitt family expanded the house in 1864, 1875, 1900, and 1910. In 1938, the family donated the house and grounds to the State of New Jersey. It is now a National Historic Landmark and the centerpiece of Ringwood State Park.

$$ All Ages Family: High

Cemetery / Burial Ground

Grave of Robert Erskine (Erskine Tomb, Ringwood Manor)

Ringwood, NJ

Robert Erskine was a Scottish engineer hired in 1771 to manage the ironmaking operations at Ringwood. After designing a Hudson River defense in 1776, he was appointed by George Washington as the first Geographer and Surveyor General of the Continental Army, producing more than 275 maps. He kept Ringwood's furnaces producing iron for the war effort, including links for the Hudson River chain. He died of pneumonia on October 2, 1780, at age forty-five, and was buried in a tomb on the Ringwood grounds.

$ All Ages Family: High

Rio Grande — 2

Aerial survey view of Winterwood Gift & Christmas Shoppe (Hildreth House)

Aerial survey · USDA NAIP

Other Dark Tourism Site

Winterwood Gift & Christmas Shoppe (Hildreth House)

Rio Grande, NJ

The Hildreth House at 3137 US Route 9 South in Rio Grande is considered the oldest standing structure in Cape May County, built circa 1722 by the Hildreth family — one of the county's founding families. The spinster sisters Hester and Lucy Hildreth were the last family members to occupy the home before their deaths in 1949 and 1954. Winterwood Gift & Christmas Shoppe has operated here since 1978.

$ All Ages Family: High

Aerial survey view of Winterwood Gift Shop (Hildreth House)

Aerial survey · USDA NAIP

Other Dark Tourism Site

Winterwood Gift Shop (Hildreth House)

Rio Grande, NJ

The Hildreth House at 3108 Route 9 South in Rio Grande was built in 1772, making it one of the oldest surviving structures in Cape May County. The Hildreth family owned and occupied the property for generations. Hester Hildreth, the last family member to live there, died in 1948 after the family line of unmarried women had maintained the house for the final decades of Hildreth family ownership. The building was later sold and eventually repurposed as Winterwood, a year-round Christmas and gift shop that has operated in the historic structure for decades.

$ All Ages Family: High

Stanhope — 2

Haunted Dining / Bar

Stanhope House

Stanhope, NJ

Built around 1790 as a single-family residence on the Morris Canal corridor, 45 Main Street in Stanhope served successively as a stagecoach stop, general store, post office, tavern, inn, and rooming house before becoming a nationally known blues venue in the 1970s. Muddy Waters, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Etta James, Buddy Guy, and dozens of other performers played its small stage. The venue closed permanently on July 30, 2025, after ownership could not sustain post-pandemic repair costs.

$ All Ages Family: High

Outdoor / Natural Site

Waterloo Village

Stanhope, NJ

Waterloo Village sits in the Musconetcong River valley in Sussex County, on a site first developed as an iron forge in 1761. The village is located within Allamuchy Mountain State Park. Known as Andover Forge during the American Revolution, it supplied iron to the colonial cause. The Morris Canal opened through the village in 1831, making Waterloo the halfway point on the 90-mile waterway between Phillipsburg and Jersey City. When the canal closed in 1924, the village declined. The NJDEP's Division of Parks and Forestry assumed management in 2007.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Trenton — 2

Cemetery / Burial Ground

Riverview Cemetery

Trenton, NJ

Riverview Cemetery overlooks the Delaware River in Trenton on ground first used as a Quaker burial place in the 1670s. The cemetery was formally established in 1699 and incorporated in 1858, when its grounds were laid out in the Victorian rural-cemetery style. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2017 for its significance in landscape architecture. Its monuments include the grave of Gen. George B. McClellan and the plot of the Roebling family of Brooklyn Bridge fame.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Asylum / Hospital

Trenton Psychiatric Hospital

Trenton, NJ

Trenton Psychiatric Hospital opened on May 15, 1848 as the New Jersey State Lunatic Asylum, the first public mental hospital in the state, founded through the advocacy of reformer Dorothea Dix. Designed by architect John Notman, it was the first hospital built on the Kirkbride plan. From 1907 the medical director Dr. Henry Cotton applied his 'focal infection' theory, surgically removing teeth and organs from patients; the practice caused many deaths and was later discredited. The hospital still operates as a state psychiatric facility.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Absecon — 1

Haunted Hotel / Inn

Dr. Jonathan Pitney House

Absecon, NJ

Dr. Jonathan Pitney arrived in Absecon in 1819 after completing his medical education, convinced that the barrier island climate was ideal for a health resort. He became the community's physician and its most persistent advocate for outside investment — lobbying Congress for the lighthouse that would become Absecon Lighthouse, promoting the Camden and Atlantic Railroad to extend service through the region, and articulating the vision for what would become Atlantic City. He built this house in 1799 (predating his arrival; a prior owner built it, and Pitney occupied it after establishing his practice) and it was expanded significantly in 1848. It has operated as a B&B since 1995, with a 2015 restoration.

$$ All Ages Family: High

Allamuchy Township — 1

Outdoor / Natural Site

Ghost Lake

Allamuchy Township, NJ

Ghost Lake is a small impoundment of approximately 0.1 square miles in Allamuchy Township, Warren County, New Jersey, created in the early twentieth century when two local landowners dammed a creek between their properties. It sits within Allamuchy Mountain State Park, off Shades of Death Road.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Atco — 1

Aerial survey view of Burnt Mill Road (Atco Ghost)

Aerial survey · USDA NAIP

Outdoor / Natural Site

Burnt Mill Road (Atco Ghost)

Atco, NJ

Burnt Mill Road is a dead-end lane in Atco, Camden County, in the Pine Barrens fringe of South Jersey. The area was a milling site in the nineteenth century; the road name reflects that industrial history. The ghost legend attached to the road has circulated in South Jersey communities since at least the mid-twentieth century and represents one of the region's most practiced folk rituals — a documented performance tradition that predates widespread internet circulation.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Barnegat Township — 1

Aerial survey view of Cedar Bridge Tavern

Aerial survey · USDA NAIP

Battlefield / Military Site

Cedar Bridge Tavern

Barnegat Township, NJ

Cedar Bridge Tavern marks the site of the Affair at Cedar Bridge, fought December 27, 1782 — more than a year after Yorktown — making it the last documented land skirmish of the Revolutionary War. Loyalist privateer John Bacon led a raid on the bridge, ambushing Continental militia and leaving one Patriot dead and multiple wounded before the raiders escaped into the Pine Barrens. The current tavern structure dates to circa 1816; Ocean County restored the property as a living-history museum.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Bay Head — 1

Exterior of The Grenville Hotel and Restaurant in Bay Head NJ, a pink Victorian shore hotel with American flag and white picket fence.

Haunted Hotel / Inn

The Grenville Hotel & Restaurant

Bay Head, NJ

The Grenville Hotel in Bay Head, New Jersey was constructed in 1890 on land purchased by Anna Nunemaker in 1886, with the building erected by Wycoff Applegate and his wife Susan. Several of the Applegate children died young, an event the building's paranormal tradition connects to reports of children's laughter in the corridors. The property changed hands multiple times before the Spurgat family purchased it in 1956; Harry and Renee Typaldos have owned it since 2003.

$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Bernardsville — 1

Museum / Historical Site

Old Bernardsville Public Library (Vealtown Tavern)

Bernardsville, NJ

The building at 2 Morristown Road in Bernardsville was constructed around 1710 as a tavern in Vealtown, as Bernardsville was then known. Captain John Parker operated it as the Vealtown Tavern, which served as a stop on the road between Morristown and Princeton during the Revolutionary War. Washington's Continental troops are documented as having stopped there. The building served as the Bernardsville Public Library from 1902 until the library relocated to a new facility at 1 Anderson Hill Road.

$ All Ages Family: High

Bridgeton — 1

Museum / Historical Site

Potter's Tavern

Bridgeton, NJ

Potter's Tavern is a frame tavern built around 1767 by blacksmith and innkeeper Matthew Potter at 49-51 West Broad Street in Bridgeton. In December 1775 the handwritten weekly Plain Dealer, regarded as New Jersey's first newspaper, was posted here with articles calling for independence. The building was later subdivided into a two-family dwelling, nearly collapsed, and was bought by the City of Bridgeton in 1958. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971 and is now a Cumberland County Historical Society museum.

$ All Ages Family: High

Byram Township — 1

Haunted Hotel / Inn

The Colby Mansion (Tamaracks Country Villa)

Byram Township, NJ

The Colby Mansion was built in 1914–1915 by New York importer-exporter Franklin Green Colby and his wife Josephine Wood Colby on the Conn Farm property in Byram Township, New Jersey. The 9,000-square-foot, 18-room Italianate (Tuscany-style) house was built around an eighteenth-century farmhouse. After decades of decline, the property was revived as Tamaracks Country Villa B&B.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Camden — 1

Museum / Historical Site

USS Battleship New Jersey

Camden, NJ

The USS New Jersey (BB-62) is an Iowa-class battleship commissioned on May 23, 1942. She served in four conflicts — World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and the Lebanese Civil War — logging more than 17 combat deployments and earning the most battle stars of any U.S. battleship. The ship carried over 45,000 sailors across her active service, with multiple deaths recorded aboard from accidents and combat operations. She was decommissioned for the final time in 1991 and opened as a floating museum in Camden in 2001.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Cape May Point — 1

Museum / Historical Site

Cape May Lighthouse

Cape May Point, NJ

The current Cape May Lighthouse is the third on this site — predecessors from 1823 and 1847 were lost to coastal erosion. The 157-foot brick tower was built under U.S. Army engineer William F. Raynolds and first lit on October 31, 1859. The U.S. Coast Guard decommissioned it in 1946; it was transferred to New Jersey in 1992 and has been operated by the Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts and Humanities (MAC) since 1988.

$ All Ages Family: Low

Chester — 1

Haunted Dining / Bar

Publick House (Chester House Inn)

Chester, NJ

Zephaniah Drake built the Brick Tavern at 111 Main Street in Chester in 1810 on a site that had served as a stagecoach stop on the colonial-era road connecting Morristown to the Delaware River crossings. Drake's establishment became a fixture of Morris County's agricultural and commercial life, occupying the building continuously as a hospitality venue through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Clinton — 1

Museum / Historical Site

Red Mill Museum Village

Clinton, NJ

The Red Mill Museum Village in Clinton, New Jersey, centers on a four-story stone mill built around 1810 by Ralph Hunt to process wool. Across the next 120 years, the mill operated as a grist mill, flour mill, graphite mill, and finally a talc plant before closing in 1928. A citizens' group purchased the property in 1960 and converted the 10-acre site into a museum.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Collingswood — 1

Haunted House / Historic Home

Collings-Knight House

Collingswood, NJ

Edward Zane Collings built this Federal-style house in 1825 on land his family had owned since the early colonial period. The Collings family is the namesake for Collingswood, the Camden County borough in which the house stands. Later occupied by the Knight family, the property eventually came under Borough ownership and is now operated as a house museum documenting the founding families of the Collingswood area.

$ All Ages Family: High

Columbus — 1

Haunted Dining / Bar

The Olde Columbus Inne

Columbus, NJ

The Olde Columbus Inne stands at 24491 West Main Street in Columbus, New Jersey, in the village formerly known as Black Horse Village. The original Black Horse Tavern dated to 1769; the village was renamed Columbus in 1827 when the post office was established. The restaurant operating in the building has been closed for several years.

$ All Ages Family: High

Cranbury — 1

Haunted Dining / Bar

Cranbury Inn

Cranbury, NJ

The Cranbury Inn has operated continuously since at least the 1750s on South Main Street in Cranbury, one of the most intact colonial villages in New Jersey. The building served travelers on the road between New York and Philadelphia, and local tradition holds that the chimney was modified with a concealed compartment used to shelter freedom-seekers during the Underground Railroad era.

$$ All Ages Family: High

Eastampton — 1

Haunted House / Historic Home

Smithville Mansion

Eastampton, NJ

Hezekiah Bradley Smith built this Italianate mansion in the 1860s as the centerpiece of a planned industrial village where he manufactured bicycles, woodworking machinery, and other goods at a scale unusual for rural Burlington County. After his death the estate declined and eventually passed to Burlington County, which operates it as a park museum.

$ All Ages Family: High

Edison — 1

Aerial survey view of Piscatawaytown Burial Ground (St. James Episcopal Church Cemetery)

Aerial survey · USDA NAIP

Cemetery / Burial Ground

Piscatawaytown Burial Ground (St. James Episcopal Church Cemetery)

Edison, NJ

The Piscatawaytown Burial Ground is one of the earliest cemeteries in Middlesex County, established when the Proprietors of East New Jersey granted land for a burial ground and town common on March 5, 1695. The oldest readable monument is dated 1693. St. James Church was established in 1704; its present white-frame building dates to 1836. The grounds hold original colonial families, a Civil War general, town mayors, and a common grave of British Revolutionary War soldiers.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Elizabeth — 1

Museum / Historical Site

Union County Courthouse

Elizabeth, NJ

The Union County Courthouse in Elizabeth, New Jersey, occupies a site near the center of one of the oldest cities in the United States. The courthouse is most closely associated with Hannah Caldwell, wife of the Continental Army chaplain Reverend James Caldwell, who was shot and killed by a British soldier at her home in Connecticut Farms on June 7, 1780. Her death and her husband's subsequent death in 1781 became symbols of British wartime conduct in New Jersey.

$ All Ages Family: High

Fieldsboro — 1

Haunted House / Historic Home

White Hill Mansion

Fieldsboro, NJ

Robert Field purchased this bluff-top property along the Delaware River in 1722 and began building; his son expanded the structure to its present Georgian form around 1760. Field was a successful merchant and vocal Revolution supporter who drowned in the Delaware in 1775 under circumstances that were never explained. The mansion subsequently passed through loyalist accusations, Revolutionary War occupation, and a Prohibition-era purchase by bootlegger Heinrich Glenk in 1923.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Freehold — 1

Museum / Historical Site

Covenhoven House

Freehold, NJ

Built circa 1752–1753 by William Covenhoven, the Covenhoven House is a well-preserved Dutch-English colonial home in Freehold, Monmouth County. It is best known as the site where British General Henry Clinton and his staff spent the night of June 27, 1778, the eve of the Battle of Monmouth. The Monmouth County Historical Association has operated it as a house museum since 1973.

$ All Ages Family: High

Frenchtown — 1

Haunted Hotel / Inn

Widow McCrea House

Frenchtown, NJ

The Widow McCrea House at 53 Kingwood Avenue was built in 1878 in the Italianate Victorian style by or for the McCrea family in Frenchtown, a Delaware River town in Hunterdon County that developed as a small commercial and agricultural center in the mid-nineteenth century. Frances McCrea, the property's early female occupant, is the primary historical figure associated with the house and the anchor of its ghost tradition.

$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Galloway — 1

Aerial survey view of Leeds Point (Jersey Devil Birthplace)

Aerial survey · USDA NAIP

Outdoor / Natural Site

Leeds Point (Jersey Devil Birthplace)

Galloway, NJ

Leeds Point is a small hamlet at the edge of Great Bay in Atlantic County, documented since the 18th century as part of the Leeds family's South Jersey landholdings. The family name appears in colonial records from the 1690s; Daniel Leeds was a surveyor, almanac publisher, and controversial Quaker figure whose conflicts with the Philadelphia Quaker meeting generated lasting animosity. The Leeds family's prominence in colonial New Jersey history — and the 'Leeds Devil' name applied to the creature before 'Jersey Devil' became standard — connect the hamlet directly to the legend's origin.

$ All Ages Family: High

Glendora — 1

Brick exterior of the 1756 Gabreil Daveis Tavern (Hillman Hospital House) at 500 3rd Avenue in Glendora, Gloucester Township, New Jersey.

Museum / Historical Site

Gabriel Davies Tavern

Glendora, NJ

Gabriel Davies Tavern was built in 1756 near the Big Timber Creek in what is now the Glendora section of Gloucester Township, Camden County, New Jersey. It was constructed by Gabreil Daveis to house boatmen transporting lumber and goods toward Philadelphia. The tavern served as an election and meeting site for the earliest days of Gloucester Township, and during the Revolutionary War was designated a field hospital by General George Washington. The building, with its original furnishings intact, was donated to Gloucester Township by its last private owner in 1976.

$ All Ages Family: High

Hackensack — 1

The 1791 stone First Reformed Dutch Church on the Green in Hackensack, New Jersey

Cemetery / Burial Ground

First Reformed Dutch Church on the Green and Cemetery

Hackensack, NJ

The First Reformed Dutch Church congregation in Hackensack was organized in 1686; its current sandstone building, the 'Church on the Green,' was completed in 1791. The adjoining churchyard dates to the late 1600s and holds more than 1,400 burials, including Continental Army Brigadier General Enoch Poor. The church, cemetery and Hackensack Green were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.

$ All Ages Family: High

Haddon Township — 1

Theater / Performance Venue

Ritz Theatre

Haddon Township, NJ

The Ritz Theatre opened in 1927 on the White Horse Pike in Haddon Township as a 800-seat movie palace serving South Jersey. It operated as a cinema for decades before transitioning to live performance under the nonprofit Ritz Theatre Company, which has operated it since 1976. The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

$$ All Ages Family: High

Hammonton — 1

Museum / Historical Site

Batsto Village

Hammonton, NJ

In 1766, Charles Read constructed an iron furnace on the Batsto River in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. The ironworks supplied cannonballs and hollow ware to Washington's Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. The Richards family managed production for 91 years until the mid-19th-century iron industry collapse; Joseph Wharton bought the property in 1876 and expanded the mansion. New Jersey purchased the site in the late 1950s; it was dedicated as a historic site in 1961.

$ All Ages Family: High

Hancock's Bridge — 1

Battlefield / Military Site

Hancock House

Hancock's Bridge, NJ

William Hancock built this Flemish-bond brick farmhouse in 1734 near the Alloways Creek in Salem County. On the night of March 20–21, 1778, a force of approximately 300 Loyalist Queen's Rangers under Lieutenant Colonel John Graves Simcoe surrounded the house, which sheltered a militia company under Colonel William Spicer. In the pre-dawn attack, the Rangers killed approximately 20 to 30 sleeping patriots with bayonets. Judge William Hancock, the owner's relative, died of his wounds. The house survived the war and is now a New Jersey State Historic Site on the National Register of Historic Places.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Hawthorne — 1

True Crime Site

Van Winkle House (Goffle Road Murder Site)

Hawthorne, NJ

On January 9-10, 1850, former farmhand John Jonston stabbed Judge John Van Winkle and his wife Jane to death at their home on Goffle Road in what would become Hawthorne, marking the first murder in Passaic County's recorded history. Jonston was convicted and hanged in the county's first execution. The house gained a haunted reputation, with an 1882 New York Times account describing it as 'the abode of unearthly visitants.'

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Highlands — 1

Museum / Historical Site

Sandy Hook Lighthouse

Highlands, NJ

Completed June 11, 1764, by contractor Isaac Conro and funded through a New York Assembly lottery, Sandy Hook Lighthouse is the oldest surviving original lighthouse in the United States. The 103-foot octagonal tower passed to federal authority in 1790 and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964. Its third-order Fresnel lens, installed in 1857, remains operational.

$ All Ages Family: Low

Hope — 1

Outdoor / Natural Site

Jenny Jump State Forest

Hope, NJ

Jenny Jump State Forest covers 4,466 acres in Warren County, New Jersey, along the Jenny Jump Mountain Range. The forest takes its name from a folk legend connected to the Minsi band of the Lenni Lenape and a European settler family. The site includes the Greenwood Observatory, operated by the United Astronomy Clubs of New Jersey, and is adjacent to Shades of Death Road and Ghost Lake — place names that reflect the region's atmosphere rather than any documented events.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Lakehurst — 1

Exterior of the massive 1921 Hangar No. 1 at Naval Air Engineering Station Lakehurst, New Jersey, the National Historic Landmark airship hangar associated with the Hindenburg disaster

Museum / Historical Site

Lakehurst Hangar No. 1 (Hindenburg Crash Site)

Lakehurst, NJ

Hangar No. 1 at Naval Air Engineering Station Lakehurst in Manchester Township, Ocean County, was completed in 1921 to house the U.S. Navy's rigid airships. The cavernous structure — 966 feet long and 224 feet high — was the intended mooring destination of the German passenger airship LZ 129 Hindenburg when it caught fire and was destroyed during its landing approach on May 6, 1937, killing 36 people. The hangar was designated a National Historic Landmark on May 23, 1968.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Lambertville — 1

Haunted Dining / Bar

Inn of the Hawke

Lambertville, NJ

The building at 74 South Union Street in Lambertville was constructed in the early 1860s as the home of William McCreedy, who also operated McCreedy's Paper Mill across the street. It was converted to an inn and tavern in the early 1900s. In 1993, Doreen and Melissa Masset renamed it the Inn of the Hawke. The property endured the catastrophic 1903 Lambertville flood, which destroyed the original covered bridge. The Inn of the Hawke closed in March 2022 after 29 years; The Hawke steakhouse opened at the same location.

$$ All Ages Family: High

Liberty Township — 1

Outdoor / Natural Site

Shades of Death Road

Liberty Township, NJ

Shades of Death Road runs 6.7 miles through central Warren County, New Jersey. Its name is most plausibly explained by a 19th-century malaria outbreak traced to Bear Swamp in 1850, which killed enough residents that a road originally called Shades Road became Shades of Death in black humor. A state drainage project in 1884 ended the outbreak. Three murders on or near the road in the 1920s and 1930s added a further layer of documented violent history.

$ All Ages Family: High

Long Branch — 1

Museum / Historical Site

Garfield Tea House / Church of the Presidents

Long Branch, NJ

On July 2, 1881, President James Garfield was shot by Charles Guiteau at Washington's Baltimore and Potomac railroad station. Doctors recommended sea air, and Garfield was transported to Long Branch, NJ, where Long Branch citizens laid 3,200 feet of emergency rail line in under 24 hours to move him from the main tracks to a cottage in Elberon. Garfield died on September 19, 1881. Actor Oliver Doud Byron later built the tea house from the original railroad ties, incorporating one original rail as the ridgepole. The site is managed by the Long Branch Historical Museum Association.

$ All Ages Family: High

Marlboro — 1

Asylum / Hospital

Marlboro Psychiatric Hospital (Big Brook Park)

Marlboro, NJ

Marlboro Psychiatric Hospital operated from 1931 to 1998 on 594 acres in Monmouth County, New Jersey. Over its history the facility documented repeated patient abuse including restraint deaths, a 1979 food-poisoning outbreak that killed five patients, 15 recorded suicides over an 18-year period, and a 1993 undercover newspaper investigation that concluded patients were treated with less care than prisoners. All buildings were demolished by 2015; Monmouth County converted the property to Big Brook Park.

$ All Ages Family: High

Marlton — 1

Aerial survey view of Airport on Kettlerun Road

Aerial survey · USDA NAIP

Outdoor / Natural Site

Airport on Kettlerun Road

Marlton, NJ

Aero-Haven Airport was established in the mid-1950s on Kettlerun Road in the Marlton-Evesham area of Burlington County, New Jersey. Built around 1954-1956 by aviation enthusiasts including Bill Kennedy and associates, the airport was dedicated in 1961 with a 2,800-foot paved runway. It operated throughout the 1960s before closure and sale in 1967, and was finally abandoned by the mid-1970s.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Martinsville — 1

Outdoor / Natural Site

Devil's Tree

Martinsville, NJ

A single oak tree on Mountain Road in the Martinsville section of Bernards Township, Somerset County. The tree stands in a field that was set aside from residential development when the surrounding area was built out. Bernards Township opted to preserve the tree rather than remove it; after repeated vandalism, a chain-link fence was installed around the trunk in 2007.

$ All Ages Family: High

Mays Landing — 1

Aerial survey view of Lincoln Memorial Cemetery

Aerial survey · USDA NAIP

Cemetery / Burial Ground

Lincoln Memorial Cemetery

Mays Landing, NJ

Lincoln Memorial Cemetery, also listed as Lincoln Memorial Park, is located in Hamilton Township, Atlantic County, New Jersey, near Mays Landing. The cemetery holds approximately 2,858 documented memorials and is listed in Atlantic County genealogical records as a recognized historical burial site.

$ All Ages Family: High

Mendham — 1

Outdoor / Natural Site

Combs Hollow Road Bridge

Mendham, NJ

Combs Hollow Road runs through Morris County in Mendham Township, New Jersey, a rural area of heavily wooded hills traversed by narrow two-lane roads with sharp bends. The road's bridge became the focus of a regional ghost legend tied to a hit-and-run fatality, though no independent historical record of the specific incident has been located.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Middletown — 1

Aerial survey · USDA NAIP

Outdoor / Natural Site

Shelly Drive

Middletown, NJ

Shelly Drive is a residential street in the New Monmouth section of Middletown Township, Monmouth County, New Jersey. The street is part of a mid-twentieth-century suburban subdivision in an area with documented Revolutionary War activity, including the nearby Spy House at Port Monmouth.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Midland Park — 1

Haunted House / Historic Home

Crayhay Mansion

Midland Park, NJ

The Crayhay Mansion is an 1864 Victorian residence in Midland Park, Bergen County, New Jersey. The home takes its informal name from the Crayhay family, who occupied the house from 1906 to 1934. It remains a private residence and has no public-tour program.

$ All Ages Family: High

National Park — 1

The 1748 James and Ann Whitall House at Red Bank Battlefield in National Park, New Jersey, a red-brick Quaker farmhouse that served as a Revolutionary War field hospital

Battlefield / Military Site

Red Bank Battlefield / Whitall House

National Park, NJ

Red Bank Battlefield in National Park, Gloucester County, New Jersey preserves the site of the October 22, 1777 Battle of Red Bank, where American forces at Fort Mercer repelled a Hessian assault and secured the Delaware River against British control. The 1748 Whitall House, home of Quakers James and Ann Whitall, served as a field hospital during and after the battle. Ann Whitall's decision to remain at her spinning wheel while artillery fired around the house became one of the war's enduring character portraits.

$ All Ages Family: High

Neshanic Station — 1

Outdoor patio and red-painted exterior of the Riverside Inn at 102 Woodfern Road, Neshanic Station, New Jersey, a 19th-century tavern building

Haunted Dining / Bar

Murphy's Crocodile Inn (now Riverside Inn)

Neshanic Station, NJ

The building at 102 Woodfern Road in Neshanic Station, New Jersey, was constructed in the 1880s and operated for years as the Neshanic Inn and later as Murphy's Crocodile Inn. After a closure period, the property reopened as the Riverside Inn in 2021 following a Covid-delayed renovation.

$$ All Ages Family: High

Newfield — 1

Lakeside exterior of Lake House Restaurant on Iona Lake in Newfield, New Jersey, formerly the Iona Lake Inn

Haunted Dining / Bar

Lake House Restaurant (former Iona Lake Inn)

Newfield, NJ

The property now occupied by Lake House Restaurant was built in the early 20th century as the Iona Lake Inn, a summer vacation destination on the shore of Iona Lake in Gloucester County, New Jersey. The building passed through multiple operators over the decades, including a period as Jake's Italian Restaurant before its current incarnation. Jake's on Iona Lake was marked as closed as of April 2026, with Lake House Restaurant operating at the same address.

$$ All Ages Family: High

Newton — 1

The Lewis Cave Grave marker at Newton Cemetery, Sussex County, New Jersey — a stone set into a rock face inscribed with three names and the year 1909

Cemetery / Burial Ground

Newton Cave Grave

Newton, NJ

At Newton Cemetery in Sussex County, a stone marker set into a rock outcropping in the adjacent woods bears the names James W. Lewis, Margaret Lewis, and J. Howard Lewis alongside the year 1909. The stone seals the entrance to a limestone cave in which the three — whose exact identities and circumstances remain disputed in local historical accounts — disappeared and were never recovered.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Ogdensburg — 1

Museum / Historical Site

Sterling Hill Mining Museum

Ogdensburg, NJ

Zinc was mined on this site in Ogdensburg, Sussex County, from at least the 1730s. Under various corporate owners — including the New Jersey Zinc Company, which held it for most of the 20th century — Sterling Hill became one of the most productive zinc mines in the world and one of the last underground metal mines operating in the northeastern United States. It closed in 1986 after more than 77 recorded worker deaths. A group of former employees and local investors purchased the property in 1989 and opened it as a museum the following year.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Oxford — 1

Museum / Historical Site

Shippen Manor

Oxford, NJ

Shippen Manor was built between 1760 and 1765 for the Shippen brothers — Edward and William — who owned and operated Oxford Furnace, one of the oldest iron furnaces in New Jersey, established 1741. The Georgian stone manor served as the ironmasters' residence and the administrative center of a colonial iron enterprise. Warren County acquired the property and now operates it as a cultural heritage museum.

$ All Ages Family: High

Pasadena — 1

Aerial survey view of Brooksbrae Brick Factory Ruins

Aerial survey · USDA NAIP

Outdoor / Natural Site

Brooksbrae Brick Factory Ruins

Pasadena, NJ

The Brooksbrae Brick Company began operating on Woodmanse Road in the Pine Barrens around 1905, taking advantage of the region's clay deposits to produce brick. Around 1908, two caretakers died in a chimney fire. Several years later, watchman Gildo Plazziano and Harriet Chattin, a 12-year-old neighbor, were found dead in the ruins in what investigators ruled a probable murder-suicide. The factory never recovered and closed; the brick kilns and chimneys that remain have been consumed by the surrounding pine forest.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Paterson — 1

Haunted House / Historic Home

Lambert Castle (Belle Vista)

Paterson, NJ

Catholina Lambert, an English-born silk magnate who built one of the largest fortunes in Paterson's industrial era, completed Belle Vista Castle in 1892 on a promontory above Garret Mountain. The home was the site of repeated family tragedy: three of Lambert's children died young, and his wife Rosa predeceased him. Lambert was forced to auction his famous art collection in 1916 after financial collapse and died in the castle in 1923.

$ All Ages Family: High

Pemberton Township — 1

Aerial survey view of Ong's Hat Ghost Town

Aerial survey · USDA NAIP

Outdoor / Natural Site

Ong's Hat Ghost Town

Pemberton Township, NJ

Ong's Hat was a small Pine Barrens settlement named after an 18th-century resident named Ong — either for a hat hung in a tree or a hut his family built as a way-station. The village supported a handful of houses and a tavern before declining as Pine Barrens industries collapsed. Its last resident left in 1936. In the early 20th century, a Polish woman named Mrs. Chininiski disappeared from the settlement; a female skeleton was subsequently found on the site.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Perth Amboy — 1

Museum / Historical Site

Proprietary House

Perth Amboy, NJ

The Proprietary House was built around 1762 as the official residence of New Jersey's Royal Governors and is the only such mansion to survive in the state. Its most historically charged moment came in June 1776, when William Franklin — the royal governor and Benjamin Franklin's son — was arrested on the steps of the mansion for refusing to support American independence. He remained loyal to the Crown and was held as a prisoner of war. The Proprietary House Association now operates the building as a museum.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Pilesgrove — 1

Haunted House / Historic Home

Seven Stars Tavern

Pilesgrove, NJ

Peter Lauterbach built Seven Stars Tavern in 1762 in Pilesgrove Township, Salem County, New Jersey — a two-and-a-half-story brick structure in Flemish bond with his initials and the date worked into the brickwork. During the American Revolution, British forces raided the property in 1778 searching for his son, John Louderback, who supplied Continental troops with food. The tavern was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.

$ All Ages Family: High

Pittsgrove — 1

Haunted Dining / Bar

Ye Olde Centerton Inn

Pittsgrove, NJ

Ye Olde Centerton Inn at 1136 Almond Road in Pittsgrove, New Jersey has served travelers since 1706, making it one of the oldest continuously operating inns in the United States. The three-story Colonial clapboard structure was a coach stop on the Philadelphia-Greenwich route and reportedly stored Continental Army munitions during the Revolution.

$$$ All Ages Family: High

Point Pleasant — 1

Haunted Dining / Bar

Magee's West Side Tavern / Shore House

Point Pleasant, NJ

Magee's West Side Tavern, also known as the Shore House and historically as the West Point Hotel, is a 19th-century building in Point Pleasant, New Jersey. Local tradition holds that the property served as an inn during the 1800s, and that following the 1846 wreck of the SS John Minturn off Mantoloking, the building was used briefly as a makeshift morgue for victims recovered from the shore.

$$ 21+ Family: Low

Pompton Lakes — 1

True Crime Site

Pompton Lakes DuPont / Chemours Works

Pompton Lakes, NJ

DuPont manufactured explosives at this 572-acre site in Pompton Lakes and Wanaque from 1902 until the plant closed in April 1994. Production of lead azide, blasting caps, and metal shells left lead, mercury, explosive powders, and chlorinated solvents in the soil, sediment, and groundwater. Contamination migrated off the property and under a residential neighborhood near Acid Brook, making it a long-running EPA- and state-overseen cleanup. The Chemours Company assumed ownership in 2015.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Port Monmouth — 1

Exterior of the Seabrook-Wilson House (Spy House) at 719 Port Monmouth Road, a colonial homestead in Bayshore Waterfront Park, New Jersey.

Museum / Historical Site

Spy House (Seabrook-Wilson House)

Port Monmouth, NJ

The Seabrook-Wilson House in Port Monmouth, New Jersey, was originally constructed around 1663 by Thomas Whitlock, making it one of the oldest surviving structures in Monmouth County. The house was expanded and passed through the Seabrook and Wilson families before operating as an inn called Bay Side Manor and then The White House in the early 20th century. Added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974, it now functions as an activity center within Bayshore Waterfront Park, managed by the Monmouth County Park System.

$ All Ages Family: High

Quinton — 1

Aerial survey · USDA NAIP

Cemetery / Burial Ground

Berry's Chapel

Quinton, NJ

Berry's Chapel originated as a Methodist house of worship built by John Berry in the Civil War era, serving an African-American community in the New Jersey pine woods. The chapel was abandoned in 1923 following the establishment of a replacement church, Haven M.E. Church, on Route 49. The original structure burned down, leaving only the cemetery as a remnant of the historic African-American settlement.

$ All Ages Family: Low

Salem — 1

Brick 1735 Salem County Courthouse on Market Street in Salem, New Jersey

Museum / Historical Site

Old Salem County Courthouse

Salem, NJ

Built in 1735 during the reign of King George II from locally made brick, the Salem County Courthouse is the oldest active courthouse in New Jersey and among the oldest still in continuous use in the United States. During the Revolution it became the site of treason trials after the 1778 Salem Raid, in which the presiding judge, William Hancock, was killed.

$ All Ages Family: High

Sicklerville — 1

Aerial survey view of Camden County Vo-Tech High School

Aerial survey · USDA NAIP

Other Dark Tourism Site

Camden County Vo-Tech High School

Sicklerville, NJ

Camden County Technical Schools, Gloucester Township Campus, was established in 1969 as the second vocational and technical high school in the county, expanding educational access to the eastern, more rural portions of Camden County. The sprawling 170-acre campus located in Sicklerville serves high school and adult students throughout Camden County.

$ All Ages (during school hours) Family: Moderate

Skillman — 1

Asylum / Hospital

North Princeton Developmental Center (Skillman Village)

Skillman, NJ

The New Jersey State Village for Epileptics opened in 1898 under Governor Foster M. Voorhees, designed as a self-sustaining campus with educational, agricultural, medical, and recreational facilities. It became the New Jersey Neuro-Psychiatric Institute in 1953, treating alcoholism, drug addiction, cerebral palsy, and childhood emotional disturbances, before closing in 1995. Final patients left in 1998. Somerset County purchased the 247-acre property; all 100-plus structures were demolished by 2012, replaced by Skillman Park.

$ All Ages Family: High

Somerset — 1

Haunted House / Historic Home

Van Wickle House (The Meadows)

Somerset, NJ

Built in 1722 by Symen Van Wickle on land purchased by his father Evert along the Raritan River in Somerset, the Van Wickle House — also called The Meadows — is a well-preserved Dutch colonial farmhouse listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In the 1970s, community organizers formed the Meadows Foundation to prevent demolition when the property came up for sale.

$ All Ages Family: High

South Brigantine — 1

Aerial survey · USDA NAIP

Outdoor / Natural Site

13th Street

South Brigantine, NJ

Brigantine, New Jersey, has a maritime history marked by shipwrecks and maritime disasters. The barrier island sits on notorious offshore shoals responsible for over 300 vessel wrecks across two centuries, including significant 19th-century tragedies. 13th Street occupies the prime beachfront district of South Brigantine.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Tabernacle — 1

Aerial survey · USDA NAIP

Outdoor / Natural Site

Carranza Memorial

Tabernacle, NJ

Captain Emilio Carranza Rodriguez, a 26-year-old pilot in the Mexican Air Force, completed a goodwill flight from Mexico City to Washington D.C. and New York in June 1928, earning him the nickname 'the Lindbergh of Mexico.' On July 12, 1928, while returning to Mexico during a thunderstorm, his monoplane came down in the Pine Barrens near Tabernacle, New Jersey. His body was found by Boy Scouts the next morning. The Mexican government and the American Legion erected a memorial at the crash site; an annual July ceremony has continued since 1930.

$ All Ages Family: High

Totowa — 1

Cemetery / Burial Ground

Laurel Grove Cemetery

Totowa, NJ

Laurel Grove Cemetery was established in March 1872 by the Hinchcliffe family, who managed it for 127 years. Located in Totowa, Passaic County, approximately 15 miles west of New York City, the cemetery spans 200 acres with more than 100,000 interments and remains an active burial ground with roughly 900 interments per year.

$ All Ages Family: High

Verona — 1

Other Dark Tourism Site

Kip's Castle County Park

Verona, NJ

Kip's Castle was completed in 1905 for Frederic Kip, a Newark-area textile merchant. The nine-thousand-square-foot Rhineland-style stone structure was built on a ridge in what is now Verona, with views over the Watchung mountains. In 1980, followers of Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh purchased the property and used it as a compound for approximately five years, drawing coverage from the New York Times and alarming local residents. Essex County acquired the property and reopened it as a public park.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Wall Township — 1

Museum / Historical Site

Allaire Village

Wall Township, NJ

Allaire Village preserves a complete 1830s iron manufacturing town at the former Howell Iron Works site in Wall Township, New Jersey. James Peter Allaire, a New York steam engine and boiler manufacturer, purchased the Howell Iron Works in 1822 and transformed it into a self-sufficient industrial village before declining iron prices forced closure in 1848. The site is now part of Allaire State Park.

$ All Ages Family: High

Walpack Center — 1

Aerial survey view of Walpack Center Ghost Town

Aerial survey · USDA NAIP

Outdoor / Natural Site

Walpack Center Ghost Town

Walpack Center, NJ

In 1965 the federal government used eminent domain to purchase all private property in Walpack Center and neighboring communities in Sussex County to make way for the Tocks Island Dam, a proposed Delaware River reservoir. The dam was never built. Eleven 19th-century structures — including a church, post office, and farmhouses — remained intact, transferred to the National Park Service and administered as part of Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Washington — 1

Aerial survey view of Washington Cemetery

Aerial survey · USDA NAIP

Cemetery / Burial Ground

Washington Cemetery

Washington, NJ

Washington Cemetery is a community cemetery off Route 57 in Washington Borough, Warren County, New Jersey. The Shadowlands narrative attributes the burial of the victims of the 1843 Changewater Murders to this cemetery, but contemporary historical research, including by the GraveMatters project, identifies the victims' burial site as Mansfield Cemetery elsewhere in Warren County.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Wayne — 1

Museum / Historical Site

Dey Mansion

Wayne, NJ

Dey Mansion, also known historically as Bloomsbury Manor, was built in the 1770s by Colonel Theunis Dey. It served as George Washington's headquarters from October 8 to November 27, 1780, while the Continental Army camped in the surrounding Preakness Valley. The mansion is operated as a museum by the Passaic County Park System.

$ All Ages Family: High

Weehawken — 1

True Crime Site

Weehawken Dueling Grounds

Weehawken, NJ

The ledge above the Hudson Palisades at Weehawken was a primary dueling ground for New York and New Jersey gentlemen from the early 1700s through the 1880s, hosting at least 18 documented duels. The most significant was July 11, 1804, when Vice President Aaron Burr mortally wounded former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton died the following day in Manhattan. Hamilton's son Philip had been killed in a duel at Paulus Hook, four miles south, in 1801.

$ All Ages Family: High

Whippany — 1

Aerial survey view of Whippany Burying Yard

Aerial survey · USDA NAIP

Cemetery / Burial Ground

Whippany Burying Yard

Whippany, NJ

The Whippany Burying Yard was established in 1718, predating the founding of Morris County, the State of New Jersey, and the United States. It is the oldest cemetery in northwest New Jersey. The approximately two-acre site contains roughly 450 graves and served as the location of the first school and first militia training ground in Morris, Warren, and Sussex Counties.

$ All Ages Family: High

Winslow Township — 1

Aerial survey view of Blue Hole (Devil's Puddle)

Aerial survey · USDA NAIP

Outdoor / Natural Site

Blue Hole (Devil's Puddle)

Winslow Township, NJ

The Blue Hole is a spring-fed pond on the Camden-Gloucester County line within the New Jersey Pine Barrens, approximately 70 feet across, notable for its clear water — a marked contrast to the region's typically tannin-stained streams. Its origin is a natural artesian spring; the pond has no documented human construction history. It appears in New Jersey Pine Barrens legend collections as one of the region's most consistently referenced supernatural sites.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Woodbury — 1

Ghost Tour / Walking Tour

Historic Woodbury Ghost Tour

Woodbury, NJ

The Historic Woodbury Ghost Tour is operated by Main Street Woodbury Inc., the downtown nonprofit, as a seasonal walking tour of the borough's historic Broad Street and Delaware Street. Woodbury, the seat of Gloucester County, dates to the colonial period and was occupied during the Revolutionary War, history the tour draws on directly.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

By type

Museum / Historical Site (37) Outdoor / Natural Site (21) Cemetery / Burial Ground (20) Haunted Hotel / Inn (19) Haunted Dining / Bar (19) Haunted House / Historic Home (15) Other Dark Tourism Site (10) Battlefield / Military Site (7) True Crime Site (7) Theater / Performance Venue (6) Ghost Tour / Walking Tour (5) Asylum / Hospital (4) Prison / Reformatory (2)