1800s Point Pleasant Tavern Tied to a Shipwreck Morgue Legend
Western Boulevard, Point Pleasant, Point Pleasant, NJ 08742
Age
21+
Cost
$$
Standard bar and restaurant pricing. Verify current operating status before visiting; ownership and operating names have changed over the property's history.
Access
Limited Access
Historic two-story building; first-floor bar with stairs to upper floors
Equipment
Photos OK
Point Pleasant Beach and the surrounding Point Pleasant area developed during the 19th century as a Jersey Shore community along the Manasquan River. The building now known as Magee's West Side Tavern dates to the 1800s, when the property operated as a hotel and tavern on the western side of the small village. The structure has carried several names through its history, including the West Point Hotel and the Shore House.
Local tradition associates the building with the 1846 wreck of the John Minturn, a packet ship that ran aground off Mantoloking, New Jersey during a February storm. The wreck killed 38 people, including the ship's captain and his family, and was a defining tragedy in mid-19th-century Jersey Shore history. According to oral history collected by the Point Pleasant Historical Society and reflected in regional ghost-tour materials, the West Point Hotel served as a temporary holding location for bodies recovered from the shore following the wreck, before they could be transferred for burial.
The building has operated continuously as a tavern in various forms through the late 20th and into the 21st century. The Shadowlands narrative attributing the building's history to use as a nursing home and slave quarters is not corroborated by Point Pleasant Historical Society materials and likely reflects conflation with other Ocean County properties.
Sources
Magee's West Side Tavern is among the most-cited paranormal sites in Ocean County, New Jersey. The most widely reproduced account is a 2001 investigation by New Jersey Paranormal Investigations, who concluded after extended on-site sessions that the building was occupied by at least three distinct spirits. The investigation report describes the spirits as primarily benign, with the activity centering on the first-floor bar area, the basement, and an upstairs storage room reputedly used during the 1846 morgue period.
Reported phenomena include glasses falling from shelves without source, windows breaking unexpectedly, and a documented account of a guest briefly locked inside a closet by what staff described as a prankster spirit. The Shadowlands narrative attributing one of the spirits to a former enslaved man named Lewis Carter who opens the attic blinds each morning is not corroborated by Point Pleasant Historical Society materials and the framing here treats the name and identification as folkloric oral tradition rather than as historical record.
Visitors should verify current operating status of the bar before planning a visit, as Jersey Shore hospitality operations have experienced significant ownership and naming turnover in recent years.
Media Appearances
Visit the 1800s Point Pleasant tavern, formerly known variously as Magee's West Side Tavern, Shore House, and West Point Hotel. The ground-floor bar maintains the building's original character. Verify current operating status and ownership before visiting.
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