#shades of death road

Shades of Death Road

 History and legend tell of the Lenni-Lenape people who used to occupy this valley; many of them died of diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis, which were rampant in the area. At one point, they were attacked by a vicious Iroquois tribe along where Shades of Death Road is located. After a horrific battle the Lenni-Lenape were slaughtered, leading many to believe that their tormented spirits haunt the area to this very day, creeping through the misty fog that blankets the valley frequently.

At some points the road runs alongside eerie Ghost Lake, which is blanketed by wispy fog and inhabited by lush foliage and an amazing array of wildlife.

Later, due to the towering, twisted trees that cast a gloomy shadow over much of the roadway, it became known to the locals as “The Shades.” Legend states that there were numerous deaths and unsolved killings along this road; many people were said to have been attacked and killed by wildcats in the region, and a series of murders plagued the area as well. The first alleged murder on Shades of Death was the unsolved slaying of a tinker along with his horse; their corpses were found discarded alongside the road. In the 1930’s, an elderly gentleman in a Model T Ford was brutally bludgeoned to death with a jack handle from his own car, presumably for a few gold coins. His murderer was never caught.

It was around this time that the local population began to refer to The Shades as “Shades of Death Road.”

In the 1940’s, two men- Leon G. Hull and William Crouse Jr.- both constructed fantastic mansions in the dark depths of the woods close to each other, near Shades of Death. By building a dam across a stream which adjoined their properties, the men created a massive lake, which they named “Ghost Lake” due to the ghostly apparitions in the fog wisping over the water. Consequently, they decided to name their property “Haunted Hollow” and the adjacent mountain “Murderer’s Mountain.”

Other reputed rumors of evil included the macabre finding of a male body that was discovered under a railroad car along the roadway, and the acts of a murderous housewife who slayed her husband, then disposed of his head and body by burying it near their home on Shades of Death Road.

During the 1990s some visitors found hundreds of Polaroid photographs scattered in woods just off the road.  Saying that most images showed a television changing channels, others showed a woman or women, blurred and somewhat difficult to identify, lying on some sort of metal object, conscious but not smiling. The magazine claims that the photos “disappeared” shortly after local police began an investigation.