It’s that time of the year again! Every Samhain, the Internet lights up (or darkens?) with spooky stories and inevitably, Ong’s Hat gets thrown into the mix. Here’s an entry from this year’s mentions. Expect more.

New Jersey’s Pine Barrens

The Pine Barrens of New Jersey encompass several towns and counties, and in the most densely populated state in the U.S., it’s a wooded wonderland of weirdness and natural beauty. Legend says the Pine Barrens, which are filled with scrub pine but are far from barren, may also contain a devil. And perhaps a portal to another dimension. In a 1936 book, “Forgotten Towns of Southern New Jersey,” Henry Charlton Beck described Ong’s Hat, one of many abandoned towns in the Pines, a “vanished town of murder, of prize fights and of isolated country dances,” a place that “a hundred or so years ago, we were told … was a center of life among the Pineys,” with “brawls and fisticuffs, some of them bloody enough.” Weird NJ, a magazine whose name says it all, wondered in 2023 whether there might be even more than a sketchy past, asking, “Ong’s Hat: Piney Ghost Town or Gateway to Another Dimension?” LINK: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/10/20/scariest-us-towns/86478634007/