I had a wonderful conversation with Gabriela L. Laracca of Asbury Park Press which was a rather atypical interview about Ong’s Hat because it focused on one of my passions, long-distance hiking.
Here’s a fun article about hiking in Ong’s Hat.
A sand road leading to the Apple Pie Hill fire tower, which is the highest point in the Pine Barrens. The tower is not open to visitors.”Courtesy Of Gabriela L. Laracca
It’s no question that weird things can be felt in the eerily silent trails in the Pine Barrens.
The cracking of every twig prompts an over-the-shoulder glance for things unknown.
It’s like you’re in a scary movie — or at least getting into the Halloween spirit.
For those not faint of heart, mysterious legends are waiting to be found, hidden along the same trails their subjects once walked (or ran) hundreds of years ago.
One of these is the Batona Trail (short for “back to nature”), which spans from Pemberton to Little Egg Harbor through 50 miles of sand and pitch pines. It has several trailheads, some with grim stories.
The most notorious is the legend of Ong’s Hat. The Ong’s Hat Trailhead is just off of Magnolia Road, which can be reached via Route 70 in Pemberton.
The leaf-covered Batona Trail at the Ong’s Hat trailhead in Pemberton.
This portion of town, once called Ong’s Hat, was believed to be named after a former resident — and he was a bit of a lady’s man. That was until a woman became angry with him and stomped on his hat, prompting him to storm off in a rage, only to throw his hat into the air and get it stuck in a tree. It hung there as an eerie reminder for years.
Visitors began to recognize the town by the hat, and all that’s left today of the small village are ruins of a ghost town that no one seems to be able to find.
Now for the fun part: Some believe it’s a portal to an alternate dimension.
The Oddlands crew search for the lost remnants of the fabled town of Ong’s Hat. Secret Princeton cults and dimensional portals are just the tip of the spear on this one! Come along for the ride!
We discuss an early example of the Alternative Reality Game genre of multimedia participatory “fiction.”
Page for show: https://www.ivoox.com/en/ong-s-hat-alternative-reality-games-are-not-games-audios-mp3_rf_93239217_1.html
The Long Seventies Podcast is an in-depth historical exploration of all things 1970’s, including politics, film, television, literature, music, culture, science and artistic/philosophical movements
Jake O’Neil/Unsplash
New Jersey is one of the most historic states in the U.S.; because of this, it definitely has its fair share of abandoned and forgotten communities.
The village known as Ong’s Hat in Burlington County can be found within New Jersey’s Pine Barrens. This small community can be seen on many maps throughout history, some of which date back centuries. The earliest findings are on a map made in 1778. According to local legend, the town had just a handful of houses as well as a hotel and thriving dance hall. As industry changed and the landscape of America shifted, the town slowly became completely abandoned.
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Muchas teorías sugieren la existencia de realidades alternativas y que, en ocasiones, estas se conectan. En este punto, los viajes interdimensionales también son posibles a través de portales. Una de las historias más conocidas relacionadas con este hecho, es la Ong’s Hat.
PORTAL EN ONG’S HAT: UN MISTERIOSO SITIO DE “VIAJES INTERDIMENSIONALES”
Este artículo ha sido copiado del sitio web https://codigooculto.com – Puede leer más en: https://codigooculto.com/enigmas/portal-ongs-hat-misterioso-sitio-viajes-interdimensionales/ – Ningún contenido publicado en CodigoOculto.com puede ser copiado, distribuido, publicado, reescrito o utilizado de ninguna manera, en su totalidad o en parte, sin una autorización previa y por escrito de CodigoOculto.com
Muchas teorías sugieren la existencia de realidades alternativas y que, en ocasiones, estas se conectan. En este punto, los viajes interdimensionales también son posibles a través de portales. Una de las historias más conocidas relacionadas con este hecho, es la Ong’s Hat. Ong’s Hat es una de las muchas ciudades fantasmas que se encuentran en la remota región “The Pines”, New Yersey. Un lugar que alcanzó la prosperidad en 1860, pero que, para mediados de 1930, ya era un pueblo fantasma. Sin embargo, para finales de los 70 y comienzo de los 80, este poblado abandonado se convertiría en la sede principal de un enigmático culto que pretendía incursionar en los viajes interdimensionales…
READ THE FULL ARTICLE: https://codigooculto.com/enigmas/portal-ongs-hat-misterioso-sitio-viajes-interdimensionales/Translate into English
ONG’S HAT
and the construction of a suspicious model reader
Jorge Flores
[PDF]
Abstract. In the late 1980s, an art collective led by writer Joseph Matheny created a multimedia narrative eventually known as Ong’s Hat about a supposed group of scientists who had achieved interdimensional travel and a subsequent persecution and concealment by of a dark conspiracy. Unfolded through printed documents sent by post, BBS (bulletin board systems) and later blogs, videos and radio, the Ong’s Hat textual complex managed to create a community of believers who discussed and amplified the narrative, appropriating it and disavowing its original creators. This article proposes to approach Ong’s Hat through Umberto Eco’s semiotics of interpretation, particularly his ideas on textual cooperation between reader and text and, starting from there, the textual strategies through which Ong’s Hat created its Model Readers. For this, concepts linked to transmedia are used, as well as the methodology developed by Margrit Schreier to evaluate how certain texts manage to confuse their readers about their reality status.
Keywords: transmedia, interpretation, textual cooperation, textual strategies, Model Reader, BBS, ARG
Entire article:https://www.hortussemioticus.ut.ee/hortus-semioticus-9-2022-07/
[PDF of the whole issue]
[PDF of article]
LP is in Aruba…so Joe Conte keeps his chair warm while KP tells Kahuna and Joe about the mysterious abandoned town of Ong’s Hat, NJ….ghost town, time portal…work of fiction…government cover up??? You tell us when you need to hope off the train…we all know it’s coming. ENJOY!
A veces el internet, tiene una forma muy extraña de crear leyendas de terror. Ese es el caso de Ong’s Hat, el misterioso relato que inició una impactante corriente del terror de internet, el cual son los ARG. . .
Sometimes the fabric of our world thins out, and people slip through – either from another dimension or into one. So some people think, while others claim it happened to them. Come along on a trip through different times and places, visiting 12th century England, 19th century Germany, Spain, Japan, Mormon mythology and, of course, the United States, including Ong’s Hat, New Jersey – site of the very first internet conspiracy theory.
SECTIONS 01:42 – It’s Not Easy Being Green – The Green Children of Woolpit 05:57 – There is No Map, and a Compass Wouldn’t Help at All – Jophar Vorin from Laxaria 09:33 – The Man from Taured & John Zegrus from Negus-Habessian 16:16 – I Wanna be Your Boyfriend – Breaking up is hard to do for Lerina Garcia Gordo 20:43 – Baby, You Can Drive My Car – The “Gadianton” Canyon Incident 25:23 – Pedro Oliva Ramirez tries to get to Alcalá de Guadaír 27:01 – Carol Chase McElheney visits a Bedford Falls version of Riverside 31:03 – “James Richards” mixes Everyday Chemistry 32:13 – You Can Leave Your Hat On – Joseph Matheny, Ong’s Hat and Alternate Reality Games (ARGs)43:51 – Travelling in other dimensions
