In the late 1990s, an obscure town in New Jersey became the center of one of the strangest stories on the internet.

According to online documents known as The Incunabula Papers, Ong’s Hat wasn’t just a ghost town—it was the site of a secret scientific experiment. One that allegedly opened a gateway… to another universe.

Was it all an elaborate game? Or a leak disguised as fiction?

James A. Hodges (School of Information, San Jose State University, San Jose, California, USA) Journal of Documentation ISSN: 0022-0418 Article publication date: 21 April 2025

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to reframe contemporary research on conspiracy narratives by examining a formative document in online conspiracy culture using bibliographic archeology and focusing on its use of intertextuality. LINK: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/jd-07-2024-0185/full/html

The City That Disappeared Overnight — What Really Happened to Ong’s Hat?
Welcome to Behind the Veil, where mystery meets reality.

In this episode, we uncover the strange, unsettling story of Ong’s Hat — a town in New Jersey’s Pine Barrens that mysteriously vanished without explanation. What started as a strange local legend evolved into a sprawling conspiracy involving secret scientific experiments, interdimensional travel, and government cover-ups.

From the eerie silence of the Pine Barrens to the mind-bending Incunabula Papers, discover the truth — or illusion — behind one of the internet’s earliest and most disturbing myths.

Was Ong’s Hat just a clever hoax? Or did someone actually tear a hole in reality… and vanish through it?

Bienvenidos a Misterios A La Orden, el canal donde exploramos los enigmas más oscuros y desconcertantes de la historia. Hoy nos adentraremos en una historia que muchos consideran una leyenda urbana, otros una compleja teoría de la conspiración, y algunos, la prueba de que existen portales hacia otras dimensiones. Hablamos del misterioso caso de Ong’s Hat, una historia que comenzó como una publicación underground en los años ochenta y que poco a poco se convirtió en uno de los relatos más inquietantes del internet primitivo, hasta tal punto que algunas agencias gubernamentales llegaron a investigar su origen. Pero ¿qué hay realmente detrás de Ong’s Hat? ¿Se trata de un juego mental, una ficción experimental… o estamos ante uno de los más extraños intentos humanos de viajar entre dimensiones?

They say Ong’s Hat never existed.
They’re wrong.