Received my ‘Mycellium Parish News 2025‘ in the mail. Great zine and I highly recommend. @rawilson23.bsky.social published a review on their site, so go check that out. Ong’s Hat: COMPLEAT received a very kind and generous review in this issue.
Or you can just receive them through this Substack.
You get the picture.
Twice a month, I will publish, in order, a chapter of the book and the corresponding discussion audio. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this is a multidisciplinary work: the text is one part, the audio is another, and the links within the text add a different dimension. Sequoyah and I discuss it in depth, including how I intended people to experience this design. Here’s a video of that discussion:
Here is the first chapter, with a bonus intro by David Metcalfe, which was previously included only in the print version.
I hope you enjoy this free experiment and know that it was made possible by those who bought the print/audio or combo. If you’d like to donate some change to thank us for the tremendous effort it took to produce 14 hours of audio and all the linked print for this project, feel free to buy the audio files on Bandcampor the print or digital versions of the books. If you can’t afford it, that’s ok. The people who bought the work this year and last year covered for you. Kinda like a “pay it forward” model.
It wasn’t until the 1980s when strange tales emerged on various bullet board services and magazines of conspiracy theorists that people thought about the place again. The publications detailed elaborate conspiracies involving mystics and scientists breaking through to another realm via Ong’s Hat. The tales arose from the novel “Incunabula Papers: Ong’s Hat and Other Gateways to New Dimensions.” Author Joseph Matheny probably didn’t anticipate his fictional tales would lead to theorists believing every word until the 2000s, seeking answers of the “truth.”
If you find one of the outdated maps from the 1930s or earlier, you may well be able to pop over to the ruins with your drone. Or visit Google and find the Ong’s Hat Parking area at the Batona Trail and hike out.
Among New Jersey’s most enigmatic vanished settlements, Ong’s Hat blurs the line between documented history and enduring folklore. You’ll find this Burlington County location first documented on a 1778 Hessian map, where Quaker settler Jacob Ong purchased 100 acres around 1700.
Folklore storytelling explains the name through legends of a trampled silk hat, possibly painted on tavern keeper Isaac Haines’s sign circa 1800 for illiterate travelers.
During the 1860s, you’d encounter a lively social center known for prizefighting and moonshining.
By 1936, only ruins remained.
Modern lantern preservation efforts combat fictional narratives from the 1980s claiming interdimensional experiments occurred here.
Today, you’ll discover descendants denied the town’s existence in 1968, maintaining only a rest hut stood along the cedar swamp route.
“Ong’s Hat” is considered one of the oldest urban legends originating on the internet, and is akin to a creepypasta or SCP. Ong’s Hat is a real ghost town in New Jersey.
Ong’s Hat: Piney Ghost Town or Gateway to Another Dimension?weirdnj.com
Therefore, there are many anecdotes and legends about it, which seem to be similar to urban legends such as those of Inunaki Village in Japan. The synopsis is as quoted below.
It all started with the emergence of a pamphlet, “Ongu’s Hut: Gateway to Multiple Dimensions, Full-Color Pamphlet for the Chaos Institute and the Moorish Scientific Monastery,” which suddenly began circulating in the late 1980s. According to the pamphlet, Ongu’s Hut was once the site of secret experiments by quantum mechanics researchers the Dobbs Brothers. Nearby, the mystic Wali Fard had founded the Moorish Scientific Monastery. Eventually, scientists and mystics met, merging metaphysical disciplines—including meditation, physics, alchemy, and remote viewing—in unprecedented ways, opening up new frontiers for further experimentation. The pamphlet describes how, after repeated complex and bizarre experiments, they finally pierced the veil between parallel worlds and developed the “Egg,” a pod that allows travel to other dimensions. However, after a mysterious nuclear accident at a nearby military base exposed them to the risk of radioactive contamination, they used the Egg’s technology to transport the entire monastery and its inhabitants to a parallel Earth, leaving only the building for the gateway behind. The end of the pamphlet invites readers to Ongu’s Hut and discover the transdimensional community there, but cautions that it will not be easy.
Matheny first launched the project around 1988, collaborating with anarchist author Peter Lamborn Wilson, physicist Nick Herbert, and artist James Cohenlein to create a legend of paranormal activity in New Jersey. Initially, Matheny and his friends spread the legends through catalogs of magazine articles and ghost books that they compiled and mailed out, but in 1993 they continued the story using the then-new medium of the internet.
Photo by Lumin Osity on UnsplashOng’s Hat — Burlington County, Pine Barrens New Jersey’s most mysterious ghost town — little more than a wooded clearing deep in the Pinelands today. The most popular folk legend says a local man named Ong had his silk hat stomped on at a dance and flung it into a pine tree in frustration, where it hung for years as a local landmark. But an actual Ong family descendant wrote to the New York Times claiming the real name was always “Ong’s Hut” — a rest shelter his ancestors built during grain-hauling trips through the Barrens — and that the name was simply corrupted on early maps. Either way, Ong’s Hat later became ground zero for internet-era conspiracy theories about Princeton scientists conducting interdimensional travel experiments in the woods. Today there’s almost nothing left but the legend. 📍 39.8568° N, 74.5579° W — Pemberton Township, Burlington CountyRead More: New Jersey ghost towns: abandoned villages and how to find them | https://nj1015.com/new-jersey-ghost-towns/
