You could drive down Province Line Road a hundred times and never consider anything out of the ordinary. Most people do. I had. It’s mostly plain stretches of road that are rural and unremarkable, hemmed in by trees and scattered homes. But its name isn’t poetic or nostalgic. It’s literal. It marks the historical dividing line between the two proprietary colonies that once made up the state: East Jersey and West Jersey.
Today, we argue over what constitutes North, South, and my old stomping grounds (neglected in this regard), Central Jersey. East and West are never in the conversation, it is merely a historical divide. One nearly forgotten, though some controversial attempts have been made to re-legitimize said boundaries.
What’s less documented about Province Line Road, what lives
in the gaps between town folklore and family genealogy, are the personal
accounts of those whose own histories intersect with the road over various
points in their lives. Stories that don’t show up in archives, but come out in
local diners, night drives with loved ones, online forums, or the knowing looks
on my friends’ faces when I tell them that I, once again, had unknowingly ended
up on Province Line Road.
The East/West Jersey split was a real thing, caused by
disputes between English landowners in the 1600s. The line was first drawn by surveyor George Keith. It was later adjusted to
settle legal disagreements. What we now call Province Line Road follows these
lines through Mercer, Monmouth, and Burlington Counties. Anyone familiar with
Jersey knows that that covers quite a lot of unique areas and quite a bit of
land. You can still see remnants of the division. Property boundaries. Odd
township lines. In some cases, county jurisdictions change from one side of the
road to the other.
That alone gives the road a strange identity. We’re not here
and we’re not there. But we are in between.
Scouring hiking forums, recalling old Weird NJ conversations,
and relating my personal experiences, I’ve found a few common threads of weird
shit going down on Province Line Road. I’ll come back around to my experiences
after providing some “discovered” stories.
These aren’t fictional accounts, at least not entirely.
These are things that have been said and then repeated by others. Threaded into
the local consciousness. That’s irrelevant to whether the storyteller believed
in them personally or not. But as you’ve probably come to know in my writing, I’m
a big believer in thoughts and emotions being able to change a landscape and “haunt”
an area. Why should that be constrained only to ghost stories?
Mapping and GPS
fuckery
Drivers occasionally report navigation systems glitching
along certain stretches of Province Line Road. Routes re-center, destinations jump, or turn-by-turn guidance falls silent. More than one amateur land
surveyor (I didn’t realize that that was a thing until I found an abandoned
hiking forum) had noted subtle discrepancies when using their reliable tools
compared to commercial GPS readings, particularly near wooded intersections. It
doesn’t last long. Just enough to miss a turn, keeping you on the road.
The lost foundations along
hiking trails
Multiple trail walkers and hunters describe encountering an old stone foundation in the woods off Province Line Road, noted to be usually west of the bend closest to the Upper Freehold border. Knee-high, mossy, no roof or adjoining walls. When some return to document it, they can’t find it again. It’s never in the same place twice. Some say it’s simply a misremembered location. Others say they just felt it right to stop looking. This is reminiscent of some of my landmark-searching further south in the Pine Barrens. Never the same stones twice. Perhaps it’s time that I try to personally find this fixture, these lost foundations. Reminds me of our adventures, further south, on Glossy Sprung Road.
Ghost lights or aliens (or both)
Seen primarily in autumn and early winter, the lights are
faint, white-blue, and erratic, floating just above the trees before darting
out of sight. Locals in Hopewell and Chesterfield have supposedly reported them
since the 1970s, but I’m not aware of direct documentation of these claims.
That’s the whimsy of taking others at their word. Some associated them with
electrical storms and aircraft, which is quite possible with the various
military bases in the state. Others suggest that they don’t behave like
anything mechanical or manmade. Those are the stories told by drivers, having
witnessed them late at night. I can say that I personally never experienced
these types of sightings, but that may be because I’m distracted by the
prospect of hitting a deer and pay attention strictly to the dark woods and
open fields.
Stories of temporal
distortion
One of my personal favorites. Anecdotally, some have
described time passing strangely. What felt like a ten-minute drive turns out
to have taken closer to an hour. A few claim that they’ve seen the same car
pass them twice in opposite directions. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to
validate these stories, but they appear in personal blog posts, Reddit threads,
and stories told by friends and friends of friends while driving late at night.
If my word is reliable at all, believe that this is something that I’ve
experienced multiple times over the last fifteen years.
Once, my friends and I were intentionally lost, driving
through the night. We saw a lone tree on the side of the road, the only
landmark visible for a mile in either direction, for it was in the middle of
open-space farmland. As our headlights shown on the gnarled, black tree, we
all, silently and simultaneously, recognized a shape on the tree that was
undeniable. We called her the “angel witch” and she became a conscious landmark
for years. Ironically, I don’t think any one of us would be able to find her
now, if she even still (or ever) existed. Nonetheless, our chance meeting of
the angel witch, and of an intersection dotted with unique (and creepy)
handcrafted, rusted scrap metal artwork left a mark on us. Enough of a mark
that we could not help using the road as a throwaway spooky scene in our series.
“Province Line Road” was synonymous with “No Through Road” (internet horror
storytelling royalty) to us for a while, for we had kept driving and
driving and driving… and would always come back to the rusted and creaking display.
Will never forget the muttered, “no fucking way…” the time that we were sure we found a way home, only to once again see the crafts under the solitary streetlight, taunting us in greeting as if to say, “do you want to try again?”
These types of stories aren’t published in newspapers and
don’t appear on plaques in local parks (though some various places I’ve visited
recently have begun embracing their weird legends). A common thread I’ve noticed
is that there aren’t usually ghosts or cryptid creatures in the stories about the road.
Just inconsistencies. Weird feelings. Places that feel like they’re in-between.
A road that doesn’t always behave. Areas that are thin. Blind spots.
One comment from others discussing the region that stuck
with me was: it’s not that something
happens there. It’s that it feels like something could.
Sure. Sounds like a cop-out about some bullshit that I’m spinning, but that’s how I feel about the road. That possibility is palpable and ever-present.
My history with Province Line Road is a blurry and nebulous
one, stretching back to my high school meanderings, to throughout our years in
video production and beyond, to the present day. In some ways, it’s an errant
reminder of darker days. I recall a silent drive alone that brought me there
once, trying to clear my mind when a loved one died when she was far too young.
Sometimes, it’s a familiar sight that reminds me of a funny and enjoyable night
with friends years ago. Coming to the realization that I’m in proximity of the
road always leaves the ghost of a memory and a feeling: one of unyielding inspiration,
creative ambition, and personal reflection of the times that I had unknowingly
or involuntarily ended up there and those countless nights and people
that had joined me on those journeys.
Province Line Road is real. Its name is historical. Its path
intersects with centuries of land disputes and shifting maps. It is, and always
has been, a boundary. But everything else? Unverified. Not invented, not
entirely a fiction, but not provable either.
Still, if you find yourself driving it after dark, take note
of your GPS. Keep an eye on the treetops. And maybe don’t stop at the forks in
the road unless you have to. We believe in a rolling stop in Jersey, so use it
liberally.
Perhaps lines are drawn for a reason and perhaps some
are more reliable than others. Of course, if you’re like me, and enjoy throwing yourself
into that possibility, getting lost intentionally on a dark road that calls to
you, well, it may give you a story that sticks with you for the rest of your
life. But maybe bring a friend. Look before you leap.
Further reading:
Hidden
New Jersey: Digging up mystery on Province Line Road
The
Baffling Battles Around Jersey's Borders | New Jersey Monthly
Province
Line | Lawrence Hopewell Trail
