The Frontier

In hindsight, the dismissive mental chuckle I felt in response to having my words received as “world-weary” might have been out of place. Perhaps that is as fitting of a title and label as someone could produce, either as a close companion or a stranger, coming across my thoughts. I have felt that I had moved beyond those fabled and cherished nights of the late teen / twenty-something with near-reckless abandon and equally as flippant of a schedule, yet find myself at four am on a Friday morning going back through the photographs of the day we found the abandoned Frontier Restaurant in the Catskills.

The Porcelain Brother

On a pleasant Saturday drive through the Pine Barrens and later through the farmlands surrounding Lawrenceville and Princeton, we found ourselves in the vicinity of a familiar and favorite past haunt: the House of the Porcelain Incident. On that initial visit many months ago, as we left the area, we saw one other boarded up and forgotten house, but it was strewn with a litany of warning signs were we to inspect the site. On this day, however, it was vacant, of both barricades and signs of recent inhabitance.

Pulling into the long dirt lot and following the crescent along the backyard and ending near the tree line, which opens up to the many acres of fields and farmland beyond, we did not really know what to expect. We found two small shed structures, one modern, the other falling apart and made of blackened wood. Beyond that, against the brush, was a collapsed workshop area, strewn with pieces of hardware, tools, household items, and even children’s toys. Ivy had tossed a Jurassic Park dinosaur head circa 1999 in my direction and we carefully mounted the puppet on a stick, to greet future visitors. We joked that someone had apparently Office Space’d a television monitor, as the electrical detritus and broken glass spattered the lot around the Escape.

The Penn Hills Resort

For New Year’s celebrations, some prefer partying with throngs of lovely strangers in the city; some with many loved ones in a home furnished for social gatherings. This last year, the gang and I decided to do something a little different. We rang in the New Year in a game-laden hotel room, telling horrible stories of fiction one word and a time, eating family-restaurant chain congealed appetizers two hours before the drop, and, of course, trekking into the Pocono Mountains and visiting the fabled Penn Hills Resort.

The Vacant House

One evening, late, driving around the extremities of our county and edging into the unyielding farmland and fields encompassing our stretch of suburbia, we discovered another forgotten home, as we are wont to do.

The House of the Porcelain Incident

More often than not, we find these locations through binges of thrill-seeking and horror-related researches, whether it be through personal accounts or folklore and fiction, but as is often the case, reality is sometimes more terrifyingly impressive than the fiction that has accumulated with time. Normalcy can trump the macabre with the right elements, in terms of creating discomfort and getting under your skin.

Dodging Cropsey at the New York Farm Colony

Over the years, you become an accidental conglomeration composed of every personal interaction, every story you've told and have been told, and give some tangible connection to the infinite loose threads that every soul, every place, and every idea holds. You take these experiences and keep them, like little gifts, little secrets, that can surprise and resurface years later. This occurrence has not been a stranger in my personal life, with many stories, films, and off-hand conversations suddenly finding themselves boldly relevant in the contemporary.

One of the most recent iterations of this involves a piece of local lore, a portion of land in New York, and a documentary bearing an ending that inspired a sense of awe, curiosity, and existential discomfort, even long after the credits rolled. This film is Cropsey, and we found the since maintained, decaying grounds and hospital buildings in which the namesake of the documentary was said to (and perhaps, did) stalk, dwell, and hide his victims.

Six Mile Run

Per the norm in the group dynamic, and seeking a break in the slowly dying months of winter, we were desperate to get out, simply put. The months not inundated by inches and feet of snow or other bouts of nonsensical precipitation and natural detritus native to New Jersey were typically prime for sating our wanderlust. My friends had plans to get out and, having not known that I was not scheduled to work, quickly invited me for the ride to a location, once again, hidden right before us.