Starting in the early 1800’s of the United States, ghost hunting has been around for centuries, unseen with a small following and low degree of thriving. At the time, ghost hunting was mostly utilized for religious and spiritual reasons, explaining its ambiguity. However, the true popularity swell lies within television productions in the late 1900s to the beginning of the 2000s with shows such as Most Haunted and Ghostbusters making their respective debuts in 1984 and 2002. Businesses began to sell equipment to take advantage of the show’s inspiration on their expansive audiences. As the tourist phenomenon of paranormal inquiries and supposed ghost sightings led to the creation of ‘ghost tours’ around the country. These ghost tours were created for publicizing an abundance of venues as haunted, some as straightforward as penitentiaries and cemeteries, while some take visitors around lakes and tour old houses with suspicious pasts.

Even in our smaller state of New Jersey, there are dozens of ghost hunters who have formed into assemblies, formally called societies. These ghost hunting societies practice paranormal investigation and work to prove undead existence while educating others. In New Jersey, there are over eighty-three of these ghost hunting societies that are active to this day. Hackettstown is currently the homebase for the longest running movement in the country. The group was founded in 1998 by the published author, L'Aura Hladik Hoffman, who has dedicated her life to her work. Her organization- dubbed creatively, the ‘New Jersey Ghost Hunters Society’ and is presently consisting of eight hundred- eighty-two individuals. L’Aura herself is commonly recognized as the “Ghost Chick” and has appeared on large named television interviews, such as Fox 29 News and Comcast. In spite of her options, L’Aura is fixated with New Jersey for the virtue of Ghost Lake, which is right off of Shades of Death Road near Allamuchy. In an interview, she stated, “it’s got its lakes, it’s got it’s rivers and then it’s got the Atlantic Ocean. And water, since it conducts electricity, it creates that type of amplifier, if you will, that ghosts can draw off of." The New Jersey Ghost Hunters Society had also been particular in scanning through more than just our lake and precariously named road- they have been active in Union Cemetery, and Centenary College in search of a particular ghost- the unrested soul of a murder case of 1886. The story is graphic enough to have made it on the Reader’s Digest List with name of ‘Tale of Tillie’.

This could register as a surprise to some of you- yet another place that is closely monitored by ghost hunters is the Fairview Mini-Golf, right across from the Fairview Cemetery. Most ghost hunters are sure that ghosts will curiously sense the energy in the kid-friendly area adjacent to it. In fact, another significantly smaller society named ‘East Koast Ghost’ that watches the cemetery notably paired with Shades of Death Road and Ghost Lake, besides the Princeton Battlefield. They serve in Orange and Sullivan County, rather than using Hackettstown as their base as the New Jersey Ghost Hunters Society organizes itself. In comparison, they are a group of five rather than hundreds, although they are just as effective in their span of locations and knowledge. Though New Jersey is smaller in proximity, the state compensates with its complex history and individual set of perplexing mysteries.