For a while now we’ve been riding in the FEARbus, tracking down the best Streets of Fear, and let me tell you—it’s tiring work.  So the FEARcrew decided to pull over and take a rest on a nice shady road.  Only problem is…we ended up on Shades of Death Road, today’s Street of Fear!

Shades of Death Road runs through Warren County, New Jersey.  Since early settlement times, it’s served as a roadway, once the main thoroughfare from Philadelphia to Boston.  How Shades of Death got its name is a mystery.  The “Shades” portion is easy to ascertain—low hanging trees canopy most of the road, creating an eerie, shaded landscape.  The “Of Death” part is a bit more complicated.  Certainly, there have been several deaths on the road.  But the debate still lingers over whether the name came from a rash of bobcat killings in earlier times, or from a mysterious slaying of a rider and his horse.

The deaths of the rider and horse weren’t the only ones to take place on this terrifying road.  When the land was a bit wilder, bobcat attacks were a constant concern to travelers.  The road also became a rather nefarious dumping ground, as part of it was dank and deep swampland.  Robbers on the road would often attack and kill people in passing horse coaches, throwing their bodies into the swamp.  In more contemporary times, legend holds that a woman stabbed her husband, and in the throes of death he crawled across the road and died.

Gruesome as those deaths are, they’re only half as terrifying as the legends of what haunts the area.  In the famous book of New Jersey oddities, Weird N.J., readers write in with several different haunted experiences.  These include seeing a mysterious girl hiding in the woods, and getting lost on the road and being chased by a phantom pick-up truck (a famous and oft-repeated NJ legend).

Eventually, we trudged the FEARbus out of the swampy muck and drove on to find out whether Shades of Death really does live up to its name.  We soon learned that, ghosts or not, it deserves to be called a Street of Fear.  So watch us team up with paranormal investigators to find out what haunts the road in the Streets of Fear: Shades of Death Road episode.