Clinton Road Fact or Fiction

Clinton Road located in West Milford, New Jersey is a legendary spot for paranormal thrill seekers and road trippers. With a little bit of research, you can find all of the stories that Clinton road has to offer, whether it be the phantom car that tries to run you off the road, the penny that mysteriously returns to the road after you throw it off the bridge, or the sightings of hybrid type animals running around. With all of the legends that surround this road, the question remains: is this truly a paranormal hot spot or is this road nothing more than just stories?

Phantom Lights

I am here to set the record straight once and for all about what happens at Clinton Road, or at least what happened to me. Being a New Jersey native and a paranormal thrill seeker, Clinton Road has always been a dream trip for me and my friends. Before going, I searched everything I could about Clinton Road, whether it be the stories or videos of what others experienced here. A large factor that a lot of people may not know about Clinton Road is this is not some random stretch of road with nothing on it. Many people live on this road and if you go too early, you will often see all of those people. For all of the trips and experiences I've had going to this road, I was able to first debunk many things. To begin let's talk about the phantom car that appears behind you and attempts to run you off the road. I personally have never once experienced anything of that sort happen to me here and in my opinion, I believe I have an explanation for the people who may have experienced this. Taking a look at what I said earlier, people live on this road and majority of people have cars, so when you see a phantom car appear behind you, they were most likely coming from one of the homes there. Another factor with this is timing. If you go at a still relatively early time, even when it's dark out, the possibility of you seeing another car is fairly high. Now even though this specific experience did not happen to me, I do not discredit anyone else's experiences. I am only inserting my opinion into the situation.

Ghost Bridge

Another legend of the road that I found very interesting on the ride up but unfortunately was let down by was the penny that mysteriously returns to the road after you throw it over a bridge where legend has it a small boy drowned many, many years ago. Now I went to the exact bridge as you can see in the image, we parked the car, got out with change ready, and proceeded to throw the penny off the bridge. We waited a few moments and sure enough, clink, clink, clink we heard the penny come back up... Incredible, right? Unfortunately, no, it was later on that I found out one of the people I was with thought it would be funny if they threw a penny on the road instead of the water to scare everyone. Now with that being said, I've heard from other friends who've thrown change off the bridge and according to them, it did indeed come back up and no one was responsible for it. Is this fact or fiction? I'm not entirely sure. Within the upcoming weeks, when I plan to return to this road, I will be trying this with a number of other things to continue to search for.

This is what you've been waiting for.

Are you still with me? If so, you've made it to the good part. It is now time to discuss the things that DID happen to me at Clinton Road. If I could give a few words of advice to any thrill seekers who are interested in going to Clinton Road, it would be this. When you go here, allow yourself to feel whatever it is the road has to offer. Don't hype yourself up to the point where every shadow you see makes your heart drop. With that being said, don't go here in full skeptic mode either. If you're going here just to disprove everything, chances are you're probably not going to even accept any weird happenings that could happen to you here. Finally it's all about the timing! I've said this earlier and I continue it here: the best hour to journey on Clinton Road is the one and only 3 AM.

Perhaps the biggest thing I experienced on Clinton Road is the fact that the road has a tendency to change. You could zip through it very quickly your first time around and boom it's the end of the road. You're done, nothing happened. That drive back the way you came is a different feeling entirely. It's as if the road becomes longer, darker, and the vibe seems to just change out of nowhere. This road has an energy to it and if you allow yourself to feel that energy, you start to pick up on things, strange feelings as if there are eyes in the forest surrounding the road, watching your every move. If you are brave enough to get out on this road, the feelings become even heavier. (If you decide to get out on this road, please be careful. There are very little lights so if another driver comes along, they may not see you and none of us want a fellow paranormal thrill seeker to be injured.) Being out of the car here is an extremely heavy feeling for me. Personally every time I've experienced this feeling in any haunted or odd location, I have a very meditative feeling that goes along with it, almost as if my energy is being drawn to something. This road was different in a way. Here it felt stronger, like it was coming from multiple different directions.

I think the biggest thing this road does to a person is make them feel really strange and have very different vibes prior to entering, The vibes are not the only thing to experience here. The first time I went to Clinton Road, we tried to do what we were told would summon the phantom lights.

The story we were told was that many years ago, a young girl racing her car died on this road and the lights of her car will come out of nowhere if you antagonize her and essentially call her out. So me and a buddy of mine proceeded to stop his car in the middle of the road. We honked the horn, revved up the engine, and yelled and carried on hoping maybe we would see those lights. What happened next neither of us have an explanation for even to this day. My buddy had a police scanner in his car. It was turned on and all as normal and worked perfectly. The car was also a new car. Now after we had finished calling out this girl and her ghost car and started to get ready to drive away, the police scanner starts going absolutely insane, just sending out every loud alarm sound as if a SWAT team was around us. We were in utter shock. This thing just kept going and going and then finally read "GOODBYE" on the scanner and the whole thing just died. That scanner did not come back on even after unplugging it and plugging it back in until we were well away from Clinton Road. We didn't experience the phantom lights but what we did experience was almost more unexplainable than if we did.

That was my first major experience at Clinton Road. To think that was the end of those experiences would have been very foolish of me. The last time I went to Clinton Road was when all hell broke loose. The last time I went, I went with a buddy of mine who has the same level of belief in the paranormal as I do, which is a very, very high level—not only that but this time around, we showed up at that perfect hour I told you about before. After our long drive up there, all the talks of what to do and all of the hype, the road ends up being closed. The whole road was closed with big orange barrels and signs saying, "Road Closed Due To Road Work Through Traffic Only." We decided, "Screw it, we drove all the way up here. Let's take a detour and see if the other side of the road is also closed." We drive past the other side of the road looking for a place to turn around and sure enough, this side looked closed as well. We continue about a quarter mile up until we were able to turn around. This is where things began to get weird.

We get back to the other side of Clinton Road that appeared to be closed but it wasn't closed at all. In fact, the barricade that looked to be blocking it was pushed wide open, almost as if it was taunting us to come in. We went in slowly of course and this time Clinton Road was more different than it has ever been for us before. We both started to get extremely powerful vibes coming from this side of the road. We both began having mental pictures of strange things around us. To this day, as I am writing this, I can still see the image in my head that me and my friend imagined that night. Both of us had a weird mental image of two park rangers in the woods, in full uniform and all, just lurking in there.

Now at the time we didn't know this but in 1939, two park rangers were killed on duty while on Clinton Road and people have reported seeing them multiple times. Two park rangers killed in 1939 and we have the same mental picture of two park rangers lurking in the woods, something we didn't even have knowledge about before going here. It's strange to say the least. This happened in the beginning of us entering the road. What followed next was even stranger.

What happened to us next was as if we passed through some sort of wormhole where our personalities just switched. To quickly explain me and my friend who went that night do these types of things all the time. Any haunted or weird place, we try and go ASAP. Every time this happens I'm the one who is on the safe side if I don't like a vibe or think it's too sketchy. I'm the one who says, "You sure you want to do this?" while he's the one that says, "Screw it let's go." Now on this night, that was different. I really don't know how to describe how I felt but it was very anxious and excited but in a dark way, almost like I was challenging this road. My buddy on the other hand became panicked to the point of becoming nauseous and having cold sweats. We were approaching a bend in the road and we both agreed something was waiting around that bend. I wanted more than anything at that time to see what was behind that bend but we ended up turning around. Could it have been the park rangers we both imagined? It's possible.

Now the drive home was equally as scary. We leave Clinton Road still not feeling like ourselves whatsoever. My buddy who never gets nervous about this type of thing pulls the car over because he's so light headed and nauseous. He's completely white in the face and swears to this day that I looked different when he pulled over, like I had some deranged look in my eye. I end up driving us a good ways away from Clinton Road before my buddy feels up to take over. We're both still feeling weird but trying to process all of the strange happenings that had just taken place. It's about 4-4:30 AM at this point and my buddy's mom calls him in a panic, talking about a horrible dream she had of Camaro on fire after an accident. The car we were in that night was a Camaro—not only that but the girl who apparently died and haunts that road with a ghost car was also driving a Camaro. To me, it just seemed like a weird coincidence.

A Mystery to This Day

Now perhaps the scariest experience of them all came after we were quite far away from Clinton Road. On our drive home, we had stopped off at a rest stop area to grab some food. I hop out of the car and walk around the back of it for whatever reason. As I did that, I noticed smudges on the back on my friend's car and back windshield. I couldn't make out exactly what it was until I put my flashlight on the car and what was on the back of his car still haunts us to this day and is still something we have no explanation for. On the back of his car were handprints. On the bumper and on the back windshield were handprints that didn't match the size of either of our hands and to top it all off, his car was freshly washed before we began our trip up to Clinton Road. Now I've never personally heard stories about phantom handprints coming from this road, but it happened to us.

So after everything you've read, all of my personal experiences, even the things I believe to have debunked, ask yourself: Is Clinton Road fact or fiction? In my opinion, Clinton Road is fact and the most haunted road in America that I have been on so far. If you don't believe my word for it, go experience it for yourself. You might just walk away with experiences that you can't explain or forget. Thank you for reading.