Why Bayville, NJ is a Stephen King Town.

Happy Valentine's day, readers. While everyone else is going on dates and exchanging cute little cards of love, let's talk about some spooky Halloween sh*t.

I've lived in Bayville, New Jersey, for nineteen years - two years less than my current age. I graduated a semester early from Marymount Manhattan College in December, and now consider myself a New Yorker. But at least once a month, the Q train speeds me and a black backpack down to Port Authority, where I hop on a bus and take an hour and thirty minute ride to my hometown. Bayville: where every new business that opens closes in the span of a year. A place that gets its name simply because it's located next to the Barnegat Bay. A town so small in spirit and size, my high school friends and their parents would ask "where's Bayville?" despite living a ten minute drive away.

My city pals wonder why I go back to Bayville every month. Besides visiting family, what on earth is there to do? To be honest...not much. The truth about Bayville is that while it's slow and made up of several empty lots, there's this weird mysticism about it. Abandonment is the theme of this town. It may be a huge vice, but to me - a young woman with an overactive imagination - it's the selling point.

Like Hawkins, Indiana from the Netflix show Stranger Things, there are many charming parts of Bayville. There's the famous bagel shop, the comic book store, Berkeley Island Park (which recently reopened after destruction from Hurricane Sandy), and the local Dairy Queen where soccer moms and energetic kids spend the hot summer nights licking their worries away. But if you're a resident here...you know about the darker stuff. The creepy parts of Bayville. The things people would like to ignore, but always pop up in monthly Weird NJ articles.

I blame Bayville for my love of horror movies. It is the heart of Central Jersey's Pine Barrens, meaning there's been several Jersey Devil sightings throughout the years. And ghost sightings. And other crazy happenings - in 2016, while on a road trip, my family and I learned of an incident where residents heard an explosion coming from a house thought to be deserted. Turns out the explosion was caused by a tripwire, and in the house was hordes of heroin, cocaine, crack, and a portable meth lab. We had our very own Heisenberg living in Bayville and we didn't even know it.

When I tell my friends about Bayville, I describe it as a "Stephen King town." Why? Because if Stephen King were to leave Maine, I believe he'd find Bayville a suitable place to live, and a treasure trove of inspiration. If my younger brother told me tomorrow morning he had been abducted by aliens in the night, I'd probably believe him. Bayville is just that kind of place. Here are some of the freakiest things I've come to learn about my hometown over the years...

I. THE HAUNTED HOUSE IN THE SUBURBS.

You're riding a bike down Station Road, heading for the Berkeley Branch Library. A suburban wonderland surrounds you. White picket fences, pastel houses with solar-paneled roofs, big grassy lawns and a cerulean, cloudless sky above...you feel at ease. Comforted, even.

You reach the corner of Manhattan Avenue: just a quick pedal across the street and you're almost there. White crosswalk lines are painted across the road, to your right. You look over. There's nothing, save for a wide lawn leading to two houses many feet away, and a black, sun-dried mailbox. It stands all alone. Odd.

You pedal across the street. And while you do so...you get the strange feeling you're being watched. There's no one to your left or right. And then you see it, through the trees - a tall, crumbling wooden house with chipped yellow paint. Tangling weeds grow over the front porch. There's a long vertical board over the front door. A big black window looms in the center, glaring at you like the single eye of the Cyclops. Broken shingles lie on the ground, and the roof's completely caved in. Trying to look inside the house, you can't see anything but darkness. And as you pedal farther...the trees conceal it once more, and it's out of sight.

This is 93 Station Road. Believed to be a farmhouse built around the late 30's, it was abandoned after a fire burnt part of the roof, supposedly sometime around the 70's. No one knows what caused the fire...a lightning strike, say some rumors. But what's odd about the house is that after so many years of being an eyesore to the people of Bayville, the town still hasn't demolished it. It sits there every day, watching passing cars and school kids while they're hopping off the bus.

It's only until recently the roof of 93 Station Road has caved in. Walk to the back side of the house, and you can see its innards stretched out in a jumbled mess like the colors of a Jackson Pollock painting. One time, I was able to catch a glimpse of peeling floral wallpaper, backdropped in a sallow yellow color.

When the roof and the backside of the house were intact, some teenagers would open the cellar door and take a trip down to the basement. It's down there things have gotten real freaky. I heard a rumor a girl and her pals took a ouija board to the basement, and had to bolt out of the house due to an unfriendly ghost. A good friend of mine went down to that basement, and while he says he never saw any ghosts, he admitted it was cold and very creepy. He spotted a shrine: a middle school boy's photo, surrounded by empty vodka bottles. A bit silly if you ask me, but still very strange...

II. THE ROYAL PINES HOTEL.

You reach the Berkeley Branch Library and walk through the front door. As you're approaching the checkout desk to return some books, you notice a colorful mural to your right. It depicts a woman draped in fur, a tuxedoed man, and a lobby boy walking near an emerald green car. Ionic columns surround them...where could they be?

After your library visit, you decide to drive to a local taco joint in the next township over. In order to get there, you need to go down a long road called Central Boulevard. You pass many houses, a church, and then...you see it. Straight ahead, in the distance...a tower peaking just above the trees. Is that a castle?

This Spanish Renaissance-style building sits on the other side of the man-made Crystal Lake. Now a nursing home and rehabilitation center, the Royal Pines Hotel was built around the 1920's and was supposed to be a retreat for the elite of NYC and Philadelphia before they drove off to Atlantic City. It had tennis courts, horseback riding, and an 18-hole golf course. Since it was far from any major cities, prohibition laws were less strict. There are tunnels from the building that go underneath the lake...rumor has it bootleggers used them to ship alcohol from the Barnegat Bay to the hotel. However, due to the Great Depression, poor placement, and the developer getting caught in a lawsuit, the hotel was a bust and soon became a psychiatric hospital.

The former hotel is famous for one reason in particular: it is rumored legendary mobster Al Capone was a frequent visitor. Some claim Capone himself owned the hotel, while others say he was going to use it as a retirement home for his mother.

While there is no hard evidence Capone visited the hotel, a contributor to Weird NJ revealed construction workers found bullet holes while removing wallpaper on the fifth floor. (They seemed to be covered up by someone.) So if anything, there may have been some kind of seedy activity going on. A mile away from the Royal Pines is a secluded structure called "The Spanish Mansion." All that's left of it now is an arch and a brick wall, but back in the day, it was a hacienda-style building rumored to be the place where Al and his gang, "took out the trash", if you know what I mean...

In addition to the Capone rumors, the Royal Pines is home to two ghosts: a little girl named Gracie who likes to play with a ball by the front gardens, and a man known as "The Bell Boy." Frequently roaming around the back of the building, he wears a striped shirt and is rumored to be a patient who committed suicide after jumping out of a 7th floor window. When the Royal Pines was a psychiatric hospital, the patients deemed "insane" were put on the higher levels so they were less of a danger to the patients below. People who have visited the building during the 70's and 80's often comment on how they could hear the loud, scary screams of the lonely patients above.

III. THE DOUBLE TROUBLE MYSTERY SPOT.

Bayville is home to many beautiful parks. There's the Barnegat Branch trail, which boasts its old railroad train trestle bridge over a gorgeous river. (Kids used to jump off it into the water during the summer - since it's been rebuilt, it's now a connector between Berkeley and Lacey Townships.) There's also Jake's Branch Park, where residents go if they'd like to see the remnants of the 2002 Pine Barrens wildfire. The trees are black as night, and you can still smell the charred wood while walking through.

But Double Trouble State Park, as evidenced by its ominous name, is home to a few spooky folklores. By a cranberry bog, Double Trouble State Park gets its name from the early 1900's Double Trouble Company. The village at the park, now historic, was owned by the company. It was where they packaged cranberries, timber, and millwork products. In the village is also a schoolhouse, a general store, and other houses.

While folks claim Double Trouble is a ghost town, there haven't been very many sightings around the area. However, there is something in Double Trouble that will send a shiver down your spine. And it may have something to do with UFO's.

The Double Trouble Mystery Spot is a circular clearing in the middle of the woods, a half mile past the Garden State Parkway. The trees are pressed down flat to the ground, but strangely not broken, and have graying sides to them. Years ago, people in the area called the police, complaining about strange lights they saw at night. The FAA thought there may have been a plane crash, but there was no debris to be found. People who travel to the spot now say it is impossible to take a picture of the area, as batteries on electronic devices will drain completely while you're there. Aliens, anyone? I'm thinking it's a maybe.

IV. THE BAYVILLE DINOSAUR.

After a long day exploring Bayville, you drive down Route 9 back to your suburban home. It's night time, and the traffic isn't horrendous, but it could be better. As you get closer to the Bayville Record Store, you notice a pair of orange scowling eyes growing in size. They shine bright in the dark, like flames. What the heck is that? You zoom past the record store and see a large...dinosaur?

Yup. Dinosaurs may be extinct, but one has been living in New Jersey for almost 100 years. And his name is Bud.

While Bud may not be entirely spooky, he tends to intimidate people who aren't Bayville locals. (My friend from New York City was very confused by Bud the first time she laid eyes on him.) It doesn't really help that he's near a creepy old church cemetery.

Bud came into town around 1935, when a taxidermist had him crafted to use as a creative marketing tool. Although it is rumored Bud was part of several dinosaurs shipped across the United States to promote a 1920's film called "The Lost World." (Basically Jurassic Park before Jurassic Park was a thing.) While all those other dinosaurs were taken down, Bud remained.

Over the years, he's gone through several different looks. In the 60's, he had spikes. In the 90's, he was painted purple like Barney. In the early 2000's, he was changed to a powder blue shade and kids pressed multi colored handprints into his side. He's gone through all these changes not just because whoever owns the building next to him feels obligated to give him a makeover, but because the poor bloke has a tendency to get decapitated by passing vehicles that venture too far off the road.

When Bud lost his head once again in 2015, the Bayville Historical Society took it upon themselves to craft him an entirely new body. One where his head was sufficiently above the ground. They added new glow-in-the-dark eyes, and voila - Bud was back to terrify greet the good people of Bayville.

In a strange way, I feel like Bud is a microcosm for the town of Bayville itself. There are two kinds of small towns in the United States: ones that progress with the times despite their low population and distance from metropolitanism, and ones frozen in time - like the dinosaurs. Bayville is old, small, and the definition of a creepy Stephen King town. With all the wacky legends and landmarks surrounding it, it's permanently glued to the past. But it's still important to the makeup of the entire Garden State. And without its wonders, I wouldn't have grown up to be the imaginative writer I am today.

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Sources: "What Ever Happened To...Legendary hotel and Berkeley's city that never was," by Amanda Oglesby, Asbury Park Press.

Al Capone and the Royal Pines Hotel," "The Double Trouble Mystery Spot," "The Spanish Mansion and the Capone Connection," and "Route 9, Through the Eyes of the Dinosaur" by Weird NJ.

"Old Abandoned Farmhouse on Station Road, Bayville, NJ" by the Ocean County Compendium.