Coast Guard selling off two lighthouses to the top bidder

The lighthouses need a lot of work however. About 5-6 years ago I convinced the Coast Guard to let me go w/them on one of their spring maitenance runs to all the lighthouses in the delaware bay so I got to visit them up close. Some of them are only accessible by climbing a ladder from a rocking board deck up to the lighthouse because they’re built on top of a submerged shoal. Yhose were fun to climb. I am not sure if I ever posted pictures or not but if I didn’t I’ll have to post those. Lighthouses, especially those away from the coastline are amazing, I can only imagine what it must be like to be in one during a severe storm all alone. I’m going to see if I can contact the person who buys this one (if it sells) and interview them for a project I am working on. Should be interesting to see how they restore it to liveable conditions.

Peakbagging the “mountains” in NJ that top 1,000 feet

Hiker and outdoor enthusiasts devote themselves to climbing the highest points in NJ. They call it “peakbagging”

efforts made to bring visitors to NJ landmark

National Stickley exhibit tries to bering visitors to NJ landmark

North jersey is home to some unusual museums

Bergen record article about museums in Bergen and Passaic County

cannons make big boom

Ringwood manor will be having a cannon demonstration at Sunday. They will be showing of cannons, talking about their manufacture and use, and at noon and 2 pm: BOOM!

A garbage Museum? in Conn?

I am so there

take a tour of a cold war relic in the Florida Everglades

Tours of old Nike bases now being offered

EVERGLADES NATIONAL PARK – At the height of the Cold War, anti-aircraft missiles stood at the ready here in Florida’s swamplands, protecting the South from a potential Soviet nuclear bomber attack launched from Cuba. For almost two decades, beginning shortly after the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the HM-69 Nike Hercules Missile Site was manned by about 100 military personnel, one of the last lines of defense if the unthinkable happened. When it closed in 1979, the park took control of the site.

Now the site is undergoing a rebirth of sorts as a public exhibit, drawing the curious who want to see the Cold War relic along with those who stumble upon it while visiting Everglades National Park. With a $10 Everglades admission fee and a phone call to park officials, tourists can join the hour-long driving tour of the Nike site, which was included on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004. Although the missiles were dismantled and removed, visitors can see the site’s administration building, the tiny missile assembly shed, the missile barns and protective berms. Tours continue through March, during the park’s peak season.Sites like this sprung up during the Cold War to defend U.S. cities from attack and send the Soviets a message of strength. The missiles in South Florida were certainly not hidden — at 41 feet (12.5 meters) tall, anyone could see them. While some Nike missiles were nuclear-tipped, Air Force spokesman Lt. Col. Tadd Sholtis said the weapons at the Everglades site probably weren’t.

“You could just drive down the road and see them setting out there,” said Bobby Jones, who was transferred to the site in 1965, when it was still a temporary operation. “The missiles were setting on trailers. … everything was mobile. We could move within an hour. The radar and everything.” Jones repaired diesel generators used to power the site, including its radar system and missile launchers. He remembers the wild birds and alligators that he shared the land with, and the porous ground that the site was built upon. “I had never seen anything like South Florida before in my life,” said Jones, who was from Missouri. “It was all really new to me. And I was fascinated with the wildlife there.”

Park officials said interest has been high in the landmark, which takes on a greater relevance this year, the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution. They have already added an extra day to the tour schedule. “I think certainly in this community, what people focus on is how things were doing the Cuban Missile Crisis. And a lot of our demographics are interested in the history of our dealings with Cuba,” said Melissa Memory, chief of cultural resources at the park. “But I think in the broader preservation community, Cold War historic assets, our appreciation for them is evolving.”

Because the site was placed inside a national park, it has survived urban expansion and is now well-preserved, said volunteer tour guide Gregg Halpin. Other Nike sites scattered around the United States, strategically placed near cities, have disappeared. As the threat of a Soviet attack faded, many of the sites (after the missiles were removed) were integrated into urban communities as parks or business centers. In Arlington Heights, Illinois, a former Nike base is now an 18-hole golf course. A New Jersey town proposed converting its former base into a commuter parking lot in December. And part of an old site in Gardner, Kansas, has been converted into Nike Elementary School. The school’s nickname: the Missiles.

The Nike site tucked away in the Everglades was not the only one in Florida. The former launch area of the Nike Hercules Site HM in Opa-Locka, just north of Miami, is now a National Guard reservation. Another site in Miami has become an Immigration and Naturalization Service facility. The Everglades site is now searching for information, historic replicas and artifacts used at the facility during the Cold War to include in the tour. Park officials are also working to spruce up areas that have not yet been open to the public because of health and safety concerns, and are conducting interviews with former military personnel who were stationed here.

“We can go on the Internet and other research is available to us, so we know who built (it) and when it was built,” Halpin said. “But we need those personal stories to make it a connection with the people, so the people will want to come here and see what it was all about.”

Terror Behind the Walls

One innovative use of the prison is a Halloween event called Terror Behind the Walls”, a scare fest filled with ghouls, gore and gallons of blood. It is easily the best haunted scare place my wife I have ever been to. Understand that we do not give such praise lightly. For my wife and I, Halloween is the bomb, it’s the shit, it is the best holiday of the whole year. I love decorating the house, I loved going to haunted scary places, I love Halloween parties. if we had to do it over again, we wouldn’t have gotten married 10/22 we would’ve waited till 10/31 and had a Halloween wedding. We even discuss redoing our vows and doing it on Halloween. But what’s the point? Spending that money for something we already did? Screw that, I’d rather put the cash towards a house. But I digress….

We both worked at a haunted greenhouse for several years and we had a ball. My wife was a guide and I played a variety of roles through the years, the best of which as eye-gore, the brother Igor, and I had my one eye covered with blood and gore and makeup, I was truly disgusting. One of my best shticks ever was when I tucked this small rubber rat, maybe 2 inches long but with a 4 inch tail, inside my cheek along with a small amount of fake blood. I would come out at the guests and babble away and eventually one of them would notice the tail sticking out of my mouth, and I would say “Where are my manners? You look hungry… I’ve already eaten but perhaps there’s something I could bring up for you,…” then I start making these horrible disgusting retching sounds. I’d slowly regurgitate the rat and offer it to the guests, often the blood would just flow from my mouth, sometimes drip down my chin, it was very disgusting I must say. I got THE BEST reactions from people, sometimes I’d chase them around offering them some dinner.

The place we used to work at is under new management and sadly it sucketh. I think a lot of haunted scare type places suck for a variety of reasons. Too much talking is usually the biggest reason. If you have q group you can scare and then intimidate and work off of, then the talking works, but if the crowd isn’t buying it, it’s like watching them die a slow death as they go thru their tired routines. I think most guests nowadays aren’t buying the doctor’s lab, the mad scientists kitchen or dining room, and even reanimating Frankenstein is old. And chasing them out the final room with Jason/Freddy/Leatherface is sooooo predictable. It’s been done to death. Talking rooms are just so predictable it’s boring.

The only way to really get people is with shocks and unexpected surprises. Innovative use of darkness, fog, noises, hidden panels, smoke, mirrors, robe lights and so forth. TBTW at ESP does this with more intensity then any place I’ve ever been. For a jaded scarefan like us to give this place enthusiastic thumbs up is saying something. (yeah I sound egotistical when I say that, but it really takes a lot to scare us or impress us and they did both). TBTW at ESP also has professional makeup jobs and incredibly good prosthetics and costumes. You can tell this isn’t done by teenagers in a trailer fighting over makeup supplies (ahhh the memories of scrounging to find a virgin piece of stipple…) The attention to detail shows, and really elevates it to the next level.

When you go to TBTW at ESP you should make reservations because otherwise the lines get long, however having a reservation at 7PM does not mean you go into the event at that time. There is a line outside, you then enter the walls of the prison, you give up your ticket, and then you have a choice. You can wait in the (potentially) long, or pay $5 more (per person mind you) and go to the front of the line. Unless the line is obscenely log, don’t take the fast pass. We had to wait 45 minutes or so but they run TV on an endless loop which features information about the prison, as well as clips from the MTV show fear which did an episode here. This, along with the prison spotlights and the actors running around scaring the crap out of the waiting customers.

I must say that one reason why I enjoyed myself so much has nothing to do with TBTW, it has to do with the company I kept. My wife’s girlfriends boyfriend Mimmo (rhymes with Nemo the fish)  is such a scardey cat that we were pissing in our pants, alternately from being scared to laughing our asses off at him. There were times he was cowering behind the women, and other times we had to shove him down the corridor because he would not move forward. My wife had bruised wrists like Michael Jackson’s after he got arrested in Santa Barbara… At one point a ghoul started bothering him, then came to bother me, and I kept pointing back to Mimmo, and of course that made him nearly shit his pants. It’s always fun when you go with someone who is genuinely terrified.
What awaits you inside the walls? I won’t bother to describe what you’ll find inside as a) it should be obvious, b) I couldn’t possibly describe it that well it happens so fast, and  c) why would I want to ruin it for you? I will say that they make extremely good use of fog, 3-D, hiding places, and sound… If you don’t believe me and my egotistic attitude, then ask Hauntfreaks.com who just rated it the best haunted attraction in the PA/NJ/DE area.

It turns out that the same guy who helped design Universal Studios Haunted attractions and Madison Scare Garden (both of which we’ve attended and thought highly of) was involved in the design of this place. From what I read, TPTW has been around for 6 years but initially wasn’t much more then a guide telling ghost stories. Not very chilling. With the recent redesign, they’ve established themselves as the place to go to get scared at Halloween.

MTV Filmed a segment of Fear here. Numerous documentaries about the prison have been filmed here as well as ones on ghosts. Here are hauntfreak.com’s final words on the subject: With proceeds going to such a worthy cause (the preservation of an amazing piece of architectural history), it is a bonus that we just can’t resist. Neither can we. Do yourself a favor. Make reservations, and get here during daylight to tour the prison, then  go eat dinner and come back to get scared. It’s a day well spent.

Read about the history of the prison here

Read about the tour of Eastern State Prison here

A tour of Eastern State Prison

I had heard about this prison and its tour through the Terror Behind the Walls Halloween website. I had suggested to my friends that we visit TBTW after visiting Skillman since we’d be down that way, and when we got kicked out early, my wife’s girlfriend said we should take the prison tour. I initially resisted, hoping to visit Ancora and a few weird virtuals, but the others won out, and in retrospect I’m glad they did.

The tours are self guided, using the same kind of audio set & headphones you get if you visit Ellis island. You walk around and certain spots are marked by a number, which corresponds to a certain track on the audio. They claim the tour takes 45 minutes but to be honest I could’ve spent twice that long if we hadn’t arrived with only an hour till the prison closed. The tour is narrated by Steve Buscemi who found ESP while checking locations for a movie he was looking to make. At the time he visited the prison was not in any shape to be toured, and he took interest in the prison and the effort to restore and preserve it.

You enter the massive gates of the prison, and then walk thru some narrow tunnels to a cashier who gives you the audio tour headsets. You then enter the prison yard and begin a slow tour of many of the wings and facilities. Among highlights you see the cell where Al Capone stayed, death row, and cell of bank robber Willie Sutton.  You see the cells themselves, along the way  hearing interviews with guards, prisoners and administrators, describing the way life was in the prison.

When you finally exit the rear of the main building you exit into a exercise yard where inmates played baseball and football. Among the more interesting facts is that when player hit home runs out of the prison often the residents outside would throw the balls back in. Little did the guards know that often these baseballs were plants stuffed with drugs or weapons!

As you walk through the hallways, peer into the cells, and listen to the stories it is impossible to come out of there without being affected by the stories that are told. Even though I took the tour with friends, the tour made me feel as if Steve was talking to me personally and singularly. As I walked the halls my wife and friends seemed to be irrelevant, as I was engrossed by the tales of solitary confinement, the mental illness, the disease, and the fears of both the prisoners and the guards. I felt quite alone myself.
Unfortunately the tour ended early since we arrived so late. We were unable to spend much time in death row, or to linger over an art project about the cruelty of the death penalty being used on children. There are more art projects planned, and the prison often hosts special events. This is without a doubt one of the most visually interesting places you can visit, and one of the oldest buildings you will likely ever get a chance to tour. it is well worth the trip, just make sure to give yourself at least 2 hours to fully appreciate the facilities. Afterwards there is a small museum area with items from the prison including the lock and key for the original front gate which still works 180 years later!

The prison is located at Fairmount Ave & 22nd Ave in Philadelphia and is open from April 1 until just after Thanksgiving. Private tours can be scheduled at any time, even during the winter. For information call 215 236-5111 x12. One of the more fascinating things I read was that the prison was a popular tourist attraction, even when it was open. Supposedly was as popular as Niagara Falls or the Capitol Building. Between 1862 and 1872 over 100,000 people visited the prison.

Read about the history of the prison here

Read my take on Terror Behind the Walls here (a Halloween attraction held in the confines of ESP)

All the photos here

Jersey’s Bat Hibernaculum

There are nine species of bats that can be found in NJ, six of which stay here year round. Caves are their natural habitat but are become increasingly disturbed by human contact, leaving them unsuitable for them to hibernate in.   Abandoned mines and tunnels are rarely entered by people because of their relative lack of safety, and are now their preferred place to remain during the winter.
The Hibernia Mine in Rockaway Township, Morris County was first used by bats in the 1930s. Thrillseekers and explorers persisted in entering the mine, leading to attempts to seal the mine. Doing so would seal it off from the bats as well, making this an unsuitable solution.

Enter the Bat Gate

In 1994,  the Endangered and Nongame Species Program was able to install a bat gate, which is a specialized gate that keeps people out but lets bats freely enter and exit. The mine is now part of the Wildcat Ridge Wildlife Mangement Area, and an estimated 30,000 bats call the mine home. During the months of July & August the bats can be seen at dusk leaving the mine by the thousands. Bat watching has become so popular that watch stands were installed to give people a comfortable place to view from.

There is a geocache here.