Demon’s Alley is a road in West Milford, New Jersey which includes about half a dozen abandoned houses. The property is owned by the Newark Watershed Commission, and is posted and patrolled. Trespassers will be prosecuted if caught roaming the grounds.
WeirdNJ offers: “THE DEMON’S ALLEY LEGEND I had always heard this spot was being preserved for some historical reasons, however recently I had brought a friend of mine who is a well-known photographer, and he was very impressed. He went back on his own to shoot some pictures, and the camera’s shutter would not open (and there was nothing wrong with it). His camera’s inability to work when photographing the houses made him stop at some of the small town stores on Rt 23 to try to get some more information on the stretch of houses. An old man told him quite a tale of the village. How true the story is I investigated no further, but it is quite scary. He claimed a man moved into the town in the early ’80s who seemed to be a typical person and a normal resident. Shortly after his arrival weird things started happening. Small pranks, I assume. The residents suspected that it was kids coming off Rt. 23 to play jokes on the odd street. The new resident decided to hold a town meeting at his house to decide what to do about the pranksters. Little did the small community know about this man’s history or the plans for all the people of the town. The old timer claimed this man had been a cult leader in the midwest and had a large following of members. He had perpetrated the pranks in a plot to get all the town members together under the roof of his home. Once all were gathered in the downstairs, cult members stampeded from the upper level and engaged in a massacre of every member of the town. Supposedly, the cult fled and were never caught. The old man said no one in the town talks about the incident, and most deny it ever happened.”
Another variation of this story tells about a cult who killed everyone on the block before vanishing into the woods
Either way…this would be national headline news…if it were true that is. “demon’s alley” is New City Road in West Milford, NJ. possible explanations The building inspector in West Milford wrote to me
“It is my understanding that homes in New City were built for workers employed by the city of Newark at the reservoir and water treatment plant. As the systems became more automated and transportation in the area improved, the housing for the workers was no longer needed and the houses were left vacant and fell into disrepair. The city of Newark still owns the land and the buildings but doesn’t feel they are worth saving or maintaining.”
Another explanation is an outbreak of radon or carbon monoxide forcing people to evacuate
Another thing I read about was that the 466-acre property off Maple Road adjoining the watershed was formerly owned by the fabled moviemaker, Cecil B. DeMille. Could it be possible this string of “abandoned houses” were used as part of a movie set ?
(New York banker Leonard Miller now owns the nearby property, which he’d like to develop into a golf course, a hotel complex and conference center, and 16 single-family homes)
Why are the windows of the houses painted black with curtain pull strings
I don’t understand why people make this a focal point of the “weirdness” of New City Road. Watershed workers painted plywood to look like window shades, and then put the plywood over the windows to make the houses look inhabbitated from afar. By doing this, in theory it also lessens the amounts of items being thrown through the windows as well as not allowing people to easily look inside the houses or break in. Think about when a store goes out of business and they soap their windows…same idea
ok so why were people’s possessions left inside the houses
Two ways to look at this. The first being that people just left some junk behind when they left which is not uncommon
The second angle is that over time people used the empty houses as squats and brought in their own stuff
What About The Arson
On Saturday morning 11-04-00 at 04:40 hrs. West Milford Fire Dept. Co. 1, 2 and 4 were dispatched to a working structure fire on New City Road. This abandoned 2 story wood frame was located at the old City of Newark, New City Village.