Pennsylvania Built a Prison, New Jersey Built Everything Else
Pennsylvania to New Jersey, United States
A day trip from Philadelphia's most infamous former prison, where visitors still report voices in empty cell blocks, into the Pine Barrens where a winged, cloven-hoofed legend has roamed since the 1700s, and out to the Jersey Shore for a six-story wooden elephant that's greeted visitors since 1881.
A former prison in Philadelphia that operated from 1829 to 1971 and pioneered the solitary-confinement-based "Pennsylvania System" of incarceration, now a museum widely promoted as one of the most haunted sites in the United States.
Start in Philadelphia at the prison built for the Pennsylvania System of solitary confinement, abandoned in 1971 and left to crumble for decades before reopening as a museum. Guards and visitors alike have long reported voices and movement in the empty cell blocks.
A winged, hoofed creature reported out of the New Jersey Pine Barrens since colonial times, and the subject of roughly 1,000 sightings in a single week of January 1909. A Philadelphia press agent later admitted he had helped manufacture that week.
Drive southeast into the Pine Barrens, home to a winged, cloven-hoofed creature reported since the 1700s and blamed for a statewide sighting panic in January 1909 that shut down schools and factories for a week. The stop is Batsto Village, a preserved ironworks settlement in Wharton State Forest. Leeds Point, where the Mother Leeds story is set, is about 35 minutes southeast on the edge of Great Bay.
A six story wooden elephant built in 1881 to sell New Jersey real estate is now the oldest surviving roadside attraction in America.
Finish at the Jersey Shore inside a six-story wooden elephant built in 1881 to sell real estate. Climb up through her legs to the howdah on top for a view of the same beach she's watched over for nearly 150 years.
