Shades of Death Road is a real two-lane road in Warren County, New Jersey, running 6.7 miles through forest and swamp. According to Weird NJ, residents have gone "so far as to smear the pole holding the street sign" with grease to stop people from stealing it.
Theories about the name go back centuries. Highwaymen once ambushed travelers in the dense tree shade and cut their throats. Locals lynched the highwaymen and left their bodies hanging from branches. In the 1920s and 1930s, three murders took place along the road — one man was beaten to death with a tire jack over gold coins, a woman beheaded her husband and buried the head and body on different sides of the street, and a third man was shot and buried in a mud pile. That case was never solved.
In 1850, malaria-carrying insects were found nesting in a cliff face alongside the road; the swamp outbreaks killed so many people that a street once simply called "Shades Road" earned the rest of its name out of black humor. Near the road sits Ghost Lake, named by two wealthy homeowners who gave it the name after seeing "wraithlike vapor formations" rising off the water on cool mornings.
