Welcome to the Ash Grove Park Memorial website
 
   

Ash Grove Park History
Ash Grove Park cemetery is located just outside a tiny, rural New Jersey town named Early's Crossing. Legend has it that there once was a small community on the site of Ash Grove Park, years before Early's Crossing ever existed. If true, there is not much left of this tiny village, save for the possible stone foundations of a few houses and a small crumbling church building. Besides these few ancient artifacts, Ash Grove Park is also home to a number of legends and strange tales that are linked to the crumbling old church and the overgrown cemetery that can be found along Old Mill Road. For years, stories of eerie sounds, strange sightings, and supernatural happenings in this old graveyard could be found in old journals and records about the area. One of the old journals even claimed that the old cemetery is one of the "seven gateways to hell." But even these old stories and legends have been all but forgotten. Only a very few local residents, whose families have lived here all their lives and have had a strong tradition of family storytelling, seem to even vaguely remember the tales.

In December of 1995, an small article appeared in a local New Jersey newspaper I was reading while stopping for a coffee break in my drives around the NJ countryside. The article spoke of a number of recent strange occurrences in a small old cemetery and churchyard. The article also cited a few of the old journal entries from generations ago, in which one local resident claimed Ash Grove Park was “haunted by diabolical and supernatural forces” and that the cemetery was one of the few places on earth where the devil appears in person two times each year. The article also said that the cemetery had been the source of many legends in the area, stories that had been told and re-told for over a century before they were forgotten in a more cynical time.

Intrigued by the short article, I decided to track down the cemetery and investigate it. What I found was a neglected and partially overgrown graveyard that, at first glance, looked to possibly hold a few days of mildy interesting exploration. As I began to dig (sorry, poor choice of words) and poke around, I began to find things that didn't fit in with what I had found in most of the other small Jersey cemeteries I have toured. As I began to document and research the small cemetery and the stories and legends about it, I found myself spending months examing the headstones, tracking down and talking to local old-timers, and so on. Like any old cemetery or graveyard, Ash Grove Park is filled with individual stories and histories, hidden tales that can only be found by hours of research and investigation. But there is something more here. A story whose pieces I am only now beginning to uncover and understand. In the next few months I plan on adding the actual history of the cemetery to this page, as I've come to understand it.
Welcome to Ash Grove Park.