Sara's Woods, Alpha , NJ Debunking A Very Tall Tale

Click on all photos to enlarge them.

I came upon a message board devoted to some strange happenings in New Jersey, and since I was born and raised there I became interested in reading the posts. http://theweirdusmessageboard.yuku.com/topic/1515/ANY-PHOTOS-OF-ALPHA-WOODS-SARA-S-WOODS-  I searched for Alpha, my old home town, and was so amused by the silly contrived posts of several of the message board participants that I had to write this blog about it.  It is the story of what I believe is a total fabrication of a ghost name Sara residing in the small wooded area that sits between Seventh Avenue in Alpha and the abandoned Vulcanite Cement Mill Quarry.

This is the first post regarding such a ghost: 

The poster mentions a coven that presently meets in a barn there.

There are several posts made using different screen names of people claiming to have lived in the neighborhood, or have had relatives living there at one time. If you read them all you will notice several comments poking fun at the type of people who live in Alpha. 

Every time anyone refuted the story of Sarah the little girl ghost, a new screen name appeared to prove its validity.  Of those that refuted the story there was a young man Heller213 who grew up in the same neighborhood and was blasted by the person with the screen name Luv from NJ.

The following post and a few others looked oh so familiar to me, the same old scenario of a poster trying to demean anyone with an opposite opinion.

 

One common thread seemed to follow through in several posts by six or so posters, they all seemed to have a similar experience, and were desperately trying to validate the original post made by the laraisblessed poster.  These posters were THeLastManHere, laraisblessed, JrGhostHunter, Luv from NJ, Mantodea3(predatory insect),  and spiritzWise.

Someone even suddenly found a blog written about Sara's Woods  :http://saraswoodsinalpha.blogspot.com/   
I found this blog rather amusing, and once again riddled with fabrication.  This poster even tells tall tales regarding the weather of the Alpha area.  From the blog: "Studies have found even the weather to be different here - we have more mini tornadoes than any other location on the East Coast!"  What a bunch of malarkey!  I lived in Alpha for 39 years, 6th or 7th Avenues for 25 of those years, and never saw a mini tornado.

I found this post by spiritzWise rather intriguing because of the location they mention where they had previously lived, and the poster's paranoid incoherent ramblings about the power lines:

 

At another point another poster who seemed to post often on this website featherboa39 discovers what she believes to be a link to other stories with striking similarities:

Not only do I find it funny in a disturbing kind of way that the multiple posters seem to wish to validate the story of laraisblessed, but they also help her in an effort to keep the curiously interested posters from traveling to "Sarah's Woods" to check it out with several posts warning them of the "criminals", and "drunken ATV riders."

These posters sure give the quaint little town of my childhood a really bad image.  It is all there posted between August and December 2006, oddly enough no one in the Dunwell family were living at 1159 Seventh Avenue at that time. 

Click on pic to ENLARGE

The Dunwell family moved to 428 Williams Street in Alpha, New Jersey in 1958 when I was seven years old.  In 1963 we then moved to 301 East Central Avenue where my parents opened a Luncheonette/Corner Store.  While we had the store we had the distinct privilege of getting to know a rather large cross section of the residents of Alpha,  Springtown, and Warren Glen.  We had many regular customers who didn't just come in to buy things, but hung out and conversed.

The house on the right was the former Romagnoli/Brunetti Butcher Shop

One such customer was one of my favorite characters, Valentino Romagnoli. Val was the son of Americo Romagnoli who built his home on Seventh Avenue in Alpha around the former Peter Brunetti Butcher Shop in 1951.   I recently spoke with Val who told me he bought a chicken coop off of John Shiller who had lived on E. Central Avenue on the block between Sixth and Seventh Avenue back then, and attached it to the rear of the home and refurbished it to create a kitchen.  Since Val only paid $20.00 for the chicken coop and was working at the Vulcanite/Alpha Cement Mill at the time he also paid to have a new floor put in the kitchen.   Back in the early fifties there were still many outhouses in Alpha, and Val also added a brand new bathroom to the house for his mother and father.  After the passing of his mother and father he sold the house for $12, 000.00. 

When I stumbled upon a totally unbelievable tale online, I knew that if anyone would have known about any ghosts that supposedly haunted the small wooded area situated behind his parent's home on Seventh Avenue Val would certainly be the one.   My family  purchased 1159 Seventh Avenue from Ethel Keller in 1968, and her parent's Mr. and Mrs. Ringo lived nearby on Seventh Avenue.  We knew everyone in the neighborhood and some that had lived there for a lifetime.

We heard many a tale about Alpha legends, and not one single one about a ghost of a child haunting the wooded area a few hundred feet away, across the street, up the hill, and over the tracks.  There were many a night we awoke to the loud clanging noises and screeching brakes of a train passing through.

I would advise that no one should go hunting for this fabricated ghost Sara in the wooded area between the former PA Railroad bed and the former Vulcanite Cement Mill quarry, because it is against the law, private property, and dangerous.   Glenn Miller stumbled over the 70 ft. cliff falling to his death on August 3, 1991.  Another young man Timothy Vas also fell at the same time but lived to sue the town of Alpha for negligence in failing to warn the public of its danger. http://articles.mcall.com/1991-01-02/news/2791687_1_alpha-suit-new-jersey-superior-court.

On my private Facebook page I put the question to my forty or so friends who grew up in Alpha.  I asked them if they had ever heard of the haunting of a little girl ghost named Sara or Sara's Woods, and not one of them ever heard of it.  However, two of my friends told me some horrendous stories about witches who were persecuted by the town's people over eighty years ago.  It was the first time I had ever heard that tale.  The two who mentioned this are third generation raised in Alpha, their families go back to the town's inception. 

When I was about eight years old a man was hit by a train on the tracks near the walking bridge that spans the tracks between Railroad and First Avenues.  He was always known to the locals as the Bocce Man.  I don't know his actual name or how he got the nick name Bocce Man.  I often thought that he could have been walking home from playing Bocce with the guys at the SIM club that was on Warren Street,  a favored spot for the Italian men to hang out and play Bocce in the yard next to the club.

And Plot Thickens With A Whole New Set Of Multiple Posters Trying To Convince Others Of The Non-Phenomena 
http://angelsghosts.com/alpha_nj_ghost_story.html

http://pub41.bravenet.com/forum/static/show.php?usernum=3480317052&frmid=1198&msgid=662318&cmd=show

http://ghosthunters39131.yuku.com/topic/381#.TygpgsVSTp9





"It makes me feel sick to my stomach knowing that the majority of the posts on all of the websites were actually made by one person using multiple pseudo-names to give  validation to her trumped up story.  I find this fact scarier than any ghost! "