My mother confirmed later, that when she worked for the state’s Jake Abel 90’s inspired shirt office, these properties were held for generations by families whose ownership couldn’t be easily determined due to inbreeding. I also met a man a couple of years later who worked for the department of public works. He told me he had to go out to these properties occasionally and had observed some outrageous behaviors among the Pine Barrens families that seemed to reinforce what my mother had said – that it scared him to the point that he told his boss that he wouldn’t go out there any more, even if it meant losing his job. He told me this before I even mentioned the camping trip incident. True or not, it creeped me out for certain! Either that, or worse, we could have run into the ‘Jersey Devil’! Never made another trip to that part of the state again…
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