They Never Listen to the Kids

If you have ever seen a classic ghost horror movie like “Child’s Play” or “The Poltergeist” you have felt the frustration of watching the young child be the first to accept the phenomenon around them, while the parents cynically wait until right before their about to be killed to accept reality. This Jersey Devil story rings that bell a little.

There was a young family that had just moved into a neighborhood in Brick, New Jersey. It was a young married couple and their daughter. The daughter was around 3 years old. The girl was nice but introverted and almost never spoke to anyone but her parents. The father worked all day and only got to see his girl for a few hours every night after work. They were very close.

The last thing the father would do every night would be to bring his daughter to brush her teeth, put her in bed and read her a story. The father was adamant on getting his daughter interested in reading.

The story gets creepy when you look at the history of the house. The location was ideal in the neighborhood. This house was one of the only ones to have water in the back. There was a large pond in the backyard and woods on both sides. The backyard was open but had privacy from the neighbors. On the surface it was perfect.

The one thing about this house that made the neighbors a bit uncomfortable was the evolution of the women who moved in. On two former occasions, a small young family moved in. The young wives would look beautiful and vibrant on the day they moved in, but by they time they moved out, they looked tired and worn out. The friendly women became reclusive and would almost never leave the property.

Turns out, the same thing was happening to this couple. The husband was fully aware his wife was looking terrible (though I doubt he ever said anything to her about it). The story goes that the daughter began telling the father that someone was visiting the mother during the day while he was at work. This unsurprisingly pissed the husband off royally and he asked the daughter to describe the man. The daughter told him that her mother would never let her see the man, and she would make the young girl play in the den whenever he was around.

The father apparently told the daughter to get a good look at the person in order to give him a description. He assumed he would be able to figure out who it was based on how the daughter described the visitor.

The daughter did as her father asked. She waited until the she heard the man leaving. The man walked out the backdoor of the house. The little girl went to the back window and saw a dark figure running on all fours towards the pond in the backyard. The creature jumped in the pond and swam away.

When the daughter described what she had seen, the father wouldn’t accept it (shocker) and figured she saw a cat or dog run across the backyard while the real visitor walked out the front door.

The next day the same thing happened. The creature was very dark and moved so fast the little girl couldn’t make out any details. That night she told her father. The father was furious with what he thought was a incoming case of ADD with his daughter combined with a cheating wife. The father apparently went to confront the mother and a fight broke out.

The official story was that the father suffered a heart attack and dropped dead during the fight. The young girl’s story seemed so nonsensical that the police didn’t take it seriously. The rumor was that the wife poisoned the husband after the fight. The wife and daughter moved out and they were the last ones to live in the house. The nice-looking home became severely over-grown and remained the “creepy house” that the kids run passed when walking around the neighborhood.

*One significant detail to note is that the pond in the back yard leads directly towards a water channel leading to the Pine-Barrens, which is home to the Jersey Devil.