Ghosts Along the Navesink and Shrewsbury Rivers

Book excerpt: The historic region between the Navesink and Shrewsbury Rivers has formed the basis for countless accounts of apparitions, hauntings and unexplained phenomena. For more than one hundred years, reports have circulated that the ghost of merciless slave master Lewis Morris can be seen scouring Passage Point Plantation in Rumson, with a gaping hole where his heart should be. The frozen waters of the Navesink were a popular destination for iceboat sailing, and many still claim to see the face of a drowned teen in the ice after a tragic incident in 1906. The native Lenapes and colonial Dutch told eerie tales of the ancient forest of Ole Balm Hollow in Middletown, including phantom riders and the echoes of crying children. Local author Patricia Heyer recounts haunted tales of the two rivers peninsula.