This reads like a ghost story. volunteers cleaning up the old Jersey City cemetery found hints of another cemetery connected to it, but buried by time and nature.
Until...
One day, clearing undergrowth, a volunteer stumbled upon a stone step. Like a modern Cair Paravel from Narnia, the stone staircase led up the hill and ended in an old rusted iron door set into the hillside. Breaking open the old door and stepping inside out of the clear Jersey sunlight, they found an antechamber. It had been undisturbed for over 100 years. Torchlight showed a series of tunnels disappearing into the hillside, snaking left and right.
Oh, there's more.
New Jersey Gothic.
The now-uncovered stone staircase that leads up the western hill to the door is cracked and falling apart and the earth has sunk in many places, swallowing the Victorian tombstones into the ground. Unlocking the old rusted iron door, we stepped inside. The first antechamber was covered in marble walls...
Stepping further into the pitch black, the light of the torch showed blackened brick tunnels heading in both directions. Heading to the left and walking into another room Markenstein told me to “be careful in there.” Piled up against the wall were wooden boxes about 2 feet long, that Markenstein claimed contained live munitions left over from the War of 1812. Beyond that were two slightly larger boxes, this time made of metal, that Markenstein explained were unburied child’s coffins.
(many thanks to Andrew Connell, friend of the Count)
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