Blairsden Lake

The day after the Talamini Road experience, Charlie decided to show me a road where there were the "13 bumps" in Bernardsville. The legend of the 13 bumps is that, supposedly, during the (Jersey?) Witch Trials, 13 witches were murdered and eventually their graves were paved over.

There's a 13 bumps road in Watchung, and I've been on that road multiple times. However, I had never been to the one in Bernardsville.

"I've only been there twice, and both times it was in the dark," Charlie told me, as we started to head towards Bernardsville in his car, Charlie's CDs coming through the speakers on the stereo.

"Do you know the name of the road?"

"No, but I know what it looks like."

"Do you know the name of the road the 13 bumps is off of?"

"No, but I know what it looks like."

This ended up being a problem, because things look very different in the daytime than they do in the nighttime.

We headed through the center of town and then up Clairmont Street until we hit some ritzy road in the middle of the woods where there were mansions on huge pieces of property--overlooking fields and farms and forests.

We drove up that road until we got to the end of it when Charlie said, "I think we went up the wrong road. But look at this house." He pointed out his window to a gigantic house at the end of the street. "It looks like a resort."

I scoffed, "We should show up here sometime with suitcases and tell the owners we're here for our spa weekend."

We got back to the center of town and then started driving down Route 202.

"I'm certain that it's going to be off of this road on our right," Charlie told me.

"You're certain?" I said doubtfully.

"I'm somewhat, very certain, yes."

We then proceeded to turn down every side street to our right, and went the wrong way down a one way street, and still we didn't come across any 13 bumps.

Finally, we gave up. I called my dad and asked him to give me directions to this lake and that sat underneath an old mansion called Blairsden. It was a nunnery at one point, and my parents took me up to the property once when I was younger because it's supposedly haunted. Weird NJ and local Bernardsville lore are all over that story. My dad tripped some alarm in the parking lot, so we had to leave. I was about nine or ten and found this whole tripping-the-alarm-business to be really, really exciting. It was the beginning of my adventures, I guess.

The lake that surrounds Blairsden is located, conveniently enough on Lake Road off of Route 202. It's gorgeous and eerie. The road that follows is so slim that it's hard for two cars to fit by. There's really no spot to park and look at the lake, and you can barely see it sometimes through the trees and bushes that line the side of the road. But when you do manage to poke through the trees and get a glimpse, the view is fantastic.

On our way back from the lake, a downpour started. You could see the drops flood into the lake and the paling sky made the whole trip even more spooky.

We never made it up to Blairsden though. The rain was too bad to keep driving around. Maybe that's for the next adventure. And maybe we can complete the investigation without tripping any alarm systems.