Haunted Mansion of Long Branch, New Jersey

The Haunted Mansion was like no other haunted house in its time, or even to this day. The Haunted Mansion gave a new meaning to scary, where actual actors and actresses would leap out at you and chase you around. This was before the time, when people did not worry about lawsuits and rules stating that you could not touch the customers.

The mansion was located on a pier at 65 Ocean Ave. Long Branch, New Jersey. The idea to build the mansion first came to Pat Cicalese, a local businessman. He sought out the help of a friend named Carmen Ricci and together along with Carmen Riccis brother Thomas. The three of them entered into a partnership.

The project for the mansion cost one million dollars, at over 10,000 square feet and standing three stories tall. Besides the Haunted Mansion, the pier also included an arcade, a fishing pier, and many concession stands. In 1977, construction had begun on the pier and in 1978 after a year of construction the mansion and its surrounding buildings opened to the public. After only a couple of years in the business, Pat Cicalese decided to buy out Carmen and Thomas Ricci, making Pat the sole owner. Then in 1985, Pat would make the decision to rename the park calling it "Kids World" and making the theme park more children friendly. However because the park had become more children friendly they needed to tone down the haunted mansion, to better suit the children.

Before they toned down the mansion, it housed a dozen different rooms, set up as sets. Some of the rooms they would make over every so often, in order to keep visitors coming back for more.

A few of the rooms were rather interesting, such as the Borden Murder Scene room, which looked like a Victorian room and set up to look like the murder scene of Lizzie Borden's family. Here an actress playing Lizzie would wait for guest and when they entered the room she would chase them around with an ax.

Another room was known as the Swamp, there creatures of all kinds would wait for their guest to arrive, and in the midst of the fog and mist they would jump out at the baffled guest.

The Freezer Rooms walls were covered in frost and had gross hacked up bodies and body parts stacked up against the walls, usually an actor would be there tied up in the middle of the room, waiting for what would come next. When the guest would arrive, an actor would jump out at them and chase them with a sickle. There of course were many more rooms, but these are just a few.

Unfortunately, the Haunted Mansion would not stand the test of time, and on June 8^th, 1987, a fire would destroy the pier and most of the buildings, completely burning down the famous mansion. It was later determined that the cause of the fire was due to a gas leak and sparked by some electrical arching underneath the pier. Pat was in hopes that he could rebuild the pier and its mansion, but due to the lack of insurance and unable to find anyone that would financially help him; the pier and its Haunted mansion would never be rebuilt. For 14 years, the remainder of the pier and its building sat empty and falling down, until 2001 when Long Branch would have the remainder of the pier torn down, and restaurants and shopping places would take its place.

Source
Bill and Seph Cherkasky
www.darkinthepark.com/Haunted%20Mansion/History/lbhistory.htm
Dark in the Park