Hells Gate

The following stories, although out of order and chaotic are all true. A little background, my name is Bill Rambo and I am from New Jersey. Growing up in an old Victorian tourist trap, things tended to get boring during the winter season every year. During these dead times, myself and the local kids would explore the supernatural areas of "weird NJ." 

This adventure took me to The Gates of Hell, located in the town of Clifton in New Jersey. The gates of hell is an underground storm sewer system. Note not my photos: photo credit belongs to weirdnj.com. I had no cell phone in 2004 nor camera, the photos are to show the creepiness. The myth goes that a cult of some sort gather in the tunnels to perform satanic rituals (mainly of Wiccan and Nordic holidays). This time around only 1 of my friends were brave enough to join me in exploration, before we entered we came to a rule agreement, that if we felt the absolute need to turn back we would. Upon enter the tunnel of hell, one could immediately begin to feel the presence of impending doom. Pushing the fears of unease aside we pushed forward. Down the graffiti enshrined tunnel you see signs that guide you toward different sections of the tunnel. (Do not recommend doing this excursion unless you are prepared to get wet and definitely not doing it when a potential storm comes). Not knowing what lies around every turn, ate away more of the nerves I had left. The further we went into the tunnels faint scratching sounds could be heard. My initial thought was an animal scratching at something. It is important to note we both had heavy duty flash lights with fresh batteries for sight. The directions, for where the supposed ritual room, were hand written guides given to us by a friend who had been to the room previously. We followed the route to a T trusting he did not steer us wrong. We came to a fork in the tunnel one path said "To gods chamber" and the other said "to sicamore trace" I think they meant sycamore trace no idea what that was about. The directions said to enter the gods chamber, which we did. Upon entering I instantly got the unmistakable smell of rotting meat and burn almonds, to the point of almost inducing vomit, but the strange thing about it was my friend did not smell anything. This flabbergasted me and mad my paranoia reach an all time high, but I kept pushing forward. That is until I saw 3 black cats dangling from a noose with their skin pealed back in what ME's refer to as "degloving." Around the cats were strange symbols that looked very similar to the pagan alphabet. That was the moment where we're both high tailed it out of there. However during the panic of running we missed a crucial turn and headed down a wrong tunnel. We ran a good 50 yards before we came to section where a big piece of drift wood blocked the tunnel. Knowing we have not been down that way we began to hyper ventilate. In actuality we were only about 3 tunnels away from the exit we froze thinking the worst. After 5-10 minutes of catching our breath I went to look at the directions and find the exit and in that moment I realized I lost the paper it was written on. We decided to retrace our steps in the hopes to find familiar graffiti to guide us back. Walking back we both kept hearing loud croaking sounds (obviously a toad), but at the time we thought it was a sinister creature out for blood. We eventually made it back to the entrance, where we were greeted by the ever friendly (sarcasm) New Jersey state police, where we were issued a summons for trespassing and thoroughly chewed out.