The Colby Mansion is located in Byram Township in Sussex County N.J. It has been known amongst teens for years to be haunted. The story goes that there was a very wealthy man who had his entire family living with him in his mansion. This man, his first name escapes me at the moment, supposedly belonged to an occult. For one of his "rituals" he cut off there heads and placed them on the fireplace mantle. Now one year later and many trips later I am finally putting my story up. Me and my partner in crime, Jay, found out part of the truth to the story. There was indeed a man who lived there with the last name of Colby. This same man did murder his family in this house, whether or not he did belong to an occult will never be known. Risking our butts, litterally, an old woman is said to live behind the mansion, the caretaker, and shoot at anyone caught in or around the house with a salt and pepper gun. Luckily we did not encounter her. But we did make it inside long enough to get pictures and grab a little momento. It was a clear night and me and Jay decided it was time to go into the house instead of just talking about it. We talked to a few local teens who knew the legend and the houses whereabouts and got some info. The legend proved to be the same that we had heard so that got us even more phsyched. There was only one small problem, no one had ever gotten into the house before. Well that egged us on even more. Getting a really big knife, some rope, alot of flashlights, we picked up our cameras and set off. We wandered around the woods for a while trying to find the best way of approaching the house without getting caught. Well, we encountered many a strange thing out in those woods. Our biggest problem, a dog. There was a gaurd dog out back that kept hearing us on the twigs and leaves. We had to go so slow. We wound up going too far back in the woods and wound up behind the caretakers house. I almost stepped on the dog before we noticed how close it really was. Well now the dog is barking up a storm. We thought we were caught for sure. So we took off running. What we found was huge piles of rocks in a field behind the house. It was so eerily quite back there it would chill anyone to the bone. We still have no clue as to why there was just a couple of piles of stones in a field, burial grounds maybe? "Who knows...we sure don't... we just know it was scary as hell back there. Well, after taking off like a bat out of hell, we doubled back and found ourselves jumping from grass spot to grass spot in the middle of a swamp on the side of the house. After we finally got across that, we were there, finally, at last. The house loomed enourmusly in front of us....where should we start? We figured the front door to be good, so we let ourselves in. The second floor had collapsed in a room on the right and there was rubble everywhere. But right in front of us was the first fireplace. So we took pictures. We made our way around the first floor of the house like mice dodging a cat. We had no idea what to expect. We just kept snatching pictures left and right. we found another fireplace on the first floor and this one had a "kiln" on the side of it. Why would you need a kiln in a fireplace in what appeared to be a living room? The marble staircase that we found was in perfect condition, that may sound pretty normal, but not when the rest of the house is falling down around you. There looked like there was a door open at the top of the stairs, but all the other doors were closed. That spooked us a little. We decided we had stayed long enough, we were bound to get caught if stayed any longer. So we left, but not without taking a little something to remind us of our trip first. We grabbed a glass jug from a room. It appears to be an old wine jug, but who knows. We just know that we got out of there in one piece. The oddest thing about the whole trip wasn't all the freaky things we saw, but how comfterable and welcome we felt when we got into the house.... like someone wanted us to be there. We only got to explore the front half of the first floor before we had to go....this leaves a reason to go back many more times in the future. Check out the pic's...there pretty neat...let me know what you think.
Some weird things we saw.
Inside Colby
Some inside pics.
The infamous fireplaces!
We made it!
