Burnt Mill Road - The Atco Ghost

A lonely stretch of road in the Pine Barrens near Atco has become infamous for supernatural encounters. The area was once home to sawmills and scattered settlements that have long since vanished into the forest.

Burnt Mill Road is a dead-end road that cuts through the Pine Barrens in the unincorporated community of Atco within Waterford Township, Camden County. The road has become one of South Jersey's most visited haunted locations, drawing a steady stream of curiosity seekers every autumn, much to the frustration of local police and the handful of families who live along its length.

The central legend involves a young boy who was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver on the road. The most common version of the story holds that the accident happened on Christmas night. The boy had just received a basketball as a gift and was playing with it outside when the ball bounced into the road. He chased after it and was hit by a drunk driver, who continued to the dead end, turned around, drove past the dying child, and fled. No specific name, date, or police report has ever been publicly connected to the story, yet the legend has persisted for decades and been documented extensively by Weird NJ magazine and other sources.

Multiple rituals are said to summon the ghost. In the most widely cited version, visitors drive to the end of Burnt Mill Road in the middle of the night, locate a crack that runs across the pavement near the spot where the boy allegedly died, flash their headlights three times, honk their horn three times, and then wait in the darkness. According to those who claim to have witnessed it, the apparition of a child will appear and slowly dribble a basketball across the road before vanishing. A second method involves parking at the roadside, turning off the engine and all lights, walking approximately twenty feet from the car, and turning around. The ghost boy is said to materialize and run toward the witness before disappearing. Some accounts claim that if you park at the end of the road with your lights off, the ghost will approach the car and peer inside, as though checking whether it is the same vehicle that killed him.

Motorists also report seeing a child-sized figure standing in their headlights that vanishes when they slow down or approach. Other Pine Barrens phenomena reported in the vicinity include a blonde woman in white who walks along the shoulder, a spectral black dog that keeps pace with vehicles before disappearing, and the sound of childish laughter echoing through the trees on foggy nights. The ever-present legend of the Jersey Devil, whose supposed birthplace at Leeds Point is roughly thirty miles to the south, adds another layer of unease to the already isolated stretch of road.

Waterford Township police have noted that the road sees a predictable surge of visitors as Halloween approaches each year. According to local reports, the parents of the boy are said to still live in a house along the road and will call the police when they see people they believe are attempting to summon the ghost. Whether the legend has any basis in an actual accident remains unconfirmed, but the road's isolation, its dead-end layout, and the surrounding Pine Barrens darkness have made it a fixture of South Jersey ghost lore for generations.