Yet Another Pier to Fear

Inspired by the success of Brigantine Castle in Brigantine, New Jersey, businessman Pat Cicalese approached his friend and the castle’s owner, Carmen Ricci about a similar venture in Long Branch. Ricci assisted in funding a new attraction with Cicalese as he had previously done for Ricci with his.

In 1977, the popular Long Branch Pier was leased by Cicalese and Ricci who built new stores on the pier in addition to businesses Cicalese already owned across from it. By 1979, they owned the pier and had completed building 50 stores in addition to a McDonald’s and the imposing Haunted Mansion, opened in 1978.

Resembling more of a darkly adorned European chateau, the three-story ‘mansion’ capably epitomized the walk-through haunted attraction experience and provided visitors with grisly and terrifying sights in its many horror-themed rooms including a graveyard, a creepy dining room, a spooky tavern and a Lizzie Borden room! Typically for such attractions, a cast of young and committed actors were always spookily in character, chasing, threatening and all-around horrifying the guests who dared to enter its doors.

Cicalese, having bought out the pier from Ricci in 1980, eventually redesigned its attractions five years later to favor a more family-friendly theme. This toned down some of the Mansion’s more fearsome terrors in its final phase. An electrical fire finally destroyed the mansion along with much of the pier in 1987.

Though plans to rebuild never came to fruition, the Haunted Mansion hasn’t been forgotten by any means with fans continuing to share their memories and stories. For everyone else, the shore simply wont be that ghoulish and scary place it briefly was.

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Christopher Robinson

Boardwalk Vampire

Another pier which haunted Jersey shore beach goers with an ominous castle full of monsters and ghouls was the legendary Castle Dracula in Wildwood, New Jersey. The hallowed haunted ride was considered to be the best of its kind and subsequently outlasted all its creepy counterparts.

Built and operated by the Nickels family beginning in 1977, the three-story attraction utilized an existing water ride in its foundation. The first level of the castle was essentially a dungeon moat ride which had initially been an ‘old mill ride’ going back to 1919! Upon the moat, a train of boats rode a water current across a drawbridge which led to the mouth of a giant skull.

Boatmen of the dungeon moat

An alternate walking tour brought one into the upper levels of the castle where its dedicated performers put the scare-act on timorous trespassers amid spooky props, antiques and eerie rooms filled with gruesome displays, ghastly animatronic figures and other cleverly macabre illusions.

One can clearly recall the castle’s frightening invitation as they roamed the boardwalk and heard the opening notes of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor looped continuously and blasting from a speaker system. Even the horseshoe crabs on the sand below got goosebumps!

It was the illustrious count himself, however, who would personally beckon patrons to step inside his majestic stone home as he approached through double doors and moved his mechanical head and arms back and forth.

“Meet my friends— Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, the Hunchback and Phantom of the Opera... Join us, we’d love to have you... for dinner!”

Dracula greets his guests

Unfortunately, the feast of fun and magic ended suddenly in January of 2002 when two youths set a fire resulting in Castle Dracula being burned down. Its impressive legacy and catacombs of memories will nevertheless always remain for the millions who accepted Dracula’s invitation to that spooky ride in the dark.

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Christopher Robinson

Ghosts on the Coast

Beach front view of Brigantine Castle

For roughly a decade, on the island of Brigantine in New Jersey, the view of a pier overlooking the ocean was conspicuously dominated by an imposing gray five-story medieval structure known to all as Brigantine Castle.

With over a million visitors a year stopping in for some bonafide frights and chills, the haunted house amusement was a popular sensation on the former site of what was initially known as the Seahorse Fishing Pier.

Promotional poster

In 1976, businessman Carmen Ricci noticed the derelict pier and knew something was missing. It needed appeal. It needed renewal. It needed... a deranged maniac wielding a bloody axe? Ricci certainly thought so. He began construction of the wooden castle alongside accompanying eateries, shops and attractions similarly developed for the revitalized summer recreation area.

The castle boasted 100-foot high turrets and housed mad laboratories, dungeons and torture chambers which came to life through the tireless work of 35 performers, mostly drama students, some of who played zombies, witches and werewolves. Many of the cast and crew also crafted their costumes and make-up and even assisted in the castle’s initial construction.

Promotional brochure

Another crucial key to the attraction’s success was Ricci’s smart and prolific ad campaigns which featured the castle’s famed East Coast radio and TV spots ensuring visitors that “It’s alive!”

Following costly storm damage and tightening federal regulations after a haunted house tragedy at Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, NJ, Ricci closed the castle and sold the pier for $1 million. Eerily, the structure burned completely down during the week that a complete demolition was scheduled.

The heyday of the spook-tacular seaside horror attractions may be long gone, but for those who remember those grisly thrills and scares, Brigantine Castle’s memories have never ceased to haunt.

The Wolf Man - Dressed to kill

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Christopher Robinson