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

Future Warnings

Indoctrination schooling, cancel culture, tech dominance, history erasure, government-dictated media, de-platforming— nightmarish realities seemingly emerging without any precedent or justification. No one had foreseen the arrival of any of these disturbing trends, no one except perhaps, Eric Arthur Blair, later to be known by the pseudonym George Orwell.

Born in India to European parents in 1903, Orwell studied in England before serving with the colonial police in Burma in 1922. Resigning in 1928, Orwell retreated to the slums of London and Paris, living a willfully meager existence as a conscious reaction to his personal attitudes on his experiences in Burma. This inspired his first book, Down and Out in Paris and London, published in 1933.

The Road to Wigan Pier, published in 1937, cemented Orwell’s socialist agenda while he enlisted in the militia of the Spanish Civil War. These experiences soon inspired Orwell’s newfound fears regarding communism which he expounded on in Homage to Catalonia, published in 1938.

In 1943, Orwell became literary editor of the socialist newspaper, The Tribune. The novella Animal Farm followed, which allegorically depicted the Russian Revolution with an array of farm animals. This paved the way for the work his name would forever be synonymous with. Nineteen Eighty-four, published in 1949, addressed the threat of Nazism and totalitarianism in a not-so-distant future.

In the novel, the story’s protagonist clashes with a draconian government which alters and censors previous accounts of history and monitors citizens by employing ‘Thought Police’ who seek to brainwash and eradicate any elements of individuality. Orwell’s greatest contribution to literature would also be his last. He succumbed to tuberculosis in London in 1950 at 46.

To now say that Nineteen Eighty-four fortuitously prophesied present developments is an arguable understatement. A rapidly evolving political climate where any dissent from those in power is immediately labeled as “misinformation” and even “immoral” obviates how many of Orwell’s 20th Century fears have been realized thus far.

The symbiotic development of these ideas within one year of Covid lockdowns can’t be chalked up to coincidence. A grimly premeditated power grab has clearly been made by those eager to take advantage of a dire global crisis.

Ironically, young Americans whose predecessors once burned draft cards have moved on to burning books. Presently, one wouldn’t exactly be alarmist to imagine Orwell’s work itself as the next pile on the bonfire.

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

Will their utopia become your dystopia? By George, let’s hope not.

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Christopher Robinson

Eating the Chains

Applebee’s? Chili’s? Cracker Barrel? Personally I’m not overtly drawn to any of the ubiquitous ‘casual dining’ restaurant chains. The trusted legions of corporate eateries across the land certainly corner an array of markets for various cravings and their convenience is always the bottom line.

Given my choice, I’d likely pick Olive Garden or Red Lobster. Both brands have stood the test of time and hold a fairly decent track record for quality and value. Both, in fact, were owned by the same parent corporation until Red Lobster had been recently sold by Darden Restaurants, Inc., a Fortune 500 company that also runs Longhorn Steakhouse, Bahama Breeze and others.

Both Olive Garden and Red Lobster boast considerable menus, sociable bar areas and a combined 1,649 global locations. Both are also appreciated for trademark signature garnish items. Olive Garden’s buttery garlic breadsticks and Red Lobster’s Cheddar Bay Biscuits usually tempt customers more than the hearty entrees on their menus.

I always enjoyed the buffet-style restaurants that are popular in the mid-west and southern states. California-based Sizzler has long specialized in steak, seafood and salad bars— that is, until Covid restrictions recently caused them to file for Chapter 11. I suppose their future now remains on the back burner.

I recall another ‘all-you-can-eat’ establishment called Big Wrangler that seemed rather outstanding. Another home-style buffet chain was the Texas-based Bonanza, which can also go by the name Ponderosa. If that seems slightly familiar, it’s because it was originally begun in 1963 by Dan Blocker who played Hoss on NBC’s Bonanza from 1959-1972. Blocker sold his ownership of the chain three years later.

My least favorite of the lot is probably TGI Fridays, which was founded in New York in the 1960s and now headquartered in Dallas,Texas. My mainly esoteric issue stems primarily from a dining experience in which I had ordered only an appetizer but, from what I remember, it wasn’t prepared properly. 

As my service was equally bad, I wasn’t able to complain before leaving but I later emailed the general manager on the restaurant’s website. Since their official response to my polite inquiry was basically ‘Too bad, buddy,’ I wondered why they chose to respond at all. Wouldn’t remedying a tiny problem of one customer be worth it to prevent the guy from never returning to their restaurant as well as bad-mouthing it to everyone he knows? That's okay, I suppose. It’s not like he’d ever gripe about the incident to the entire world in a blog one day, right?

While thinking back on Fridays experiences, I actually recall another occasion that should conversely give me reason to look upon them with favor. One evening, on a rare occasion, a friend and I had spent a few hours at a table and ordered appetizers, entrees, and a few rounds of beer. With tax and tip, our total bill between us must have come close to about $100 (Well, for us it was a lot, anyway). Nice thing was, we never had to fork anything over. It was a mysterious undisclosed circumstance that forced the manager to ‘comp’ our bill and rush us out of the building, despite our offer to pay. Confused, we walked out to the parking lot, among the vacated clientele and staff. My quip?

“Glad I called in that bomb threat.”

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Christopher Robinson

The World is Your Cloister

Limboujrg brothers, from the
"Belles Heures du Duc de
Berry." French, 1399-1416

Merging two eternally favorite attractions, museums and gardens, the world-famous Met Cloisters in Manhattan are an assemblage of medieval artifacts situated on four acres of rolling green hillsides overlooking the Hudson River.

Opened to the public as part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cloisters have become an iconic New York tourist site and occasional film locale.

Alexander the Great
or Hector of Troy.
From the Nine
Heroes tapestries.
South Netherlandish,
c. 1385

Built in 1938 by architect Charles Collens in Fort Tryon Park, the grounds consist of three chapels in addition to a collection of European art dating from the 9th to the 17th Century. They also boast medieval gardens, paintings, sculptures, manuscripts and stained glass windows.

The four ‘cloisters’ or galleries were brought to New York from Europe throughout the 1930s, their relocation financed by John D. Rockefeller Jr. who also purchased several hundred acres of the Palisades to remain undeveloped in the Cloisters’ exterior view. Other major donors included banker and philanthropist J. P. Morgan Jr.

In 1948 the grounds were used in location filming for Portrait of Jennie starring Jennifer Jones and Joseph Cotten. Twenty years later the Cloisters’ steep hillsides provided the setting for a climatic motorcycle chase in the Clint Eastwood film, Coogan’s Bluff.

Bonnefont garden and cloisters

The museum is generally open Thursday through Monday from 10am to 5pm and offers group tours, virtual events and a gift shop. All in all, an unequaled journey through the Middle Ages, only minutes from the city, awaits the most adventurous and curious of time travelers.

Photos courtesy of: Wikipedia.

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Christopher Robinson