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