A ghost and his dog once haunted Clark railroad tracks

It's been years since anyone has seen Henry Shieve walking his dog along the railroad tracks.

Shieve, a land owner with property on Westfield Avenue, and his dog were a regular sight on tracks between Terminal and Central avenues from the 1930s up through the 1950s. That's unusual if for no other reason than Shieve died in 1905.

Clark was a radically different place at the turn of the 20th century. Incorporated in 1864 at the height of the Civil War, local law enforcement in Clark was handled by a horse-mounted constable. The township itself was filled with wide, open spaces and a population that could be measured in the hundreds instead of the thousands.

In the Clark of 1905, there were no indications that in 40 short years the Garden State Parkway would be dumping cars into the streets. The township was a rural farming community visited daily by a train that brought its load of passengers, goods and news from beyond Clark's borders. For Shieve, a retiree in his late 70s, visiting the train when it stopped near Picton Street, was the perfect way to idle away the afternoon.

And so, on Oct. 5, 1905, Shieve bid his wife adieu and took his dog for a walk to the train station. He was never seen alive again.

"He and the dog disappeared," said Municipal Historian Brian Toal.

No one at the railroad station saw him that day, and for two weeks, Shieve's wife and others searched the area for some sign of what had happened.

"They eventually found his body in the woods, down near the railroad tracks," said Toal. Although there was some speculation that Shieve might have been hit by the train, authorities finally decided he had died of natural causes, probably heart failure.

The story includes a touching note about the depth of loyalty a dog has for its master. Unable to rouse Shieve, the dog stayed by his side, barking and baying for help that never came. When the train arrived, it hit the dog and killed it, throwing its body into the woods some distance away.

If that were all, the story would be a sad incident of too little note to warrant even a footnote in Clark's history. One of his daughters, Sue Shieve, had married Benjamin King, the son of former Mayor Benjamin King, but that was as close as Shieve comes to prominence in local history. His death does not even serve as a warning about walking along the railroad tracks, since he died of natural causes.

About 30 years after Shieve's death, people started seeing him again.

"The legend is that there was always a man and a dog walking by the tracks down near the Central Avenue bridge," said Toal, who also serves as 4th Ward councilman. "The people on the trolley, when they were going over the trestle, would always say, 'There's a man and a dog down there.'"

The first eyewitness accounts of Shieve that we know about today are from the 1930s. Those reports continued for the next two decades, and finally dried up sometime in the 1940s, during World War II.

Paige Deacy, a paranormal investigator who lives in Clark, considers the ghost story to be credible, given that Shieve died without, warning in the middle of something he loved to do.

"It could be it was such a sudden death that he didn't realize he had died," said Deacy. "He's walking his dog, doing his routine, and has a heart attack and dies. Maybe he enjoyed walking his dog so much that he 'stayed behind.'"

Sightings of Shieve's ghost stopped around the same time the Garden State Parkway connected Clark with its neighbors to the north and south.

Perhaps the increase in traffic along Central Avenue and Raritan Road has made Shieve feel out of place in a Clark he no longer knows, or perhaps with the demolition of the Picton Street train station, his destination is lost and he has gone to a final resting place.

Or maybe, some October evening, Shieve and his dog will walk the tracks, someone will spot them, and the legend will begin again

In the shadow of death: Questions linger for bereft family of slain man

There are a number of questions Leslie Kiray has about his son's death, but the one that looms largest is, "Is that it?"

Kiray's son, James, 38, was killed Sept. 3 in a motor-vehicle accident at the Garden State Parkway Exit 135 traffic circle. Since his son's death, Kiray, who has lived on Blake Drive for 45 years, has been at a loss to understand why the other driver was charged only with careless driving.

And every time he drives through the traffic circle, he's forced to watch his son's death play out in his mind, again and again.

"Every time I go around that circle, my heart stops," said Kiray, 73. "Every time 1 go to that place where my son was killed, I see everything."

State Police accident reports indicate that the Corvette James Kiray was driving that night had stopped at the stop sign on the left side of the exit ramp. Joseph Ruggirello, driving a Cadillac, started down the right side of the exit ramp, toward Brant Avenue, but struck the concrete island between the two exit lanes and became airborne.

Ruggirello's Cadillac struck the right rear panel of James Kiray's Corvette. From there it continued its forward momentum, shearing the roof off the Corvette and killing James Kiray before striking the one-way sign on the far side of the road, about 3 feet from the ground. Propelled by the force of the impact, James Kiray's Corvette rolled forward about 40 feet, into the circle.

Ruggirello's Cadillac meanwhile landed on the grassy infield of the circle. Its left rear wheel, torn away by the impact, the car continued to slide along the grass. A little further than halfway across, the car began to overturn and again became airborne, losing its left front wheel in the process.

The Cadillac finally came to a complete stop on the far side of the traffic circle from where the initial collision took place, near the Valley Road exit.

A Westfield motorist listed as a witness to the accident said the Cadillac landed perpendicular to the road.

In a letter to State Police dated Oct. 17, Union County Prosecutor Theodore J. Romankow declined to file charges against Ruggirelio, citing a lack of evidence of speeding, substance abuse or recklessness.

Robert O'Leary, executive assistant prosecutor and public information officer for the County Prosecutor's Office, said such decisions are based on the reports of witnesses, police reports and forensic evidence gathered at the scene of the accident.

"Every time there's a fatal accident, they review the facts that are verifiable and determine what's appropriate," O'Leary said.

Accident reports by neither Clark nor State Police indicate how fast Ruggirelio had been going. The posted speed limit for the ramp is 25 mph.

Kiray said he was told the police believed Ruggirelio had been driving around 70 to 80 mph. That seems more likely to him than the possibility Ruggirelio was going the posted limit.

"The man flipped three times. If you're going 20 to 25 mph, you're not going to flip," he said.

Ruggirelio pleaded guilty to careless driving. A careless driving charge nets a fine of less than $100.

"That then was my son's worth," said Kiray. "I just want the truth. Why? Why is somebody who killed somebody else getting off with nothing?"

James Kiray's death devastated his family. His widow, Laura Kiray, unable to live in the home she had shared with her husband, sold it and took their children with her to Livingston, where her parents live.

And at the funeral the elder Kiray had to comfort his. grandsons, who were trying to understand what had happened to their father.

One grandson decided his father had just gone on a business trip. Another, only 5 years old, had an even harder time understanding.

"This was the saddest in my opinion. Because of the nature of the accident, the casket was not open," said Kiray. "1 knelt down with him and said a prayer, and he reached and touched the casket, and said, 'Grandad, can we open it to see if Daddy's stiil in there?'

"I almost fell apart," Kiray said, his voice choking up as he spoke. "Thank God the 5-year-olds don't understand it."

On Monday, Kiray and his second wife, Anna Kiray, sold the Blake Drive house where James Kiray and his brothers grew up. It was only last year that the elder Kiray — who spends about half of each year in Europe — had told his son that he was planning to sell the house because its upkeep was getting'to be too difficult.

"He said, 'Dad, don't sell the house. I want to keep the heritage. I want to buy it from you,' " Kiray recalled.

Instead of buying the house, James Kiray was laid to rest in a burial spot beside his mother's grave. It was where the elder Kiray had expected to be buried himself, but it has become one final gift from father to son.

"God is close to him and his mother is close to him," said Kiray.

With the house closing behind them, Kiray and his wife headed to Florida, where one of his other sons lives.

He hopes to move on, but he has his doubts whether healing will ever come.

"To me it's not closed," he said, "because in my heart I know it's not ever going to be closed."

School official allegedly assaulted teen

A Board of Education member may be headed to court to defend himself against an accusation that he assaulted a teenage boy from Garwood.

Michael Timoni, 45, of Wheatsheaf Road, is a six-year veteran of the school board now beginning his third consecutive term. In a July 7 complaint filed in Garwood Municipal Court, Linda Russo of Anchor Place, Garwood, alleges that Timoni assaulted her son early last month.

"The allegations as they are stated on that ticket are denied, and have been responded to," Timoni said Tuesday afternoon.

The complaint was filed in Garwood but has been transferred to Roselle because of a conflict. Russo said the complaints may be headed to mediation instead.

Details on the alleged incident are scarce. A report by the Garwood Police Department indicates that authorities there received a 9-1-1 call at 11:57 a.m. July 2 from a resident who was reporting a group of people fighting in the street at Second Avenue and Winslow Place.

Garwood police arrived at the scene within two minutes, where they found six people fighting. In addition to Timoni, police listed as suspects Michael O'Donohue, 20, of Shackamaxon Drive, Westfield; Aldo Ramondelli, 72, of Walnut Avenue, Cranford; and Stephen Timoni, 49, of Autumn Drive, Scotch Plains.

The Garwood police report identifies the victim as a i6-year-oid from Anchor Place, Garwood.

A second 16-year-old, from Shackamaxon Drive, Westfield, also is listed as involved in the incident but the police report as released does not identify the Westfield teen either as a suspect or as a victim.

Russo also filed municipal complaints against Ramondelli and a Ryan O'Donohue of 865 Shackamaxon Drive, Westfield, alleging simple assault.

"I am not going to talk about it, period," Russo said. "My son is away. He is a minor, and it will be up to him if he would like to say something."

A call to Russo's attorney, Richard Butler of Union, was not returned.

The Garwood report says the fight was about a missing adult child from Clark, whom Timoni identified as his daughter Lauren.

Like Russo, Timoni declined to discuss the allegations, referring to the situation as "a fairly serious family problem" and as the "middle of a nightmare."

"When it started, my daughter was a minor.... This has been an ongoing problem for two families," he said. "I'm doing my best through my family attorney to settle this."

It was not known what effect the allegations could have on Timoni's participation in the Board of Education. Superintendent of Schools Paul Ortenzio, who works with Timoni in his role as a member of the school board's building and grounds committee, could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

Although Timoni generally is one of the quieter members on the school board and has avoided involving himself in some of the more explosive issues that have gained the board's attention, such as the debate over the discontinued gymnastics team, he has provided an active behind-the-scenes role in some of the board's other activities.

In previous discussions, Timoni has called his professional experience as a real estate appraiser and broker an asset to the board, particularly during its ultimately successful appeal of a public referendum that defeated a major facilities repair project.

At the moment, though, Timoni hopes to bring the problem to an ending.

 "The Timoni family is trying to make a comfortable resolution," he said.

Municipal pool denies family membership to same-sex couple

The temperatures will be in the 80s for much of the next week, but don't expect to see Patti Jaworski at the pool, no matter how hot it gets.

It's not that she didn't try to get a pool membership before they expired. She tried. It's just that Jaworski and her same-sex partner were denied a family membership because they don't fit the township's definition of "family."

Township Attorney Joseph Triarsi, who wrote Jaworski and her partner a letter informing them of the township's decision, could not be reached for comment.

At the Township Council meeting when the question arose of whether to grant the requested family membership, his immediate advice was to reject it based on the legal definition of "family" of a married man and woman.

"They're not a recognized family unit," he said at the time.

Calls to the state Attorney General's Office on whether that distinction could be considered discriminatory were not returned.

The decision does not ban either Jaworski or her partner — an untenured elementary school teacher in another county, she asked not to be identified for fear of anti-gay discrimination — from joining the pool at the more expensive rate for singles.

They are not joining anyway.

"I want no part of it," Jaworski said Monday afternoon. "I'll just go to the beach. I'll just spend my money there."

The experience differs sharply from the experiences Jaworski claims to have had elsewhere in Clark.

It becomes all the more difficult to digest because she grew up in Clark and knows some of her elected officials from their days at Arthur L. Johnson Regional High School, including Mayor Sal Bonaccorso and 4th Ward Councilman Brian Toal.

"It was very disheartening to get this response," said Jaworski. "It was kind of like a slap in the face."

Discussion at the council meeting was virtually nonexistent, but Tuesday night Toal said he personally would have no problem with the family membership if the council's legal counsel had not recommended otherwise.

"The pool committee should have given us a directive, 'We have no problem with it,'" he said. "They threw it at the council, and our attorney said the state doesn't recognize it. That's where it stops."

Jaworski and her partner have no children. They been together for eight years, and held a private commitment ceremony four years ago.

"I really think the township is missing the boat," Jaworski, a Middlesex County high school health and physical education teacher, said Monday afternoon. "I'm really disappointed in their answer."

The two of them live on Lefferts Lane, in the house Jaworski grew up in.

Jaworski's quest for a family membership began toward the end of June when she visited the Clark pool office at the Charles H. Brewer Municipal Building.

There, she said, Assistant Pool Director Rose Tomchak told her to make the request in a letter to the Township Council, which denied it during its July 8 meeting.

"It's a sleepy little town and I think it just needs a few more years before it wakes up and realizes we're not the only couple in this situation," said Jaworski.

Despite her severe disappointment in the township's decision, Jaworski said she has no desire to make her case in court.

"As an educator, I always tell my students, 'Ask any questions, but when you ask any question, there's a 50-50 chance the answer will be no,'" she said. "What kind of educator would I be if I don't do what I'm telling my students?"

With the stipulation that the family couple be married, the policy at the pool also would preclude unmarried couples with children from family membership. No information was available at presstime to say whether this actually was the case.

 At the moment, no states in the union confer same-sex unions the same status as marriages, although Vermont recently recognized them as civil unions, a classification one step short of marriage.

"It's the 21st century," said Toal simply. "It's something that should be looked in with a legal standpoint in the near future."

First, she began to go numb

Six years ago, Beth Adamusik started to lose feeling in her left foot.

Over the next several days, the numbness spread. It swept up her entire left side, reached her head, and began an inexorable descent down her right side.

At the same time, Adamusik started to lose her peripheral vision. Darkness crept in from the sides, blotting out more and more of the world until she was blind in one eye and had suffered an 80 percent vision loss in the other.

This all, happened within three days.

A neurologist was able two weeks later to clear up the worst of Adamusik's symptoms with oral steroids, but her doctors were stumped by what had happened to her. In her late 30s and by nature an active, athletic and on-the-go person, the affliction had come without warning and left her devastated.

It was more than a year before she was diagnosed by a doctor as having multiple sclerosis.

Multiple sclerosis, or M.S., as it is commonly known, is an affliction that removes the protective fatty myelin sheath that surrounds the spinal column and brain. What causes the disease remains a mystery, but it leaves hardened tissue on the brain and along the spinal column and often can result in paralysis and a loss of muscle control.

Multiple sclerosis affects about 400,000 people nationally. It principally strikes people from 20 to 50, and is more than tree times as likely to attack women as it is men. Researchers also have noticed a higher rate of incidence in the Northern regions of the nation than in the South.

The disease follows one of two patterns, either putting its victims through alternating flare-ups and periods of remission, or gradually taking away more of their independence and mobility as it progresses. In neither case is the disease considered terminal.

* * *

Adamusik, 42, falls into the former category. Within the last year, doctors have been able to get her condition to stabilize. Today she is walking again, often without the benefit of a cane, although she has one she needs from time to time.

Make no mistake, though: She has not "recovered." Some numbness remains in her feet, her depth perception is unreliable and her endurance is not what it once was.

"I was a very lucky person. I got everything back, which most people don't," she said. "People in their mid- 30s are shut down. Some people get diagnosed with M.S, and they never get out of a wheelchair. They never get their eyesight back. That's just their first symptom, and — bam!"

The truth is, the disease has taken plenty from her. Adamusik no longer plays tennis, she is limited in how far she can drive, and she has to live with the knowledge that what mobility she has could vanish without warning.

"I'm always afraid when I turn the comer, that I'll return and go back to the way I was," she said. "My legs will not do it. My legs will not walk more than half a block.

"At times it restricts me around here. 1 had to hire a cleaning woman," she said. "I can't even push a vacuum. Last year I couldn't even cook dinner or cook meals."

In a casual conversation around the dinner table at her Armstrong Drive home or out in public, you might never notice that Adamusik has multiple sclerosis. She remains animated and vivacious, and when the subject does come up she is prone to laugh and make jokes about it.

"I have a superpositive attitude, but also every single day I take advantage of, because I don't know if it's going to be my last day," she said. "1 just have to be positive. I don't have time for this crap. I just don't. I'm way too busy."

* * *

Despite her upbeat approach to living with multiple sclerosis, getting to the point she's at now took time and the support of her family at friends.

At the onset of her illness, she said, Adamusik even told her husband, Gene, 38, that she would understand if he left her, and told her friends that she understood if they didn't, want continue their friendship.

Her offers fell on deaf ears.

"You find out that you have a lot of friends," she said. "I have friends who I really count on, who have really come to the forefront and taking my kids places."

Because she often is unable to take her children all the places she used to, Adamusik seizes upon the opportunities she does have since they come less frequently than they once did.

"M.S. is not just my disease. It's my family's," she said. "It has affected everyone in this house."

Just as celebrities like "Family Ties" actor Michael J. Fox have dedicated themselves to advocacy and research connected to diseases they suffer from — Fox has been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease — Adamusik has channeled her energy and enthusiasm into the fight against multiple sclerosis.

The chief agency she works with is the greater North Jersey chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, which this week will sponsor a 6.2- mile hike through Nomahegan Park on Springfield Avenue in Cranford.

Wearing T-shirts provided by Arena Sports Connexion on Raritan Road, her 31 -member team, including  two of her daughters, will walk the distance to raise money for the society. Her daughter Jenna has raised $410. Her oldest; daughter, Ashleigh Snow, 20, also .will walk, and her youngest daughter, Lauren, 7, is assisting her, mother at the finish line.

Such walks account for about 40 percent of the money raised annually for the North Jersey chapter.

In addition to the walk, Adamusik runs a 25-member support group for Union County victims of multiple sclerosis, called But You Look So Good, with Julia Adams of Roselle Park. The group is sponsored by the Multiple Sclerosis Society.

"It's a really very positive group. If someone has an issue, we'll listen and talk about it, and move on, but we're not going to dwell on it," said Adamusik.

* * *

The exact cause of multiple sclerosis still eludes medical science. No one is certain if it is caused by a virus or bacterium, or by possible environmental factors.

Adamusik's older sister, Carole Fishe of Georgia, also has multiple sclerosis, but statistically family members of the affliction's victims have only a minimally higher chance of developing the disease than those with no family history.

Even in cases where more than one family member suffers from it, the symptoms can vary widely, as they do between Fisher and Adamusik.

"She struggles with it daily, but she's out doing her own thing. She's not using a wheelchair or a cane," said Adamusik. "It affects every single person differently. That's the hardest thing about it."

But life goes on, and Adamusik refuses to let her affliction get her down. Her goal is to seize each moment as it comes and treasure every opportunity to do things with her family that she has.

"Every kids' softball that I can go to, every recital that I can attend,  every honors society induction that I can go to, I'll go to," she said. "I am not defined by M.S. M.S. does not have me."

Teens face drug charges following raid on party

Three Clark teens are free after a police raid at a party being held at the Knights of Columbus Saturday evening.

The men — identified as Daniel Tice, 18, of 86 Jupitor St.; Jonathan Azevedo, 18, of 4 Rolling Hill Way; and Dominick Malanga, 18, of 6 Whitley Terrace — are all students at Arthur L. Johnson High School.

Superintendent of Schools Paul Ortenzio would not say what disciplinary action the school district might take against the teens, and was evasive when pressed for details about the school district's policy in general.

"Basically there is a confidentiality to student records and discipline," explained Board of Education Attorney Michael Gross. "It's not a public matter, it's a private matter."

That confidentiality extends to the students even though they are 18, Gross said.

A student at Arthur L. Johnson High School who attended the party said the three teens were all at school Tuesday morning.

In addition to making the arrests, police seized 200 tablets of Ecstasy, fewer than 50 grams of marijuana, two kegs of beer and S464 in cash. The seized items are being held as evidence.

Tony Fiorillo, grand knight of the Clark Knights of Columbus, said the organization had nothing to do with the party. The Knights of Columbus has a policy of renting its Westfield Avenue hall out to other groups.

"It's a private party that had rented the hall for a college graduation," Fiorillo said Tuesday morning. "We had rented the hall for that. We didn't sell them no food, no liquor. I wouldn't even sell them no pizza."

Fiorillo said he also carded the party-goers and ejected three of them whom he believed to be too young for a party where alcohol would be served, despite their IDs.

The student, who spoke on the condition he not be identified, said the party was a birthday party for Anthony Pecorella, a senior at ALJ.

He also said that despite statements to the contrary, the Knights of Columbus made virtually no effort to prevent underage drinking at the party.

"The situation was that people who were obviously underage or with fake IDs were going in, and the owner of the club was sitting there, saying 'Do you have your ID?' They would say no, and he would say, 'Don't drink,'" the student said.

The student, who is younger than the legal drinking age, added that he drank alcohol while he was at the party and did not take any identification with him to the party. He left 15 minutes before the police arrived.

In a rare but candid insider's view of the high school culture, the student described an environment where drug and alcohol use, while not necessarily out of control, is i practiced more or less openly.

"With the upperclassmen in the high school it's existing, but it's much more controlled," he said. "It's with the underclassmen where the problem really lies. Because they've never been around it, they just jump in."

The student described himself as an occasional user of marijuana who began smoking it his freshman year.

"In Kumpf, you never heard of the stuff. I mean, obviously you've heard of it, but you've never seen it, except in a DARE officer's hands," he said. "But now you come into school and it's readily available to you. All you have to do is know somebody who knows somebody."

He added that he understands drug use to be on the rise among Clark middle-schoolers as well.

The arrests followed a monthlong narcotics investigation involving detective John Doherty, Lt. Kevin White, Sgt. Michael Pollock, Patrol Officer Steven Francisco and Patrol Officer Susan Ricci.

Tice was charged with underage possession of an alcoholic beverage and released on his own recognizance at police headquarters.

Azevedo was charged with possession of drug paraphernalia because of an alleged crack pipe police found him with. He also was released on his own recognizance.

Malanga was charged with possession of marijuana, possession of Ecstasy, manufacturing/distributing a controlled dangerous substance, and possession of a controlled dangerous substance with the intent to distribute it within 1,000 feet of a school zone.

The student said he is unaware of anyone using Ecstasy during the party while he was there.

"No one was really on it, but the one person who ended up getting arrested had to pick it up in order to sell it or drop it off to anyone who wants it," he said.

The student described obtaining marijuana or more potent drugs is easy for Clark teens to accomplish. He called school itself "definitely the last place" a student would sell drugs.

"Most of the dealing is done on the weekend," the student said. "It's at that time 'John Smith' would get into his car and drive around Clark."

More arrests may be coming, depending on further investigation into the identities of people attending the party, police said.

If that happens, parents might be in for a shock if they consider drug use to be a problem unique to underachievers and at-risk students.

"There's no longer a distinction where the kids that are failing are doing the drugs," said the student. "Many honor students are able to handle occasional use of drugs and alcohol and retain their academic status."

The wozzlebug that once stalked Clark Twp

It slinks about on four feet, leaving tracks that resemble a bear's whenever it passes through mud or snow.

It has a long tail sharp teeth and cruel claws, and, if that's enough, at six feet tall, it towers over its prey when it stands on its hind feet. Children, understandably, are terrified at the mere sight of it, as are a few adults.

"It" is the wozzlebug, Clark Township's once-feared but now-forgotten bogeyman that was blamed for the bloody deaths of chickens, rabbits and other small farm animals and wild game at the turn of the 20th century.

The wozzlebug scare, recounted in the writings of Emma T. King, ran from 1901 to 1907. The monster was said to frequent the area near St. Mary's Cemetery on Madison Hill Road.

The wozzlebug drew professional investigators and reportedly brought the attention of reporters from New York newspapers.

Serious-minded adults and skeptical children find it easy to scoff at the idea of a wozzlebug, but monsters like it fill an important role in our culture.

"Monsters have always been with us," said Susannah Chewning, an English professor at Union County College. "Monsters always represent what we fear most."

In that sense, the wozzlebug, despite its humble roots in a turn-of-the-century farming community, belongs to a long and proud tradition of things that go bump in the dark.

Among the wozzlebug's more noteworthy compatriots are shapeless menaces like the dreaded "black man" whom Puritans believed lived in the forests of Massachusetts and led the godly into sin and witchcraft, and Grendel, the monster defeated by the Anglo-Saxon hero Beowulf.

"They don't respect the things that we define as civilized," Chewning said of these monsters — hence the wozzlebug' s association with a cemetery, or Grendel's forays into Heorot to eat people as they slept.

"The whole concept of the bogeyman is that universal monster we're all afraid of," said Chewning. "What they represent is our fear of the unknown, our fear of nature, the things we can't control."

The legend spawned by the wozzlebug survived another 20 years, only to vanish amid the economic hard times of the Great Depression, when life seemed hard enough without needing a bogeyman to spice things up.

That hardly seems fair when you consider the enduring life of the New Jersey Devil. Not only does he have his own hockey team, the New Jersey Devil still has ardent believers who claim to have seen him lurking about the Pine Barrens.

"I think the ones that persist are the ones that have the least shape, because everyone's got different nightmares," said Chewning.

Chewning believes the wozzlebug might have met its end at the hands of another creeping monster: development. As more farms disappeared, the horrifying empty spaces between homes shrank to cozy quarters.

The Pine Barrens, of course, is still wilderness.

The inspiration for the wozzlebug finally came to light in 1907 when authorities discovered it was nothing more sinister than a hobo who was stealing food to take back to his "home" — a hole he had burrowed out under the O'Donnell mausoleum in the cemetery.

The self-appointed keepers of Clark's folklore and heritage introduced a new generation to the wozzlebug and other Clark legends in the 1960s, but it failed to endure.

A wozzlebug revival is not beyond the realm of possibility, said Chewning. Although the legend is not widely known, she considers it likely a few parents still trot out the monster when they share scary stories with their children.

The thought of the wozzlebug gaining new notoriety is one Municipal Historian Brian Toal finds amusing, and he plays into the idea at once.

"The children should be aware of the wozzlebug," he said. "Be aware, be warned. The historian has spoken."