Turning, he found himself face to face with a large winged creature with a horse-like head and bird-like legs. At that moment, Bonaparte heard a strange hissing noise. He stared at the tracks for a long moment, trying to figure out what the strange animal might be. The tracks ended abruptly as if the creature had flown away. Bonaparte noticed that one foot was slightly larger than the other. They looked like the tracks of a two-footed donkey. Schlosser who retold the legend in his book "Spooky New Jersey": "the ex-King of Spain was hunting alone in the woods near his house when he spotted some strange tracks on the ground. Like the two teenage boys who spotted the frightening figure in 1978, Bonaparte himself reportedly saw The Jersey Devil. Joseph Bonaparte also has a connection to another ghost story with a skating connection that was explored last year in October on Skate Guard - The Jersey Devil. and this is a cool (if not icy) note to end on. Here's where things get even creepier though.
Point breeze estate series#
Bonaparte's wife, an unpleasant woman, refused to come to America with him, and Joseph had a series of lovely young mistresses while at Point Breeze - another reason to lure his ghost back to New Jersey!" His ghost may have preferred to return to the scene of his happiest days. Bonaparte had a carefree life here, out from under the shadow of his famous younger brother. Joseph Bonaparte really liked Americans, and his neighbours liked his generosity and the glamour of his social life. It was Bonaparte's habit of rolling oranges and apples out on the ice for his visitors to chase that seems to be perpetuated by his ghost. The fruit being rolled onto the ice almost makes you think that maybe someone with more of a skating background (like Napoléon Bonaparte himself?) might be the culprit but Martinelli and Stansfield's book offers some great insight as to exactly why an ghostly apparition might be making offers of Vitamin C to local skaters: "Calling himself the Count de Survilliers, Bonaparte allowed his neighbours to use the park he had created from wilderness and encouraged them to ice skate on his pond in winter. The English Style of skating popular in the nineteenth century (which we'll get into more in a later blog), which involved tracing figures around an orange placed on the ice as a point of reference. Is the dark spectator of the ice skaters the ghost of the one-time king of Spain and former king of Naples?" But as the skaters chase these gifts, the fruit disappears. The figure rolls oranges and apples out onto the ice toward the skaters. On occasion, in deep winter, a mysterious figure appears to watch ice skaters on a local pond. with a skating connection: "On the north side of Bordentown is a housing development known as Point Breeze, where some residents report strange noises - sounds of footsteps coming from beneath their feet, underground, and the faint sounds of partying: conversations just too low to be understood, laughter, clinking glasses, and faint music. Stansfield's book "Haunted New Jersey: Ghosts and Strange Phenomena of the Garden State" shares a bit of local folklore about the elder Bonaparte. While at Point Breeze, the elder Bonaparte entertained a who's who of anyone who was anyone in New Jersey at the time including the Marquis de Lafayette, John Adams, John Clay and Daniel Webster, but Joseph ultimately returned to Italy where he died at age seventy six in 1844.
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