Cossart Road

I don't know exactly when I started hearing about it. I think the first I heard of it was sometime around the beginning of junior year, maybe even during that summer just after I came back from Governor's School but before I went back to school. The first time I heard about it was definitely from either Beth or Dani, though. The two of them wanted to go see it sometime. They referred to it as "Devil house" or "Cult house" or "the house where the trees bend backwards." For some reason, it just didn't interest me back then. I guess my imagination wasn't good enough.

In the summer after my senior year, though, I suddently became very interested in Cossart Road, and I can't remember why. I think what happened was, when I was away, Viv had a bonfire and told ghost stories, including the one about Cossart Road. All the kids in the pit told me that Viv was awesome at telling scary stories, so the next time I had kids over, we went down to my basement, turned the lights low, and had Viv tell the story of Cossart Road. I remember I was sitting on the couch on the side wall of the basement, and everyone listened very intently even though they'd all heard the story before. Viv's voice always shook a tiny bit when she spoke.

So Cossart Road is in Delaware, not too far from the border with Pennsylvania, just off of Route 100 [Montshanin Road]. You can see the road on maps sometimes, but not always, and it's often unnamed. There isn't even a street sign for it off of Route 100. This part of Delaware, of course, has been owned for decades and decades by the DuPont family - famous for creating Teflon, black gunpowder, and other chemicals. The horror movie The Village was filmed on their property. They have an enormous mansion on the top of a hill that you can easily see from Smithbridge Road. You can see a stone, round guard tower, too. There's one set back, and one close to the road.

The DuPonts also owned the DuPont hostpital. If you go to the DuPont hospital, and look closely, you'll see some very clearly unsafe sharp objects in some places. Glass and mirrors sticking out of walls and windows and such. The beliefs is that the DuPont's kids - who were very inbred and violent - were kept in the guard towers and these sharp rooms so they wouldn't be too much trouble.

Cossart Road is also on DuPont property. For hundreds of years, someone probably used the house in question. But then it went vacant. Nobody knows what house number it is, or deed number, or its last occupant, or anything. And apparently, sometime in the 1950s or so, the KKK moved in. Perhaps they didn't occupy it always, but on certain nights, you could see them. Sometime in the 1970s, three brothers were murdered on the grounds of this house. You can read about them in the newspaper - it's true, I saw the stories - as The Johnston Murders.

The road is very, very small. Even a motorcycle in the middle of the road would make it impossible for you to pass. It's also very shaky, and curvy, and on the side of a ravine. You can't go too fast, you can't go backwards, and you can't maneuver. There's a guard house early on in the road. In the 1970s and 1980s, people kept getting chased off the road. They said there were large trucks that would come quickly behind them as they passed the driveway, blind them with their lights, and force them to the end of the road. No one could ever see their face. There were so many complaints about it that the road was actually shut down by the Delaware police, and people who drove on it were given $1,000 fines. This part is also true, and you can read about it in newspapers.

The house itself is hard to see. It's set back from Cossart Road by quite a distance. Its driveway has at least one metal gate, possibly more. It's covered on some sides by tall evergreen trees. But there are accounts. For a long time, the first metal gate wasn't in place. Some people drove up as far as they could to the end of the driveway, only to be met by another gate before they got to the house. On the spikes of the gate, they saw that someone had impaled recently killed animals. And the windows, as rumored, had crosses in them. I have actually seen a picture - the framing of the windows are large, white crosses.

Perhaps you find a lot of the this story so far unbelievable. That's understandable. There is one thing, though, that is so clearly visible and, so far, is unexplained.

The trees on Cossart Road bend. In their trunks. Away from the house. At almost ninety degree angles. People have tried to explain it, but none of the solutions make sense. Others have suggested that the house is so evil, the trees grow away from it the best they can. Some say the devil screamed and the trees bent in response.

And there is one tree in particular on Cossart Road: Skull Tree. If you look at it from the right angle on the road, it looks like a skull - eye holes, mouth holes, bone structure, everything. From another angle it looks like a hand reaching into the ground. Supposedly, a woman left her baby to die there years ago. Some say it was cradled by the hand as it died. If you leave a tape player in the eye hole where the baby died and listen to it backwards, you are supposed to be able to hear it screaming.

I remember the first time I went. Although I actually can't remember exactly when it was. I'm pretty sure it was in the summer, but I don't know exactly when in the summer, although I would have to guess earlier rather than later. Gina was in the front seat with me, and Viv was in the back with Joe. I can't remember which one of them sat on which side. I asked Viv to tell the story again as we were driving - it was just getting dark, maybe about 8PM, then - because it made it way creepier. I think this was actually the perfect time of day to see this place. I tried again multiple times but never caught it in such good light.

As we drove, Viv pointed out the signs on the road. There were many of them that said, "No stopping No standing No parking anytime." You could see red and black stains on the - paint or blood, or both, Viv said. People who stopped were routinely beaten, she said.

We listened to The Dresden Dolls as we were driving. I'm not sure which song was on for the four minutes or so that we were really on the scariest stretch of Cossart Road, but I'm pretty confident it was either Gravity or Half-Jack. Gina was really scared by the whole aura of the place, and she put her head down near the door and looked into the space where she put her feet and concentrated on the music instead of everything else around.

Viv told us we probably wouldn't have cell phone service, and we didn't. If something happened to us, it seemed like we would be all alone. We all really, really hoped my engine wouldn't give out.

I didn't think I would be freaked out by this place. I'd seen TV shows about places like this, and sure, they felt a little eerie, but I chalked it up to editing. I didn't think I would actually be scared if I went to one of those places. But I was. Something about the trees and the bending and the road and the isolation and the light. I felt very unsafe and like something or someone could actually come out of the trees and that would be it. I drove slowly and looked at the bending in the trees and looked for skull tree and hoped that nothing was waiting for us around all the bends.

There was a car in front of us. They probably thought we were chasing them off the road. When we got to the circular turnaround at the end, they sped off. I think they were afraid of us.

I forget whether or not we took Cossart Road home that night. We might have gone to Route 100 or whatever it was. I think that night we were too scared to go back, but I can't say for sure.

And even though I was terrified, I wanted to go back, over and over again. And I still want to go back every time I come home, and I don't know why.

Peace out.