Driving This New England Haunted Road Was a Teen Ritual We Couldn’t Resist

There’s something about being a teenager that makes fear feel exciting instead of dangerous. Maybe it’s curiosity, maybe it’s the need to prove you’re brave, but for us, it meant chasing haunted places.

Years later, those memories still sneak up on me. I’ll be in the middle of an ordinary morning, and suddenly I’m back there, laughing in a car with my friends, driving toward something we didn’t fully understand but couldn’t resist in Cumberland, Rhode Island.

Most weekends were harmless: sleepovers, basement concerts, late-night food runs. But every so often, we followed a different tradition. We drove to Tower Hill in Cumberland, where a narrow, wooded road was rumored to be haunted by a little boy walking his dog.

It's a place that's even been mentioned in haunted U.S. road lists.

We always went around midnight. The routine was simple: drive deep into the road, turn off the car, and sit in complete darkness. Then we’d flash the headlights into the woods, like we were trying to wake something up.

We never saw anything. But we all felt it.

The silence was heavy, almost suffocating, like the woods were watching us. No one spoke. No one moved. And when the headlights came back on, we’d all exhale at once, laughing as we sped away, half-convinced something might follow.

Sure, I didn't see anything on my trips, but looking back, it wasn’t about ghosts. It was about the thrill, the fear, the unknown, and the feeling of getting away with something.

I’d go back… but only in the daylight.