The Dancing Jesus of Middletown
There’s a local cemetery attraction in Middletown known as the Dancing Jesus. It is said that if you visit at night and shine your cars headlights on the statue of Christ, then stare at it long enough, it will begin to shimmy and shake for you.
There’s a local cemetery attraction in Middletown known as the Dancing Jesus. It is said that if you visit the Mt. Olivet Cemetery at night (which is probably illegal) and shine your cars headlights on the statue of Christ, then stare at it long enough, it will begin to shimmy and shake for you.
Sam, from Middletown, wrote of his experiences with the dancing symbol of one of the world’s major religions at a cemetery along Chapel Hill Road. Pull into the main driveway and you’ll see its centerpiece: a life-size statue of Jesus.
Sam elaborated: “The statue, when stared at long enough, begins to dance, mostly moving its outstretched hands and undulating slightly. It’s a sight to see, and something you should check out. I’ve seen it, as have many of my friends, and always sober.”
Hey, sobriety is key.
A reader who goes by the initials CWC also had an experience with some friends in front of the Jesus statue:
“We all looked up at it, kind of laughing at the fact that people think statues dance, and then we all just stopped at the same time. Now, I’m not gonna tell you that the statue danced, but I’ll be damned if it didn’t move. It mostly seemed to move up and down slightly and move its hands from side to side a little. We didn’t know what to make of it and got the hell out pretty fast. We ended up waking our friends, calling them at 2:00 AM to tell them we just saw a statue of Jesus moving. Needless to say they had their doubts, but we’ll always know what we saw.”
And wait: Jesus doesn’t just dance in Middletown. Bob tells us of another dancing Jesus statue in a cemetery, “somewhere by or in Hazlet.” Here, the statue is located on top of a high gravestone, and according to Bob, “You are supposed to look at it for awhile (at night) with your car’s headlights on and then after like 10 seconds, you shut them off. If you do it right, the Jesus should do a little dance or wave. I saw it and it kinda looks like it’s waving to you. Whatever it’s doing, it’s damn strange.”
Amen to that.
Photo by Ryan Doan
