New Brunswick, New Jersey: Parking Lot Grave of "Brandy"

Came to check out how the old girl was fairing and the plot is so overgrown now you can barely see the gravestone. It made me want to grab my garden shears.

Easy to find in back of the parking lot of the movie theater -- you can climb up the raised structure to get a better look. Strange to see something so old in such a modern setting, in a parking lot no less!

My family owned the property from the late 1930s until the 1990s. They sold this piece in the 1960s to develop a shopping center -- with the stipulation that the grave plot remain.

There is more than one body in there. It has nothing to do with the song "Brandy."

P.S. My stepdad's company, J.E. Burke Playground Equipment, was there until the end. In the 1940s and 1950s we had an amusement park named Raritan Playland on the same spot where the movie theater now is.

The gravesite is a little overgrown, but easy enough to find in the back of the parking lot, on a big brick pedestal (about 8 feet high).

It is surmised that, because the band Looking Glass originated in the New Brunswick area, that their hit song "Brandy" was based on the legend of Mary Ellis. However, in an interview with Elliot Lurie, lead guitarist and writer/singer of the song, the lyrics were loosely based on a girl he knew in real life, and while the stories may be similar, the song has nothing to do with Mary Ellis.