Hey.. I was watching the local cox ghost thing and remembered Hell's Gate tonight for some reason, i did a search and this thread popped up. I'm older than you guys, just turned 41.
I'll take Megster's word for what it's like there now, or in the last 10 years.. just wanted to post that I saw the actual gates when they were there.
I'm from Cranston. When I was in high school, on a Halloween night myself and 3 other friends went to "Vampire's Graveyard" .. you know, the church, etc.. and Hell's Gate was a side-attraction, lol.
It was 1985. Back then there was nobody on the road, the larger popularity hadn't started yet, and of course there was no internet, cell phones, etc. Certainly no street lights at all in the area, I mean none. Maybe there still are none. Anyway we were partying, smoking, drinking.. my friend had a Mustang and we went up that road going 75 mph or more, he was sooo bad driving so fast we coulda easily wiped out. Thank God we didn't, but there was nobody else at the church. we hung around the parking lot a while, (even then, we were afraid of getting caught, especially in our condition) got back in the car and another friend who knew about Hell's Gate made us stop there.
If my memory serves right, someone had spray-painted the word HELL in big red letters on it.
The iron gate was there and all bent outta shape, falling apart. it did give me the creeps. Come to think of it, I may have heard a dog bark. When I heard someone say about the dogs it struck a nerve, kind of like a suppressed memory from what, 24 years ago. Wow has it been that long. I wish we had phones with cameras back then. Too bad you guys don't have a picture of the gates. I'm sure someone does.
The only rumor about the place I heard at the time was that a really weird family flipped out and all died there. The mob thing has got to be wrong. That's swamp yankee territory.
Ron D.