Before even getting out of your car, you start to question reality at Grounds for Sculpture. Driving in, there’s a group of people along the road holding a banner that reads “Hurrah Welcome,” and signs that say “We thought you’d never get here” and “I drink to your arrival.”

“Is this for me?” you may think. “How did they know I was coming? And why aren’t they moving?"

Then it hits you, perhaps a little later than it should have — these stiffs are statues.

Just an hour outside Philadelphia, Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, New Jersey, is one of my favorite weird and wonderful corners of this strange and beautiful world.

Here, it’s hard to tell the real people from the fake ones. Here, beloved paintings are brought to life and invite you to step inside and become a part of them. Here is where wonder — true, childlike wonder — awaits around every corner, if only you’re open to it.

I tell everyone I know about Grounds for Sculpture, and if they say they’ve never been or haven’t heard of it, which a surprising number of Philadelphians do, I tell them they’ve got to go, because the magic that exists there is so rare in this world that you are powerfully overwhelmed to share it.

That’s why I took three of my colleagues who were first timers to explore it last month. I’m also obviously biased, so I wanted to get the untainted opinions of my coworkers — reporter Michelle Myers and social media editors Esra Erol and Sam Stewart — for journalism’s sake.

They are now as biased as I am.

“It is magical,” Myers said after our visit. “It’s not that I didn’t believe you, you just need to experience the magic.”

‘An immersive sensory experience’

Built on the former site of the New Jersey State Fairgrounds, this 42-acre sculpture park and arboretum opened in 1992. It is home to more than 300 sculptures by almost 200 artists, from the wildly abstract to the fabulously figurative. But it is the work of one man — the park’s founder, the late artist and philanthropist Seward Johnson — that is the soul of Grounds for Sculpture.

A sculptor known for his hyperrealism, Johnson, who was an heir to the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical fortune, not only had a boatload of money, he had a ton of talent and an immense imagination.

Gary Garrido Schneider, executive director of Grounds for Sculpture, described Johnson as generous — not just with his money but with his art.

“It is democratic in a way that invites people to be playful, to allow them to be joyful,” Schneider said. “The park was really designed as an immersive sensory experience, and that includes touch. Sculpture is physical and Seward was…adamant that you should be able to touch the sculptures here.”

Johnson has about 45 works on display at the park and they generally fall into two series: Celebrating the Familiar, his sculptures of everyday people doing everyday things, like a young couple asleep in the grass, and Beyond the Frame, life-size sculptures of famous Impressionist and post-Impressionist paintings, like a version of Henri Rousseau’s The Dream you can Inception yourself into, or a recreation of Vincent van Gogh’s Bedroom in Arles, you can step inside of.

You’re hit with a one-two punch of both types of sculptures at the entrance, where your attention is demanded by a 21-foot-tall version of the twirling, rosy-cheeked couple in Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Dance at Bougival and diverted from the man on a nearby bench talking to a young child. Your mind assumes the man and child are fellow visitors, until you realize they’re not.

“The amount of times I’m going to think a sculpture is a real person today,” Myers said.

‘The element of surprise’

Inside the park, my colleagues marveled at the size and variety of sculptures and their placement within the rolling landscape of changing fall colors. There was a garden of monoliths under a canopy of yellow leaves that gave off Stonehenge vibes. And just beyond it, in a wooded area no signs tell you to explore, were life-size statues of four beautifully-dressed 19th-century women gathered under a tree, whom Johnson modeled after Claude Monet’s Femmes au jardin.

This was my fourth visit and I’d never seen these women before. It felt like discovering a secret, like something hidden for only those willing to explore, and that’s a gift Grounds for Sculpture — whose every hill and water feature was intentionally crafted — gives again and again.

“The element of surprise is a huge part of the park because you don’t know what’s gonna be around that corner,” Schneider said. “It could be something intimate, it could be something large and monumental, and that sense of discovery — of surprise and joy and whimsy — is a big part of how the park was designed.”

Whimsy can seem in short supply these days, but I saw it on the faces of my colleagues as we pretended to cast spells over a caldron filled with skulls guarded by three larger-than-life demonic female figures, which Johnson based on Odilon Redon’s painting, The Three Fates.

“This is my favorite thing ever. This is so cool,” Stewart said, of the piece Johnson cheekily titled Has Anyone Seen Larry? (The Three Fates).

We crashed Johnson’s life-size recreation of Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party and pretended to listen in on the whispered conversations, wrapped our arms around the figures, and became a part of this painting we’d all seen before. I felt the same joy in that moment I did when I crashed the party for the first time 13 years ago, experiencing it again through my coworkers’ eyes.

“This is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen! This is incredible to see it come to life,” Erol said.

And I reveled in the first-timers’ sense of curiosity and mild trepidation as we wandered down a small path into the Forest of the Subconscious, where we encountered a clear cube filled with creepy Kewpie dolls, and as we entered the Chamber of Internal Dialogue to go inside the head of the haunting figure in Edvard Munch’s The Scream.

“It’s like Alice in Wonderland,” Myers said.

“Like being in a storybook,” Stewart agreed. “You just never know what’s around the corner.”

‘Speaks to my soul’

The most recent addition to Grounds for Sculpture is the Meadow, where Johnson’s “monumental” creations are displayed. Here, you are dwarfed by a 14-foot recreation of the couple from American Gothic, awed by 36-foot figures inspired by Henri Matisse’s Dance, and mesmerized by a giant’s face and limbs — spanning 70 feet — that emerge from the earth in Johnson’s The Awakening.

“The screaming man coming from the ground speaks to my soul,” Myers said.

Grounds for Sculpture is a place that sparks an innate sense of wonder, that ignites that light within our souls that can dim as we age, but that’s important to keep alive, to make living worthwhile.

There’s so much more at Grounds for Sculpture than I could ever tell you about — Rat’s Restaurant, the Monet Bridge, the lake — and so much more of Johnson’s work to explore (perhaps you’ve seen some of his pieces around Philly’s Mayfair section or in front of Ardmore Toyota).

But the joy at Grounds for Sculpture and in Johnson’s work emanates from the surprise and discovery of it, and if I gave it all away, I’d be an even bigger stiff than the statues.

Know before you go:

•Grounds for Sculpture is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday to Monday and closed Tuesdays. Timed tickets, which must be purchased in advance, range from $12 for students to $25 for adults.

•The peacocks and ducks that roam the grounds are not statues, they are living animals. Not realizing this, my colleague got quite the jump scare when she got awfully close to a couple of the fowls.

•Wear comfortable shoes, you will be walking a lot and some smaller paths are uneven. The grounds are ADA accessible and Electric Convenience Vehicles and wheelchairs are available for rent. Access mobile tours, touch tours, and ASL tours are also offered.

•Outside food is not permitted. Food is available for purchase at Rat’s Restaurant and the Van Gogh Cafe.

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