Ghosts of Manhattan: Legendary Spirits and Notorious Haunts

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INTRODUCTION

Why are we fascinated by ghosts? Whether we are believers or skeptics, we are all fascinated by the unknown. When we die, is that it? Or do we get another opportunity in one way or another? Above all, if we cannot have life, we would like to be remembered in some way.

Why do we have ghosts? Usually, in most stories, the ghost has unfinished business of some kind and cannot let go. Often a traumatic incident such as a murder has occurred, or in very rare instances, a curse has been uttered. Thus, ghosts are usually unhappy; you do not frequently get a ghost that says, Wish you were here.

The question is: are there really ghosts? Al Schroeder, a frequent letter writer to newspapers, comments that ghosts do not understand they are dead and are in a state of shock unable to understand what has happened to them. In an obituary on Hans Holzer, the noted ghost hunter, the New York Times quoted him: After all, a ghost is only a fellow human being in trouble who does not understand that he or she is no longer among the living because of sudden circumstances that transformed their fates. Likewise, in their Village Voice article City of Ghosts, Tom Robbins and Jennifer Gonnerman noted that ghosts leave gaps of memory among their loved ones and friends.

On the negative side, the great British novelist Sir Walter Scott, in Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft (co-authored with J.G. Lockhart in 1836), was very careful in accepting the truth about ghost stories. Scott declared that it was one thing to enjoy ghost stories and another to determine if they really occurred. He writes that an English judge stopped a witness from relating what the ghost of the murder victim had told him. The judge declared that repeating this evidence was hearsay. However, the judge noted, the ghost placed under oath would make an excellent witness and would provide the very best possible evidence and if the ghost could be placed under oath, he would be glad to have the ghost testify in court.

Did Edgar Allan Poe himself believe in ghosts? If you read carefully, children’s author Daniel Cohen explains in his book In Search of Ghosts that Poe never wrote any real ghost stories, even though he is the father of the supernatural stories in America. He showed no interest in spiritualism, which became increasingly popular throughout the nineteenth century.

To further cloud the issue, we have fakes. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle believed in easily faked photographs of faeries. Doyle had lost a son in World War I and turned to spiritualism as a comfort. This tendency often comes through in his plots and characters. His greatest Sherlock Holmes story, The Hound of the Baskervilles, revealed a faking of the supernatural to commit a series of murders. Doyle, modeling himself after the real doctor after whom he patterned Holmes, was an amateur detective and helped right several cases of injustice. His other well-known character, Professor Challenger, the discoverer of the Lost World, has a proclivity in believing in the supernatural. Doyle even wrote a book trying to prove that his friend Harry Houdini had supernatural powers, which the magician denied. As a result, their friendship came to end.

Mediums claim that they have a special spirit that communicates through them. Harry Houdini made a specialty of exposing these charlatans, and many have followed in his footsteps. For example, Uri Geller, an Israeli psychic, suffered psychic failure on Johnny Carson’s show. Carson, a former professional magician, had his staff carefully watch Uri Geller so that he had no opportunity to monkey around with the props. The Great Randi through the James Randi Educational Foundation also continues Harry Houdini’s crusade by offering $1 million to any psychic, professional or amateur who can professionally survive being unmasked. So far he has not had to pay out the money to mystical homeopathy buff Jacques Benveniste or Crossing Over host John Edward, who claims that he hears from the dead (or to University of Arizona scientist Gary Schwartz, who claims to have validated John Edwards). Johnny Carson once joked that he was waiting for the following newspaper headline: Psychic wins the lottery.

PART I

GUIDE TO KNOWING YOUR GHOSTS

TYPES OF GHOSTLY ENCOUNTERS

Ghostly encounters can take the form of sound, sight, smell, touch, feeling, temperature and/or movement:

1. Visual or sight: a view of an entire being in real time or an orb, an unexplained source of light, which appears in a photograph. We now have YouTube to highlight the more dramatic encounters, while orbs are often spotted on photographs. Poltergeist activity such as the movement of an object without any visible force can be documented.

2. Auditory or sound: people hear a noise of some kind. Sometimes, this can be caught as an electronic voice phenomenon (EVP) on a sound recording device. At the same time, these sounds can be manufactured to fake the presence of ghosts. Some people have heard whistles.

3. Olfactory or smell: one can smell perfume, cologne, tobacco or burnt hair or flesh.

4. Tactile or touch: people can touch something.

5. Kinesthetic: One carries out a physical activity. For example, a person is possessed by the spirit or engage in automatic handwriting of some kind.

6. Feeling: people feel uneasy around places such as the scene of an accident, a fire or fatality. Oftentimes, pets (especially cats and dogs) seem to be sensitive to the presence of spirits.

7. Temperature: sudden decrease or increase of temperature or the feeling of a cold or warm spot.

WHERE YOU ARE LIKELY TO FIND GHOSTS

1. Where bodies have physically been buried: graveyards and churchyards. Religions have different conceptions of what happens to the deceased. Those of the Jewish faith believe that the body together with the soul will be physically resurrected. Christians and Muslims believe that the soul will be resurrected. Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs believe in reincarnation. Peter Stuyvesant does his haunting around the family mausoleum at St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery (after his mansion burned down).

2. Modern parks: many former burial spaces have been turned into green spaces with the deceased left in place. Washington Square Park, a former burial place for the poor, is ghost central in New York City. Greenwood Cemetery was designed to serve as a park for the living.

3. Where natural or unnatural deaths occurred but people are not buried. Sometimes disturbing the scene will stop ghostly phenomena or solving the crime will give the ghost rest. Once McGurk’s Suicide Hall at 295 Bowery was torn down, the ghosts stopped haunting there.

4. Where people lived or worked: Edgar Allan Poe is reported at many locations at the same time: Baltimore, Richmond, Philadelphia, Boston and New York (Manhattan and the Bronx). Occasionally pets seem to be sensitive to ghostly visitors. People who have lived inside the apartments of St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery have reported that their pet cats or dogs refuse to enter certain areas unless they are there.

5. Where people played: abandoned sports facilities, amusement parks and other places where people went to enjoy themselves. The New York Giants have failed to win the World Series since they moved to California to become the San Francisco Giants in 1957. Also, the memorial plaque of Edward L. Grant, the first baseball major leaguer to die in World War I, has disappeared from the Polo Grounds.

6. Where people drink alcohol: bars, inns and drinking establishments are most popular. McSorley’s Old Ale House is where a variety of ghosts can be found.

7. Where people go for entertainment: theatres are popular places for ghosts to haunt or entertain. Judy Garland was channeled by psychic Elizabeth Barton at the Palace Theatre. Barton claimed that the theatre had more than one hundred ghosts reporting for guest haunts.

8. Where people travel: subway and railroad stations. Grand Central has its share of ghosts. Locomotion appears to attract some ghosts. In more recent times, people have reported giving rides to passengers who have disappeared or when they go back to check the drop off point, they discover they once were at the location but are long dead. Staircases and elevators also appear to attract ghosts.

HOW IS THE VALUE OF A HOUSE AFFECTED BY THE PRESENCE OF A HAUNTING?

We simply have no hard statistics. Some people welcome the presence of a ghost as a conversation piece, a way to make friends or to scare off burglars and other intruders. Others see ghosts as pests that disturb them, their friends and the surrounding neighborhood. Depending on the individual state law, you may or may not have an obligation to say whether or not there is a ghost. In the case of the mansion at 19 Gramercy Park South, its value has gone up the more haunted it has become. Over the years, the house has proved to be a successful real estate investment. Benjamin Sonnenberg paid $89,000 in 1945. Richard Tyler and his wife Lisa Trafficante paid $9,500,00 in 1995 and sold it for $19,000,000 in 2000.

THE TEN MOST POPULAR GHOSTS OF NEW YORK CITY

In terms of the frequency of reports over a period of time, there are many popular ghosts in New York City.

1. Most appearances by a single ghost: Edgar Allan Poe has been reported in several New York locations and several other cities at the same time. He has been reported as a ghost in Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia and Richmond.

2. Most reported family of ghosts: the five Tredwell sisters sadly all haunt separately at the Merchant House.

3. Peter Stuyvesant is the oldest ghost in the city, with the most reports over a period of time.

4. David Belasco haunts several locations inside the Belasco Theatre, named after him.

5. Olive Thomas is a well-known spectral presence in the New Amsterdam Theatre.

6. Samuel Clemens appears as a specter at 14 West Tenth Street.

7. People report being spooked by Mrs. Eliza Jumel at the Morris Jumel Mansion.

8. Aaron Burr has been spotted at Battery Park and elsewhere in Manhattan.

9. Burr’s daughter Theodosia has been reported up to ghostly mischief at One if by Land, Two if by Sea Restaurant at 17 Barrow Street in the West Village.

10. Washington Irving has been reported at his home in Upstate New York as well as a few locations in Manhattan such as the Colonnade.

HOW TO GET RID OF GHOSTS

1. Physical destruction of the site, although this does not always work. When Stuyvesant’s mansion burned down in 1744, he moved his haunting to the Stuyvesant family mausoleum. Edgar Allan Poe no longer haunts at 85 West Third Street once NYU destroyed his original home.

2. Destruction or removal of the physical remains of the body. Once A.T. Stewart’s body was moved from a secret hiding place near St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery to the Episcopal cathedral in Garden City, he stopped haunting.

3. A séance is an encounter or meeting at which a spiritualist or a medium attempts to communicate with the spirits of the dead. The word séance comes from the French word for seat, session or sitting and from the Old French word seoir, to sit. Hans Holzer, through a medium, would chat with the spirit, find out what the problem was