For as long as people have been living, they’ve been dying, and we’ve been trying to make sense of what happens to them after the fact. Whether you’re a true believer or not, the concept of ghosts and hauntings has been around since the ancient Mesopotamians and played a pivotal role in texts and tales both ancient and modern. In a city with a history as long as New York’s, you better believe there are some seriously spooky tales of hauntings, possessions and the gruesome events that led to the creation of these restless souls.
With that in mind, we’ve assembled a list of some of the most famous, be they public parks, private homes or just a good, old-fashioned, haunted bar or two. It’s enough to make you want to add “no ghosts” to your apartment wish list.
Paranormal Public Spaces:
Washington Square Park
Though it may be a great spot for strolling, people watching or having a picnic during the day, this public space has some seriously supernatural creds when night falls. Back in the 1800s, the park served as a huge public burial ground for many of the city’s more impoverished citizens. As believers would tell you, many of the park’s 20,000-some “residents” have taken to roaming the park at night. There’s even a landmark known as the “Hangman’s Elm,” and though it’s hotly debated whether it was actually used in any executions, it is Manhattan’s oldest tree at 327 years old.
McCarren Park Pool
Though the original pool was closed in 1984 and fully rebuilt for an expanding local population, its ghosts still remain. Though there were countless child drownings in the ‘30s (both accidental and purposeful), the rough crowd that used to frequent the pool meant that shootings, stabbings and beatings happened with regularity. To this day on summer nights, a young girl — the pool’s most famous ghost — is said to be heard calling for help out into the sticky summer night.
Eerie Imbibing:
The White Horse Tavern
Located in the financial district, this 135-year-old bar was a favorite spot of the famed writer and poet Dylan Thomas — so much so that he actually drank himself into a fatal coma there. The notoriety this event gave the bar has made it a hotspot for aspiring writers and fans alike, many of whom submit to the tradition of buying the writer’s ghost an Irish whisky and placing it on the bar for him.
Barcade
Though to the casual observer this may just seem like a hole-in-the-wall bar filled with arcade games, it’s the location’s past that lends itself a creepy cred. Built on top of an Old Methodist Burial Ground, this spot used to sit atop an estimated 30,000 forgotten souls. Though the bulk of the bodies were said to be moved in 1856, many concede that this would have been a near impossible task at the time, and hundreds could still restlessly wait below.
Haunted Homes:
Kreischer Mansion
Any home that’s 130 years old is probably going to have a pretty storied past, and the Kreischer Mansion is no different. Built by German immigrant Balthasar Kreischer for himself and his family, this Victorian perched on a hill above the town below held a certain ominous reputation from day one. Rumors of infidelity and financial mismanagement plagued the family, but ultimately it was the mysterious deaths of both Balthasar and his son Edward that cemented the home’s reputation as a ghostly place. Many owners over the coming decades would claim to feel a mysterious presence from time to time, but it was in 2005 when the house entered a gory new chapter in its life. A caretaker with associations with a well-known crime family attempted to drown a visitor before instead electing to chop his victim up and burn him in the home’s ornate master fireplace.
House of Death
Since 1956, this Greenwich Village apartment building has truly earned its nickname, “The House of Death.” With nearly 22 individual ghosts reported to be haunting the building, residents and visitors can take their pick of hauntings. Author Mark Twain is a favorite sighting, but for those looking for something truly ghoulish, they can keep an eye out for the 6-year-old who was brutally beaten to death by her father in 1987.
If ghosts aren’t your thing, be sure to steer clear of these spots when choosing an Apartment in NYC.
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