New York City is home to roughly 8 million living people — and an immeasurable number of the dead.
Across all five boroughs, haunted history lingers everywhere, from Edgar Allan Poe’s shadowy Bronx cottage to streets rumored to be visited by restless spirits after dark.
“This city is haunted as hell,” Andrea Janes, a scholar, author and founder of the macabre tour company Boroughs of the Dead, told The Post.
The explanation, she said, lies in New York’s centuries of upheaval, its chronic shortage of land and the fact that much of the modern city was built over the literal and symbolic remains of earlier generations.
“We continually reuse the same spaces, even when they once served as burial grounds or places associated with illness and suffering. We simply build over them,” Janes said.
That repeated layering of death, history and redevelopment, Janes believes, forms “a psychic force field where we’re surrounded by spirit energy” — perhaps helping explain the city’s enduring enthusiasm for Halloween.
With Janes’ guidance, The Post explored some of the most chilling locations in New York, places where the past never feels entirely gone and the people on the sidewalk may not be the only ones roaming nearby.
The Bronx
Edgar Allen Poe Cottage
In the Bronx, residents and aspiring goths alike have long claimed that the Edgar Allan Poe Cottage at 2640 Grand Concourse is still visited by the ghost of its famously morbid former occupant.
Poe moved into the small white clapboard home in 1846 with his wife and first cousin, Virginia. She died there of tuberculosis the following year.
The cottage is also associated with “Annabel Lee,” Poe’s celebrated poem about the death of a beautiful young woman.
“People have very different opinions about whether the Poe cottage is truly haunted,” Janes said. “But regardless, it undeniably has a vibe.”
That atmosphere becomes even more unsettling thanks to the home’s original furnishings, including the bed where Virginia Poe died.
“It’s absolutely worth a visit,” Janes said.
Manhattan
City Hall Park
Although Janes considers much of Manhattan haunted, she identifies City Hall Park as one of the borough’s most intensely eerie locations.
“The history of City Hall Park is incredibly layered,” she said. Over the years, the site has included a prison, almshouses, burial grounds and P.T. Barnum’s American Museum.
That museum burned in a catastrophic 1865 fire, killing countless animals — among them two beluga whales that were reportedly boiled alive in tanks beneath the building.
The park’s dark history does not end there.
A network of underground passages beneath the area connects with a surviving potter’s field, where poor and unidentified New Yorkers were once deposited in unmarked mass graves.
Janes said even hardened security guards have reported strange experiences in the park. One guard told her he felt an unseen force pull a pen from his pocket and hurl it across a tunnel as he walked through it.
City Hall Park also sits beside an African burial ground and the site of a former sugar refinery where prisoners were held during the Revolutionary War, adding still more layers to one of New York’s most haunted corners.
“You just have this intense, tremendous amount of history. There were even executions on the commons, in the south part of City Hall Park in the 18th century.”
She encourages both believers and doubters to stand in the park at dusk. “Be quiet for a minute and see if you can feel it. There’s something there.”
Brooklyn
Hendrick I. Lott House
Janes says the intersection of Pacific and Smith streets in Coral Gardens is a source of a persistent, personal unease.
“Every time I walk by, I’m overcome by the queasy feeling I get in haunted places. I don’t know what happened there because I haven’t come across any details in my research, but everyone I talk to thinks it’s mob-related,” she explained.
For a better-known Brooklyn haunt, she points to the Hendrick I. Lott House at 1940 E. 36th St. in the Marine Park neighborhood.
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One of Brooklyn’s oldest residences, the house was built by Hendrick I. Lott in 1800 and incorporates an earlier structure built by his grandfather, Colonel Johannes H. Lott, in 1720.
New York City purchased the house in 2002 from the estate of Ella Suydam, a direct descendant of the original owner.
While no historical horror or tragedy is connected to the house, Janes suspects that the home remaining in a single family line for three hundred years has contributed to its creepiness.
“The Lotts lived there for centuries, and the house is imbued with the psychic residue of them,” she explained.
For the curious, while regular access is restricted, the Friends of the Lott House occasionally hosts special events and seasonal programming.
Staten Island
“Staten Island is just wall to wall ghosts,” emphasized Janes. “It’s haunted as hell. It has haunted mansions, asylums, an old fort. There’s a convergence of psychic activity right over Staten Island that I cannot explain.”
Janes said she feels an overwhelming sensation of past spirits when in Staten Island.
For specific haunted spots, she calls out the Kreischer Mansion on Arthur Kill Road.
German brick magnate Balthasar Kreischer built the gabled mansion in 1885 for his son, Edward.
In 1894, Edward was found shot dead behind his father’s brick factory across the street.
Unsure whether Edward’s death was a murder or a suicide, his grieving family members sought the help of spiritualists, holding seances in the home, which some say opened up portals that would have been better left closed.
In 2005, the Kreischer Mansion played host to the grisly mobland killing of Bonanno crime family associate Robert McKelvey.
Along with three other mob members, Young stabbed and strangled McKelvey before dismembering his body and burning his remains in the mansion’s furnace.
Queens
44th Street between Broadway and 34th
Residents along this stretch of Astoria street have reported seeing the same apparition: a woman in a high-collared dress, her white hair pulled back in a bun
Sometimes the figure appears by a sick child; other times she is seen walking in the backyards of the brick row houses lining the east side of 44th Street.
She is known to leave the scent of lavender in her wake.
According to Janes, the “White Lady of Astoria” is the ghost of Elizabeth Hallett, who was massacred along with her family in the early 1700s.
Janes shared that two enslaved people belonging to the household murdered Elizabeth, her husband William, and their five children.
Elizabeth was pregnant at the time of her death.
“It’s the most arresting ghost story,” said Janes.
While the Hallet farmhouse is long gone, Elizabeth is said to haunt the row houses built on a 44th Street block in the early 20th century—though she’s seen as a benevolent spirit.
“One friend, who described [the ghost] sitting with her and her brother when they were ill, described it as a comforting experience,” said Mitch Waxman, who runs the history website the Newtown Pentacle and lives a block away from the homes.
Janes honors the dead by telling their stories on her guided tours and explaining that guests don’t have to believe in the paranormal to participate.
“All of our tours are history-based, and some don’t have anything to do with ghosts at all,“ she underscored.
Boroughs of the Dead celebrates its 13th anniversary this October; curious visitors can book a tour here and catch Jane on October 27th at the Center for Brooklyn, where she appears on the panel discussion, HistoryHaunted Brooklyn: Ghosts, Folklore, and the Stories We Tell.
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