October may very well be the best month of the year. The leaves are changing, the city is beautiful, and just about everything is leading up to Halloween. In between finding the perfect costume and shopping for candy, make sure you check out a few of the most haunted places in New York City.
Constructed in the late 1850s and located in West Village, the House of Death is known to be haunted by more the 20 spirits ranging from young children to old ladies, and even a cat. The name comes from the ghosts that haunt the building, and also from the incident in 1989 where prominent attorney Joel Steinberg beat his adopted daughter to death. The house’s most famous resident, Samuel Clemens, known as Mark Twain, supposedly roams the lower floors and basement dressed in a white suit.
2. Palace TheaterThe Palace Theater opened in 1913 as a show place featuring the time’s top stars. Tightrope walker and acrobat Louis Borsalino, who fell to his death in the 1950s during a performance, is said to haunt the theater. It is rumored that his ghost has been seen swinging from the rafters and then screaming as he falls.
The oldest home in Manhattan and the former residence of Aaron Burr, several ghosts haunt the mansion today. The most famous apparition is that of Aaron Burr’s wife, Eliza Jumel. Her haunting of the building is speculated to be due to the mysterious death of her first husband, whom she was rumored to have murdered.
Now an NYU building, 85 West 3rd Street was home to poet Edgar Allen Poe in 1845 and 1846. Poe wrote some of the opus “The Raven” in this building, and only a single banister of the original layout remains. Some have reported seeing the poet near it.
5. Hangman's Elm at Washington Square Park
Not only is NYC’s Washington Square Park a former burial ground, home to approximately 20,000 bodies, it was also a forum for public hangings. It is said that the tree used to hang prisoners, known as the “Hangman’s Elm,” still exists in the northwest corner of the park. Some historians dispute on whether or not this actually was the site of the hangings, but it is said that the last hanging to occur at the Hangman’s Elm was in 1820 when Rose Butler, a slave, was executed for burning down her master’s home.
The famous NYC hotel that has been known as an artists’ hangout for lodging rock stars and cultural celebrities over the years. Tragedy, however, has struck the premises in the past. Sid Vicious’s girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, was found stabbed in the couple’s bathroom in October of 1978, and poet Dylan Thomas died nearby at St. Vincent’s Hospital in 1953. According to believers, they may have never checked out.
NYC’s most famous skyscraper, the Empire State Building, also adds to the list of haunted sites in the city. In 1945, 14 people died when a plane crashed into the building, and about a dozen suicides have taken place at the building. People have witnessed a woman leaping off the building while dressed in a 1940s suit, and it is said that her husband died in World War II.
It is said that an abundance of ghosts haunt the City College of New York. Witnesses have seen spirits and apparitions of former students and professors since as far back as the 1920s. Among these apparitions include a student who died in 1918, students wearing clothing from the 1960s or ‘70s, and a “sad-looking” male spirit wearing the style of more recent years.
9. Hart Island
Located near the Bronx, Hart Island is a 101-acre burial ground, where more than 800,000 dead have been buried since 1869, making it the largest tax-funded cemetery in the world. It was created for those who are either unclaimed, or whose family could not afford a funeral for a loved one.
10. Creedmoor Psychiatric Center
The Creedmoor Psychiatric Center was built in 1912 in Queens Village. By 1960, the facility’s population had grown from 150 in 1918 to more than 7,000. In 1984, a patient restrained in a straitjacket was struck in the throat with a blackjack by a staff member, and Creedmoor was rocked with scandal. The campus operates today, but only houses a few hundred patients and provides outpatient services.
Over the years, the Staten Island Farm Colony was often associated with society’s unwanted, catering toward housing the poor, infirm, mentally ill, and developmentally disabled in the 19th century. In the 1920s, however, the abduction and murder of a seven-year-old boy occurred on the Farm Colony’s grounds. Also, in the 1970s and ‘80s, Andre Rand, a man who supposedly lived in tunnels underneath the abandoned Farm Colony site, was responsible for a string of child murders.
12. Machpelah Cemetery, Houdini's Grave
At Machpelah Cemetery, just through the front gate, you can find the resting place of Harry Houdini, who died on Halloween. For years after he died, Houdini’s wife would hold a seance every October 31, hoping to hear him from beyond the grave. A crowd usually gathers at the cemetery every Halloween night, where fans of the magician come to pay their respects and attempt to contact his spirit.
