Exporing New York From a Different Side (Part 2)

At the Algonquin Hotel located at 59 W. 44th St. guests claim to have spotted members of The Algonquin Round Table. They were a celebrated group of New York City writers, critics, actors and wits. They gathered for lunch each day at the Algonquin Hotel from 1919 until roughly 1929. At these luncheons they engaged in wisecracks, wordplay and witticisms that, through the newspaper columns of Round Table members, were disseminated across the country. They called themselves The Vicious Circle and members included were Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, Franklin Pierce, Robert Sherwood, Harpo Marx, Alexander Woollcott, Harold Ross, George S. Kaufman, Heywood Broun, Marc Connelly and Edna Ferber.

Located under the Brooklyn Bridge at 279 Water St. people frequenting the Bridge Café in a building dating back to 1794 have rumored about ghosts of pirates who used to frequent the bar in the old days.

At one of NYC’s oldest theaters The Belasco Theater 111 West 44th St. there have been sightings of the builder and namesake, David Belasco. He lived in an apartment above the theater before he died in 1931. His ghost supposedly interacts with actors, offers kudos and handshakes. Many people have also reported hearing footsteps and the sound of the disconnected elevator running. There have been sightings of a Blue Lady who may have been Belasco’s companion.

One would think that a hospital might be safe from unexplained happenings but then when we thing about it how many people don’t suffer and die in hospitals and how many severely injured people pass through them every day. At the Beth Israel Hospital at First Ave. and 16th St people have reported hearing unexplained footsteps, noises and voices throughout the hospital.

The Brittany Hotel at 55 East 10th St. is now a New York University dorm. Here people have reported hearing mysterious music, unexplained lights and sounds of footsteps. Some claim to feel like someone is watching them.

At Chumley’s 86 Bedford St. a West Village speakeasy the former barmistress and owner has never left the building. Henrietta Chumley comes for a Manhattan and likes messing with the restaurant’s jukebox.

One of the most fascinating old apartment buildings in Manhattan is the Dakota located at Central Park West at 72ndSt. just off Central Park. In the sixties some construction workers saw the ghost of a young boy or man. Several years later painters working on the building saw a girl in turn-of-the-century clothing. Former Beatle John Lennon, who was murdered outside of the Dakota in 1980 has been rumored to be haunting the area around the undertakers gate. To make a perfectly eerie setting the building was also used to film Roman Polanski’s most terrifying horror film Rosemary’s Baby.

Have you ever wondered what becomes of people who die tragically in front of their place of residence? Well Mickey, who was a sailor and lived in the Ear Inn at 326 Spring St. when it was a boarding house was killed when hit by a car in front of the Inn he chose to stay in his place of residence.

It appears that the Empire State Building on Fifth Ave. is supposedly haunted by all the suicide victims who have jumped from the buildings observatory.

A ghost that touches people is rumored to live in the Hotel Des Artistes which is located at 1 West 67th St. and at the Landmark Tavern 626 11th Ave. (46th St.) which opened in 1868 waiters believe the restaurant is haunted by an Irish girl and a Confederate soldier.

And then there is the "House of Death" 14 West 10th St. (near Fifth Ave.). It is a classic brownstone constructed in the 19th century and is believed to be haunted by the 22 people who have died in this house, as well as by Mark Twain who lived there from 1900 – 1901. He is rumored to be haunting the stairwell of the house. And in addition, attorney Joel Steinberg lived in this house in 1987 when he was accused and later convicted of beating his 6 year old adopted daughter Jessica Steinberg to death.

There was a young woman named Elma Sands who was murdered when this area was Lispenard Meadows in December of 1799 then dropped into a well which is now the restaurants Manhattan Bistro 129 Spring St. basement. The woman’s supposed murderer was her fiancé with whom she had gone sleigh riding. Levi Weeks trial became a sensation with a defense team that was made up of two big name lawyers Aaron Burns and Alexander Hamilton and he was acquitted despite strong evidence. Now the poor woman’s spirit haunts the bistro supposedly expressing her anger at what happened. Ashtrays are knocked off tables, plates broken on the floor and bottles flying from shelves. Some people have also spotted a young woman in a dirty dress with moss and vines which would be logical if her bruised body had been found in a well.

A Ziegfeld Follies chorus girl Olive Thomas who committed suicide by overdosing on her husband’s syphilis medication has been seen on stage and in one of the dressing rooms at the New Amsterdam Theatre at 214 West 42nd St. She is seen wearing a green beaded Follies dress with a beaded headband and a sash. She is supposedly holding a blue glass bottle which contained the pills that killed her. Typically, she appears only after audiences have left but has been rumored to appear also when her contemporaries are in the theater.

A wealthy merchant’s daughter Gertrude Tredwell is believed to haunt the home that her father built in 1832 the Old Merchant’s House on 29 East 4th St. which is now a museum. Gertrude never married and shortly after the birth of an unwanted baby which her family strongly disapproved of she died in an upstairs bedroom in 1933. Her ghost is most often spotted in the kitchen and also seen in her former bedroom. Gertrude appears as an elegant, petite woman dressed in mid-19th century clothing.

What is fascinating at the restaurant One If By Land, Two If By Sea at 17 Barrow St. is that it is haunted by the ghost of Aaron Burr, a former vice president of the United States who is famous for killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel. The restaurant is located in what was once Burr’s carriage house. Visitors and employees have seen flying dishes and chairs have been pulled out from under customers. Burr’s daughter, Theodosia Burr Alston en route to visit her father in New York vanished off the coast of North Carolina and it is rumored that she has found her way to her father and also haunts the carriage house. She is rumored to have removed earrings from female patrons at the bar.

Welsh poet Dylan Thomas liked drinking in the White Horse Tavern at 567 Hudson St. at West 11th St. On November 3rd 1953 he celebrated his 39th birthday here at which time he consumed 18 shots of whiskey. Afterwards feeling ill he returned to his room at the Hotel Chelsea where he collapsed and slipped into a comma. Four days later at St. Vincent’s Hospital on November 9, 1953 at around 1 PM he died. His spirit returned to the White Horse Tavern and supposedly he appears from time to time and rotates his favorite corner table.

If ghost hunting in old cemeteries is more your style you should visit the following places:

Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral 263 Mulberry St. where the city’s oldest Catholic Church’s cemetery is haunted by a slave who founded, with St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, one of New York City's first orphanages, and helped raise funds for the city's first cathedral in the19th century. His name is Pierre Toussaint and the ghost of Bishop Dubois, who is buried below the entrance to the cathedral and has been seen quite often in the church.

St. Marks-in-the-Bowery Church 131 E. 10th St. is rumored to be haunted by the ghost of Peter Styvesant, the 17th century Dutch Governor who apparently roams around the chapel. He was buried in a vault under the chapel in 1678.

St. Paul’s Chapel Burial Ground Broadway and Fulton St. this burial ground of the Episcopal Church is haunted by the headless ghost of an English actor. His name is George Frederick Cooke who died in September 1811. He was buried headless because he had donated his head to science to pay doctor’s bills and his skull was used in numerous productions of Hamlet.

At Trinity Church Broadway and Wall Street there is supposedly a tombstone in the graveyard that many people claim when passing to have heard laughter.

Washington Square Park West 4th and MacDougal St. was used as a hanging ground during the American Revolution and also as a burial ground. Today 15,000 bodies remain buried there. Now and then an occasional one can be seen hanging around.