Ghost Stories of Old New York (Live At Joe's Pub 2025)

Welcome to Joe's Pub

0:00Get your tickets now to the Bowery Boys at Joe's Pub, a 75-minute extravaganza of ghost stories mixed with music and comedy with an extra special theme this year, Haunted Circus, featuring a little extra magic to add to your Halloween season, October 28th to 31st, 2026. Many shows are already sold out, so grab your seats now at joespub.org before they all disappear. And now, as a little treat, here's a recording of our live show from last year, 2025, at Joe's Pub, featuring five of our favorite ghost stories and urban legends, live on the stage, a cabaret setting, a rainy night, some silly stage props from Party City, and a show that included myself, Tom, and our musical stars, Andrew Austin and Lisa Carlin. Enjoy.

0:52Please put your hands together for Greg Young and Tom Myers, the Bowery Boys!

1:11Wow. Wow. Thank you for coming out in this, well, I guess it's perfect ghost story weather, isn't it? Welcome to Joe's Pub. I'm Greg Young. And I'm Tom Myers, and we are the hosts of the Bowery Boys podcast. Welcome! Thank you, thank you.

1:27Now, for anyone out there who isn't familiar with our podcast, let me explain really quickly who we are. So, picture it, a summer night, 2007, and in the Lower East Side. And Tom and I were in his Essex Street apartment, and we recorded the first episode of the Bowery Boys podcast. And for that very first episode, we called our show, New York Cast. But then, a couple weeks later, we actually found ourselves right here, in Joe's Pub, attending a concert of the legendary Varla Jean Merman.

2:01Any fans? Yeah. When Greg leaned over that banquette right there and said to me, Tom, I have a better idea. The Bowery Boys. And I said, Where? And he eventually understood, of course, after all, the movie, The Gangs of New York, had come out just a few years earlier, so, you know, it was all the thing, it was all the rage. And the original Bowery Boys, of course, were a 19th century gang that were very fierce and fearsome.

2:31And wore top hats. Yeah, so it was a perfect fit. So, we changed the name of our show right there, that night. Yes. And this, my friends, is the room where it happened.

2:47The room where that happened was down the hallway. And that will be our only Hamilton joke for the evening. 10th anniversary. Sorry. Shout out. But since we recorded that first episode in 2007, believe it or not, I can't believe it, we have recorded more than 470 shows. 471, in fact. Our newest one is Ghost Stories of Long Island. Anyone heard it? Right?

3:17Thank you. All of it true. All of it. Yes. Yeah. That's true. And actually, that is our favorite podcast, I think, to record all year. Because it gets us in the mood to be right here at Joe's Pub. And also, we couldn't do this alone. We get to work with these wonderful artists. So, we're going to introduce you to our music director, Andrew Austin.

3:45And sitting right next to me is somebody who has just come from away. Like, literally, she just got off the stage, a northern stage production of Come From Away. It's Lisa Carlin.

4:01Truly, I'm so happy to be here. Well, we are so glad that you landed right here with us. And you will be singing for us a little bit later in the show. So, but I think we've all waited all year for more, you know, one of your crazy, scary cackles. Could you just give us one to get us in the mood? Don't make me cackle. Please, come on. Don't make me cackle. There we go. There we go.

4:27Lisa Carlin. Perfect for this kind of weather. But hold on. We have to acknowledge, of course, we have some other favorite freaky friends here. Are all about us on the stage. Joining us tonight over here, we've got Bat Damon.

4:43Back here, we have Liza Spinelli. Where is she? She's hanging back there. Never know where she's going to be. But we all, of course, we all know who you're waiting for. We heard some bird calling earlier. So, making her seventh appearance tonight on the Bowery Boys live show at Joe's Pub. Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Cheryl Crow. Wait, where is she? She was just here. She was just, did someone take her? I'm crying foul play.

5:15Thank you. All right, well, we absolutely must track down Cheryl. This is, we can't do the whole show without Cheryl. No, I just hope that we can get to the bottom of this mystery in the next 70 minutes and two drinks. Minimum. Two drinks minimum. Yes. Okay.

Locked Up on Riverside Drive

5:31Yes.

Locked Up on Riverside Drive

5:32But while we check that out backstage, I think we've got some ghost stories to tell. Yes. I think that we will just kick things off right now, Greg, with a good old haunted house. Actually, better than that, a haunted mansion. Oh, yes. Yes. Let's situate the listener here. Where in New York are you taking us for this one? We are heading up to what was once a lovely estate that was perched up high over the Hudson River on today's Riverside Drive. But back in the early 1800s, this was just the vast Bloomingdale countryside in upper Manhattan.

6:03And for generations, it was the summer residence of a very wealthy New York family. But after they moved out, the mansion was rented out. But renters were always given very strict instructions. They must never, ever enter the padlocked room upstairs. I'm liking this crowd already. But of course, somebody did. And that's when the footsteps started. The phantom footsteps in the parlor after midnight.

6:35For this is the tale of Locked Up on Riverside Drive. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Okay, we've got haunted mansions, padlocked doors. I'm already into this, okay? So this is Bloomingdale. So basically, this is the Upper West Side, but before it was the Upper West Side. Yes, this manor was constructed sometime in the 1820s or 30s,

7:06decades before the grid system of streets and avenues reached up there. So, you know, there was this one big road, Bloomingdale Road, which eventually became Broadway, but back then there were lots of little lanes, rolling hills around it, and even country estates. That's right, and farms too. Remember our show that we did on Edgar Allan Poe? Well, back in 1844, he and his wife Virginia actually relocated up here to around today's Broadway and 84th Street for her health. But our haunted mansion was constructed north of there

7:39at what would become Riverside Drive between 99th and 100th. But its gardens and its, you know, yards were even larger. They covered about five of today's city blocks. So, a piece in the New York Times described the home's, quote, stately-pillared portico on its western front that commands a wide sweep of the river. So, you may have said this, but who built the place? That's a bit of a mystery. We don't really know. But we do know that in 1843, a very rich man named William P. Furness bought this old estate.

8:11Now, Furness had been born and raised in New Hampshire, but he had moved to the island of St. Thomas as a young man where he founded a shipping company, and he soon prospered. In 1843, Furness, who was now quite rich, decided to move his family to New York. So, he and his wife Sophia and their six children moved into a lovely home that was actually located just down from us on Bond Street. And that same year, in 1843, Furness bought this lovely, isolated Bloomingdale Country Manor,

8:45and he would relocate his family here every spring. Now, this would have been a great place for those children to grow up because there's all of this, you know, land and room to play around in. That's right, yeah. The Times wrote that, quote, There were heard the merry sounds of romping children who loved this house and played in the lush grass and the blossoming groves or bathed or boated. The years passed, and William Furness continued buying up more land around his estate. The family enjoyed summer after summer here,

9:17and Furness entertained widely, but he also loved relaxing downstairs in his grand parlor or out on the portico. But then tragedy struck. Two of the boys died in 1862. Then William died in 1871. And then another son, and then mother Sophia in 1878. This left three Furness daughters, Sophia, Margaret, and Clementine. But this rambling old mansion was too much for them to keep up, and their father had been very explicit in his will.

9:48He mandated that the home must always remain a private dwelling, no selling it off to developers. So around 1880, the daughters rented it out to the Russell Clark family, but there was just one little catch. The New York Herald explained that, quote, There was a little room on the top floor of the house that was secured by double locks. In every lease given with the old place, it was stipulated that this little room, the smallest in the house, must never be touched or meddled with. No one was to disturb it or touch those locks.

10:21And so then, did the Clark family follow these instructions? They did, yeah, the Clarks did, for the 20 years that they lived there. But that means that there were 20 years of them passing those locks almost daily, wondering, but not touching. But they did complain about hearing things. Late at night, the floor creaking, the sound of moving bodies, breathing. But they told themselves it was probably just, you know, that new railroad,

10:52the Hudson River Railroad. And they just shook it off. By 1900, the neighborhood had changed. Now strangers looked down onto the old mansion and its gardens from the new apartment buildings that had been constructed around this old estate. After the Clarks moved out, the Furnace Sisters leased the old mansion to a woman named Alma Walker, who rented out the rooms to artists. The well-known dramatist Paul Kester lived there. And according to the New York Times in 1905, he, quote,

11:22used to rehearse his companies in the big drawing room or on the wide western portico. And the house, though weather-beaten, has the charm that will linger around old memories. But in truth, the place was becoming ramshackle. Paint peeled, window frames broke. The actors stayed on, even as the mansion was crumbling around them. Can we get back to this padlocked room? So there's actors in the building. Did they leave it alone? Well, somebody must have disturbed it,

11:54because this is also when the accounts of those ghostly footsteps started to appear in the press. In 1905, the New York Times reported that this old white house was also home to a spirit, an old ghost who inhabits what is now used as a parlor. It was for a time occupied as a sleeping room, and some who have slept there affirm positively that when the lights are out and everyone has retired, the ghost will come forth without waiting for the hour of midnight.

12:25He comes into the room and walks gently across to an imaginary bookcase. The glass doors of which are heard to open. The ghost takes from a shelf one of the books, which can also plainly be heard in the stillness of the night. The glass doors are gently closed again, and the shade walks over to the fireplace, where he draws up an armchair, into which he subsides with a sigh of relief. Then all is silent again.

12:56Quote, if the one who has been listening to these sounds should get up and light the gas, he would find nothing, neither bookcase, ghost, nor armchair, yet the same sounds would be heard on each succeeding night. A ghost that likes a good book and a roaring fireplace? Ironically, that sounds like a nice life. And the New York Times then took this all seriously? Oh yeah. They added that, quote, the writer of these lines has been assured in a manner that carried conviction

13:26that there was no doubt about the authenticity of this ghost story. Unquote. But the article also mentioned how Riverside Park had been finally finished about five years before this and had really transformed the area that was surrounding this old mansion. It was still standing here in 1905, but for how long? It was sitting on land that covered 23 of the new city lots. The Furnace Sisters had already sold off most of the land around the mansion, and now they looked

13:57at that old house. But meanwhile, we've got actors here. They're still living here, right? I mean, were they still rehearsing on the porch? Oh yeah, they were. Yeah, the acting continued. Rehearsals continued on the portico, even as chunks of plaster fell. At night, they would return up to their rooms, which lacked modern conveniences, you know, like electric lighting, just gas fixtures and cold water sinks. But at midnight, some would actually linger downstairs in the parlor.

14:27And then first would come the chill, even on summer nights, and then the footsteps.

14:34Slow, deliberate, crossing the empty room, the creak of glass doors opening, pages turning, doors closing, then a chair scraping up close to the fireplace. And finally, that sigh.

14:58Most just accepted it because this was a performance it played every night. I mean, this just sounds unsustainable to me, actually. It was. The next year, on October 28, 1909, the New York Tribune announced that, Sophia Margaret and Clementine Furnace had sold the 23 lots in Riverside Drive between 99th and 100th Streets on which stands the famous Furnace Mansion. The purchase price was about $800,000.

15:31And about five weeks later, the Herald announced that, quote, a bit of old New York gone. Riverside Drive loses the old Furnace house. Demolition crews worked for weeks, knocking down the old walls and the columns and carting off the debris. But as a century of memories were hauled away, the crew reached the top floor. And there it was, the small room, the padlocks, rusty after decades. For a moment, the workers hesitated.

16:01Nobody had opened up these doors in more than 30 years. What was inside? Finally, one man took a crowbar and the lock snapped and the door groaned open. And inside, the Tribune wrote, quote, it contained what might be classified as family relics. There were some curious seashells from foreign shores. There was the cradle in which all of the last generation of furnaces were wrought. And there were six or seven cases

16:31of old wine of different vintages, most of them dating from 1830, the very year that William Furness was at the height of his shipping empire on St. Thomas. Wine that he had likely brought back when he moved to New York. But the Tribune added, quote, on examination, one of these cases was found empty. Only the straw that had wrapped the bottles filled the case. So the, but the door had been locked for decades. So how could it

17:02have been empty? Exactly. Nobody could have gotten past those padlocks. No living person, that is. A year later, in 1910, the 12-story apartment building called the Wendelin was constructed on the side of the old mansion, and it still stands there today.

17:21Most residents have no idea what once stood on that spot. The white mansion with its pillared portico, its lush gardens rolling down to the river, its invisible bookcase, its midnight reader.

17:39And the ghost? Do we think it's moved on? Well, there's no locked room anymore to guard his heirlooms or his wine collection. There is nothing there that he once called home. But perhaps on quiet nights, at that very spot on Riverside Drive, if you listen very carefully at midnight, you might hear it. that faint creak of glass doors opening, the scrape of a chair being drawn up to the fireplace,

18:11a glass of wine being poured, and the contented sigh of a very gentle spirit. We're going to turn

Beware the Dancing Ghosts

18:31our attention, in fact, to the borough of Queens.

18:37And, even further, I want to hear some applause on this, to one of the oldest places, the neighborhood of Flushing. Okay? Wow, huge Flushing crowd. Flushing has everything. It is such a wonderful, diverse place. You know, it's a place where 17th century landmarks stand right next to some of the city's busiest intersections in the middle of Queens' Chinese community. You can stroll the grounds of Flushing Meadows, Corona Park, where the World's Fair

19:07was once held, and then end up at Citi Field and watch a Mets game, and maybe sometime in the near future a casino will pop up there. Can we please not? No. What's the matter, Tom? Are you afraid that your luck will run out? Well, then you share a plight with the unfortunate souls who lived in Flushing in the year 1884, when there was no borough of Queens at all, and Flushing was but an independent village, and already by that time

19:38200 years old. So it's not a surprise that there are ghosts in such an old place like Flushing, but it is a surprise to see where they have turned up. For the name of this story is Beware the Dancing Ghosts. Ooh!

19:56Why are they dancing?

20:01Exactly. Why are they dancing? But I'm gathering that the spot here that you've taken us to is the Flushing Meeting House, a house of worship for Quakers that has stood there for centuries. Since 1694. It seems so old. And if you think that is an unbelievable date, well then, may I suggest you walk just a few blocks south to an even older landmark, the home of John Bowne, which was constructed in 1661.

20:32So this is one of New York's oldest historic structures today, and one of America's oldest landmarks to religious freedom. And John Bowne and his wife Hannah were Quakers, and so in 1661 then they were living here in the colony, the Dutch colony of New Netherland. So the Bowne's were religious refugees, but in a European settlement that was dominated actually by the Dutch Reformed Church. And while the Dutch government, as we mention sometimes on our show, tends to be a little bit more tolerant towards other denominations,

21:03even still, Director General Peter Stuyvesant attempted to clamp down on this alternative form of worship. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is our only Peter Stuyvesant reference of the evening. He frequently haunts the show, but not tonight. That's not tonight. Anyway, his meddling led residents to draft the Flushing Remonstrance, which is a petition to the Dutch government by the residents of Flushing proclaiming their freedom of conscience and belief. So, because of this,

21:34Flushing becomes a place of pilgrimage for many Quakers, and they come specifically to the John Bowne house to worship. So, by the end of the 17th century, then, John Bowne's house was a little bit too small. Oh, yes. They definitely needed a bigger place. So, in 1692, Bowne and the other worshippers acquired some land just a short distance west to build this new meeting house, which opened for services in 1694. Today, you know, Flushing is two blocks west of the Bowne house

22:05on Northern Boulevard, and is known as the Old Quaker Meeting House. It is a model of architectural simplicity, both outside and inside, as the religious society of friends desire that no worldly ostentation should distract their attention from their worship. It feels almost otherworldly today, right? Because it's a simple structure built in this Dutch style that sits on very, very busy Northern Boulevard. But inside, all is very, very quiet,

22:37and it has been quiet since services began there in 1694. Well, except for one period during the Revolutionary War, when the quiet was harshly broken by the cries of war during the Battle of Long Island in 1776, when it was then taken over by the British and the building was transformed into a hospital. Now, we don't know the exact number of British troops that were treated here, and we have no count of those who died

23:08within the walls of the Old Meeting House. Okay? So then, by 1785, the war is over, the Quakers returned to their Old Meeting House, but things were never the same. So, I want us now to jump ahead almost a century later to the year 1884. Now, Flushing, which was now a town in Queens County, had been drastically transformed by this time. Very notably, in fact, across the street from the Old Meeting House

23:38was Flushing Town Hall. Some of you may know this building. It was built in 1862, a really beautiful Romanesque revival building that is, of course, like the Meeting House, still standing today on Northern Boulevard. So, by 1884, though, the Meeting House was finding itself in the middle of town. Right. This was the center of it all. There was a police headquarters around the corner, and there were the offices of two local newspapers here. So, it was a bit past midnight when one newspaper reporter

24:10left the office, and while walking to the trolley station on his way home, he happened to pass the old Meeting House, and there he saw something most peculiar, an apparition, all in white, floating aimlessly along the Meeting House grounds, and at the spirit's side hung an old sword, something that might be seen in a museum or an armory today. Quoting from the New York Times

24:41on April 20th, 1884, the reporter at once ran to police headquarters and informed the chief that, quote, the devil just came out of the Quaker Meeting House. It was about one in the morning, and the chief, who knows or pretends to know something about ghosts, was surprised that any kind of respectable ghost would be out at that unusual hour. He called his men and hastened with the reporter to the meeting house. As they approached,

25:11the chief was astounded at the sight that met his gaze. Now, it was a moonlit night, and the chief could plainly see a strange, ghostly form drifting silently right through the walls of the meeting house. So they approached the house cautiously, but found the doors and the windows fastened. By this time, the party had actually increased by ten men, and so one of the men decides to look through the keyhole of the front door.

25:42He only looked for a few seconds, but then suddenly panicked and then sped away in terror. So the rest of the men, they ran after him, they caught up with the frightened man at the monument on Broadway and demanded an explanation. He was completely out of breath and turned deathly pale. He shrieked, please, we must escape home after what I saw through that keyhole. I never want to go out again after dark.

26:12Tell us what you saw, said the chief of police. What I saw, exclaimed the man, I saw three big men dressed in white with swords hanging by their sides. when I looked in first, they were close together and one of them seemed to be explaining something to the other two. Then, they commenced to dance. And at that point, I ran away, unfroached. Okay,

26:45so he saw three ghosts with swords dancing. And Quakers, after all, you know, they dress quite plainly by the tenets of their faith and so I doubt that they would be wearing white in the middle of the night in their own meeting house, right? So, for the next several days, perhaps as you can imagine, people came in from all corners of the countryside because a story like this, of course, quickly spreads around.

27:15And so, everyone came into town to get a little glimpse of the now famous meeting house. According to the New York Tribune, quote, farmers from the surrounding country drove into town bringing their wives, daughters, and sweethearts with them to have a look at the old frame structure. A venerable member of the Quakers said to a reporter, brother, why dost thou believe in such nonsense? Unquote. And it seems the chief of police himself tried

27:46to backtrack a little bit, perhaps a little bit out of embarrassment here. He was quoted as saying, the men who claim to have seen the ghosts may have had a little too much flushing corn juice. Unquote. Flushing corn juice. So, in other words, yeah, he was saying that perhaps these men were drunk, right? Yes, yes, yes, but the newspaper reporter is the one who saw the ghosts first and we all know that reporters don't drink.

28:17Well, there were a host of explanations thrown about to explain this. One notable newspaper of the time concocted a frightful theory that, quote, the flushing ghosts may be the ghosts of three deceased pirates who buried money in flushing and thereby contracted chills and fever. And the dancing in which they are said to have indulged in may have simply been involuntary motions, which ghosts suffering from chills are wholly unable to control. Unquote.

28:48So that's one explanation. Mm-hmm. But seriously, were there other explanations? There's got to be something better. Well, I think this will explain it because behind the meeting house on a plot of land that's concealed from the street sits a graveyard and a graveyard which dates back to the late 17th century. And it's believed, in fact, that John and Hannah Bowne of the Bowne House are actually buried here, but nobody really knows

29:18for sure because before the year 1820, the Quakers never used headstones. But before 1820, there would have been hundreds of people, maybe even more, who were buried here. Right. And if I recall then, it would have also covered the period during the Revolutionary War, right, when this was occupied by British troops. Now, there was an elderly man named Eubank who lived just behind the meeting house and he was interviewed by the New York Times. and he gave

29:48a very detailed account of the situation here. Quote, When I was a boy about 50 years ago, I remember very well that there was a real ghost in the meeting house. You see, next to where the meeting house stands was also a burial ground during the Revolutionary War and there were over 500 Hessians buried here. Hessians, German mercenary soldiers

30:20who fought with the British against the Americans. Now, we, who knows if there were actually 500 buried here, but we do know that there is a burial ground and we do know that this meeting house was used as a hospital where many on the British side may have perished from illness or from their injuries. So then, with this information, I went sort of digging, investigating this possibility, this link, and I did find some illustrations of Hessian troops

30:51all in white uniforms with blue coats and pointy gold caps. They were, of course, all equipped with swords, brass hilts, and long slashing blades. And yes, these German mercenary soldiers did also, at times, dance. So often, in fact, that there is a colonial era dance called the Hessian. So it seems that these spirits

31:22were not Quakers, but rather, they were Hessians, ghosts of the most ruthless fighters during the Revolutionary War, men who may have died during the war and were possibly buried here at the meeting house and may in fact still be there waiting for another clear moonlit night to perform that unusual ritual opening a portal between Flushing and the spirit world here within New York's

31:52oldest surviving house of worship. Andrew Austin, everyone. I just want to say, by the way, what you actually heard was in fact the colonial era Hessian dance from the year 1758. So he threaded that throughout the whole story. So who knows we'll be conjured up while doing that, but let's cross our fingers. It literally hasn't been played for centuries until tonight.

32:23So, um,

Hungry Lucy Wreaks Havoc

32:29you are never going to believe what we just found in our dressing room. A note. A clue.

32:39A note, and it says, believe nothing you hear and only half of what you see. And stuck to the note is one of Cheryl's googly eyes. Her eyes! Her eyes! What does it all mean? Well, it does mean that we're heavily invested in this running gag, but we will continue on.

33:03Well, in the meantime, I would like to tell a story that I wrote for this show three years ago. Unfortunately, just days before that performance, I came down with a dreaded COVID. fortunately, the show went on because of you fabulous folks, but I love this story so much and I never got to tell it, so with your permission, I would like to tell it tonight.

33:30Oh, stop!

33:32Audience applause. Wait for applause. Yes, okay, thanks. For that, we are heading up to Hell's Kitchen to a townhouse at 428 West 44th Street between 9th and 10th Avenues. It's a lovely 1860s brick townhouse, three stories in a basement apartment. Now, in the 1960s, just about 100 years after it was constructed, the home's rather famous owner, the actress June Havoc, found herself visited nightly by an unwanted visitor

34:04who knocked and banged about the kitchen and finally revealed herself and her tragic past. For this is the tale of Hungry Lucy Wreaks Havoc.

34:24June Havoc. Not a household name, so could you remind some of the audience here where they might have seen her? Is she a TV star, film star? She did it all, Greg. Okay? She was a child star in vaudeville, then moved on to Broadway where she starred in the original 1941 Broadway production of Pal Joey. But she also made dozens of films including Gentleman's Agreement and she did lots of TV. In fact, she had her own talk show in 1964

34:55at the time of our story. But here's the thing. Her real life is often overshadowed by the fictionalized version of her story that was written by her sister, Miss Gypsy Rose Lee. Hello, everybody. My name's June. What's yours? Let me entertain you. Let me make you smile. Yes, now, her story is going

35:26to sound familiar to anybody out there in the audience who is a fan of the musical Gypsy. And I'm guessing that's about 90% of our audience. All right, all right. So see if any of this rings a bell. Baby June was born Ellen Evangeline Havik in 1912 and started appearing on vaudeville on the West Coast when she was just two years old, billed as the tiniest toe dancer in the world. Also in the act, her slightly older

35:57and much less talented sister, Louise. Sing out, Louise! Baby June was rather spoiled by her overbearing stage mom, Rose Havik. Fast forward to 1928 in a Topeka, Kansas vaudeville house when 16-year-old June eloped with a boy from another act named Bobby. She married him and she crushed her mother's dreams. Fortunately, June's sister, Louise, would soon find stardom on the American burlesque scene

36:28as Miss Gypsy Rose Lee. Are we still talking about the life of June Havik or is this the musical plot now? Oh, it's complicated. Yes, I know. It's confusing. But it's all true, folks. Let me explain. Gypsy Rose Lee, June's sister, Louise, took a lot of liberties when she wrote her memoir in 1957 and it was upon that which the Broadway musical Gypsy was based two years later. And June was not

36:58really pleased with how she was portrayed. For example, Gypsy the musical follows Louise's story and watches her ultimately find fame and fortune as Gypsy Rose Lee. But it forgets to mention that Baby June also went on to be pretty famous herself. Baby June just kind of disappears at the end of act one of the musical. Now, I'm sure that the crowd is all enjoying this grand Broadway history. Yeah. But, TikTok Tom, where are the ghosts here?

37:30The ghosts are coming, Greg. Okay, all right. So, this story is about June Havik, a.k.a. Baby June. And in 1962, June purchased this townhouse on West 44th Street. And she moved into the main floor apartment, an apartment that had sat strangely vacant for many years. They just couldn't manage to rent it out because, as June soon found out, the apartment had issues. There were disturbing noises,

38:02ghostly moans, that startled her in the middle of the night. First time. Then night. Then night. Oh.

38:13Those are ghostly moans. More like Randy Neighbors, probably. It was Hell's Kitchen.

38:22So, June just kind of shrugged it off, you know, and she thought that maybe some earplugs would help. And she put up with it for a number of years. According to an interview that she gave to the Daily News, she had been working with Helen Hayes on a new play, and June was trying to explain why she looked so tired. She said, quote, I was complaining about a headache that I had because of the lack of sleep. I was hearing noises at three and four in the morning. So she called in a plumber to check out the pipes. She called in an architect to check out the floors. Nobody could find any reason

38:52why there would be this incessant noise. Other people heard it, too. It wasn't just her. Friends visiting heard it. Her cleaner heard it. Everybody heard these noises in Miss Havoc's apartment. So she did what any famous actress who lived in a haunted house in the 1960s would do. She called up paranormal researcher and author Hans Holzer, who had written several books on ghost haunting. And within 24 hours of calling Hans, he was there, and he brought along with him the famed British medium,

39:24renown psychic and self-described witch, Sybil Leek. Just a real photo photo. Amazing. Photo. Amazing. So, Sybil Leek. Holzer and Sybil Leek and a small group of friends and journalists who were documenting this whole phenomenon descended upon June Havoc's apartment to try to communicate with whatever spirit was creating this noise. And as they sit there ready to be visited, immediately,

39:54a loud tapping began.

39:58First I up, then I up, then I up, up, up. And so Holzer spoke directly to the spirit. What do you want? He said. And the noise stopped. Okay, let's reiterate. This is all documented? This was actually seen, it happened in front of other rational, non-paranormal people, right? Oh yeah, this was witnessed in front of a whole room of actors. Okay. Okay. Sorry. It's okay.

40:28It totally tracks. They even had a TV crew because June was also taping it for a show. But then suddenly, Sibylique tilted back her head, closed her eyes, and went into a deep trance. And suddenly she started channeling the spirit, speaking as the spirit. And she cried out, Hungry. No food. I want some food.

40:55They learned that the spirit's name was Lucy, and that the year was 1792, and that they weren't in a kitchen at all. They were all in a field where the house would later be built. Soldiers had left Lucy there, and she couldn't leave. Nobody would listen to her. And that's why she was making so much noise, because she was hungry. She said, They picked me up. A man brought me here and put me down on this spot. I don't want to leave this spot.

41:27But then as quickly as she had arrived, the spirit left Sybil, who woke up out of her trance. The spirit had moved. Had it just left? But then the banging started again. But now Sybil felt the presence of Lucy standing in the corner of the living room. So the group cautiously entered the living room and sat down at an antique table, gently laying down their hands, barely touching it, when it started to move. First slowly, and then faster, and then faster, and then the table began flying chaotically

41:58around the room. And then it fell to the ground. And there was silence for a second before the tapping started.

42:07And then they made the connection. The tapping was code. The spirit was tapping out a message to them. So they started counting the taps. One tap for each letter of the alphabet. They all listened together. The cameras were rolling. Tap, tap, tap. L. Tap, tap, tap. B. Tap. A. Tap, tap, tap, tap. V. Tap, tap. B.

42:34Leave. The table spun out of control, moving and shaking as the group ducked and dodged it and then suddenly it lost its power and fell to the ground. The party was over. Is that it? Is the ghost gone? Is Lucy gone from the apartment? Well, things did quiet down for a couple of days but then three nights later June was startled awake in the middle of the night by a horrible screech.

43:05The apartment was pitch black and June lay there without moving in bed. What had she just heard? Had she just imagined that? I had a dream.

43:17But this time the tapping wasn't in the kitchen. June told the newspaper instead of incessant banging and tapping there was this hideous screaming and this time it sounded like it was coming from directly over me. It was above her bed. A dream about you, June.

43:37The next morning she called Holzer who told her to be harsh and to stand up to the spirit. But the screaming came back the next night too. They think that's worth the room, June.

43:53Well, a few months later the group all came back over to June's apartment and Holzer plays Sybil back into a trance. And soon, Lucy started speaking through Sybil again but this time she was complaining about all the people and all the activity in the house. She said, people there too much. She sings and dances. She makes a lot of noise. I'm hungry. I'm always hungry. You don't do a thing about it.

44:25But then Lucy revealed that she was waiting for a love of hers named Alfred Bailey. He said that he'd come back for her at three o'clock in the morning to take her away which is why at three o'clock in the morning she's always there. She's always ready. But she can't get out to meet him because she's stuck. And so Holzer pleaded with Lucy to leave to go find Alfred. He told her that she could find him if she just left this place. June Havoc reported over the next few weeks that the sounds

44:56had become much quieter. It seemed like Lucy had found a way to get out of there. But just to be sure they held one more seance to make sure that the coast was clear. Sybil fell into her trance and waited and waited but Lucy didn't show up. Instead Alfred showed up. He was waiting for Lucy. So this time Holzer told Alfred that he had to leave. He had to go find Lucy.

45:26He told Alfred that she had just gone off to find him and then Alfred left.

45:34And that was the final seance that was ever held in June's home. They weren't needed anymore. Because somehow at 3am on a cold night in Hell's Kitchen two spirits who had waited 200 years had found each other again. Alfred and Lucy finally had their happy ending. Everything's coming on her own as for me

46:04and for you ladies and gentlemen Andrew Austin and Alisa Carlin. I am so glad that we finally got to tell that story and I wrote that before Audra's big revival of Gypsy. And we know how you love some Audra McDonald. Of course. I like to call her Dorothy Scott Peggy's mom

46:35on the hit HBO series The Gilded Age. Who's ready for season four?

The Poltergeist of Cherry Street

46:42Well not to be the best kill but since you mentioned The Gilded Age I must confess that there is something a little class based even a little elitist about ghost stories at times right? Because sometimes it seems like with these stories that only the houses of wealthy people can afford to be haunted right? How very Mom Donny of you Greg. Well haunted houses for all I suppose.

47:12But yes it is true he has a point that haunted mansions are more fun to talk about than haunted studio apartments. Yes. But the spirit world does not discriminate and the next story which will take place in the year 1900 takes place in the lower east side or rather a tenement quarter that was known then as Cherry Hill along the east side waterfront today. So you may know that as the neighborhood of Two Bridges which is located between the

47:42Brooklyn and the Manhattan Bridges. Yes. Most of the 19th century buildings are gone today from this street but many of the streets are still there. Today you can actually walk down a portion of Cherry Street which was once the heart of a very attractive district but way back in the late 18th century. In fact then later in 1824 the home of Samuel Leggett at 7 Cherry Street actually became the very first in New York to be lit to be lit with gas

48:13lighting. So it sounds very fancy right? Yes it does yes. As you mentioned this story takes place in 1900 so by then the neighborhood had changed right? I mean this had become something of a notorious waterfront district. Streets were kind of rowdy. Right. So let me now turn your attention to the corner of Cherry and Roosevelt Streets into a three room flat within an old townhouse which by the mid 19th century had been cut up into smaller apartments to accommodate

48:44more people as they often did in the mid 19th century. But this was however a building where an evil violent presence had also made itself home. For the name of this story is the poltergeist of Cherry Street.

49:06So you just said Cherry Street so that would be sort of near where the Brooklyn Bridge would be constructed. Yeah so in fact the Brooklyn Bridge opened in 1883 and so during the construction you could see this grand feat of engineering from the windows of this building on Cherry Street that I'm about to talk about. But by that day already 1883 sinister things were already taking place within this

49:37apartment and everyone in the neighborhood knew it. Now there was a rowdy gang gangs of New York period here a rowdy gang named the Square Back Rangers who ruled the roost here and very tough right here on Cherry Street a rather edgy bunch the Square Back Rangers but even the bravest member of that band refused to enter this building and they even refused to so much as even look in the windows for fear that something might be

50:08looking back at them. According to the New York Times under the headline Mystery of Cherry Hill Haunted Flat Made Uninhabitable for 19 years quote no tenant has remained more than a few hours within its walls for the goodly space of 19 years tenants have presumed to move in only to hustle out after finding their furniture turned upside down and their handsome framed prints turned to the wall by occult influences.

50:39Oh for 19 years? Yes. What had happened 19 years before? Well okay so at some point in the year 1880 an old married couple some immigrants from France moved into the apartment. Now each morning they would be awakened by sounds of construction on the Brooklyn Bridge outside their window you know as it was nearing completion and I think it would have been quite exciting you know to live next to this incredible symbol of

51:10progress to be living you know near it to see it rise even though the streets around them were actually very squalid and perhaps for this man and woman it might have even represented a job or a new opportunity but unfortunately at some point in the year 1880 the husband suddenly grew very sick and eventually died here within the apartment and then his wife who was so paralyzed with grief then took her own life the following year in 1881

51:41okay so after this tragedy the flat becomes uninhabitable Cherry Street gossip mongers they hesitated to say at this time that it was haunted per se they didn't believe that there were ghosts in the apartment but that just something else more sinister was going on here by the 1890s then jumping forward everyone in the old fourth ward knew that something was the matter with that flat so something was lurking here

52:11was there anything particularly creepy about the neighborhood by this point yeah it had actually a rather notorious reputation as a place where mysterious and disturbing things happened you know as is often the case with New York waterfront neighborhoods of this period for instance in the year 1891 just a couple blocks east from this haunted place sat a boarding house where a woman named old Shakespeare was murdered

52:42in a most grisly fashion and a murder that the press believed was committed by Jack the Ripper now while this theory was eventually disproved it only confirmed that Sherry Hill was a very peculiar place and had a very bad reputation but the haunted apartment on Cherry Street how long did that stay empty well I mean there were some attempts by families to live here over the years you know housing's problem then it's a problem now right so

53:13for instance there was the Ryan family who attempted to make this their home at this time quoting from the New York Times quote they were just as respectable a family as had ever lived on the hill and they had no skeletons in their closet to excite the sinister ill will of a ghost so they moved into the flat husband wife and three children but no sooner had they begun unpacking and putting things into place when suddenly the Ryans

53:43began experiencing strange phenomena very small things at first a table moving of its own accord a scratching sound coming from the hall but when it was investigated it was discovered that nothing was there so then later that evening about an hour after the family had all gone to bed they heard a terrible unexplainable noise they woke up to see that their furniture

54:14was being thrown all about the flat by some invisible agency their possessions were flying around the room books toys clothing as though gravity had simply released its hold upon the flat and then of course it was also dark for the lights had been snuffed out the children were screaming and then somewhere in the darkness came forth a shape a figure of some kind and then suddenly

54:44the husband was punched in the face and then so too was the wife in fact her left eye was left blackened by this incident and the children well they were affected in a very different way according to reports they came down with a harsh scratchy and perpetual cough as though something was suddenly and severely blackening their lungs and all of this all of which I just described

55:15took place in the span of about 10 minutes according to the report six hours had been used to move the family into the flat but it took that family just 50 minutes to get out for good with their belongings yeah well I certainly hope this was a one-time thing Greg oh no it wasn't other families did try their luck you know I'm sure it was a cheaper apartment by this point so people kept moving in and

55:46then they kept moving out time and again each family met the same spirit and fled into the streets from this most malevolent poltergeist by the 1890s this apartment's reputation was so notorious that at some point it was never again rented out what it just sat there empty I mean didn't anybody investigate well we do know of one man okay so in the year 1895

56:17a man that the times referred to as the bravest guy in Sherry Hill well he he ventures into the apartment to spend the night his name was Jackie Haggerty and he was infamous around the neighborhood if you know what I mean he was foolhardy he was headstrong this was a guy who claimed to have jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge they were all doing that back then so he claimed to have also have done that in other words Jackie was just the perfect

56:48person to investigate an uninhabitable haunted house fearless and yet his encounter would doom him he talked it up among his cohorts who then loaded him up in booze one evening before sending him into the dark apartment where he was to have spent the evening so you know what fear did he have of an alleged ghost walked in and yet the moment he stepped foot in that apartment he knew

57:18that something was very off now we don't have his first hand account but we do have reports from other people that he was severely beaten within the apartment by some kind of invisible force something cold and evil he was beaten so badly that he fled the house in this outside panic screaming and crying which by some accounts ruined his good reputation among the street toughs of course yet he was never the same

57:49again never mentally the same the experience shook him so badly that he withdrew from the street and spent his last remaining years living in isolation with his mother his only solace was daily reading to her from the newspaper their favorite preferred section the obituaries seven months after the times first reported on this haunted house Jackie Haggerty died in his home of pneumonia

58:19having never lived down his encounter with the ghost of Cherry Hill that's very sad and that building is it still standing there today well unfortunately or fortunately the building is not there and in fact not only is the building gone but actually much of the neighborhood around it has gone as well including some of the streets so in 1934 the New York City Housing Authority was formed and then

58:50by the early 1950s Roosevelt Street parts of Cherry Street and other blocks were demolished to build the Alfred E. Smith houses so it's impossible to for us to locate the exact side of this house today however a few blocks of Cherry Street still exist as I said earlier and that street actually runs underneath the dark archway of the Manhattan Bridge further east and it also runs near a

59:20Manhattan mini storage where people pack away their old furniture and old boxes so many tables so many chairs some say some say that these spirits have even moved into a storage unit was that a poltergeist engaging in some spooky rearranging I thought

59:57they need a cloak at that point throw a cloak over my shoulder well since we kick things off you know with a gentle spirit who likes to read by the fire I thought that we might wind

Once Upon a Midnight Dreary

1:00:09up with a salute to a legendary author Edgar Allen Poe ladies and all because did you know this that Poe actually lived just blocks from here during one of his most creative periods around near Washington Square Park where his spirit still lingers today appearing to those who inhabit his old dwelling for this is a tale of once upon a midnight dreary oh

1:00:43I am so glad they get to talk about Poe again so many people overlook his New York connections in fact we actually mentioned a New York connection earlier with the furnace mansion oh that's right yes wow he popped up earlier tonight yes but backing up Edgar Allen Poe was born in Boston in 1809 he was orphaned as a young child and later attended West Point as a young man also got kicked out of West Point as a young man before moving to Baltimore

1:01:13where he lived with his widowed aunt and her daughter Virginia his first cousin whom he married yeah and in the year 1837 all three of them moved to New York into a house on Carmine Street so that's over in today's West Village but unfortunately things didn't really work out for them so no jobs came for him and so they actually continued moving on to Philadelphia that's what he did well in Philadelphia

1:01:43published pieces and magazines edited a lot in Philadelphia and all over the country so then in 1844 when the three of them moved back to New York City he was now quite established though still rather nomadic they moved around that year in 1844 living at boarding houses on Greenwich Street and Ann Street but unfortunately Virginia's health was actually failing for a few years she had first suffered from tuberculosis back in Philadelphia and was

1:02:14never she wasn't recovering so they moved back to New York but of course Poe was very anxious by this time so Poe moved his family out of the crowded city to get some fresh air up to Brennan's Farmhouse which we mentioned earlier which was roughly at West 84th Street and Broadway just down the street from the Furnace Mansion and it was here on this moody farm in late 1844 that Poe penned his masterpiece The Raven The Raven

1:02:44hmm hmm as Poe wrote The Raven in the late cold months of 1844 at his farmhouse he warmed himself by his fireplace and that mantelpiece sits today in Columbia University's Butler Library those are the details The Raven was published on January 29th 1845 in the New York Evening Mirror for which Poe was

1:03:15paid nine dollars in the fall of 1845 they moved back down to 85 West 3rd Street just off of Washington Square but meanwhile Virginia was not getting any better and so in May of 1846 the Poe's were on the move again and this time a place some of you may know further north to a small cottage in the village of Fordham which is in today's borough of the Bronx and it was a modest wooden cottage

1:03:46and Poe would walk the grounds of nearby St. John's College now Fordham University and here he wrote some of his most famous works including The Cask of Amontillado and Annabelle Lee but on January 30th 1847 Virginia died in that cottage she was only 24 years old Poe was devastated and he realized that he had no image of her there was no painting or sketch of any

1:04:16kind so at that moment he summoned an artist to the cottage so hours after her death a painter came and captured Virginia in watercolor this is her first and only portrait a deathbed portrait and she's wrapped in a white shawl the same linens in which she would later be laid to rest and Poe himself would die less than three years later in Baltimore under very mysterious circumstances however

1:04:47his spirit lingers on here in New York remember the house on West 3rd Street which was called Amity Street at the time just a couple blocks from here well in 2000 plans were announced by landlord NYU to tear it down for their law school but wait yeah yeah yeah but they kind of save it a little bit they move the building down a couple feet and then they reconstructed

1:05:17its facade it's something okay it's something and they and then they reinstalled that old banister and the staircase from Poe's old house the very the very one in fact that the author climbed every day back in the 1840s and it seems that he still might be climbing that banister law students at NYU have reported seeing a figure in dark clothing slowly going up and down that very staircase a shadowy presence dressed in

1:05:48period clothes from the 1840s up and down he goes refusing to leave his home searching for something or someone once upon a midnight dreary while I pondered weak and weary over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore while I nodded nearly napping suddenly there came a rapping as if someone gently

1:06:18rapping rapping at my chamber door tis some visitor I muttered tapping at my chamber door only this and nothing more and the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain thrilled me filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before thank you it's Cheryl where what do you mean where there Cheryl who took you tis I Edgar Allan Poe

1:06:49you can have your raven back she does nothing for me our what that that's not a raven that's a crow Cheryl Crow she's a prop from Party City a crow yeah she's a stuffed crow named after a famous musician well that's creative well actually Cheryl you look great I knew a change would do you good sorry Poe all we want to do is have some fun every day is a winding road around here oh it's true

1:07:19no more lame jokes fine if it makes you happy quote the raven nevermore and have a great New York week whether you live here or not thank you thank you very much thank you cheers ciao thank you thank you thank you thank you