7 Most Haunted Places in New York City: Ghosts, Murder & Dark NYC Legends

New York City is built on the dead.

That sounds dramatic.

It is also, in many places, literally true.

For more than four hundred years, New York has buried cemeteries, demolished prisons, abandoned hospitals, sealed subway tunnels, paved over battlefields, and constructed some of the most expensive real estate on Earth above places where thousands of people suffered and died.

Most visitors look up.

At the skyline.

At the lights.

At the penthouses.

But occasionally, New York gives you a reason to look somewhere else.

Behind you.

Into an upstairs window.

Down an empty hallway.

Or beneath your feet.

Some of the most famously haunted places in New York City are scattered across Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and Roosevelt Island, making them impossible to experience on one reasonable walking route.

So we collected several of the creepiest.

And if you want to actually walk through New York’s dark history yourself, Ghost Tour Fun offers a completely self-guided New York City ghost tour you can take from your phone at www.ghosttour.fun.

Put on your headphones.

We’re going somewhere unpleasant.

1. Merchant’s House Museum — The Woman Who Never Moved Out

Imagine standing alone inside a nineteenth-century Manhattan bedroom.

Nobody else is upstairs.

Then the floorboards creak.

One step.

Another.

Another.

They are coming toward you.

The Merchant’s House Museum on East Fourth Street is one of New York City’s most famous haunted houses.

Built in 1832, the home was occupied by the Tredwell family for generations. Members of the family were born here.

They lived here.

And several of them died here.

The most famous is Gertrude Tredwell.

Gertrude spent almost her entire life inside the house and died there in 1933 at the age of 93.

According to the legends, she never entirely left.

Visitors and staff have reported inexplicable footsteps, unusual smells, doors moving, strange sounds, and sightings of a mysterious woman dressed in nineteenth-century clothing.

Gertrude is usually blamed.

Perhaps she simply liked the house.

Considering Manhattan real estate prices, refusing to leave a rent-free property after death might actually be financially responsible.

Still...

Imagine being the last person inside at night.

You hear a woman walking around upstairs.

And you know exactly which bedroom she died in.

Would you investigate?

Or would you decide that whatever Gertrude wants, she can have it?

2. Morris-Jumel Mansion — Manhattan’s Haunted Revolutionary Mansion

Now travel far uptown.

The traffic begins to fade.

The towers become more distant.

And standing above the surrounding neighborhood is a house that has watched New York transform for more than 250 years.

The Morris-Jumel Mansion dates to 1765 and is Manhattan’s oldest surviving residence.

George Washington temporarily used it as a military headquarters during the Revolutionary War.

Generals passed through it.

Wealthy families occupied it.

People grew old inside it.

People died inside it.

And eventually, visitors began reporting that some of them might still be there.

Stories surrounding the mansion include phantom footsteps, unexplained voices, strange figures appearing inside rooms, and apparitions associated with former inhabitants.

That is the problem with extremely old houses.

Every staircase has been climbed tens of thousands of times.

Every bedroom has witnessed sickness.

Every hallway has heard arguments nobody remembers.

And every room contains moments that disappeared when the people who experienced them died.

Unless they didn't.

Picture yourself outside the mansion after sunset.

One upstairs window is dark.

Then somebody walks past it.

You look again.

Nothing.

Would you go inside?

3. Roosevelt Island Smallpox Hospital — The Ruins Across the Water

This may be the most horror-movie-looking place in New York City.

On Roosevelt Island, facing the glittering towers of Manhattan, stands the skeletal ruin of an old smallpox hospital.

Its Gothic windows are empty.

Its roof is gone.

Plants creep through the structure.

At night, the building becomes a dark shell silhouetted against one of the richest cities in the world.

The hospital opened during the nineteenth century, when smallpox remained one of the most feared diseases on Earth.

Patients were isolated here.

Many recovered.

Others did not.

Today the ruined structure remains standing like the corpse of the institution itself.

And naturally, people have wondered whether everyone who entered actually left.

Stories surrounding abandoned hospitals almost always follow the same pattern.

Movement behind windows.

Voices from empty rooms.

Figures where figures should not be.

The Smallpox Hospital has something even creepier going for it:

You can see Manhattan from the ruins.

Imagine dying here while the city continued living across the water.

Now imagine watching it for another hundred years.

4. Green-Wood Cemetery — Brooklyn’s City of the Dead

Cross into Brooklyn and you will find an entire city built for people who no longer breathe.

Green-Wood Cemetery opened in 1838 and eventually became the final resting place for hundreds of thousands of people.

It is enormous.

Rolling hills.

Old trees.

Stone angels.

Mausoleums.

Crypts.

Monuments disappearing into the distance.

During daylight, Green-Wood can be extraordinarily beautiful.

That is precisely what makes it unsettling.

Because every path eventually reminds you what the landscape actually contains.

Bodies.

Generation after generation of them.

New Yorkers who died before electricity.

Before cars.

Before skyscrapers.

Before the Brooklyn Bridge.

And over the decades, stories have naturally accumulated.

Apparitions.

Unexplained sounds.

Figures appearing near graves.

That moment when somebody seems to be standing farther down the path...

and then isn't.

Here is your challenge:

Imagine you are somewhere deep inside Green-Wood.

It is almost dark.

You have taken the wrong path.

Your phone battery is at 2%.

Then, fifty yards ahead, someone steps out from behind a mausoleum.

They don't move.

What do you do?

5. The House of Death — Greenwich Village

Some haunted places look haunted.

This one looks expensive.

At 14 West 10th Street in Greenwich Village stands an elegant brownstone sometimes known by a considerably less elegant nickname:

The House of Death.

The property has accumulated decades of paranormal folklore.

Stories describe apparitions supposedly belonging to former residents, mysterious figures inside the building, and other unexplained phenomena.

Writer Mark Twain once lived here and later became one of the spirits allegedly associated with the building.

But the history of the address also contains very real tragedy.

That combination makes the house particularly disturbing.

Because there is no abandoned ruin.

No cemetery gate.

No crumbling hospital.

It is simply a beautiful townhouse on a beautiful Manhattan street.

People pass it constantly.

Dogs are walked outside.

Cars drive by.

People laugh.

Restaurants are nearby.

And according to the stories, the dead remain inside.

That may be one of the defining characteristics of haunted New York.

The city never stops simply because somebody died.

It builds around them.

6. Fort Totten — Something in the Tunnels

Now we leave Manhattan.

Far out in Queens sits Fort Totten.

Old military structures.

Fortifications.

Dark corridors.

Underground spaces.

Rooms constructed for wars that never reached New York.

The property dates back to the nineteenth century and contains exactly the sort of architecture that produces ghost stories almost automatically.

Imagine walking into an old military tunnel.

Your footsteps echo against the walls.

Then you stop.

The footsteps continue.

One.

Two.

Three.

Then silence.

Stories associated with Fort Totten have included phantom soldiers, inexplicable noises, shadowy figures, and uncomfortable encounters inside its old structures.

Whether ghosts actually inhabit the fort is impossible to prove.

But there is one rule worth remembering whenever you enter an old tunnel:

If you hear footsteps behind you...

don't immediately assume they are echoes.

7. The Dakota — Death Outside the Door

At the edge of Central Park stands one of New York City's most famous apartment buildings.

The Dakota.

Its enormous stone exterior looks less like an apartment complex than a fortress.

The building has been home to celebrities, artists, musicians, and some of New York's wealthiest residents.

It also became the location of one of the city's most infamous murders.

John Lennon was shot outside the Dakota on December 8, 1980.

But supernatural stories surrounding the building did not begin with Lennon's death.

For decades, residents and visitors have associated the Dakota with unusual experiences and alleged apparitions.

The building's strange architecture only adds to the atmosphere.

Arched entrances.

Shadowed windows.

Interior courtyards hidden from the street.

Hundreds of rooms containing more than a century of private lives.

Imagine how many people have slept inside those walls.

How many arguments.

How many deaths.

How many secrets.

New York has thousands of apartment buildings.

But very few have acquired a reputation like this one.

THE HAUNTED NYC CHALLENGE

Now you have seven locations.

Be honest.

Which would you enter alone after midnight?

Merchant's House?

Morris-Jumel Mansion?

The abandoned Smallpox Hospital?

Green-Wood Cemetery?

The House of Death?

Fort Totten?

The Dakota?

Going inside during daylight doesn't count.

And neither does bringing six friends.

The Problem With Seeing Haunted New York

There is one major problem with the places on this list.

They are everywhere.

Queens.

Brooklyn.

Roosevelt Island.

Upper Manhattan.

Greenwich Village.

The Upper West Side.

You could spend an entire day traveling between them.

That is why our New York City ghost tour does something different.

We chose an area where centuries of New York's darkest history are concentrated within walking distance:

Lower Manhattan.

Here, catastrophe happened on top of catastrophe.

Old cemeteries.

Churchyards.

Explosions.

Forgotten prisons.

Abandoned infrastructure.

Murder.

Disaster.

And an underground city most tourists never think about.

Ghost Tour Fun's self-guided New York City ghost walking tour lets you explore it entirely from your smartphone.

There is no tour guide to meet.

No group.

No scheduled departure time.

No need to keep pace with thirty strangers.

Go to www.ghosttour.fun, put on your headphones, and walk into the darker side of New York whenever you are ready.

Why Take a Self-Guided NYC Ghost Tour?

A normal ghost tour belongs to the guide.

A self-guided ghost tour belongs to you.

Start when you want.

Pause when you want.

Stop for dinner.

Get a drink.

Take photographs.

Replay a story.

Spend longer somewhere that interests you.

Or keep moving when somewhere makes you uncomfortable.

And in New York, headphones create an entirely different experience.

The city becomes part of the soundtrack.

A subway train rumbles beneath the pavement.

A siren echoes between skyscrapers.

Steam rises from a street grate.

Somebody walks behind you.

You turn.

Just another pedestrian.

Probably.

Then the narration continues.

There Are Two New Yorks

Everyone knows the New York above ground.

The skyline.

Broadway.

Wall Street.

Central Park.

Restaurants.

Hotels.

Penthouse apartments glowing hundreds of feet above the streets.

But another New York exists beneath it.

Old foundations.

Buried graves.

Abandoned stations.

Sealed rooms.

Utility tunnels.

Forgotten pieces of a city that existed before the skyscrapers arrived.

The New York above ground wants you to look up.

Ghost stories make you look somewhere else.

Down the alley.

Through the cemetery gate.

Into the upstairs window.

Toward the person who seems to be standing behind you in the reflection.

And sometimes...

beneath your feet.

If that is the New York you want to experience, take the New York City Self-Guided Ghost Tour from Ghost Tour Fun at www.ghosttour.fun.

Bring headphones.

Charge your phone.

And enjoy the city above.

Just don't forget what is underneath it.