Even though NYC has lots of scary sites year-round, we think Halloween is the greatest time to visit them. These spooky homes, medieval cemeteries, and decrepit smallpox hospitals will shock you to the bone.
When Halloween rolls around, we start thinking about costumes, decorations, and where to go for screams or a haunting. Some seek out NYC’s top haunted houses, designed to scare, while others seek out our own backyard haunts. NYC’s top ghost tours will show you terrible sites and tell terrifying stories of genuine crimes, tragic deaths, and ghostly hauntings.
You can explore these scary NYC spots alone if you’re daring. Once you discover all these haunted places, you may want to change your after-hours routine. Not a fan of proximity scares? Scream at home with the greatest terrifying movies.
1. Morris-Jumel Mansion
The palace where George Washington temporarily kept his headquarters during the Revolutionary War and where Aaron Burr lived with his wife, Eliza Bowen Jumel, is a must-see for history buffs. The Washington Heights home, Manhattan’s oldest, has been haunted.
2. North Brother Island
Though small, this island east of the Bronx and north of Astoria has a dismal history. The 1904 steamboat collapse killed nearly 1,000 people, making it New York’s deadliest disaster until September 11. From 1885 to the mid-20th century, Riverside Hospital treated and isolated patients with deadly contagious diseases such smallpox, TB, measles, scarlet fever, and polio. In 1938, Typhoid Mary Mallon died after two decades there.
3. Green-Wood Cemetery
This 478-acre cemetery, home to New Yorkers including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Leonard Bernstein, and Civil War and World War I fatalities, offers a frightening, moonlit tour. We recommend visiting during one of Green-Wood’s special events, such as a string quartet concert in the catacombs or site-specific installations and performances.
4. The homes on Governors Island
Governors Island is a verdant city escape, but its military past and deserted homes make it eerie. Castle Williams, a circular structure built between 1796 and 1811, was a Union Army prison, defense system, and full-time prison. The 3,500 residents of Colonels Row and Nolan Park were moved in 1966. The homes’ peeling paint and eerie quiet make it seem like the residents simply fled.
5. Quaker cemetery in Prospect Park
Imagine enjoying a picnic on Prospect Park’s Long Meadow. A trek in the woods leads to a tall wire fence and some very old gravestones. Freaky! You can feel assured that this cemetery is well maintained—2,000 Quakers from over 150 years ago are buried here.
6. Renwick Smallpox Hospital
This gloomy stone Gothic Revival edifice isolated and treated sick people on Blackwell (now Roosevelt) Island in the 19th century, when smallpox killed thousands. The hospital’s remains, on the island’s Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park, are a civic landmark despite decades of inactivity.
7. The Tugboat Graveyard
Boats perish there, or used to. The Arthur Kill boat graveyard is between Staten Island and New Jersey. Ghosts of New York’s shipping industry haunt the graveyard. The Witte Marine Equipment Company scrapped and demolished obsolete tugboats, barges, and ferries, which amassed on the shore for a century. Due to its creepy atmosphere, curious (and brave?) individuals tour it by boat and kayak.
8. Merchant’s House Museum
The Tredwell family once owned this old NoHo townhouse, and one member may still live there. Gertrude Tredwell, the last Tredwell to live in the house until her 1933 death, may be watching over her childhood home. After three years as an under-the-radar museum, odd sights, sounds, and odors have been observed. Since ghost tours are regular, the crew seems unfazed.
9. Hell Gate Bridge
Can we presume that any “Hell Gate” is haunted? New Yorkers have been frightened by urban legends and ghost stories concerning the East River bridge connecting Queens and Ward’s Island for decades. Urban Ghosts claims a monstrous ghost train traverses the bridge at night. Some have seen a demonic train carrying the souls of those who died in the water below.
10. City Hall station
This station’s beautiful tiles, skylights, arches, and chandeliers have survived substantially unaltered since the station ceased operating in 1945, unlike most NYC subway stations. Tours of this once-great hub sell out quickly, but if you stay on the 6 train to the end of the line at Brooklyn Bridge and City Hall as it switches to the uptown track, you can see the abandoned station where (we assume) commuters from the past wait for their train.