New York Ghost Tours
Whether you are a New Yorker or just visiting, don't miss the many ghost tours and haunted neighborhoods throughout the city.
The Ghosts of New York Walking Tour
This tour promises "the haunted New York experience." The tours are 90 minutes long and the total walking distance is less than a mile. Tours are conducted by Phil Schoenburg, a professor of history at Queens College, and his assistants. There are separate tours with different themes, such as the "Peter Stuyvesant and his Ghostly Friends of the East Village" tour, which will take you through the old haunts of such men as Edgar Allan Poe and Harry Houdini. There is also the "Ghosts of Times Square" tour, which takes you through the eerie history of the theatre district.
Crypt Keeper Tours New York
This tour company, which does not have a website but only a phone number (and a P.O. box maintained by a "Mistress Craven") will reportedly shuttle you around the city in a hearse while playing a CD that describes the "demise of New York's infamously deceased."
Greenwich Village
This has the highest ghost population of any of New York's neighborhoods. A psychic medium says that the unconventional arrangements of streets are a haven for spirit activity. It claims many famous ghosts, including Dylan Thomas and the troubled daughter of Aaron Burr. Some Greenwich Village haunted spots to check out are the restaurant One if by Land, Two if by Sea, which is sometimes visited by Burr's daughter, and the historic Merchant's House Museum, which is home to a reclusive spinster who died nearly a century ago.
Washington Square Park
Now adjacent to NYU, this park was once an execution ground for criminals sentenced to death by the noose. After the grisly sentences had been carried out, many of the dead were buried beneath the gallows trees. Some of them are rumored to still be hanging around the place. Before this, the park was an Indian burial ground. If ghosts are anywhere in New York, they're here.
Tompkins Square Park
Once a haven for drug users and now a dog walkers' park, Tompkins Square is host to an annual Halloween parade for dogs. The only ghosts you're likely to see here will be on leashes and in costume, but you might meet a fellow dog owner who likes the macabre as much as you do.