The Bowery Boys: New York City History
Above: The cover of the New York edition of Brown’s optical illusion book One of the hottest books in New York City in the fall of 1864 was an optical illusion collection that conjured ghosts through a simple trick of the eye. Spectropia, or surprising spectral illusions showing ghosts everywhere and of any colour was… Read More
Hopefully this young lady acquired this turkey by legitimate means. In this week’s podcast, I feign shock at the wild party held at the old home of famed actress Charlotte Melmoth, a former school for etiquette-turned-booze hall. To quote historian Henry Reed Stiles directly: “After [Charlotte’s] disease, the house was converted into a tavern, which… Read More
A 1932 photo of 34-36 Barrow Street by Charles Von Urban, courtesy the Museum of the City of New York. Click here to see what this section of the street looks like today In this week’s Ghost Stories of Old New York podcast, Tom speaks of the ghosts at romantic restaurant One If By Land,… Read More
 The Van Cortlandt House, 1906PODCAST This is the Bowery Boys 7th annual Halloween podcast, with four new scary stories to chill your bones and keep you up at night, generously doused with strange and fascinating facts about New York City. For this episode, we’ve decided to go truly old-school, reaching back to old legends… Read More
Above: The Doppelgänger, a creepy wood engraving from Harper’s Magazine, 1871 (Courtesy NYPL) It’s our favorite time of year — time for the annual Bowery Boys New York ghost stories podcast! The new show — featuring four more frightening tales — will be available this Friday. Catch up on the tradition by listening in to… Read More
Above: While this is the old Brooklyn Schermerhorn house, it’s of a similar type to one that Ms. Melmoth may have owned, quickly becoming a tavern after her death. Less than two hundred years ago, in the area approximate to the neighborhood of Carroll Gardens today, there was a very, very rowdy tavern. It was… Read More
My new column for the Huffington Post just went live. It’s kind of an overview of why we continue to produce ghost story podcasts every year for Halloween. (Well, outside of having a hell of a good time doing them!) And then my countdown of eight of New York City’s most haunted houses — actually… Read More
A session with a ouija board, a haunting illustration from a piece of 1901 sheet music ‘There’s A Charm About The Old Love Still’. (NYPL) PODCAST Our sixth annual ghost story podcast takes a little twist this time around. Oh sure, we have two of New York’s most FAMOUS horror stories in our first part,… Read More
It’s our favorite time of year — time for the annual Bowery Boys New York ghost stories podcast! The new show — featuring four more frightening tales — will be available this Friday. Catch up on the tradition by listening in to our last five ghost story shows. You can listen at the links below,… Read More
Above: The unusual weather this weekend left my pumpkin with an unfortunate new hairstyle. We hope you all have a fun and safe Halloween this year! In this year’s ghost-story podcast, I talked about a haunted church in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Apparently, other spirits find the neighborhood desirable. I’m reprinting an article from three years ago… Read More
Above: the Algonquin Hotel, home to those bawdy rakes of the Round Table during the 1920s. You may find yourself meeting one of them even today. A special illustrated version of our ghost-story podcast, Spooky Stories of New York (Episode #65). is now available on our NYC History Archive feed. Just hit play and images… Read More
PODCAST It’s our fourth annual Halloween history special, and we’ve got four bloodcurdling stories for the season. The first three are spooky ghost tales — a haunted boardinghouse on 14th street with violent, vain spirits; a short history of New York’s seance craze and a man tormented by the spirit of a dead painter; and… Read More
The Algonquin Hotel: the hippest haunt for the dead writer set By popular demand, we return to the creepier tales of New York City history, ghost tales and stories of murder and mayhem, all of them at some point involving great American icons — Alexander Hamilton, P.T. Barnum, Dorothy Parker and Mark Twain. Listen to… Read More
From the podcast: David Belasco and some his feminine daliances. Belasco is still believed to haunt his theater on 44th St. A city this size certainly has its share of ghosts, and the Bowery Boys spend the spooky season with some of the most famous — a suicide showgirl, a grumpy landowner, a womanizing theater… Read More