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Amityville
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Okay, so the ghost story is probably total rubbish, but this is still the house where Ronald DeFeo murdered his six family members. Why haven't they turned this into a bed and breakfast yet? | |
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Elmira
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Lady Hourglass writes: "Saw that you mentioned Andersonville, and thought I would share the Yankee version. Twisted little muffin that I am, I have been on an American Civilwar prison camp kick and have been doing a little research into the topic. Elmira Prison Camp was 1/3rd the size of Andersonville, but had a higher mortality rate, 31% or more, and had none of the Confederacy/Andersonville's excuses (ie. a lack of supply, rural environment, lack of trained staff)" | |
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Geneva
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Robert recommends this supposedly haunted site: "Supposedly, you can hear singing ghosts in this Gothic style mansion." | |
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New
York City
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The site of the 9/11 disaster. As things get rebuilt it's not as interesting as it used to be... | |
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I can't tell you
how much this place disappointed me during my visit in July, 2003.
For some inexplicable reason, I had imagined a full-size museum exhibit
with a nice big hall full of huge canvas posters hanging from the
ground, and filled with display cases filled with all manner of sideshow
memorabilia. However, this is actually a VERY tiny (as in more than
3 people would be a mob) room adjacent to an even tinier shop. For
$5.00 you can spend a few minutes looking in a few cases and at sideshow
stuff on the walls. Granted, the material itself was interesting...
but I couldn't help but feel that $5.00 was a steep price for so tiny
a collection. And the website
itself is misleading, making it sound like it overflowed with freakish
entertainment, which it certainly does not. And, worse still, they
don't even let you take pictures inside (undoubtedly because it would
reveal how small the collection really is), hence I have no pictures
of the place to share with you. Update: The Freakatorium closed its doors on December 31, 2004. There has been no announcement of where (or whether) they will open again. Alas... Guess I shouldn't have been so hard on them... |
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| Kathleen recommends this memorial to a horrible riverboat fire which killed over 1,000 people in 1904: "The next time you're in NYC you may want to stop by the General Slocum memorial in Tompkins Square Park. After the Slocum fire the entire East Village neighborhood changed radically. Most of the hundreds of children who died in the fire were the children of local German immigrants, and the surviving families, stricken with grief, moved en masse either uptown to Germantown or left the city entirely." | ||
| From Wikipedia: "Green-Wood Cemetery was founded in 1838 as a rural cemetery in Brooklyn, New York, several blocks west of Prospect Park. In the New York Times it was said to be the "ambition of the New Yorker to live upon the Fifth Avenue, to take his airings in the Central Park, and to sleep with his fathers in Green-Wood". Inspired by Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where a cemetery in a naturalistic park-like landscape in the English manner was first established, Green-Wood was able to take advantage of the varied topography provided by glacial moraines. The cemetery was the idea of Henry Evelyn Pierrepoint, a Brooklyn social leader. It was a popular tourist attraction in the 1850s and was the place most famous New Yorkers who died during the second half of the nineteenth century were buried. It is still an operating cemetery with approximately 600,000 graves. The rolling hills and dales, several ponds and an on-site chapel provide an environment that still draws visitors. On weekends cars are allowed on cemetery grounds. There are several famous monuments located there, including a statue of DeWitt Clinton and a Civil War Memorial. During the Civil War, Green-Wood Cemetery created the "Soldiers' Lot" for free veterans' burials." Suggested by Kathleen. | ||
| Recommended
by Burleyque: "The Jekyll and Hyde Club in New York is aimed at kids, but its still very morbid, decorated with rotting skeletons, specimens, framed anatomical and insect drawings, talking gargoyles, ghostly widows, TVs playing old b&w scary movies and a bar on every floor for adults to 'get into the spirit' (and they're watched over by deceased bartender 'Max Gorey' : "He served Dr. Jekyll and his companions for years, mixing such potent drinks as the "Cerebral Hemorrhage" and the "Spine Smasher". Max perished in an unfortunate blender accident. In the words of club member Lucifer Garrotte, "Max was a good bartender, but he was a great Daiquiri.")It's the kind of sick place I'd take my kids if I had any, and I'd take my friends kids just to try and corrupt them. Apparently the same company has a couple of other bars in the city and a dance club. |
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| From urbanlens: "At first it seems the island is nothing but an oasis greenery in the East River. Then you notice the buildings and smokestacks poking through the mess of vines and trees. These are the remains of a complex of buildings that once housed unfortunate victims of the most hideous contagious diseases of the 19th and 20th centuries, including tuberculosis, typhoid fever and smallpox. When these diseases were tamed, the island found a new use as a home for troubled and drug-addicted youth, but the program proved unsuccessful and funding for it vanished. After the program closed in the 1950s, the island was abandoned, and quickly claimed again by nature. Today the island is an informal sanctuary for birds. One must be cautious of the nests of eggs hidden on the ground in the dense growth covering the island. The birds have a truly fascinating home- an unpopulated island in the middle of New York City. An island once home to the infamous Typhoid Mary, an island that bore witness to a horrifying nautical disaster - the wreck of the General Slocum, and an island that occasionally has harbored escaped convicts from nearby Riker's Island." (Thanks to Kathleen for the suggestion.) | ||
| There are lots of interesting things on Roosevelt Island - especially the ruins of an old castle-like Smallpox Hospital (Renwick Hospital), a bacteriology laboratory, and an asylum. Now, why on earth arent' these buildings protected landmarks? (Thanks to Kathleen for the suggestion.) | ||
| Kathleen recommends this site: "Have you been to the Hanging Tree in Washington Square Park? The park is in Greenwich Village in Manhattan, and the tree is located in the Northwest corner of the park. It's huge, and the plaque describing its history is above eye level on the north side of the tree. Don't ask one of the friendly cops in the park for help locating it, they appear to have standing orders to misdirect tourists looking for it. The park itself was a potter's field in the early days of NYC. It was only closed after the monied gentry decided they wanted to live around the park square. The paved walkways in the park were laid down right over the graves. In the late 1950's or early 1960's NYU (which now owns most of the buildings around the park) was having some renovation work done that included major electrical upgrades. The work came to an abrupt halt when the Con Ed workers unearthed some bodies in yellow shrouds at the edge of the park. Yellow shrouds were used for people who had died of Yellow Fever! As you can imagine, the Con Ed guys just covered it all up with cement and asphalt, moved a few feet over, and started digging again. The current Potter's field is on Hart Island." | ||
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Rochester
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John recommends this site: "Rochester is the home of Kodak, and one morbid local spot is the George Eastman house. George shot himself in the bedroom of his mansion. It's a beautiful place, now used mostly to highlight photographic and film arts." | |
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Karen
sends the following recommendation: |
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Sleepy
Hollow
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The
Old Dutch Burying Ground & Sleepy Hollow Cemetery
A Comtesse Travelogue! |
Come visit the olde Dutch Burying Ground and the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery and see the grave of Washington Irving. Surely Ichabod would approve? |
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ABANDONED PLACES Buffalo
State Hospital Hart
Island Mt.
Loretto Girls Orphanage NY
Correction History Society Staten Island Boat Graveyard |
 Wicked Words... |
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