Gothic Gotham: New York City’s Most Haunting Locations

Program Type:

Virtual

Age Group:

Adults
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Event Details

If you like spooky things, we’re sure you’ve seen every “Top Ten Most Haunted Places in NYC” list on the internet by now. But you’ve never heard the stories told like this before. 

Join Andrea Janes, founder of Boroughs of the Dead and author of AMERICA’S MOST GOTHIC for a virtual tour of the most haunting places in New York City with the Tappan Library this October.

Janes presents her favorite haunted places, gothic stories, and secret histories learned over ten years of leading macabre-themed walking tours in New York City. More than just retelling the same tales you’ve heard so often, Janes applies the insights and analyses she shares in her Stoker Award-nominated nonfiction books to highlight not just how we tell ghost stories but why. 

What lessons do these tales impart to us? How do hidden histories emerge in the built environment of modern New York? How do ghost stories function not only as lore and cautionary tales, but also provide us with opportunities to process our own fears and anxieties about modern, urban life? And how can one responsibly tell these stories in the context of verifiable history? 

Stories told will include: 

  • A haunted house in Astoria that was the scene of unfathomable horror and revenge 

  • The tale of a hidden chamber and the beautiful girl who starved to death inside it in 18th century Flatbush

  • An actress whose haunting tale has left a lingering, eerie aura in her former home, called one of the most frightening houses in New York 

  • Devilishly gorgeous apartment buildings with macabre associations in real life and horror fiction 

  • And more!

A strange, haunting, and unforgettable approach to the stories you thought you knew, this talk will shift your perception of NYC and its ghosts forever. These tales all have a lush, eerie, atmosphere redolent of the Gothic, yet all are drawn from real-life, stranger-than-fiction history. 

Registrants will automatically be entered in a Giveaway to receive a FREE signed first edition of Andrea’s latest book, AMERICA’S MOST GOTHIC: HAUNTED HISTORY STRANGER THAN FICTION