Little House of Horrors

Curious Expeditions, Flickr

If I’ve learned anything from the mystery solving teens on Scooby-Doo, it’s that ghosts are nothing more than profit hungry realtors wearing sheets over their heads. With this in mind, I was skeptical that Manhattan’s most haunted house was actually haunted. For years, staff and visitors at the Merchant’s House Museum on East 4^th St have claimed to have supernatural encounters. They say they can’t explain the phenomena, but they believe that something other than antique furniture lurks through its corridors. 
     I decided to see the house for myself, and told myself to keep an open mind. I went on a sunny weekend afternoon, which I admit isn’t ideal haunted house weather. For the $5 admission price, I could see all the ghosts I wanted. However, the museum doesn’t focus on its spooky history. Above all, it’s a historic institution that preserves the house the way it was when the original owners lived there in the mid 1800s.

 It’s only when I asked the staff directly about the ghosts that they opened up about their experiences. The visiting services coordinator told me about how one night as she was closing up, she saw a man sitting in the hallway. A second later he was gone. While this seems unusual, she speaks of the ghosts as if they were no different than the other furniture and antiques in the museum.

“Whatever’s here is here,” she said, “It comes and goes as it pleases.”

 One of the tour guides hasn’t had a personal encounter but said she’ll take her colleague’s word for it. But an oral haunted history wasn’t good enough for me; I had to see these ghosts with my own eyes.

  Before joining the guided tour of the house, I decided to roam the halls by myself, in case the ghosts were shy. In the kitchen, I sat on a wooden bench facing the cast iron stove. I looked around to make sure no one was close by. Quietly, almost inaudibly, I asked if there was anyone there. There was no response. Feeling more confident, I spoke louder and more clearly, hoping a ghost would reveal itself to me. I was out of luck. I lacked the high tech gear of a paranormal investigation team, but I figured my politeness would be enough for a spooky conversation.

 My fellow tour takers and I saw a lot of old furniture and heard stories about life in the 19^th century, but we didn’t see any ghosts. As our tour guide went into detail about the merchant’s original writing desk, I thought about something the visiting services coordinator told me. According to her, the house is so enriched in the past that the ghosts are the result of a rip in the space-time continuum.

Even with the lack of paranormal encounters, a trip to the museum can still be scary. As our group descended the narrow, winding staircase the elderly woman behind me paused to make an observation.

“These stairs scare the shit out of me.”