Dreadful Places

by Aaron Mahnke

  It turns out that the man looked a lot like Mark Twain, who had lived there for a year in 1901. Twain’s real name, of course, was Samuel Clemens. All of this was too much for Bartell, though, who committed suicide in 1973, just before publishing a book of her experiences there. Today, many New Yorkers refer to the old brownstone as the House of Death.

  But death happens all over the city. It always has, but more often than not, the reason is more human than supernatural. In fact, one of the first highly public murder trials in New York City happened way back in 1799, although it still haunts the area to this day. That was the year a twenty-one-year-old woman named Elma Sands was killed and dumped into a well on Spring Street in Manhattan.

  Her killer, according to the prosecution, was her wealthy fiancé, Levi Weeks. While much of the witness testimony and evidence pointed to Weeks as the true killer, his wealth brought a team of powerful attorneys to the courtroom: Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton.

  Oh, and if any of that sounds even the least bit familiar, go ahead and assume you’re the smartest in the room.

  Weeks got off the hook, but Elma Sands has apparently refused to slip away. The well was covered by a building in the 1820s, and for decades the site played host to a restaurant. Reports of unusual activity in the building have been nonstop ever since, including plates and silverware that have been seen floating. Some have even claimed to see the ghost of Elma herself crawling out of the well, now located in the basement.

  There’s also the small matter of the curse. According to legend, as Burr and Hamilton were exiting the courtroom after their victory, Elma Sands’s cousin Catherine Ring blocked their path and shouted a prediction to the room. “If you die a natural death,” she cried, “I will think there is no justice in heaven.” Then she pointed at Hamilton, who would be killed just four years later by Burr.

  But you don’t have to take part in a murder trial to attract the attention of the dead. In fact, if you believe the stories, life is full of moments with the potential to leave us feeling haunted. And few locations in New York City can compare to one historic neighborhood near Prospect Park.

  But the story that lies dormant beneath the ground there is far worse than a shallow graveyard or body in the well. It’s a tale of secret rooms, violent politics, and a love that refused to die.

  HIDDEN AWAY

  The area of Brooklyn known today as Flatbush began life as a Dutch colony in 1651. The name comes from the original appearance of the landscape, which was described as a flat, wooded plain. It’s difficult to imagine, given the urban sprawl of modern New York, but for a while Flatbush was a wide-open collection of forests and farms.

  Roughly a century later, the city was under British rule, and that meant the old Dutch architecture was slowly giving way to English manors. And one of those newer homes was built in 1749 by an Englishman by the name of Lane. He came from a wealthy family that didn’t care for his drunken parties and new lower-class wife, and so New York became his home in exile.

  Life didn’t change much for him in the colonies, though. The parties continued unchecked, and his grand manor, which he called Melrose Hall, became the centerpiece of local gossip. And then, some years later, he stepped outside during one of his celebrations and never returned. As far as I can tell, no one knows what happened to Mr. Lane after that.

  But Melrose Hall remained, and from the descriptions that survive, it was quite the home. It was two and a half stories tall, with a gabled roof that created numerous small spaces—something Lane had apparently taken advantage of. The right-side wing of the house held the dining room and library, while the left wing contained a large banquet hall. But it wasn’t this collection of traditional rooms that gave the house its flavor. No, the true personality came from its hidden parts.

  According to one writer in 1888, the fireplace in the banquet hall was flanked by two closets. And it was inside one of them that a secret door could be found. It only unlocked from the outside, but once unlocked it revealed a narrow staircase that led to a hidden bedroom above the hall.

  Across the house in the dining room, another secret passage was hidden behind a piece of furniture. One writer claims that the whole thing swung outward like a door, and that walking through it would take you into the slave quarters. And as if that weren’t enough, the home even had a small vaulted dungeon beneath the main house.

  At the same time, a few miles to the north, in lower Manhattan, a man named William Axtell was growing restless. He was a merchant who’d spent most of his life in Jamaica as part of the business, but had moved to New York in the 1750s. But the city was expanding around him, and it was time to find more space and solitude.

  So when a home as textured and unique as Melrose Hall suddenly became available for purchase, Axtell didn’t blink. But before he and his family arrived to move in, he sent someone ahead of them: his mistress, Isabell.

  Now, history is a bit foggy on who she really was. Some say she was his wife’s sister, while others claim she was a woman he met in Jamaica. She was described as tall and dark, with long black hair and a kind, beautiful smile. And when she showed up at the house ahead of Axtell and his wife, it was Miranda—one of the Axtells’ most trusted slaves—who welcomed her inside and guided her to the secret bedroom above the banquet hall.

  Miranda would, in fact, become Isabell’s lifeline. Since she couldn’t open the door in the closet from her side, it was up to Miranda to bring her food and care for her needs. It was also a responsibility that Miranda kept entirely to herself, at the request of William Axtell.

  Once the family had moved in, the lovers fell into a new, clandestine routine. Once a week at midnight, William would creep downstairs to the banquet hall and sit by the fire. Then Miranda would appear and open the closet beside the fireplace, unlock the secret door, and release Isabell from her hidden chamber. Then the lovers would…well, whatever lovers do. You get the idea.

  All of this went on for years. By day, Axtell ran his merchant business and worked for the English crown as a member of the Governor’s Council. At night, though, he secretly met with his mistress. It wasn’t honest, but you could certainly call him busy, I suppose.

  But life was about to change dramatically in Melrose Hall. Those midnight trysts would continue, of course, but daily life for William Axtell was about to slip into chaos and danger. You see, war had arrived. Not in some far-off land, or even a few miles away. No, when the Battle of Brooklyn took place on August 27, 1776, it happened in the worst possible location.

  Right in Axtell’s backyard.

  LOCK AND KEY

  All of this was bad news for William Axtell. He was an English loyalist who stood to lose everything—power, money, land, all of it—if the Americans managed to succeed. And in 1776, the Battle of Brooklyn showed just how close to home this new war for independence could get.

  As a member of the Governor’s Council, he had a duty to perform. So it was common for rebel leaders to be captured and transferred to his personal dungeon below Melrose Hall. But it wasn’t enough to hide them away from the watchful eye of the rebels; Axtell was being pushed toward action by the king.

  He was told to gather five hundred men and get ready to march. It wasn’t clear if he would be gone for weeks or months, but he would be out of the house and away from his lover, Isabell. And that’s when a problem occurred to him: Miranda, the slave woman who cared for Isabell and kept their secret from the rest of the household, was getting along in years.

  In fact, she was old enough that Axtell feared she might be close to death. Which, as we all know, would be a very bad thing. Because without Axtell around, Miranda was the only access that Isabell had to food and water. That secret door in the closet only opened from Miranda’s side, and if she were to die…well, that hidden bedroom would slowly transform, first into a prison, and then into a tomb.

  So the n
ight before his departure, Axtell went to the banquet hall at their appointed time and waited for Miranda to open the door and lead Isabell to his side. When she arrived, he made his case. Leave, he told her. Run away and find safety someplace else. He even handed her a bag of gold and told her to use it to take care of herself while he was gone.

  But Isabell didn’t take the news well. She felt as though William was trying to abandon her, that he was essentially breaking up with her and using his impending military tour as an excuse. She screamed and threw the coins back at him and ranted about his motives. And then she ran back to the secret staircase inside the open closet, closed the door, and vanished from sight.

  They say that he was gone for a full year, far longer than he’d expected. In his absence, the very thing he had feared might happen did. Miranda, the only keeper of his secret, became sick and died. Legend says that on her deathbed she tried to tell the others about Isabell, but everyone thought it was just the madness of a dying woman.

  Weeks later, William Axtell rode up the path to his beautiful estate and entered his home for the first time in a year. His wife welcomed him home. His adopted niece, Eliza Shipton, did the same. And then they led him into the banquet hall, where a gathering of his friends waited for him. The moment he walked through that door, the party began.

  But it wasn’t all laughter and joy. Axtell kept glancing at the closet door beside the fireplace. He longed to hold Isabell, to kiss her and hear her voice. But something was troubling him: he had seen no sign of Miranda since arriving.

  The legend tells us that Axtell got up from his seat at one point in the night and ran across the house to the slave quarters. There he was greeted with the terrifying news that Miranda had passed away weeks before. And that’s when panic fully gripped his heart.

  He staggered back into the banquet hall and wandered slowly through the gathering of people. They were laughing and singing and talking joyfully, but he couldn’t hear their voices anymore. All he could think about was Isabell and the secret room that had become her prison. That’s when the impossible happened: every single candle in the room went out.

  At first everything was dark, but then a subtle glow began to illuminate the edges of the room. One newspaper from 1886 described it as a “sickly glowworm light.” Then the sounds began. They were soft at first, low and distant, as if they were coming from a great distance. And then, just as they exploded in volume, the closet burst open and the secret door swung outward.

  That 1886 article described the woman who stepped out as “ashen pale, each vein strongly defined on the emaciated features, her long black hair hung drooping over her shoulders to the floor, and she seemed clad in airy gossamer.” She didn’t walk so much as glide, and she headed straight toward William Axtell.

  The room was silent. Every eye was on this strange new visitor. Maybe they were frightened. Perhaps they were waiting to see if this macabre performance would end in applause. Or maybe they were under some sort of spell. Whatever the reason, not a single sound could be heard as the pale shape came to a stop just inches from their host.

  The woman lifted her hand, a single finger extended, and aimed it at Axtell’s face. And then she opened her mouth and uttered a single, chilling word.

  “Betrayer,” she said.

  And then the glow vanished, leaving all of them in pitch darkness.

  When candles were brought in and lit, the guests found no sign of the pale woman, but they did see something else: Axtell was sprawled out on the floor, eyes closed and body motionless. He was moved to his bedroom almost immediately, and a doctor was called to the house. But the legend tells us that it was all futile.

  Colonel William Axtell, they say, died that very night.

  BURIED TRUTH

  In places as old and sprawling as New York City, history is bound to get buried beneath the bustle of everyday life. The tragedy of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire evolved into a watershed moment for labor reform and working conditions. The burial vaults and shallow graves of Washington Square Park have given way to beauty and art and culture, making the park a place that practically pulses with life.

  History slips away. It fades into the backs of our minds much the same way it sinks beneath our feet. Humans are good at a lot of things, but forgetting is one of our crowning achievements. But there are always clues…if you know where to look for them.

  Colonel William Axtell was a real person. In fact, if you visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, you can see him. There’s a painting of him hanging in Gallery 747. He commissioned it in the 1750s just before moving into Melrose Hall, and it hung there for years.

  But as it turns out, William Axtell didn’t die that night in the banquet hall of his home. The tides of war turned against the British, and by 1782 Axtell had packed up his family and returned to England. He died there in 1795, and there were no reports of ghosts at his deathbed.

  Stories can be tricky, it seems. Sometimes they’re rooted in fantasy, in events that never happened at all. Other times they sprout from truth like a sapling sprouts from a seed, and take on a shape and life of their own. Stories grow. They evolve and shift with the passing of time. But the truth is always there, even if it’s buried beneath centuries of hearsay.

  Melrose Hall passed from hand to hand over the years that followed. In a bit of irony, the first couple to take ownership after the Axtells left was their own adopted niece, Eliza Shipton, and her new husband, an American military officer named Aquila Giles.

  In 1880, the house was purchased by Dr. Homer Bartlett, and he felt it was time for some changes. An entire neighborhood had grown up around the property in the century since the Axtells’ departure. So he had the main house lifted up and moved four hundred feet farther back from the road. It was a change that came with casualties.

  All of the external buildings were demolished, and a number of ancient trees were cut down. The biggest loss of all, though, was the left wing of the house, which Bartlett decided was no longer necessary. But right before they moved it, Melrose Hall gave up one final secret.

  While searching the structure for valuables worth saving, someone discovered a secret chamber. After grabbing a light and venturing inside, they made a grisly discovery. It was a skeleton, many decades old and covered in dust.

  The skeleton, they say, was of a woman.

  THE SETTING OF a story is everything. It creates mood and atmosphere. It triggers memories and helps our minds fill in the blanks, adding tension and suspense where there were only words and images.

  What would The Shining be like without the long hallways of the Overlook Hotel? Or The Legend of Hell House without the dusty bones of the old Belasco House? And can anyone ever look at an old cabin in the woods without a chill running down their spine? Not me, that’s for sure.

  One of the most iconic and most visceral settings for any horror story, without question, has always been the insane asylum. These days, we refer to the institutions that treat mental disorders as psychiatric hospitals. They’re hard places to work—I know this firsthand thanks to a colorful college internship during which I met a double amputee who enjoyed streaking down the hallway on his knees. Mental health professionals do amazing work.

  But a lot more than just the name has changed for these hospitals of the mind. In the late 1800s and through to the 1950s, asylums were a very different place. They were filled with sick people in need of help, but frequently patients were offered only pain and suffering.

  When H. P. Lovecraft wrote “The Thing on the Doorstep” in 1933, he imagined a place that he called the Arkham Sanitarium. Arkham is the seed; it’s the first of its kind. Through it, Lovecraft brought the asylum into the horror genre, and others quickly caught on. The famous super-prison and mental hospital of the Batman universe, Arkham Asylum, is a direct descendant of Lovecraft’s invention.

  Arkham was a real pla
ce, though, known as the Danvers State Hospital. In fact, the remains of it stand just eight miles from my front door. And even before construction began in 1874, the hospital’s story was already one of fear and suffering, a theme that continued unchecked well into the twentieth century.

  BEGINNINGS

  Before the days of institutional care for the mentally ill, the job was left largely to independent contractors, people who were hired by the state to look after others. But that was a system with far too many opportunities for failure.

  Patients were routinely placed in cages or stalls, and they were chained and beaten into submission. Violence, rape, and death were everyday occurrences. Thankfully, people began to look for a better, more humane way of caring for these individuals, and those conversations led to the establishment of a new, state-of-the-art mental hospital.

  Plans started off on the wrong foot, though. The site that was chosen for the construction was the former homestead of John Hathorne, one of the nine magistrates who oversaw the witch trials of Salem in 1692. Hathorne was known for his vicious, harsh attitude toward those who were accused of witchcraft, and he pushed hard for their execution.

  He was so well known for his violent, hateful personality that his great-great-grandson, the author Nathaniel Hawthorne, changed the spelling of his last name—adding the w—to distance himself from that reputation.

  It was there, on Hathorne Hill, that the foundations of the hospital were laid. The chances are pretty high that no one made the comparison at the time, but hindsight is always 20/20, and looking back over the last century and a half, it’s clear that Hathorne’s legacy lived on atop that hill.

  The Danvers State Hospital was actually intended to be a beacon of hope. There was a specific plan behind its design, one that was based on the work of Dr. Thomas Kirkbride. He designed the building with four radiating wings emanating from a central structure. His reason was simple: with more sunlight coming into the rooms, and proper ventilation, more patients would experience recovery.