Of course, I don’t believe in ghosts or spirits (exceptin’ always “animal spirits” and “ardent spirits,” both in moderation), and, of course, you don’t believe in ‘em either, reader. I never yet met man, woman or child who believes in ‘em, or owns up to believin’. But somehow a good ghost story always gets a good many readers, and a “haunted house” sensation always takes first-class in New York.
I remember two big “haunted house” sensations in my time in New York, and both of ‘em took like a camp-meetin’, or a circus, or a caucus.
The first one was about the house in Hudson street that Burton, the actor, lived in and died in. It was 174 Hudson street, between Vestry and Laight, on the north side, and is standin’ in pretty good shape still.
It stands right in the centre of the block, and has a history that is quite interestin’. Burton, in his flush days built it to please himself, and as he was half British and half Yankee–as he used to say, English by accident and American by necessity–he built a house that on the outside was a very swell American brown-stone front and all that, but on the inside was all old English.
His neighbors on Hudson street didn’t like Burton’s buildin’ a house in their vicinity a bit. Most of ‘em were very old New Yorkers–Knickerbockers of the very Knickerbockers, or Dutch of the very Dutch; they were all steady-goin’ citizens. Some of ‘em were of Quaker extraction, and wore broad brim hats. They went to their stores, their homes, and their churches, and nowhere else. They regarded the theatre as Aminadab Sleek said he did, “an abom-i-na-ti-on.” They all had demure, steady-goin’ wives and daughters. Just imagine Burton coming into the middle of them with his woman, and his play actin’, and his drinkin’, and his fandangoes generally. A bull in a china shop was nothin’ to it.
But Burton had money, and money makes the mare go, and put up the house. So his neighbors had to look on, growl and submit, while Burton’s house became by far the finest in the neighborhood–in fact, one of the finest in the city.
The hall was tiled with marble slabs, the ceilin’s were of ribbed and grained arches, frescoed splendidly. In the alcoves were statues of the muses and the graces. Shakespeare’s “Seven Ages” were worked in on the walls of the staircase. There was a fine parlor and a reception room, and a lyceum or library, where Burton studied and wrote, and a wine room where he and John Brougham and other chums reveled.
There was a blue room, and a red room and a “green room,” where he attended to a good deal of theatrical business. The sleeping apartments were delightful; even the servants’ rooms upstairs were neat, airy and pleasant. In point of elegance and comfort both, the only two things worth a fig in a house, there never was a better house to live in than Burton’s.
Burton thought so himself, and enjoyed himself immensely in it, not carin’ a care what the neighbors thought. But one day he died suddenly, and then people began to shake their heads mysteriously–said retribution had come at last, and that Burton, “the great but godless actor,” as some minister styled him, had committed suicide. There were no particular facts to justify this idea, but he certainly died suddenly, and rumors never care much for facts anyway.
After his death there was a wrangle between the women callin’ ‘emselves the wives of Burton over the property, and Colonel James Price, now connected with the Stuart estate, became agent for the Burton property.
Then James Fitzgerald, a real estate dealer, occupied the Burton house with his family a while–only a while–for he soon began to hear all sorts of sounds at night, and to see all sorts of queer things and shapes around the house, and his family saw ‘em, too, and heard ‘em, and altogether they came to the conclusion that the story that Burton had killed himself was true, and that his uneasy and guilty ghost was still hauntin’ the premises.
Then the story leaked out over the neighborhood through the servants (who answer in a small way the same purposes as newspapers in a big way, and tell all that happens and sometimes more.) “The house Is haunted,” the neighbors began to say, and at last a reporter, snookin’ around, heard it, and made a five dollar bill by writin’ a paragraph about it.
This, of course, made the matter ten times more troublesome, and pretty soon the Fitzgeralds left their “haunted house,” and it stood in all its glory, tenantless, for awhile.
Then Howe, the lawyer, and Wetmore, then his law partner, took possession of the Burton mansion. But they, too, (so it is said) saw the queer sights, heard the strange noises, and gave the house up. The last fact is certain, though Howe has held his tongue pretty well about the “haunted” part of the business.
Then other parties rented the mansion, which of course was let at a cheaper rent now that it would have been if it hadn’t got such a ghostly reputation, much to the disgust of its agent. But party after party heard, or claimed they heard, the strange noises, saw, or swore they saw, the odd sights, and moved away.
The house became a local “show” as the haunted house of Hudson street. People came from far and near to look at it with mingled curiosity and tremblin’, and finally Uncle Sam, seein’ his chance, stepped in and rented the whole establishment for a mere song, as a barracks or recruiting office–what it is to this day.
The soldiers sleep every night in the library where Burton sat in state, surrounded by his costly and really valuable books, and in the parlor where he received with genuine hospitality his guests, the soldiers drill. And all because everyone said the house was haunted. I don’t know whether the house was haunted when it was occupied, but it is a fact that it was often haunted when it was not occupied.
One night, for instance, two men, known in the neighborhood, happened to look at the “haunted house,” which was then without a tenant, and avoided by everybody. To the horror of one of ‘em, and the astonishment of both of ‘em, lights, or rather a light, was to be seen flitting to and fro, first from one window of the room where Burton had been found dead, and then from the front parlor, then disappear in total darkness.
The men hurried away, but one of them was of an inquirin’ turn of mind, and he went back again to the Burton mansion by himself, as soon as he could, and waited. He had to wait a pretty good while, and it was pretty cold, too, and there was snow on the ground. But he was rewarded for his Patience by seein’ a black ghost–at least a black man, a coal black man, who came shufflin’ out of the front door, thinkin’, of course, he wasn’t at all likely to be noticed. The light seen flittin’ around just now had been due to this negro, who had been carryin’ a candle about. He had been in the habit of makin’ raids on the house every now and then, and stealin’ whatever little thing he could, takin’ advantage of the bad reputation the mansion had acquired.
This was one of the ghosts that “haunted” the house in Hudson Street. Whether there were any more of the same sort, or whether Billy Burton’s ghost real did really walk, I’m sure the reader knows as much as I do.
Another big haunted house sensation that occurred in New York took place about eighteen years ago, and made more stir than the Hudson street house affair, although there was less in it. In fact, there was nothing at all in this last affair, because it was nothin’ at all but a very clever “sell” or “hoax” by a tip-top reporter.
But then it was very smart, bold in its idea and clever in its carryin’ out. It was really one of the smartest things ever done by its author, Rose, who is not yet forgotten by New York newspaper men, though he has been dead for years. An article appeared one Sunday in the Mercury, givin’ an account of a fearful ghost that had been seen in a fine house in Twenty-seventh street.
Now, ghosts are generally very poetical bein’s–too poetical for this great practical world. They generally wear elaborate nightgowns, white and fresh from some celestial Chinese laundry, and they do all sorts of unearthly things.
But this Twenty-seventh street ghost was a very common lookin’ person indeed, a cartman or a truckman, or somebody of that sort, dressed in his ordinary workin’ clothes, and the only way people could tell he was a ghost was by lookin’ not at him but through him–right through him–in which case one could see whatever there might be on the other side of him, for the cartman or truckman was transparent. He would come mysteriously into the parlor of the house, on the second story, facin’ Twenty-seventh street, and sit down by the fireplace, and you could then distinctly see the fireplace, and its fire shinin’ and blazin’ right through him.
This was a very singular sort of a ghost indeed–a regular novelty in the line of spirits–and he made a hit from the start.
The daily papers took it up, and some even went so far as to give the number of the haunted house, and of course the different papers gave different numbers. And, of course, also everybody whose house was thus mentioned came rushin’ near mad to the office of the Mercury which had first published the story, threatenin’ libel suits or demandin’ retraction, although the Mercury hadn’t described any one house in particular, and hadn’t mentioned any number at all. As for the public generally, it took up the ghost story at once and “froze on” to it. The ghost was nicknamed “the carter ghost,” and everybody rushed up to Twenty-seventh street to look at the haunted neighborhood in general, and to see if they couldn’t discover the haunted house in particular.
The day after the article was published, Twenty-seventh street from Fifth Avenue to Sixth, was pretty well “blocked” by ghost-hunters. City folks and country folks were seized with a fit of curiosity together. Shop girls, Broadway belles, counter-jumpers, men about town, and regular all-night-in-the-station-house bums, huddled together around this or that house, which was supposed for the moment to be the haunted house; and among the crowd movin’ around, quietly enjoyin’ the fun, was the clever reporter himself, who had got up the ghost.
There was such a crowd that the police had to make a raid on it to clear the street; and a liquor store in the neighborhood cleared a hundred dollars a day extra, by the extra customers who called in, bent on “spiritual” refreshment.
But the most comic feature of the whole thing was the way the “philosophers” throughout the country took a hold of this Twenty-seventh street ghost to make capital out of it. One philosophical chap, a doctor, absolutely published what he claimed was his own personal interview with this carter ghost, and a mighty comical interview it was, showing how little is the difference between a first-class philosopher and an ordinary fool.
Then the “foreign” philosophers got hold of it, and especially the German philosophers. They “explained” the ghost in words of from five to fifteen syllables each, which nobody but a ghost or a German could pronounce or understand, and altogether there was a tremendous time while it lasted, which was several weeks. After a while people began to see into the joke and the ghost, and the excitement dropped off as quickly as it had sprung up. But to this day there are some philosophers who don’t believe in the Bible, but who do believe in the Twenty-seventh street ghost.
[Editor’s notes: William Evans Burton’s literary career was equally, if not more notable than his stage career. He published The Gentleman’s Magazine, a popular literary magazine, which later became Graham’s Magazine. He employed Edgar Allen Poe as an editor, though the two grew to have a testy relationship. Burton penned what has been called of of the first detective stories, “The Secret Cell,” which predated Poe’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue.”
Burton had an exception library of theatrical and literary works, said to be in the tens of thousands of volumes. Burton’s mansion at 174 Hudson Street in Tribeca was replaced with another building, presumably un-haunted.]
