Looking for a spooky spot to call your haunt for the week? Check out the Merchant’s House Museum. Located at 29 East Fourth St., this building is not technically about anything Halloween-y. However, it has been called “Manhattan’s Most Haunted House” by the New York Times, and that makes it worth a visit as we approach the end of October.
The Merchant’s House
At its core, the museum — a national historic landmark — exists to educate people about the domestic life of a wealthy merchant family and their four Irish servants during the period of 1835-1865, when New York was beginning to emerge as a buzzing metropolis. In addition to a meticulously-restored house, the museum contains over 3,000 items belonging to the Tredwell family, who lived there. These include fashionable dresses, decorative arts, photographs, and furniture, among other things.
Lingering Lodgers?
But after they lived in the house for nearly 100 years, not everyone is sure that the Tredwells have entirely gone. The main suspect is thought to be Gertrude Tredwell, the youngest of the eight Tredwell children. Born in 1840 in an upstairs bedroom, she never married and lived her entire life in the house, dying in 1933 at the age of 93. It is said that she still watches over the house where she lived, and ever since the museum was opened, just a few years after her death, strange sights, sounds, and smells were reported by curators, visitors… even passers-by. Who knows — perhaps you’ll get a chance to meet her in “person.”
Halloween Horrors
You can visit the museum normally to experience its charms, its history, and maybe its spectral inhabitants. Or, this Saturday October 31st, at 7pm, you can attend a special event for readings of dark gothic literature and ghost stories around the “newly-laid-out coffin” of Seabury Tredwell, the family patriarch. Don’t come alone to this spine-tingling encounter unless you count yourself amongst the very brave — you may get a few real ghosts in amongst the stories!
The Merchant’s House Museum, besides being good historical fun, doubles as a great place to get your Halloween thrills and chills. And make sure to take Seastreak over. We’ll treat you with dignity and pomp, and make sure you get over there as would behoove a gentleman or lady of the era. Because it’s probably best that you make a good impression on Gertrude — if you don’t, no one can say what might end up happening to you…
Sea you Soon!
The Seastreak Family
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