Local Stories

Admin Posts : 206 Join date : 2010-05-28

Bowery Street in Lower Manhattan

For over a hundred years, McGurk’s Suicide Hall on Bowery Street in Lower Manhattan was a landmark. In the late 1800s it was famous for low-brow entertainment, cheap prostitution… and several famous suicides. Most of the original victims were prostitutes, although over the years there were many “copycat” suicides as well, a phenomenon that ranged clear up to the buildings destruction in the early 21st century. Hundreds are rumored to have killed themselves during the time period that the building stood. Some threw themselves from the roof of the four-story building, but many committed suicide by ingesting carbolic acid, a chemical that was easily obtained from pharmacies at the height of the building’s suicide craze.

Police in the area were relieved when the building was fnally demolished, fguring that the end of over a century of suicide investigations in the area had drawn to a close. However, after the building fell, the rate of self-harm in surrounding areas actually skyrocketed. Those who failed to accomplish their own death report being hounded into the action by a woman, who disappeared as soon as the deed seemed to be done. One witness (who is being held for psychological evaluation in a local mental institution) described her as a ghostly fgure, wearing an “old timey” dress.

Wallabout Bay

During the latter part of the Revolutionary War, British naval offcers were under orders to keep captured American prisoners on prison ships in Wallabout Bay. The conditions were horrifc, specifcally designed to encourage as many Americans to join up with the British Navy in order to escape imprisonment on the ships. Many civilians and soldiers died due to the rot, flth, and lack of clean food and water — an estimate claims that more Americans died in these prison ships from deliberate neglect than died in battle in the war. Rumors told around the bay still claim that occasionally one of these ships is seen off the shoreline, and that on certain dates (the anniversary of particularly cruel actions against the captive prisoners), ghostly British soldiers in redcoat uniforms take new prisoners to fll their hold.

Northern Manhattan

In laying out excavation for a site for a new business complex, surveyors discover a well-preserved body. It appears to be that of a young native woman, dressed in a leather dress and clutching a gourd rattle. All construction on the site stops while the matter is investigated, but before work can begin again, the site is plagued with mishaps. Anthropology crews sent to study the burial site come down with fever and hallucinations within hours of arriving. Small children in the local area disappear and are found hours later locked in a shed nearby.

They claim to have followed a strange girl into the building, but that she disappeared when the door shut behind them. Nearby pets are found brutally ripped apart, and animal control issues a report of a cougar or wildcat in the area. And fnally, when one of the developers arrived to check out the delays, his legs were crushed by a piece of equipment. In the hospital, he insisted he’d seen a young girl with long black hair in the driver’s seat of the rig before it backed over him.