The World’s Most Famous Ghosts by Daniel Cohen

This was one of my favorite books when I was a kid, just like all of Daniel Cohen’s other kiddie books on weird stuff like UFO’s, the Loch Ness Monster, Conspiracies, and whatnot. The stories are all incredibly entertaining, but they’re also educational. The part with the ghosts of the Tower of London was frightening because the actual location is real. The Berkeley Square Horror, now that got me interested. Soon after reading this book, my family made a trip to London and we made a bee line for Berkeley Square. I remember marching into the building and saying “excuse me, where’s the haunted room?” The only person there at the time wasn’t surprised; there are occasional writers and paranormalists who drop by. But she was there by herself and couldn’t let two strangers upstairs. She said “we use it to store the books, and no, there haven’t been any strange goings-on.” I bet the sight of my typical American dad, with his trucker cap, was probably the strangest “going-on” they had that day!

Abraham Lincoln’s ghost gets a chapter to himself, and it’s a rather depressing one, with or without the haunted rooms. Abe’s family wasn’t a happy one; his son William died in the White House, his wife was crazy, and his youngest son died in his teens. If you couple that with a rough childhood, a difficult adulthood, and the most stressful presidency in history, his ghost has a lot to wail about. But the ghost did show up at the right moment, when someone tried to bulldoze the White House’ famous Rose Garden.

The Winchester Ghost House is a story that always fascinated me, but I never knew what it looked like until the internet allowed me to see photos. Sarah Winchester was the heir to the Winchester rifle company, and like Abe Lincoln’s wife Mary Todd, she had two things against her; she was into spiritualism, and she was nuts! She was told by a psychic medium that her dead husband and daughter were being tortured in hell, and she’d have to build a huge house to lodge all of the ghosts killed by her husband’s rifles. I won’t spoil the rest of the story.

It seems as though these ghosts were once depressed people. Aside from the Drury Lane ghosts, they all have to do with unhappy lives. At least the Drury Lane theater ghosts are considered good luck. In New York City theaters (especially the old ones in the West Village) there are ghosts too. Don’t wear yellow or green on stage. Those used to be the color of the devil in old plays.

Bet you didn’t know that one!

History’s Mysteries by Brian Houghton

Thanks to modern science, the Oak Island treasure pit has been explained, and now the whole mystery is ruined! But hang on, what else could have tempted your appetite for a good story when you were a kid? What better was there to entice you into reading about pirate treasure on a mysterious island?

History’s Mysteries is a great book on the unexplained things we wonder about. One of the things that makes it so darn great is that it’s written by an archeologist; his expertise makes the stories even more fascinating. All of those ancient weird places-Mesa Verde, Petra, the burial mounds-Houghton makes everything readable and enjoyable.

I strongly recommend this for the armchair historian.

Ghosthunting New York City by L’Aura Hladik

I love it when these books are displayed in the store in the month before Halloween. Each chapter is about some charming NYC landmark, and the spirit that lives there at night. In all of the city’s historic houses, there are spirits that move the pictures, pet the cats, or steal pints of beer. The part about McSorley’s Ale House, now there’s history involved in that one, and I bet the owner and patrons all have stories to tell. The old bars in the Village, they’ve been around since the 1800’s, long before all the colleges sprang up in the city. Back then, New York really was diverse, and the patrons weren’t all college students, actors, musicians, teachers, and bankers. There were a lot of unsavory characters.

Hart Island is many things; cemetery for the unclaimed dead, site of an old Nike missile base, resting place for the old Ebbet’s Field bleacher seats, to name a few. North Brother Island was an isolation zone for Typhoid Mary, and later an institution for teenage junkies. I can imagine the ghosts of all those dead kids roaming the island at night. Typhoid Mary’s ghost is probably crying like a banshee from the solitude. If I had to live on an island all by myself, I’d be crazy too!

The haunted NYC theaters didn’t surprise me, because the Drury Lane theater in England is said to be haunted too. But with or without the ghosts, the authors have brought up all kinds of superstitions I never knew about. For starters, never wear green or yellow on stage, the limelight cancels it out. Never whistle in the theatre, because the stagehands were ex-sailors and they’d signal each other by whistling. Whistle the wrong tune, and the curtain might drop at the wrong time. Did you know that green and yellow are considered bad luck on stage? They used to be the colors of the devil in old plays. Never let the theatre go pitch black, because the spirits will run amok.

Here’s the bottom line; New York City is one of the oldest communities in the USA. Old cities, like ours, and New Orleans, Boston, and Philadelphia, they’re bound to have lots of ghosts. Happy Halloween!