Today, I am on a curated walk about the ghosts of East Village and I am not confident about how respectful it maybe to eavesdrop on ghosts. The walk leader for the night – Jane, thinks that it is completely alright. I believe her because I am sure she does this every Friday. I am a loiterer. I love walking around aimlessly, with no destination in mind. Even though this walk might not exactly be loitering, but with ghosts involved, one can really easily wander off in unanticipated directions. The weather has set the tone for the spookiness ahead. On a stormy October evening, the wind twirls the leaves on the sidewalk. We meet at The Waverly Diner in East Village. In groups of twos and fours, it’s a mixed batch of people. There are families and there are friends. There are couples using the hauntings as an excuse to get cozier. Additionally of course, there’s a psychic who keeps reminding us of how often she communicates with ghosts. And then there’s me.
I came to this walk because more often than not, I feel like a ghost in New York City. I don’t mean it in any dark, sad or morbid way. I mean it in the way cartoonists have forced us to imagine ghosts. If I am ever alone in my house late at night, with my imagination running wild, I think of a ghost as a translucent phantom like figure. Most likely, it’s milky white in color, and I can see faintly through it. What I mean when I say I feel like a ghost is that I feel translucent. It feels like I am partly here, and a part of me is faded. It hasn’t fully taken on the saturation of New York’s colours.
I moved to New York from New Delhi in the fall of 2022. “You’ll fit right in”, one of my friends had said. In New Delhi, I was concentrated and located. I had friends who – when they looked at me – saw me as 24 years old. At this particular moment, I feel more diffused and displaced. When people look at me, I only feel four months old – only as old as my presence in New York. Maybe I am here to see if ghosts ever get darker, acquiring a luminosity that makes them fully perceivable? Will I ever turn opaque enough to be seen in New York?
I trust Jane. I have to because I am on a walk about ghosts. It’s a willing suspension of disbelief. She has a small mic that connects to a speaker and all of us can hear her clearly. She is tinier than most of us, and we stand around her like large Teletubbies, clearly not fitting in. She tells jokes with a straight face and matter of fact-ly, as if she were a call center operator. It makes her funnier, and also, more reliable. If a ghost were to pop up in front of you, Jane would know the sequence of jokes to tell them too. We start with Washington Square Park. It is built on a cemetery and as we stand on it, Jane tells us there are different kinds of ghosts. After giving us a brief on “Ghosts 101” she says that there are varieties of hauntings. For instance, Intelligent Haunting or Visceral Haunting. The definitions are too technical. What catches my attention however is when Jane announces, “Oh you know, spirits like to manipulate electronics.” I am hoping they don’t manipulate my recorder because I need this for a class assignment. But if they do, I hope they give me a strong sound bite.
We’re in front of the “infamous hanging tree”. It’s an English Elm that’s about 330 years old. It’s one of the oldest trees in New York City. In many ways, I think if something has been around for that long, it can make one feel located. Jane tells us it’s called the hanging tree because during a certain period of time in New York, a lot many slaves were hung to death here as a form of punishment. The haunting is really the great American dark past. Most of the stories on this walk are similar stories of injustice. The ghosts here are obviously upset about white men’s insatiable appetites. I think of them as social justice warriors, perhaps much more evolved in their politics than the average woke American.
As we wander around more, putting pieces together, I am now zoned out. I came here to eavesdrop on ghosts but by now, I am eavesdropping on Jane in intervals. I think often of how I don’t find the ghosts of East Village spooky. I am more rattled by the city’s unpredictability. It’s nice to think that each day can be different, but it is also equally terrifying. On most days, I like the city. On many days though, I find something missing. Why does everyone keep saying it’s the best city in the world I wonder? Can I not see something that everyone else can? Somewhere, I am waiting to feel and sense the vastness of New York.
“You can’t really see ghosts, you can only sense them”, the psychic next to me says. She’s staring at a flickering light bulb. We’re in front of the NYU Brown Building. It’s a tragic story. Sometime in 1911, on the 9th and 10th floor of this building was a garment factory. Mostly, it employed women. Often, young girls. And one day, a fire broke out in the building. On the 9th and the10th floor, the doors were locked. The girls and the women screamed for their life, ultimately jumping out of the window. They fell right through the vaulted sidewalk. Whoever saw it, never forgot the sight and the loud thudding sound. The building is now a chemistry lab. A lot of people still smell the smoky foul odor but Jane says that NYU came up with a “good scientific cover up.” Before we leave, Jane points to the flickering light on the street. It’s the girls, she say. The psychic is still transfixed and finally she says, “I can’t see them here but I can sense a lot of presence.”
Just as the walk is about to come to an end, it dawns upon me that this was not a walk about ghosts. It was a walk about context. It is important to know the dead, screaming history of a city to be fully in its present. Aged cities age us. I came to New York four months ago. After this forty-minute walk, I am a year older. Every day, I walk about ten minutes. Someone could do the math. Lauren Elkin, who writes about wandering women thinks of walking as an act of locating yourself — “I walk because it confers – or restores – a feeling of placeness…” Not too bad to place my age one walk at a time.