The Ghosts' Boarding House

Only the dead know Brooklyn - but they know other places, too.

One of those places was 131 West Fourteenth Street in Manhattan. It was a four-story brick house adjoining the 14th Street Armory at 14th St. and 8th Avenue. I think it might be the house at thefar left of the picture on the right.

It was in June 1881 that Mrs. Mary Carr called in the police. Something strange was happening at her boarding house. She had lost thirteen of her thirty boarders in a week - and as a poor widow, she could not afford this. She was hysterical. She told the police officers from the 29th Precinct that everyone was leaving because of the two ghosts.

Mary Carr had never seen them, though she had felt strange cold hands upon her face, and mysterious cold breezes in the house, sometimes. And her servants - well, they had been complaining about the ghosts for awhile. She could no longer keep track of how many maids and cooks had quit, terrified of the ghosts who came at all hours of the day and night. At first only the servants saw them. Now the boarders were seeing them as well.

There were two spirits - a tall, thin man with black side whiskers and piercing black eyes and a stoop. And there was also a young lady , a very beautiful girl with long blonde hair. She usually stood in the parlor in front of the mirror, fixing and combing her hair. Her face, though lovely, was "disfigured by marks which would seem to indicate a life of dissipation."

Disipated or not - the servants and lodgers did not mind her so much. But the man was another story. He would sit in a chair and stare at them with those piercing eyes. Or sometimes at night he entered a room and knocked the sleeper out of bed.

Mrs. Carr hopes that the policemen can help. Officers Clinge and Chapman of the 29th went through the house - all four stories as well as the basement. They did not see or hear anything amiss. At this point, a man named Harry Paine came to 131 to keep watch all night and see what was really going on. Mrs. Carr and one of the police officers kept him company.

Paine stayed awake until 2 am and then decided to lie down and have a nap. His nap ended rather suddenly when he felt something or someone pulling at his ankles and the next thing he knew, he was on the floor. He said he saw a shadow disappearing through the door after that.

Officer Clinge told the New York Times that he knew who the ghosts were. He had been on the beat for some time and knew the family who had lived in the house before Mrs. Carr. One of the young ladies in that family was very beautiful - very like the female ghost - but an alcoholic. Her drinking problem worsened when she lost her fiance when he was drowned on the way to Europe. She had died of it, said Clinge - and one of her brothers, who looked very like the gentleman ghost, had poisoned himself not long afterwards.

The Brooklyn Eagle reporter was amused enough by the story to try his hand at a little verse:

But boarders at 131 West Fourteenth street This very queer couple of ghosts may see; The gentleman staring and pulling their feet, And the lady doing her hair à la Eugenie.

This is the Empress Eugenie of France, Consort of Napoleon III (reigned 1853-1871), known for her fashionable dress. You can see that her hairstyle might take a bit of fixing at the back - just what the young lady ghost was interested in.

I imagine that Mrs. Carr left after this, to try her luck at keeping a boarding house elsewhere - somewhere less haunted. And that 131 West 14th Street - now a vacuum cleaner repair store - was left, for awhile, to its ghosts.

SOURCES

"Two Spectral Lodgers," New York Times, Jun. 24, 1881, p. 8

"The Ghosts' Boarding House," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Jun. 26, 1881, p. 4.

Images from NYPL Digital Gallery.