Club-going Mayor Eric Adams is a man who likes to boogie. Now he also apparently believes in the boogeyman.
Adams turned his attention from the Bronx Bombers to the Manhattan boo-ers as he broke news in the Yankees press box during Tuesday’s game: Gracie Mansion is haunted.
“I don’t care what anyone says, there are ghosts in there, man,” Hizzoner told Yankees announcers Michael Kay and Cameron Maybin, who invited him into the booth after the mayor tossed out the first pitch. Adams laughed while confirming he sees stuff moving around and hears footsteps in the stately 223-year-old country house that became the official mayor’s residence in 1942.
“Listen, they’re creeping around,” he said.
If the mansion is haunted, that would be news to historians, ghost hunters and former employees, who told The Post they aren’t familiar with stories of spirits, hauntings or undead people lurking around the People’s House.
“Absolutely not, I never heard of such idiocy,” said Anna Maria Santorelli, who worked as a chef and event manager at the mansion under mayors David Dinkins, Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg. Santorelli, who sometimes pulled 19-hour shifts feeding the mayor and guests, told The Post she never heard one story of a bump in the night during her many years there.
Adams is not the first inhabitant of the house to mention ghosts though: Former first lady Chirlane McCray said during a Halloween interview in 2017 that she’d witnessed some unusual activities, saying “there are times when doors open and close by themselves, and the floorboards creak as though someone is walking through the rooms.”
At least one person is known to have died at Gracie Mansion: Elizabeth Wolcott Gracie, daughter-in-law of the merchant who constructed the house, who died from apoplexy in 1819. But one death at an address is actually quite low for New York City’s many layered history, historians said.
EPA
“Any time there is a well-known location in a city, especially one that was built before 1800, there’s naturally going to be speculation: ‘Oh, it’s totally got to be haunted right?’ ” Professor Mortimer (real name: Robert Gonyo), co-founder of the Haunted Manhattan tour company, told The Post. He consulted one of his history books and found only a brief mention of Gracie Mansion, but no specifics.
The building, one of the oldest wood structures in Manhattan, has a general aura of spookiness to at least some visitors.
“The place did straight up give me the creeps,” Andrew Fine, vice president of the E. 86th Street Association, an area that abuts the mansion, told The Post. “It was just really old and dated. I could see how somebody staying in that house would feel that way.” He only toured the building once but said if he were mayor, he would be “burning a boat ton of sage before I moved into that joint.”
Lance Zaal, founder of the NYC Ghosts tours, confirmed that the mayor’s house is not on any list of known haunted places in the city. For a real chance at seeing ghosts, including that of Mark Twain, he recommended Hizzoner visit the famous House of Death in the West Village. Adams has been accused of being a ghost in his own city before the election, after reports suggested that he actually lives in New Jersey instead of his sparsely decorated Brooklyn address.
Robert Miller
“There’s an allure where a lot of people see there’s an old house and they can connect that a lot of people worked there,” Zaal said. “Hauntings in a way help connect people to the past and help make history more relatable in a way that’s entertaining”
While Adams is often preoccupied with things that aren’t real — his obsession with mythical people barbecuing on the subways, for one — ghost hunters are willing to investigate his claim.
“We’ve never lived there and we’ve never gone ghost hunting there so we can’t tell,” Mortimer said. “If Eric Adams would like to submit a statement and help us start an uptown tour, we would gladly sit down for an interview.”
