Haunted New York

366 haunted destinations cataloged across New York, spanning 80 counties. The collection features museum, haunted hotel, and haunted dining — every listing verified with family ratings, accessibility info, and practical visit logistics.

366 locations 80 counties 14 classifications 197 wheelchair accessible
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Top 6
Yaddo — Queen Anne-style mansion and artists' retreat in Saratoga Springs, NY
Haunted House / Historic Home

Yaddo

Saratoga Springs, NY

Yaddo is a 55-room Queen Anne-style mansion on a 400-acre estate purchased by financier Spencer Trask and writer Katrina Trask in 1881. After the deaths of all four of their children and the destruction of the original house by fire in 1891, the Trasks built the current mansion and in 1900 conceived of it as a future retreat for artists; the first residents arrived in 1926. The estate is now the largest artist-residency program in the United States.

$ All Ages Family: High
Aerial survey view of Woodlawn Cemetery
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Woodlawn Cemetery

Syracuse, NY

Woodlawn Cemetery Association was incorporated in April 1881 to provide a picturesque burial ground for the growing city of Syracuse. The non-denominational, non-profit cemetery spans roughly 160 acres on Grant Boulevard on the city's north side and includes a Civil War memorial section honoring more than 100 soldiers interred there, along with a Sunset Mausoleum Complex for above-ground entombment.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
1850 Syracuse Weighlock Building, home of the Erie Canal Museum
Museum / Historical Site

Erie Canal Museum

Syracuse, NY

The Erie Canal Museum occupies the 1850 Syracuse Weighlock Building, the last surviving structure of its kind in the United States. The building served as a working weighlock — essentially a giant scale for canal boats determining toll fees — from 1850 until weighing was discontinued in 1883. The museum was founded as a private non-profit in 1962, and the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971.

$ All Ages Family: High
Marriott Syracuse Downtown historic 1924 hotel facade on East Onondaga Street
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Marriott Syracuse Downtown (Hotel Syracuse)

Syracuse, NY

The Hotel Syracuse opened on August 16, 1924, designed by William Stone Post of George B. Post & Sons — an architectural firm whose other work includes the New York Stock Exchange Building. After bankruptcy and closure in 2004, the hotel was acquired in 2014 by developer Ed Riley, who led a $57 million restoration. The building reopened as Marriott Syracuse Downtown on August 19, 2016, and was inducted into Historic Hotels of America.

$$$ All Ages Family: High
The Octagon Tower on Roosevelt Island — preserved Alexander Jackson Davis rotunda from the 1841 New York City Lunatic Asylum, now anchoring a luxury residential complex.
Asylum / Hospital

The Octagon (former NYC Lunatic Asylum)

Roosevelt Island, NY

The Octagon is a five-story rotunda designed by Alexander Jackson Davis and built 1834-1839 in blue-gray stone quarried on what was then Blackwell's Island. It served as the main entrance and administrative center of the New York City Lunatic Asylum, opened in 1841, and was later part of Metropolitan Hospital. Conditions were documented by Charles Dickens (1842) and Nellie Bly (1887). After decades of abandonment the exterior was preserved when the site was redeveloped as the Octagon residential complex in 2006.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
The Gideon Putnam — 1935 Georgian Revival resort hotel in Saratoga Spa State Park, NY
Haunted Hotel / Inn

The Gideon Putnam

Saratoga Springs, NY

The Gideon Putnam Hotel opened in 1935 inside Saratoga Spa State Park and is named for Gideon Putnam (1763-1812), the entrepreneur who founded Saratoga Springs in the early 1800s. Putnam built the city's original Putnam's Tavern and Boarding House (later Grand Union) in 1803 and began Congress Hall in 1811. While overseeing construction of Congress Hall, he fell from scaffolding and broke ribs; he died December 1, 1812, of pneumonia complications. The hotel is a National Historic Landmark and member of Historic Hotels of America.

$$$ All Ages Family: High

More in New York

New York — 39

Photo of 12 Gay Street (Gay Street Phantom)
Haunted House / Historic Home

12 Gay Street (Gay Street Phantom)

New York, NY

The four-story brick townhouse at 12 Gay Street was built around 1827, when Gay Street was being developed as modest housing on what had been stable land behind the elegant homes of Waverly Place. In the 1920s, New York City Mayor Jimmy Walker acquired the building and used it as a residence for his mistress, actress and Ziegfeld Follies performer Betty Compton. It later housed a speakeasy called the Pirate's Den, and in subsequent decades the Howdy Doody puppet was created in its basement by puppeteer Frank Paris.

$ All Ages Family: High
Exterior of the Algonquin Hotel at night, 59 West 44th Street, Midtown Manhattan
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Algonquin Hotel

New York, NY

The Algonquin Hotel opened in 1902 on West 44th Street and quickly became a gathering place for the New York literary community. Beginning in 1919, writers and critics including Dorothy Parker, Alexander Woollcott, Robert Benchley, and George S. Kaufman met daily for lunch at what became known as the Round Table. Harold Ross founded The New Yorker at one of these lunches in 1925. Parker lived in the hotel periodically during the 1920s.

$$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Brick Stuyvesant-era facade of the Belasco Theatre at 111 West 44th Street in Manhattan's Theater District
Theater / Performance Venue

Belasco Theatre

New York, NY

The Belasco Theatre opened on October 16, 1907, as the Stuyvesant Theatre, designed by George Keister for impresario David Belasco. Renamed in 1910 when Belasco gave up his earlier 42nd Street theatre, the venue served as the laboratory for Belasco's experiments in stage naturalism and remains an active Shubert Organization Broadway theatre.

$$$$ Varies by production Family: High
The 1931 Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital building on First Avenue in Kips Bay, Manhattan, surrounded by its original iron spiked fence
Asylum / Hospital

Bellevue Hospital Psychiatric Building

New York, NY

Bellevue Hospital traces its origins to a two-story almshouse established in 1736, making it the oldest public hospital in the United States. Its psychiatric facility became notorious over nearly two centuries for overcrowding, experimental treatments, and the sheer volume of New York's desperate and forgotten. The 1931 Italian Renaissance psychiatric building, designed by C.B. Meyers, still stands on First Avenue between 29th and 30th Streets.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Exterior of the Brown Building at 23-29 Washington Place in Greenwich Village, Manhattan—site of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.
True Crime Site

Brown Building (Triangle Shirtwaist Factory)

New York, NY

On March 25, 1911, fire broke out on the upper floors of the Asch Building at 23-29 Washington Place. The Triangle Shirtwaist Company occupied the 8th, 9th, and 10th floors; 146 workers—123 women and 23 men, most of them recent Italian and Jewish immigrants—died in the blaze and in falls from the windows. Exits had been locked to prevent theft and keep out union organizers.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
The red-brick Victorian Gothic and Queen Anne Revival exterior of the Hotel Chelsea seen from across West 23rd Street in Manhattan
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Hotel Chelsea

New York, NY

The Hotel Chelsea opened in 1884 at 222 West 23rd Street in Manhattan as a cooperative apartment building, designed in a mix of Victorian Gothic and Queen Anne Revival styles. It became one of the most-storied artists' residences in American culture, housing writers, musicians, and painters across the 20th century. After a multi-year redevelopment, the hotel reopened in 2022 as a boutique hotel and remains a landmarked Manhattan building.

$$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Exterior of Cherry Lane Theatre at 38 Commerce Street in the West Village, viewed from the east
Theater / Performance Venue

Cherry Lane Theatre

New York, NY

The building at 38 Commerce Street was constructed as a farm silo in 1817 and subsequently served as a brewery, tobacco warehouse, and box factory before four collaborators including poet Edna St. Vincent Millay converted it into a theater in 1923–1924. It is the oldest continuously operating off-Broadway theater in New York City.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Exterior of 86 Bedford Street in the West Village, the site of the former Chumley's speakeasy, on a cloudy morning
Haunted Dining / Bar

Chumley's (86 Bedford Street)

New York, NY

Leland Stanford Chumley converted a former blacksmith's shop at 86 Bedford Street into a speakeasy in 1922, during Prohibition. The unmarked bar became a favored gathering spot for writers including Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Steinbeck, and O'Neill. Chumley died in 1935; his wife Henrietta ran the bar until her death in 1960. The bar closed after a chimney collapse in 2007 and went through several ownership changes before reopening as The Eighty Six in 2025.

$$$ 21+ Family: Moderate
Exterior of the James Brown House at 326 Spring Street Manhattan, Federal-style 1817 townhouse housing The Ear Inn, photographed from street level
Haunted Dining / Bar

The Ear Inn (James Brown House)

New York, NY

The James Brown House at 326 Spring Street is an 1817 Federal-style townhouse built for James Brown, an African-American Revolutionary War veteran. A New York City designated landmark, the building has housed a drinking establishment since the mid-19th century. The Ear Inn opened on the ground floor in 1977.

$$ 21+ Family: Moderate
Open-air 86th floor observation deck of the Empire State Building in Midtown Manhattan, with the city skyline visible beyond the safety barriers.
True Crime Site

Empire State Building Observation Deck

New York, NY

The Empire State Building opened on May 1, 1931, and its 86th-floor observation deck became one of the most visited attractions in New York City. Over the following decades, the building attracted visitors from around the world, while also accumulating a grim record of deaths by falling—more than 30 since its opening—that the building's management has responded to with successive upgrades to safety barriers.

$$$ All Ages Family: High
The First Shearith Israel Graveyard at 55 St. James Place in Chinatown, Manhattan—the oldest Jewish cemetery in New York City, established 1683, viewed through its iron gate.
Cemetery / Burial Ground

First Shearith Israel Graveyard (Chatham Square Cemetery)

New York, NY

The First Shearith Israel Graveyard at 55-57 St. James Place was established in 1683 when Joseph Bueno de Mesquita purchased the plot for Congregation Shearith Israel, the first Jewish congregation in North America. In use from 1683 to 1833, the cemetery holds roughly 100 surviving headstones with inscriptions in Hebrew, Spanish, and Portuguese—including Revolutionary War patriots and Dr. Walter Jonas Judah, who died at age 20 in 1798 after staying in the city to treat yellow fever patients. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is the only surviving 17th-century structure in Manhattan.

$ All Ages Family: High
Ghost Tour / Walking Tour

Five Points Ghost Tour (Columbus Park site)

New York, NY

The Five Points neighborhood occupied Lower Manhattan from roughly the 1820s through the 1890s, built on the failed landfill of the Collect Pond. The poorly compacted fill caused constant ground subsidence, driving out wealthier residents and drawing the urban poor — Irish, Italian, and free Black New Yorkers — into overcrowded tenements. The neighborhood had the highest murder rate of any slum recorded at the time; the 1857 Dead Rabbits Riot on Bayard Street left at least eight people dead and more than 100 seriously injured. City reformers led by Jacob Riis documented the conditions in the 1880s, and Mulberry Bend was cleared in 1895–97, replaced by what is now Columbus Park.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Exterior of Fraunces Tavern at 54 Pearl Street in Lower Manhattan, showing the red brick colonial-era facade
Haunted Dining / Bar

Fraunces Tavern Museum

New York, NY

Fraunces Tavern was built in 1719 as the residence of Stephen Delancey and converted to a tavern by Samuel Fraunces in 1762. It became a primary gathering place for the Sons of Liberty and was the site of George Washington's farewell address to his Continental Army officers on December 4, 1783. The building was reconstructed to its colonial-era form by the Sons of the Revolution in 1907 and now houses the Fraunces Tavern Museum and a working restaurant.

$$ All Ages Family: High
Restored Georgian brick facade of Fraunces Tavern at 54 Pearl Street in Lower Manhattan, photographed in November 2021.
Haunted Dining / Bar

Fraunces Tavern

New York, NY

Fraunces Tavern at 54 Pearl Street in Lower Manhattan was originally built in 1719 as the home of Stephen DeLancey. In 1762 it was purchased by Samuel Fraunces and operated as the Queen's Head Tavern. On December 4, 1783, George Washington bid farewell to his Continental Army officers in the building's Long Room. The complex now operates as a restaurant on the ground floor and a museum on the upper floors.

$$ All Ages Family: High
The 1906 General Slocum memorial fountain in Tompkins Square Park, East Village, Manhattan—a pink Tennessee marble stele with two children in relief.
Other Dark Tourism Site

General Slocum Disaster Memorial (Tompkins Square Park)

New York, NY

On June 15, 1904, the steamboat General Slocum caught fire in the East River while carrying approximately 1,342 members of St. Mark's Lutheran Church's congregation on their annual outing. At least 1,021 people died—mostly women and children from the Kleindeutschland (Little Germany) neighborhood of the Lower East Side. The disaster remained New York City's deadliest single event until September 11, 2001. The marble memorial fountain in Tompkins Square Park was dedicated in 1906.

$ All Ages Family: High
Exterior of Gracie Mansion in Carl Schurz Park, Manhattan, showing the Federal-style white wood-frame mansion
Haunted House / Historic Home

Gracie Mansion

New York, NY

Archibald Gracie, one of New York City's wealthiest merchants, built the Federal-style mansion in 1799 on a bluff overlooking the East River. The city acquired the property in 1896, and in 1942, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia made it the official mayoral residence — a role it has held ever since.

$ All Ages Family: High
Victorian Gothic brick facade of Hotel Chelsea on West 23rd Street in Manhattan, photographed in 2025
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Hotel Chelsea

New York, NY

The Hotel Chelsea opened in 1884 as a Victorian Gothic and Queen Anne Revival structure designed as a socialist commune where artists and musicians could live and create collectively. It became one of America's most storied residential hotels, home at various times to Mark Twain, Arthur Miller, Dylan Thomas, Patti Smith, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Andy Warhol, and Allen Ginsberg. It underwent a comprehensive renovation and reopened in mid-2022.

$$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Looking up the facade of Hotel Des Artistes, above en:Café des Artistes on a cloudy afternoon.
Haunted House / Historic Home

Hotel des Artistes

New York, NY

Hotel des Artistes at 1 West 67th Street in Manhattan was completed in 1917 to a design by architect George Mort Pollard. A group of artists including Walter Russell and Frank DuMond purchased the site in 1914 for $250,000, intending to create live-work studio space with 20-foot atelier ceilings. The building housed Noël Coward, Norman Rockwell, Isadora Duncan, Rudolph Valentino, and writer Fannie Hurst, among many others. In 1929, writer Harry Crosby — nephew of J.P. Morgan — died in a murder-suicide in the building. The property was converted to a full cooperative in 1970.

$ All Ages Family: High
Victorian Gothic facade of the Jefferson Market Library at 425 Sixth Avenue in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, showing the clock tower.
Museum / Historical Site

Jefferson Market Library

New York, NY

The Jefferson Market Courthouse was built between 1874 and 1877 at the corner of Sixth Avenue and West 10th Street in Greenwich Village, designed by Frederick Clarke Withers and Calvert Vaux in the Victorian Gothic style. It served as the Third Judicial District Courthouse until 1945 and housed the country's first night court. After a community campaign saved it from demolition in 1958, it reopened as the Jefferson Market Branch of the New York Public Library in 1967 and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1977.

$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of Landmark Tavern
Haunted Dining / Bar

Landmark Tavern

New York, NY

Patrick Henry Carley opened the Landmark Tavern in 1868 on the Hudson River waterfront at 11th Avenue and 46th Street, serving dockworkers and merchant sailors in a predominantly Irish immigrant neighborhood. The tavern operated through Prohibition—using its third floor as a speakeasy—and by the 1980s had become a Westies gang hangout before transitioning to its current life as a Hell's Kitchen dining institution.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Beaux-Arts facade of the Lyceum Theatre at 149 West 45th Street in Midtown Manhattan, Broadway's oldest continuously operating legitimate theater.
Theater / Performance Venue

Lyceum Theatre

New York, NY

Built by producer Daniel Frohman and opened November 2, 1903, the Lyceum Theatre at 149 West 45th Street is Broadway's oldest continuously operating legitimate theater. Designed by Herts & Tallant in the Beaux-Arts style, the 922-seat house has been owned by the Shubert Organization since 1950. Frohman lived in a penthouse apartment above the auditorium, using an 18-inch trick window to observe performances below.

$$$ All Ages Family: High
Federal-style 1817 building at 129 Spring Street between Greene and Wooster Streets in SoHo, Manhattan, site of the preserved Manhattan Well.
Haunted House / Historic Home

Manhattan Well (129 Spring Street)

New York, NY

The Manhattan Well at 129 Spring Street is the preserved late-18th-century well in which 22-year-old Gulielma 'Elma' Sands was murdered on December 22, 1799. The 1800 trial of suspect Levi Weeks — featuring Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr as joint defense counsel — was the first jury trial in the United States to be transcribed in detail and is considered the founding text of American trial advocacy. The well was rediscovered in the building's basement during a 1980 excavation and is preserved today in the lower level of the COS clothing store.

$ All Ages Family: High
Exterior street view of McSorley's Old Ale House storefront at 15 East 7th Street in the East Village, Manhattan, New York City
Haunted Dining / Bar

McSorley's Old Ale House

New York, NY

McSorley's Old Ale House opened in 1854 at 15 East 7th Street as 'The Old House at Home' by Irish immigrant John McSorley. It is self-described as the oldest continuously operated Irish saloon in New York City. The building dates to the mid-19th century and the saloon famously refused to admit women until forced to integrate by court order in 1970.

$ 21+ Family: Not Recommended
Merchant's House Museum facade at 29 East 4th Street in NoHo, Manhattan — 1832 Federal-style brick home
Museum / Historical Site

Merchant's House Museum

New York, NY

The Merchant's House Museum at 29 East 4th Street is the only 19th-century family home in New York City preserved intact inside and out. Built in 1832 by hatter Joseph Brewster, it was purchased in 1835 by merchant Seabury Tredwell. Eight Tredwell children grew up in the house; the youngest, Gertrude, lived there until her death in 1933.

$$ All Ages Family: High
Morris-Jumel Mansion in Washington Heights, Manhattan — 1765 Palladian villa, oldest extant house in Manhattan
Museum / Historical Site

Morris-Jumel Mansion

New York, NY

The Morris-Jumel Mansion at 65 Jumel Terrace in Washington Heights, Manhattan is the oldest extant house on the island, built in 1765 as a Palladian summer villa for British Colonel Roger Morris. The house served as General George Washington's headquarters from September 14 to October 18, 1776, and later as the home of merchants Stephen and Eliza Jumel. New York City has owned the property since 1903.

$ All Ages Family: High
The preserved facade of Edgar Allan Poe's 1844 residence incorporated into the West 3rd Street side of NYU Furman Hall
Other Dark Tourism Site

NYU Furman Hall Banister (Edgar Allan Poe Site)

New York, NY

Edgar Allan Poe rented rooms at 85 West 3rd Street from 1844 to 1846, during which time he wrote 'The Cask of Amontillado' and completed his revisions of 'The Raven.' NYU announced plans in 2000 to demolish the building for its new law school expansion. Preservationists negotiated a compromise: the original facade was incorporated into the new building's West 3rd Street side, and an original banister from the structure was retained inside.

$ All Ages Family: High
Mulberry Street facade of the Basilica of St. Patrick's Old Cathedral in Nolita, Manhattan, photographed on a sunny day.
Other Dark Tourism Site

Basilica of St. Patrick's Old Cathedral

New York, NY

The Basilica of St. Patrick's Old Cathedral, at 263 Mulberry Street in Nolita, was built between 1809 and 1815 to designs by Joseph-François Mangin. It served as the seat of the Archdiocese of New York until 1879, when the present St. Patrick's Cathedral on Fifth Avenue opened. Pope Benedict XVI designated it a basilica in 2010. Its catacombs — among the only true catacombs in the United States — contain 35 family crypts and 5 clerical vaults and have hosted public candlelight tours since 2017.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Brick facade of One If by Land, Two If by Sea restaurant at 17 Barrow Street in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, photographed in 2024.
Haunted Dining / Bar

One If by Land, Two If by Sea

New York, NY

17 Barrow Street is an 18th-century carriage house in Greenwich Village built in 1767. Aaron Burr — the third Vice President of the United States and the man who killed Alexander Hamilton in their 1804 duel — kept his horses and coach at the property from the 1790s until the early 1800s. After service as a firehouse, brothel, and silent-movie theater, the building opened as One If by Land, Two If by Sea restaurant in 1972.

$$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
The Palace Theatre marquee and facade at 1564 Broadway in Times Square, Manhattan, photographed in 2017
Theater / Performance Venue

Palace Theatre

New York, NY

The Palace Theatre at 1564 Broadway opened on March 24, 1913, designed by Kirchhoff & Rose for vaudeville impresario Martin Beck. For decades it was the most prestigious vaudeville house in America. After vaudeville's decline it was used for film and limited live productions; Judy Garland's record-breaking 19-week run beginning October 16, 1951 is the theater's most famous engagement. The Palace reopened in 2024 after a multi-year renovation that raised the auditorium 30 feet to permit ground-floor retail.

$$$ All Ages Family: High
Exterior of Radio City Music Hall at 1260 Avenue of the Americas in Midtown Manhattan, viewed from 50th Street
Theater / Performance Venue

Radio City Music Hall

New York, NY

Radio City Music Hall opened on December 27, 1932, as part of Rockefeller Center, conceived by Samuel 'Roxy' Rothafel, the theater impresario who had built some of New York's most celebrated movie palaces. Rothafel died of a heart attack on January 13, 1936, at age 53. The four-tiered auditorium with 5,960 seats was the world's largest indoor theater at opening. A $70 million renovation in 1999 restored the building, which had nearly closed in 1978.

$$$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of South Street Seaport Museum Sinister Secrets Tour
Ghost Tour / Walking Tour

South Street Seaport Museum Sinister Secrets Tour

New York, NY

The South Street Seaport Historic District encompasses a concentration of 18th and 19th-century commercial buildings along the East River waterfront in Lower Manhattan — one of the densest surviving collections of Federal and Greek Revival commercial architecture in New York City. The district was the hub of New York's maritime trade from the 1790s through the mid-19th century, and the surrounding streets saw generations of crime, vice, and waterfront violence before the shipping industry relocated to deeper Brooklyn piers.

$ Minimum 13 Family: Moderate
Exterior of St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery, Manhattan, an 1799 Federal-style Episcopal church
Museum / Historical Site

St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery

New York, NY

St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery stands on land that Peter Stuyvesant, last Dutch Director-General of New Amsterdam, purchased for his farm in the 1650s. Stuyvesant built a private chapel on the site around 1660 and was buried here upon his death in 1672. The current Federal-style church building was completed in 1799 and is the oldest continuously active site of Christian worship in New York City.

$ All Ages Family: High
Exterior of St. Paul's Chapel on Broadway in Lower Manhattan, with the churchyard visible in the foreground
Museum / Historical Site

St. Paul's Chapel

New York, NY

St. Paul's Chapel, completed in 1766, is the oldest public building in Manhattan in continuous use. Built in the Georgian style by the Trinity Church parish, it survived the 1776 Great Fire of New York and served as a place of worship for George Washington during the early years of his presidency. George Frederick Cooke, a celebrated British actor who died in New York in 1812, is buried in the churchyard.

$ All Ages Family: High
Interior of the Campbell Bar at Grand Central Terminal, showing the ornate 1923 Florentine-style coffered ceiling and mahogany fixtures
Haunted Dining / Bar

The Campbell Bar (Grand Central Terminal)

New York, NY

John W. Campbell, a financier and member of the New York Central Railroad's board of directors, leased a 3,500-square-foot room in the southwest corner of Grand Central Terminal in 1923 and commissioned architect Augustus N. Allen to convert it into a lavish private office and entertainment salon.

$$$ 21+ Family: Moderate
Exterior of The Dakota apartment building at 1 West 72nd Street, Manhattan, as seen from Central Park West on the Upper West Side
Haunted House / Historic Home

The Dakota

New York, NY

The Dakota is a luxury cooperative apartment building at 1 West 72nd Street on the Upper West Side, constructed between 1880 and 1884 for businessman Edward Cabot Clark and designed by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh in German Renaissance style. Widely regarded as New York's first luxury apartment building, it is a National Historic Landmark. Its most famous resident, John Lennon, was murdered in the building's archway on December 8, 1980.

$ All Ages Family: High
Gothic Revival spire of Trinity Church at 75 Broadway with the head of Wall Street and the churchyard tombs in the foreground.
Other Dark Tourism Site

Trinity Church and Churchyard

New York, NY

Trinity Church's congregation was chartered in 1697 by King William III, who granted the parish the land at the intersection of Broadway and Wall Street. The current Gothic Revival church at 75 Broadway is the third on the site and was consecrated in 1846. The adjacent churchyard contains the graves of Alexander Hamilton, his wife Eliza Schuyler Hamilton, steamboat inventor Robert Fulton, and U.S. Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin.

$ All Ages Family: High
Hangman's Elm, a large English elm in the northwest corner of Washington Square Park, Manhattan
Outdoor / Natural Site

Washington Square Park (Hangman's Elm & Potter's Field)

New York, NY

Washington Square Park sits on land that served as a public potter's field from 1797 to 1826, estimated to contain roughly 20,000 burials. The park opened in 1827 and the space became Greenwich Village's central gathering place. The 350-year-old English elm in the northwest corner, one of Manhattan's oldest trees, acquired its 'Hangman's' label in late-19th-century folklore — no public record confirms hangings from the tree itself.

$ All Ages Family: High
Haunted Dining / Bar

Waverly Inn (16 Bank Street)

New York, NY

The building at 16 Bank Street was constructed in 1845 and has had a varied history: it served as a tavern and brothel in the 19th century, then as a carriage house storing coaches for wealthy West Village families. Ye Waverly Inn opened in the early 20th century as a Colonial-themed tavern serving inexpensive home-style meals. The building has survived two documented fires, in 1977 and 1997.

$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Exterior of the White Horse Tavern at 567 Hudson Street, West Village, Manhattan
Haunted Dining / Bar

White Horse Tavern

New York, NY

The White Horse Tavern opened at 567 Hudson Street in 1880, initially serving the West Village's longshoreman community. By the early 1950s it had become a gathering place for New York's literary and bohemian community, with Dylan Thomas as its most famous regular. Thomas drank here on the night of November 9, 1953, then returned to the Chelsea Hotel where he fell into a coma. He died at St. Vincent's Hospital on November 9, 1953.

$$ 21+ Family: Low

Staten Island — 14

Photo of Alice Austen House (Clear Comfort)
Museum / Historical Site

Alice Austen House (Clear Comfort)

Staten Island, NY

Clear Comfort was built in the 1690s as a one-room Dutch Colonial cottage on the bluffs of Staten Island's Rosebank neighborhood. Alice Austen's grandfather purchased and substantially remodeled it in 1844, and Alice grew up there from infancy, living in the house until 1945 when her savings were exhausted and she was moved to the Staten Island Farm Colony. She died in poverty in 1952, shortly after Life magazine published her photographs and donors raised enough money to place her briefly in a private home. The house was restored as a museum and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1993.

$ All Ages Family: High
View north from Gate 3 of Baron Hirsch Cemetery in Graniteville, Staten Island, New York — a historic Jewish cemetery.
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Baron Hirsch Cemetery

Staten Island, NY

Baron Hirsch Cemetery was established in 1899 by an association of Jewish men in New York and named for philanthropist Baron Maurice de Hirsch. Located in the Graniteville neighborhood of Staten Island, the 65-acre cemetery is the final resting place of approximately 65,000 individuals. The cemetery is organized into approximately 500 plots belonging to various synagogues, Jewish associations, and family groups.

$ All ages Family: High
Exterior view of the historic Billop House (Conference House), a pre-1680 fieldstone manor in Tottenville, Staten Island, photographed for HABS.
Haunted House / Historic Home

Billop House

Staten Island, NY

The Billop House, also known as the Conference House, was built by Royal Navy Officer Christopher Billopp around 1680 and served as the site of the 1776 Staten Island Peace Conference between British Commander William Howe and Colonial representatives including Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Edward Rutledge. The historical significance of this failed peace negotiation shaped the trajectory of the American Revolutionary War.

$ All ages Family: High
Photo of Church of St. Andrew
Museum / Historical Site

Church of St. Andrew

Staten Island, NY

The parish of St. Andrew's on Staten Island was established in 1705 when the Reverend Aeneas Mackenzie arrived, and the first church was built between 1708 and 1712, receiving a royal charter from Queen Anne that year. During the British occupation of Staten Island (1776–1783), the building was used as a barracks and hospital for British and Hessian troops, sustaining severe damage; two skirmishes were fought in the churchyard when New Jersey Patriot militias raided Richmondtown. The building was burned in 1867, and the current Gothic Revival structure was built in 1872 by local architect William Mersereau.

$ All Ages Family: High
c.1680 fieldstone manor of the Conference House (Billopp House) at the southernmost tip of Staten Island.
Museum / Historical Site

Conference House (Billopp House)

Staten Island, NY

The Conference House (also called Billopp House) is a two-story fieldstone manor built circa 1680 by Captain Christopher Billopp, a Royal Navy officer granted the 932-acre Manor of Bentley in 1676. On September 11, 1776, the house was the site of an unsuccessful peace conference between Lord Admiral Richard Howe and American delegates Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Edward Rutledge. The house was deeded to the City of New York in 1926 and operates as a historic-house museum within Conference House Park.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Battery Weed at Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island, New York — a multi-tiered red sandstone coastal fortification completed in 1861 at the entrance to New York Harbor
Battlefield / Military Site

Fort Wadsworth

Staten Island, NY

Fort Wadsworth occupies the Staten Island side of the Narrows, the natural choke point at the entrance to New York Bay. The site has held continuous military fortification since 1655, beginning with a Dutch blockhouse on Signal Hill. The current Battery Weed and Fort Tompkins date from federal rebuilding completed in the mid-19th century. Decommissioned in 1994, the fort is now part of the Gateway National Recreation Area.

$ All Ages Family: High
The Guyon-Lake-Tysen House, c. 1740 Dutch Colonial farmhouse at Historic Richmond Town, Staten Island
Museum / Historical Site

Historic Richmond Town (Guyon-Lake-Tysen House)

Staten Island, NY

Historic Richmond Town is a 35-acre open-air museum complex in Staten Island's Richmondtown neighborhood, managed jointly by the Staten Island Historical Society and the City of New York. The complex preserves more than 30 structures dating from the late 17th to early 20th centuries, including the c. 1740 Guyon-Lake-Tysen House, the Voorlezer's House (c. 1696), and the Third County Courthouse (1837). The site was established in 1958, though the town of Richmondtown itself dates to the early 18th century when it served as Richmond County's seat.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Photo of Moravian Cemetery
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Moravian Cemetery

Staten Island, NY

Moravian Cemetery opened in 1740 in Staten Island's New Dorp neighborhood, making it the oldest and largest active cemetery on the island. In the 19th century, Cornelius Vanderbilt donated 45 acres to the Moravian Church and his family commissioned Richard Morris Hunt and Frederick Law Olmsted to design a private mausoleum and landscaped family section. The Vanderbilt Mausoleum was completed in 1886. After a 24-year-old woman was fatally crushed by the ornamental gate at the mausoleum entrance in 1967, public access to the Vanderbilt section was permanently revoked.

$ All Ages Family: High
Exterior of the 1832 Old Bermuda Inn on Veterans Road West in Staten Island, New York
Haunted Dining / Bar

Old Bermuda Inn

Staten Island, NY

The Mesereau family built the house at 301 Veterans Road West on Staten Island in 1832. After passing through various uses, it now operates as a bed and breakfast, restaurant, bar, and event venue. The building retains much of its nineteenth-century residential character, including an oil portrait of Martha Mesereau that still shows singe marks from an unexplained fire during renovations.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Ruins of the historic Sea View Hospital tuberculosis complex on Staten Island, New York, a 1913 city sanatorium now partially abandoned
Asylum / Hospital

Sea View Hospital (Old)

Staten Island, NY

Sea View Hospital opened in 1913 on Staten Island as the largest and most expensive municipal tuberculosis sanatorium in the United States. Built on the former 25-acre hilltop estate of Charles Schmidt, the campus eventually held 37 buildings constructed between 1905 and 1938. Streptomycin trials at Sea View in 1952 produced one of the foundational breakthroughs in tuberculosis treatment.

$ All Ages (perimeter only) Family: Moderate
Temple Row Greek Revival buildings at Sailors Snug Harbor on Staten Island New York
Museum / Historical Site

Sailors' Snug Harbor

Staten Island, NY

Sailors' Snug Harbor opened on Staten Island in 1831 as one of the first retirement homes in the United States, funded by the 1801 bequest of Revolutionary War mariner Captain Robert Richard Randall. The 83-acre campus grew to fifty buildings and 900 residents at its peak, and now operates as Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Botanical Garden.

$ All Ages Family: High
Greek Revival facade of the Snug Harbor Music Hall, Staten Island, New York
Theater / Performance Venue

Snug Harbor Cultural Center Music Hall

Staten Island, NY

Sailors' Snug Harbor was founded in 1801 by Robert Randall, a maritime merchant who left his estate for the support of aged and disabled sailors. The Staten Island campus opened in 1833 and operated as a sailors' retirement home until 1976. The Music Hall, a 686-seat Greek Revival auditorium, opened in July 1892 and is the second-oldest music hall in New York City after Carnegie Hall. The Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden has operated the site since the 1970s.

$ All Ages Family: High
The Parsonage at Historic Richmond Town on Staten Island, the 1855 Carpenter Gothic building once home to a restaurant, photographed at the living-history village
Haunted Dining / Bar

The Parsonage at Historic Richmond Town

Staten Island, NY

The Parsonage at Historic Richmond Town is an 1855 Carpenter Gothic building constructed as the home for the pastor of the local Dutch Reformed Church. It served as the Parsonage Restaurant between 1995 and 2008 and is one of the historic structures at the Historic Richmond Town living-history village operated by the Staten Island Historical Society.

$ All Ages Family: High
Sandy beach at Wolfe's Pond Park on Raritan Bay, Staten Island, New York
Outdoor / Natural Site

Wolfe's Pond Park

Staten Island, NY

Wolfe's Pond Park is one of Staten Island's largest parks, operated by NYC Parks. It encompasses a freshwater pond, the southernmost and least crowded public beach in New York City on Raritan Bay, and a wildlife and plant preserve. The park draws visitors for swimming, walking, birdwatching, and access to the pebble-strewn Raritan Bay shoreline.

$ All Ages Family: High

Buffalo — 13

The 17-story 1929 Art Deco tower of Buffalo Central Terminal seen from East Lovejoy Street in the Broadway-Fillmore neighborhood
Museum / Historical Site

Buffalo Central Terminal

Buffalo, NY

Designed by Fellheimer & Wagner for the New York Central Railroad and opened June 22, 1929, the 17-story Art Deco terminal stood as a monument to Buffalo's role as one of the nation's busiest rail hubs. At peak it handled more than 200 trains and 10,000 passengers daily. Passenger service ended in 1979 and the structure deteriorated until preservation efforts began in the 1990s.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Buffalo and Erie County Naval Military Park museum ships including USS The Sullivans destroyer in Buffalo NY
Museum / Historical Site

Buffalo Naval Park

Buffalo, NY

USS The Sullivans (DD-537) was a Fletcher-class destroyer commissioned in 1943 and named after the five Sullivan brothers who died together when their ship, USS Juneau, was sunk in November 1942. The destroyer served the U.S. Navy through World War II and the Korean War before being decommissioned in 1965. The vessel has served as a museum ship at Buffalo Naval Park since 1977.

$$ All ages Family: Moderate
Richardsonian Romanesque Central Wing of the former Buffalo State Asylum with twin towers in Buffalo NY
Asylum / Hospital

Buffalo Psychiatric Center

Buffalo, NY

The Richardson Olmsted Complex in Buffalo was constructed beginning in 1871 as the Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane, based on the Kirkbride Plan of psychiatric treatment. Designed by renowned architect H.H. Richardson and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, the 203-acre campus formally opened in 1880. The facility operated as a psychiatric hospital until 1974, when patients were transferred and the complex fell into decay. Modern restoration efforts have partially reopened the campus as Hotel Henry.

$$ 18+ for most facilities due to construction and hazards Family: Low
Central wing and Richardsonian-Romanesque twin towers of the Richardson Olmsted Campus (Buffalo State Asylum) in Buffalo, New York
Museum / Historical Site

Buffalo State Asylum / Richardson Olmsted Campus

Buffalo, NY

The Richardson Olmsted Campus in Buffalo, New York, was designed in 1870 by architect Henry Hobson Richardson, with grounds by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. Built as the Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane on Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbride's plan, it opened to patients in 1880 and operated as a psychiatric hospital until 1974. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1986.

$$ All Ages Family: High
Mausoleums and mature trees at Forest Lawn Cemetery on Delaware Avenue in Buffalo, New York
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Forest Lawn Cemetery (Buffalo)

Buffalo, NY

Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo, New York, was founded in 1849 by Charles E. Clarke as one of America's first purpose-designed rural cemeteries. The 269-acre grounds contain nearly 170,000 burials, including 13th President Millard Fillmore, Seneca chief Red Jacket, Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, and musician Rick James.

$ All Ages Family: High
Iron Island Museum at 998 East Lovejoy Street in Buffalo, New York, the former 1883 Lovejoy Methodist Episcopal Church and later funeral home.
Museum / Historical Site

Iron Island Museum

Buffalo, NY

Built in 1883 as a Methodist Episcopal church in the Lovejoy section of Buffalo, the building served the iron-working immigrant community surrounded by railroad tracks (the 'Iron Island'). The church closed in the late 1940s, the building was converted into a funeral home in 1956, and in August 2000 it was donated to the Iron Island Preservation Society for use as a neighborhood history museum.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Exterior of The Mansion on Delaware Avenue in Buffalo, New York, the 1869 Second Empire Sternberg House now operating as a luxury hotel.
Haunted Hotel / Inn

The Mansion on Delaware Avenue (Sternberg House)

Buffalo, NY

Commissioned 1869 by Buffalo grain-elevator owner Charles F. Sternberg and designed by George M. Allison in Second Empire style at a cost of $200,000, the mansion was later expanded by Samuel Curtis Trubee into a 100-room hotel. After lives as Victor Hugo Wine Cellar and other uses, the property stood vacant for 25 years until a $3 million restoration reopened it in 2001 as the Mansion on Delaware Avenue.

$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Main building of the former Medaille University campus on Agassiz Circle in Buffalo, New York
Other Dark Tourism Site

Medaille University (Former Campus)

Buffalo, NY

Medaille University in Buffalo, New York was founded in 1937 by the Sisters of St. Joseph, named for the order's founder Jean Paul Médaille. The institution closed permanently on August 31, 2023, after holding its final commencement ceremony in May of that year. The campus was subsequently sold and now houses BuffSci Charter School.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
The 1929 Art Deco Rand Building rising over Lafayette Square in downtown Buffalo, New York
Museum / Historical Site

Rand Building

Buffalo, NY

Built 1929 on the site of an earlier fire, the 391-foot Art Deco Rand Building (also known as 14 Lafayette Square) was at completion Buffalo's tallest building. It served as headquarters for Marine Trust Company and later George F. Rand interests, and has long housed several local radio stations on its upper floors.

$ All Ages Family: High
Marquee and ornate facade of Shea's Buffalo Theatre on Main Street in downtown Buffalo, a 1926 Rapp and Rapp movie palace
Theater / Performance Venue

Shea's Buffalo Theatre

Buffalo, NY

Shea's Buffalo opened January 16, 1926 as a 'Wonder Theatre' movie palace designed by Rapp and Rapp for impresario Michael Shea. Saved from demolition in the 1970s by community fundraising, it was restored and reopened as a performing arts center; today it is Buffalo's flagship Broadway-tour venue.

$$ All Ages Family: High
The eighteen-story 1923 Statler Hotel (Statler Towers) on Delaware Avenue and Niagara Square in downtown Buffalo, New York
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Statler Hotel (Statler City)

Buffalo, NY

Designed by George B. Post & Sons and opened in 1923 as the flagship of Ellsworth M. Statler's national hotel chain, the eighteen-story English Renaissance Revival hotel introduced amenities including private bathrooms, radios and circulating ice water to every guest room. After decades of operation the hotel closed in the 1980s, was largely vacant, and was acquired in 2010 by developer Mark Croce for restoration as the Statler City event venue.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Town Ballroom exterior on Main Street in Buffalo's Theater District, showing the venue's marquee and updated facade
Haunted Dining / Bar

Town Ballroom (former Town Casino)

Buffalo, NY

The Main Street site originally housed a Prohibition-era speakeasy known as the Town Barn; it reopened as the Town Casino in 1945, hosting Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Connie Francis and Louis Armstrong through the late 1940s and 1950s. After years as a bingo hall and other uses, the building was renovated and reopened as the Town Ballroom live-music venue in 2004.

$$ 18+ Family: Low
Photo of USS The Sullivans (DD-537) — Buffalo Naval Park
Battlefield / Military Site

USS The Sullivans (DD-537) — Buffalo Naval Park

Buffalo, NY

USS The Sullivans (DD-537) was commissioned on September 21, 1943, specifically to honor the five Sullivan brothers — Albert, Francis, George, Madison, and Joseph — all of whom were killed when USS Juneau was torpedoed on November 13, 1942. Their collective loss directly prompted the U.S. War Department to issue the Sole Survivor Policy. The destroyer served through WWII and the Korean War before being preserved at Buffalo Naval Park in 1977.

$$ All Ages Family: Low

Rochester — 10

Wooded entrance and arboretum sign at Durand Eastman Park, the 965-acre Olmsted-influenced park on Rochester, New York's Lake Ontario shore
Outdoor / Natural Site

Durand Eastman Park

Rochester, NY

Durand Eastman Park is a major Monroe County public park on Lake Ontario in Rochester, New York, founded in 1907 from farmland purchased by Dr. Henry S. Durand and George Eastman. The park includes the stone ruins of an early-twentieth-century refectory popularly known as the White Lady's Castle.

$ All Ages Family: High
Colonial Revival mansion exterior of the George Eastman Museum at 900 East Avenue, Rochester, New York
Museum / Historical Site

George Eastman Museum

Rochester, NY

Completed in 1905 as the 35,000-square-foot Colonial Revival mansion of Kodak founder George Eastman, the property opened to the public as the George Eastman House photography museum in 1949. The site was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966 and is the world's oldest photography museum.

$$ All Ages Family: High
Aerial survey view of Holy Sepulchre Cemetery
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Holy Sepulchre Cemetery

Rochester, NY

Holy Sepulchre Cemetery was founded in 1871 by Bishop Bernard J. McQuaid, the first bishop of the Diocese of Rochester, on a 110-acre tract along Lake Avenue. McQuaid consecrated the cemetery on September 10, 1871, in a ceremony that drew 10,000 people. The cemetery's charter was granted by New York State in 1872. Today it covers 332 acres.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Exterior facade of the 1916 Hose Company No. 22 firehouse on Stutson Street Rochester New York during restoration showing RFD brickwork and arched windows
Haunted Dining / Bar

Hose 22 Firehouse Grill

Rochester, NY

Built in 1916 as the Rochester Fire Department's Hose Company No. 22, the firehouse on Stutson Street was the 'crown jewel of Charlotte' until the department vacated it around 1962. It sat largely empty for nearly half a century before contractor Craig Ristuccia purchased and restored it; the restaurant opened in 2008-2009. It is included on the official Haunted History Trail of New York State.

$$ All Ages Family: High
The Little Theatre historic Art Deco cinema marquee at night, Rochester, New York
Theater / Performance Venue

The Little Theatre

Rochester, NY

The Little Theatre opened October 17, 1929, billed as 'The House of Silent Shadows' and debuting with the silent film Cyrano de Bergerac. The Art Deco building at 240 East Avenue in Rochester is recognized as the oldest continuously operating independent film theater in the United States. It has operated without interruption through the sound transition, the multiplex era, and the streaming era.

$ All Ages (varies by film) Family: High
Victorian-era monuments at Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, NY
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Mount Hope Cemetery

Rochester, NY

Founded in 1838, Mount Hope was the first municipal Victorian cemetery in the United States. The 196-acre landscape adjacent to the University of Rochester is the resting place of more than 350,000 people, including Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2018.

$ All Ages Family: High
Entrance facade of the West Herr Auditorium Theatre, the 1928–1930 former Masonic Temple of Rochester, New York
Theater / Performance Venue

West Herr Auditorium Theatre

Rochester, NY

Built between 1928 and 1930 as the Masonic Temple of Rochester, the building's 3,000-seat auditorium was sold to a private owner in 1989 and purchased by the Rochester Broadway Theatre League (RBTL) in 2004. RBTL acquired the adjoining Auditorium Center portion of the building in 2023.

$$$ All Ages Family: High
Front exterior of the Rundel Memorial Library, Rochester's 1936 Beaux-Arts/Art Deco central library on South Avenue in Monroe County, New York.
Museum / Historical Site

Rundel Memorial Library

Rochester, NY

The Rundel Memorial Building, designed by Gordon & Kaelber and constructed between 1933 and 1936, is the Central Library of Rochester and Monroe County. The Beaux-Arts/Art Deco building was constructed atop the Johnson & Seymour Mill Race on the Genesee River and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.

$ All Ages Family: High
Entrance facade of Rush Rhees Library at the University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, showing the 1930 Italianate-Neo-Romanesque arcade and central tower.
Museum / Historical Site

Rush Rhees Library (University of Rochester)

Rochester, NY

Rush Rhees Library was dedicated in 1930 as the centerpiece of the University of Rochester's new River Campus. The Italianate-Neo-Romanesque building features a 186-foot central tower and remains the principal research library at the university.

$ All Ages Family: High
Haunted Dining / Bar

Union Tavern

Rochester, NY

The current building was constructed in 1856 by Irondequoit town supervisor Capt. Samuel Waldo Bradstreet VI and his wife Lavinia. The Bradstreet home remained a private residence until the 1930s, then served sequentially as apartments, restaurants, and bars (including Hallie's Steak House and The Reunion Inn). It is now Union Tavern, listed on the Haunted History Trail of New York State. Local tradition holds that the property was a stop on the Underground Railroad and later operated as a Prohibition-era speakeasy.

$$ All Ages Family: High

Albany — 9

South profile of the Cherry Hill historic Van Rensselaer house in Albany, New York
Haunted House / Historic Home

Historic Cherry Hill

Albany, NY

Cherry Hill is a 1787 Georgian house built by Philip Van Rensselaer of Albany's largest landholding family. After five generations of family occupation, the home opened as a museum in 1964 and is operated today by the Historic Cherry Hill Association.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
The Copper Crow restaurant exterior from the south at 904 Broadway, Albany, NY, showing the black-painted 1832 Andrew Kirk Brewery building with a large white crow mural
Haunted Dining / Bar

The Copper Crow (Andrew Kirk Brewery)

Albany, NY

The Copper Crow is a craft cocktail bar and restaurant that opened in 2021 inside the 1832 Andrew Kirk & Son's Brewery building at 904 Broadway in Albany's historic North End warehouse district. Andrew Kirk, the son of a Scottish immigrant, was a leading figure in 19th-century Albany brewing.

$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Colossal Corinthian colonnade fronting the 1912 New York State Education Building on Washington Avenue in Albany
Other Dark Tourism Site

New York State Education Building

Albany, NY

The New York State Education Building opened in 1912 in Albany as a Beaux-Arts state office building designed by Henry Hornbostel, distinguished by 36 Corinthian columns forming one of the longest colonnades in the world. It originally housed the New York State Museum, State Library, and State Education Department, and continues to serve as headquarters for the Education Department.

$ All Ages on public exterior; interior access during business hours with security Family: High
Aerial survey view of Graceland Cemetery (Albany)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Graceland Cemetery (Albany)

Albany, NY

Graceland Cemetery opened in May 1902 as a nonsectarian 228-acre cemetery on the banks of the Normanskill in Albany, NY. It was designed by Garnet Douglass Baltimore (1859-1946), the first African American to graduate from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and one of the leading landscape engineers of the Hudson Valley.

$ All Ages Family: High
Exterior of the New York State Capitol in Albany, completed 1899
Museum / Historical Site

New York State Capitol

Albany, NY

The New York State Capitol in Albany was completed in 1899 after 32 years of construction by a succession of architects including Thomas Fuller, H.H. Richardson, and Isaac Perry. It is one of the few U.S. state capitols built without an exterior dome. On March 29, 1911, a catastrophic fire that originated in the third-floor Assembly Library destroyed much of the State Library and gutted the upper floors, claiming the life of 78-year-old night watchman Samuel J. Abbott — the only person to die in the blaze.

$ All Ages Family: High
Haunted Dining / Bar

The Olde English Pub (Quackenbush House)

Albany, NY

The Quackenbush House at 683 Broadway is the second-oldest building in Albany, with the front section dating to approximately 1736 and the rear to the late 18th century. It is named for the Dutch Quackenbush family, who owned the home for over a century before vacating in 1864. Since then it has served as an antique store, boarding house, and tavern; the Olde English Pub has occupied the space since 2010 as part of the redeveloped Quackenbush Square.

$$ All Ages (full restaurant); 21+ at the bar after dinner hours Family: High
Exterior of the 1761-1765 Schuyler Mansion in Albany, a brick Georgian National Historic Landmark
Haunted House / Historic Home

Schuyler Mansion State Historic Site

Albany, NY

The Schuyler Mansion is a 1761-1765 brick Georgian mansion built for Major General Philip Schuyler — Continental Army general, U.S. Senator, and father of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton. The home hosted notable Revolutionary-era visitors and was the site of the 1780 wedding of Eliza and Alexander Hamilton. It is a designated National Historic Landmark and is operated as a museum by New York State Parks. Historical interpretation now includes the lives of the enslaved people Philip Schuyler held in bondage.

$ All Ages Family: High
Exterior of the 1797-98 Ten Broeck Mansion in Albany, a Federal-style brick house designed by Philip Hooker
Museum / Historical Site

Ten Broeck Mansion

Albany, NY

The Ten Broeck Mansion is a Federal-style brick house built in 1797-98 for Major General Abraham Ten Broeck and his wife Elizabeth Van Rensselaer, designed by Albany architect Philip Hooker. Ten Broeck commanded New York militia at the Battle of Saratoga and later served as mayor of Albany. In 1848 the home was purchased by banker and philanthropist Thomas Worth Olcott, whose family modified it with Greek Revival details. The Olcott family donated the property to the Albany County Historical Association in 1948; it has operated as a museum since.

$ All Ages Family: High
Aerial survey view of Washington Park (former State Street Burying Ground)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Washington Park (former State Street Burying Ground)

Albany, NY

Washington Park is an 81-acre Olmsted-tradition urban park in central Albany that was developed beginning in the 1870s. The site previously held the State Street Burying Ground, established in 1800 and closed by law in 1867. In 1868 the City of Albany disinterred the cemetery and moved remains to Albany Rural Cemetery before laying out the park.

$ All Ages Family: High

Binghamton — 9

Brick and cast-stone facade of the Broome County Forum Theatre in downtown Binghamton, New York
Theater / Performance Venue

Broome County Forum Theatre

Binghamton, NY

The Broome County Forum Theatre opened in 1919 as the Binghamton Theatre, a vaudeville and movie palace designed by architect Herbert Brewster. After years as the Capri Theatre, it was restored as Binghamton's main performing-arts venue and now seats roughly 1,500. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2008.

$$ All Ages Family: High
Gothic Revival stone exterior and steeple of Christ Episcopal Church in downtown Binghamton, New York
Museum / Historical Site

Christ Church (Binghamton)

Binghamton, NY

Christ Church is Binghamton's oldest organized congregation, formed in 1810 by founders meeting at the county courthouse on a lot secured by city land agent Joshua Whitney. The current stone sanctuary at Henry and Washington Streets was designed by architect Richard Upjohn and built between 1853 and 1855, with its 110-foot steeple completed decades later.

$ All Ages Family: High
Exterior of the Jonas M. Kilmer House at 9 Riverside Drive, Binghamton, showing Victorian stone turrets and towers
Haunted House / Historic Home

Kilmer Mansion

Binghamton, NY

The Jonas M. Kilmer Mansion was built in 1898 at 9 Riverside Drive in Binghamton by Jonas M. Kilmer (1843–1912), who managed the Kilmer family's Swamp Root patent-medicine business after it was developed by his brother Dr. S. Andral Kilmer. Jonas's son Willis Sharpe Kilmer (1869–1940) took over the business, built the Kilmer Building and Printing House downtown, founded the Binghamton Press newspaper, and owned the racehorse Exterminator, winner of the 1918 Kentucky Derby.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
The 1870 Second Empire brick and stone Phelps Mansion Museum on Court Street in Binghamton, New York
Haunted House / Historic Home

Phelps Mansion Museum

Binghamton, NY

The Phelps Mansion Museum is an 1870 Second Empire residence in Binghamton, New York, designed by architect Isaac G. Perry for banker and former mayor Sherman D. Phelps. It is the last surviving mansion on Court Street's Gilded Age "Mansion Row" and operates today as a historic house museum.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Exterior of the Alonzo Roberson House at 30 Front Street, Binghamton, New York, showing Italian Renaissance Revival architecture
Museum / Historical Site

Roberson Mansion

Binghamton, NY

Alonzo Roberson Jr. (1861–1935) built his fortune as a regional lumber magnate in Broome County. In 1904 he engaged Binghamton architect C. Edward Vosbury to design an Italian Renaissance Revival home on Front Street; construction finished in 1907. New York firm Pottier & Stymus handled the interiors, including silk damask wall treatments. Roberson's will created the Roberson Memorial Inc. in 1934, and the mansion opened to the public as a cultural center in 1954, eventually growing into the Roberson Museum and Science Center.

$ All Ages Family: High
Monuments and rolling grounds at Spring Forest Cemetery in Binghamton, New York
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Spring Forest Cemetery

Binghamton, NY

Spring Forest Cemetery opened in 1849 as a park-like rural-movement cemetery in Binghamton. Its iron gates were designed by Binghamton architect Isaac Perry, who is also buried on the grounds. Interments include Binghamton founder Joshua Whitney, numerous Civil War veterans, and Medal of Honor recipient General John C. Robinson.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Gothic Revival limestone facade of the New York State Inebriate Asylum, the Castle, in Binghamton
Asylum / Hospital

The Castle (Binghamton State Hospital / NY Inebriate Asylum)

Binghamton, NY

The Castle is a Gothic Revival limestone building in Binghamton designed by architect Isaac Perry. It opened in 1864 as the New York State Inebriate Asylum, the first state institution in the country dedicated to treating alcoholism as a disease. In 1879 it was converted to the State Asylum for the Chronic Insane, later the Binghamton State Hospital and today's Greater Binghamton Health Center.

$ All Ages Family: High
Exterior of the Harlow E. Bundy House at 129 Main Street, Binghamton, showing Queen Anne architecture with conical corner tower
Museum / Historical Site

The Historic Bundy House

Binghamton, NY

Harlow Bundy (1856–1914) and his brother Willard founded the Bundy Manufacturing Company in Binghamton in 1889, producing time-recording clocks that grew into a global business. Harlow commissioned the Queen Anne-style residence at 129 Main Street in 1892, designed by architect Elfred Hull Bartoo. The family occupied it until 1906. Through corporate mergers the time-clock business became International Business Machines—IBM—in 1924. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2011 and has operated as the Bundy Museum of History and Art since 2004.

$ All Ages Family: High
Italian Renaissance Alonzo Roberson House at 30 Front Street in Binghamton, New York
Museum / Historical Site

Roberson Museum and Science Center

Binghamton, NY

The Roberson Mansion was designed in 1904 by Binghamton architect C. Edward Vosbury for lumber magnate Alonzo Roberson Jr. and completed in 1907. After Roberson's widow Margaret died, the Roberson Memorial Center opened to the public in 1954 and has since grown into the Roberson Museum and Science Center.

$ All Ages Family: High

Brooklyn — 8

Photo of Atlantic Avenue Tunnel (Cobble Hill Tunnel)
Other Dark Tourism Site

Atlantic Avenue Tunnel (Cobble Hill Tunnel)

Brooklyn, NY

The Atlantic Avenue Tunnel — officially the Cobble Hill Tunnel — was built in 1844 for the Long Island Rail Road to separate its trains from street traffic on the approach to South Ferry. Opened December 3, 1844, it is recognized by Guinness World Records as the oldest subway tunnel in the world. The New York State Legislature banned locomotives from within Brooklyn's city limits in 1861, and the tunnel was sealed. A 20-year-old amateur historian named Bob Diamond rediscovered it in 1980 through a manhole and led public tours from 1982 until 2010, when the NYC DOT terminated his contract. The tunnel has been sealed since.

$ All Ages Family: High
True Crime Site

Brooklyn Theatre Fire Site (Cadman Plaza)

Brooklyn, NY

The Brooklyn Theatre fire of December 5, 1876, killed at least 278 people — the worst disaster in Brooklyn history by lives lost. The theater, at Washington and Johnson Streets in Downtown Brooklyn, caught fire near the end of a performance of 'The Two Orphans' when a backstage set piece ignited from gas lamps. Most deaths occurred in the uppermost gallery, where the cheapest seats were located. One hundred and three unidentified victims were buried in a mass grave at Green-Wood Cemetery, marked by an obelisk. A replacement theater, Haverly's, was built on the site in 1879 and failed within a decade.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Cypress Hills Cemetery with the Franklin K. Lane Educational Campus visible in the background, Brooklyn, New York
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Cypress Hills Cemetery

Brooklyn, NY

Cypress Hills Cemetery was established in 1848 and opened for burials in 1851. It spans 225 acres across the Brooklyn-Queens border and was one of New York City's first non-sectarian cemeteries. From 1854 to 1856, more than 15,000 bodies were transferred from church cemeteries in Manhattan and Williamsburg following an 1852 law prohibiting new Manhattan burials; the total reinterment count over time reached approximately 35,000. A three-acre section was designated as Cypress Hills National Cemetery in 1862 for Civil War dead, holding 3,425 Union and 478 Confederate soldiers. Notable interments include Jackie Robinson, Mae West, Piet Mondrian, and Eubie Blake.

$ All Ages Family: High
The Gothic Revival entrance gate of Green-Wood Cemetery on 25th Street in Brooklyn, New York
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Green-Wood Cemetery

Brooklyn, NY

Green-Wood Cemetery is a 478-acre rural-style cemetery in Brooklyn's Sunset Park, established in 1838 as one of the first rural cemeteries in the United States. Civic planner Henry Evelyn Pierrepont led a group of investors in purchasing 178 acres on the moraine ridge; the cemetery has since expanded to encompass roughly 600,000 burials, including Leonard Bernstein, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Boss Tweed, and sixteen Union generals. Green-Wood is a National Historic Landmark.

$ All Ages Family: High
True Crime Site

H.P. Lovecraft Residence (169 Clinton Street)

Brooklyn, NY

H.P. Lovecraft, one of the most influential writers in American horror and weird fiction, occupied a ground-floor apartment at 169 Clinton Street in Brooklyn Heights from late December 1924 until April 1926. He had relocated from Providence, Rhode Island, following his marriage to Sonia Greene, who later moved to Cincinnati for work, leaving Lovecraft to live alone in poverty. During his time at 169 Clinton Street, Lovecraft wrote 'The Horror at Red Hook,' a story directly inspired by his walks through Red Hook and his reactions to Brooklyn's immigrant communities. He described the building as harboring 'something vast lying subterrenely in obnoxious slumber' and characterized it as 'a malignly sentient thing — a dead, vampire creature which sucked something out of those within it.'

$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of McCarren Park Pool
Other Dark Tourism Site

McCarren Park Pool

Brooklyn, NY

McCarren Park Pool opened on July 31, 1936, designed by Aymar Embury II under Robert Moses and built by the Works Progress Administration. Its opening drew approximately 75,000 people. The pool served the Greenpoint and Williamsburg communities for nearly five decades before closing after the 1983 season. Renovation work the following year was halted by community opposition citing drug dealing and prostitution in the abandoned facility. The pool sat dormant for 29 years, hosting concerts during part of that period, before a $50 million restoration brought it back in June 2012.

$ All Ages Family: High
Exterior of the Old Stone House (Vechte-Cortelyou House reconstruction) at 336 3rd Street, Park Slope Brooklyn, photographed in 2017.
Museum / Historical Site

Old Stone House (Vechte-Cortelyou House)

Brooklyn, NY

The Vechte-Cortelyou House was a Dutch stone farmhouse built around 1699 in what is now Park Slope. On August 27, 1776, it became the British command position during the Battle of Long Island as approximately 256 Maryland soldiers under Major Mordecai Gist launched repeated rear-guard charges against British lines to enable George Washington's army to retreat to Manhattan. The soldiers who died in these charges — historically remembered as the Maryland 400 — were buried in a mass grave on nearby land. The original house was demolished in 1897; a faithful reconstruction using recovered original stone was built in 1933–34 by the City of New York and now operates as a public history museum.

$ All Ages Family: High
Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument in Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn — a 149-foot Doric granite column topped by a bronze brazier, photographed from the southwest in winter.
Battlefield / Military Site

Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument (Fort Greene Park)

Brooklyn, NY

During the American Revolutionary War, the British held thousands of captured American soldiers and sailors aboard prison ships anchored in Wallabout Bay, off what is now the Brooklyn waterfront. More than 11,500 Americans died in captivity — more than perished in all Revolutionary War combat combined. Their remains washed ashore for decades, and local residents collected bones for burial in a series of temporary tombs. In 1908, President-elect William Howard Taft dedicated the Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument, a 149-foot granite Doric column with a bronze brazier designed by McKim, Mead & White, over a crypt containing bone fragments in 20 slate boxes.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Lake George — 8

Photo of Bloody Pond
Outdoor / Natural Site

Bloody Pond

Lake George, NY

Bloody Pond earned its name on September 8, 1755, the day of the Battle of Lake George during the French and Indian War. A column of reinforcements from Fort Edward ambushed a retreating French force and their baggage train near the pond, inflicting heavy casualties. The bodies of more than 200 French colonial troops and Native American allies were deposited in the small pool, which reportedly ran red. New York State erected a historical marker at the site in 1906.

$ All Ages Family: High
Aerial survey view of Caldwell Cemetery
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Caldwell Cemetery

Lake George, NY

Caldwell Cemetery on Mohican Street in Lake George sits atop ground that served as a burial site for Fort William Henry's smallpox victims during the 18th century. It is also the final resting place of James Caldwell, the Irish-born Albany merchant who founded the Village of Caldwell—now Lake George—in 1810.

$ All Ages Family: High
Reconstructed log-and-stone exterior of Fort William Henry at Lake George, New York
Museum / Historical Site

Fort William Henry Museum

Lake George, NY

Fort William Henry was a British garrison built in 1755 at the southern end of Lake George during the French and Indian War. After a six-day French siege in August 1757, the surrendering British column was attacked by allied Native warriors during their withdrawal — an event later dramatized in James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans. The current museum is a 1950s reconstruction on the original site.

$$ All Ages Family: High
Side view of the reconstructed Fort William Henry at Lake George, New York, a 1950s replica of the 1755 British fort
Museum / Historical Site

Fort William Henry Museum

Lake George, NY

Fort William Henry was a British fort built in 1755 at the southern end of Lake George during the French and Indian War. A French and allied Native force of approximately 10,000 besieged the fort in August 1757, forcing surrender on August 10. The post-surrender violence inflicted on the British column by Native combatants became the historical core of James Fenimore Cooper's 1826 novel The Last of the Mohicans. The fort was reconstructed in the 1950s and operates today as a museum.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Photo of House of Frankenstein Wax Museum
Theatrical Haunted Attraction

House of Frankenstein Wax Museum

Lake George, NY

The House of Frankenstein Wax Museum opened on Canada Street in Lake George Village in 1974, making it one of the longest-running horror attractions in the Adirondack tourism corridor. For over 50 years it has operated as a combination wax museum and walk-through haunted experience in the heart of Lake George's tourist district.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Photo of Lake George Battlefield Park
Battlefield / Military Site

Lake George Battlefield Park

Lake George, NY

Lake George Battlefield Park preserves the 118-acre site of the September 8, 1755 Battle of Lake George, a pivotal French and Indian War engagement in which a British-colonial and Mohawk force under General William Johnson repelled a French attack commanded by Baron Jean-Armand Dieskau. The battle produced hundreds of casualties and helped establish British control of the Lake George corridor.

$ All Ages Family: High
Open Graph image from dec.ny.gov
Outdoor / Natural Site

Long Island Campground

Lake George, NY

Long Island is a 100-acre New York State campsite in the southern basin of Lake George, near the hamlet of Diamond Point in Warren County. The New York State Forest Commission, predecessor to the Department of Environmental Conservation, assumed management of Lake George forest preserve lands in 1885. The island's campsite infrastructure was developed during the late 1930s and 1940s with support from the Civilian Conservation Corps.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Photo of Old Warren County Courthouse (Lake George Historical Association)
Museum / Historical Site

Old Warren County Courthouse (Lake George Historical Association)

Lake George, NY

The Warren County Courthouse was constructed in 1845 at Canada and Amherst Streets in Lake George Village, serving as the seat of county justice for more than a century. The building housed criminal trials, notorious prisoners, and the basement cells where those awaiting trial were held. Warren County moved to a new courthouse in 1963; the building passed to the Lake George Historical Association, which now operates it as a free public museum.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Saratoga Springs — 7

Aerial survey view of The Arcade Building
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Other Dark Tourism Site

The Arcade Building

Saratoga Springs, NY

On June 9, 1902, a devastating fire broke out at 376 Broadway, then home to The Saratogian newspaper, the U.S. Post Office, a bank, and a theater. Five people died and damage was estimated at $200,000 — roughly $4.1 million in today's dollars. The fire is still remembered locally as 'Saratoga's Great Fire.' The replacement Arcade Building opened in 1907 as one of the city's earliest commercial mall structures and remains a working mixed-use building.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Batcheller Mansion — 1873 High Victorian Gothic mansion with conical minaret-style tower at 20 Circular Street, Saratoga Springs, New York
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Batcheller Mansion Inn

Saratoga Springs, NY

The Batcheller Mansion was built in 1873 at a cost of $100,000 as the home of George Sherman Batcheller, a Civil War officer, New York State Assemblyman, judge, U.S. diplomat to Egypt, and President of the Universal Postal Congress. The High Victorian Gothic design featured eleven bedrooms, steam-vapor furnaces, and gas illumination throughout. The mansion was sold out of the Batcheller family in 1916 and now operates as a boutique bed-and-breakfast.

$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Canfield Casino main building and east wing in Congress Park, Saratoga Springs, New York — the 1870 Italianate Saratoga Club House
Museum / Historical Site

Canfield Casino

Saratoga Springs, NY

The Canfield Casino was built in 1870 by prizefighter-turned-entrepreneur John 'Old Smoke' Morrissey as the Saratoga Club House and operated as one of the most exclusive gambling halls in 19th-century America until reformers ended gambling in 1907. Richard Canfield bought the property in 1894, sold it to the City of Saratoga Springs in 1911, and the building has housed the Saratoga Springs History Museum since 1911.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Hattie's Restaurant — Southern cuisine restaurant on Phila Street in Saratoga Springs, NY
Haunted Dining / Bar

Hattie's Restaurant

Saratoga Springs, NY

Hattie Moseley Austin (c. 1900-1998) was a Louisiana-born Black chef who opened Hattie's Chicken Shack in Saratoga Springs in 1938 with $33 in startup capital. The restaurant moved from its original Federal Street location to its current Phila Street site in 1968 due to urban renewal and has operated continuously since. Hattie ran the restaurant herself into her nineties, and it remains a beloved Saratoga institution.

$$ All Ages Family: High
Olde Bryan Inn in Saratoga Springs, New York — a Federal-style 1826 stone building serving as a historic restaurant and tavern at 123 Maple Avenue
Haunted Dining / Bar

Olde Bryan Inn

Saratoga Springs, NY

The site at 123 Maple Avenue has been occupied since 1773, when Dirck Schoughten built a crude log cabin overlooking High Rock Spring. Revolutionary intelligence agent Alexander Bryan purchased the property in 1787; his son John Bryan built the current stone house on the site of his father's tavern in 1825. The building served as a private residence and laundry before being restored as a restaurant in 1979.

$$ All Ages Family: High
Haunted Dining / Bar

The Parting Glass

Saratoga Springs, NY

The Parting Glass opened on St. Patrick's Day 1981 in a 1926 building that had previously housed Rocco's Royal Spring Grill, Lou Rocco's Italian restaurant. The tiger-oak front bar was built in 1936 by Frank K. Spalt, with a partition that originally separated a men's bar side from a ladies' entrance. The Parting Glass is said to be the oldest continuously running bar and restaurant in Saratoga Springs.

$$ 21+ Family: Low
Adelphi Hotel facade in Saratoga Springs New York, 1877 Gilded Age Broadway hotel
Haunted Hotel / Inn

The Adelphi Hotel

Saratoga Springs, NY

The Adelphi Hotel opened in 1877 in Saratoga Springs and quickly became a hub of Gilded Age society, hosting politicians, racing figures, and business leaders during the spa city's peak. The 123-room property underwent a multi-year preservation renovation completed in 2018.

$$$$ All Ages Family: High

Bronx — 6

Keating Hall, the Gothic central building of Fordham University's Rose Hill campus in the Bronx
Other Dark Tourism Site

Fordham University (Rose Hill Campus)

Bronx, NY

Fordham's Rose Hill campus occupies the grounds of the former Rose Hill Manor estate and sits near the site of an 1830s hospital that was demolished to make way for the Jesuit college, founded in 1841. Keating Hall, the campus's central Gothic building, was completed in 1935 and served as a filming location for The Exorcist in 1973. Hughes Hall, a former dormitory, was converted to the Gabelli School of Business in 2012.

$ All Ages Family: High
Aerial survey view of Joseph Rodman Drake Park and Enslaved People's Burial Ground
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Joseph Rodman Drake Park and Enslaved People's Burial Ground

Bronx, NY

The Hunts Point area of the Bronx was settled in the early 1700s by three interrelated colonial families — the Hunts, the Willetts, and the Leggetts — who enslaved both African and Indigenous people. The families established a fenced burial ground by the 1720s for themselves and their descendants; the people they enslaved were buried in a separate, unmarked cemetery across the road. Road construction in the early 20th century leveled the enslaved burial ground, and its existence was largely forgotten until 2013, when a Department of Education official located a 1910 photograph of the site in the Museum of the City of New York. A subsequent ground-penetrating radar survey confirmed four likely burials. The Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the site on December 12, 2023.

$ All Ages Family: High
Abandoned Riverside Hospital building on North Brother Island, East River, New York, photographed in 2006 showing severe deterioration.
Asylum / Hospital

North Brother Island and Riverside Hospital

Bronx, NY

North Brother Island, a five-acre tract in the East River between the Bronx and Rikers Island, became the site of New York City's deadliest disaster before September 11, 2001. On June 15, 1904, the steamship General Slocum caught fire while carrying 1,342 passengers — predominantly women and children from St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church in Manhattan's Little Germany neighborhood — on their annual outing. The ship's fire hoses were rotten and burst on deployment; the crew had never conducted drills. Captain William Van Schaick steered the burning vessel at full speed toward North Brother Island, where it beached, but 1,021 passengers died from the fire or drowned before reaching shore. The disaster effectively ended the Little Germany community, as grieving families relocated to Yorkville uptown.

$ All Ages Family: Low
Aerial survey view of Strawberry Fields of Silver Beach Gardens
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Strawberry Fields of Silver Beach Gardens

Bronx, NY

Silver Beach Gardens is a private bungalow community at the southeastern edge of the Throgs Neck peninsula in the Bronx, overlooking the Long Island Sound. The 'strawberry fields' folklore attached to the inlet is community urban legend rather than documented history.

$ All Ages Family: Low
Photo of Van Cortlandt House Museum
Haunted House / Historic Home

Van Cortlandt House Museum

Bronx, NY

Frederick Van Cortlandt built the house in 1748, making it the oldest known surviving building in the Bronx. During the Revolution, General George Washington used it as a headquarters on multiple occasions; it was also occupied by British and Hessian forces during their period of control. A British officer named Captain Rowe (or Rau in some tellings) was severely wounded in battle nearby in 1780 and died in an upstairs bedroom of the house just after his fiancée arrived. The Van Cortlandt family occupied the house until 1823; it is now operated as a museum under the NYC Historic House Trust.

$ All Ages Family: High
Aerial survey view of Van Cortlandt Park (Indian Field Burial Ground)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Battlefield / Military Site

Van Cortlandt Park (Indian Field Burial Ground)

Bronx, NY

Indian Field, in the northeast section of Van Cortlandt Park, marks the burial ground where approximately 37 Stockbridge Indian patriots were killed in a British ambush on August 31, 1778, during the American Revolution. The Stockbridge Indians — Mohican people from Stockbridge, Massachusetts — served as Continental Army allies under sachem Daniel Nimham, who died in the battle alongside his son Abraham.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Utica — 6

Photo of Hotel Utica (DoubleTree by Hilton)
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Hotel Utica (DoubleTree by Hilton)

Utica, NY

Hotel Utica opened March 11, 1912, designed by Esenwein & Johnson of Buffalo for the United Hotels Company of America. The original ten-story structure had 200 rooms, four dining rooms, a ballroom, and separate dining rooms for men and women. Three floors were added in 1926. Famous guests over the decades included Judy Garland, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Mickey Mantle, Mae West, Bobby Darin, and Hopalong Cassidy.

$$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Haunted House / Historic Home

Rutger Park Mansions (Munn's Castle & Miller-Conkling-Kernan House)

Utica, NY

Rutger Park is a historic district of grand 19th-century mansions in Utica, New York. Number 3, the Miller-Conkling-Kernan house, was built in 1830 to a design by Albany architect Philip Hooker. Number 1, the Italian Villa long known as Munn's Castle, was built in 1854 by banker John Munn to a design by architect Alexander Jackson Davis. The Landmarks Society of Greater Utica has owned both houses since 2008 and is restoring them.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Stanley Theater facade at 261 Genesee Street, Utica, New York — 1928 Spanish Baroque movie palace
Theater / Performance Venue

Stanley Center for the Arts (Stanley Theatre)

Utica, NY

The Stanley Theatre opened September 10, 1928, designed by Scottish-born theater architect Thomas W. Lamb in a Mexican Baroque style with Spanish Colonial and neo-Baroque elements. Warner Bros. purchased it three days before its debut. Facing demolition in the early 1970s, a community arts council acquired it for $135,000 in 1974. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976, it now operates as the Stanley Center for the Arts.

$$ All Ages Family: High
Beaux-Arts exterior of Union Station in Utica, New York
Museum / Historical Site

Union Station (Utica Union Station)

Utica, NY

Utica's Union Station opened in May 1914 as the New York Central Station, designed in the Beaux-Arts style by the firm of Stem and Fellheimer. It replaced earlier depots after the Mohawk River was rechanneled north in 1907. The building remains an active Amtrak station and the terminus of the Adirondack Railroad, and is now part of the Boehlert Transportation Center owned by Oneida County.

$ All Ages Family: High
Front facade of the Utica State Hospital Old Main building in December 2007, showing Greek Revival architecture
Asylum / Hospital

Utica State Hospital (Old Main)

Utica, NY

Opened January 16, 1843 as the New York State Lunatic Asylum at Utica, it was the first state-run psychiatric institution in New York and one of the earliest in the country. The Greek Revival building was designed by Captain William Clarke. Its first director, Amariah Brigham, promoted progressive therapies but also authorized the Utica Crib—a locked bed cage used to confine agitated patients—which the institution developed and exported to asylums across the country.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
The Gothic Revival gatehouse at the entrance to Forest Hill Cemetery in Utica, New York
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Forest Hill Cemetery

Utica, NY

Forest Hill Cemetery in Utica was founded in 1848 and opened in 1850 as a rural cemetery, established to relieve overcrowding at the city's earlier Water Street burial ground. Designed by engineer Almeron Hotchkiss, it spans roughly 166 acres with three ponds and a Gothic Revival gatehouse. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2017.

$ All Ages Family: High

Lockport — 5

Entrance sign at Cold Springs Cemetery, Lockport, New York
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Cold Springs Cemetery

Lockport, NY

Cold Springs Cemetery in Lockport, New York was incorporated in 1841 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004. Set in wooded grounds on Cold Springs Road in Niagara County, it holds the graves of Erie Canal proponent Jesse Hawley, jurist Cuthbert W. Pound, and World War II Medal of Honor recipient William F. Leonard.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Haunted House / Historic Home

Kenan Center & Kenan House

Lockport, NY

The Kenan Center in Lockport, New York occupies the early-twentieth-century home of the Kenan family at 433 Locust Street. William Rand Kenan Jr. and his family lived in the house from the 1910s until the 1960s. It now operates as a public arts, education, and recreation center.

$ All Ages Family: High
Interior of Lockport Cave showing the water tunnel blasted from solid dolomite rock, with stone walls and low ceiling
Other Dark Tourism Site

Lockport Cave and Underground Boat Ride

Lockport, NY

In 1858, hydraulic engineer Birdsill Holly proposed blasting an underground tunnel from the Erie Canal above the Lockport locks to supply water-powered industry below. Construction continued through 1900, with workers hand-drilling and blasting through Lockport dolomite. The raceway fell out of industrial use and opened as a tourist attraction in 1977.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Ghost Tour / Walking Tour

Lockport Paranormal Walks (Ghost Walk of Lockport)

Lockport, NY

Lockport Paranormal Walks, also billed as the Ghost Walk of Lockport, is a guided walking tour operated by the Niagara Frontier company Paranormal Walks, founded in 2012 by historian and author John Koerner. It covers downtown Lockport's history and ghost lore along the Erie Canal.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Aerial survey view of ParaNiagara at The Western Block
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Other Dark Tourism Site

ParaNiagara at The Western Block

Lockport, NY

The Western Block complex in Lockport's Lowertown Historic District contains three stone structures dating to the early 1800s, situated on the Erie Canal. A hotel that previously stood on the site burned down in 1841. The property has served as a hotel site, a fire department station, and a police department over two centuries, experiencing multiple fires throughout its history.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Huntington — 4

Museum / Historical Site

Conklin Farmhouse Museum

Huntington, NY

Built around 1750 on High Street in Huntington Village, the Conklin Farmhouse remained in the Conklin family for over 150 years, becoming one of the earliest museums on Long Island when Ella Conklin Hurd donated it to the Huntington Historical Society in 1911. The house represents three periods of American domestic life — Colonial, Federal, and Victorian — through its preserved furnishings.

$ All Ages Family: High
Aerial survey view of West Hills County Park (Mount Misery)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

West Hills County Park (Mount Misery)

Huntington, NY

West Hills County Park covers 853 acres of forested hills in Huntington, New York, including Jayne's Hill, Long Island's highest natural point at 401 feet. The park is maintained by Suffolk County and incorporates Mount Misery Road, a winding rural road through the West Hills moraine area associated with extensive local folklore.

$ All Ages Family: High
Oheka Castle seen from the eastern side, showing the French chateau architecture and formal grounds
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Oheka Castle

Huntington, NY

Oheka Castle was built between 1914 and 1919 by investment banker and philanthropist Otto Hermann Kahn, partly in response to antisemitic exclusion from clubs in New Jersey. Designed by Delano & Aldrich and featuring Olmsted Brothers formal gardens, the 127-room, 109,000-square-foot chateau became New York's largest private residence and served as Kahn's primary country estate until his death in 1934.

$$$ All Ages Family: High
The Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Building at Fort Golgotha and the Old Burial Hill Cemetery in Huntington, New York
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Old Burial Hill Cemetery (Fort Golgotha)

Huntington, NY

The Old Burying Ground in Huntington contains the earliest dated marker from 1712, though the burial ground predates that. In 1782, during the British occupation of Long Island, Colonel Benjamin Thompson of the King's American Dragoons ordered the cemetery desecrated to construct Fort Golgotha on the site. More than 100 gravestones were removed to use as flooring, fireplace material, and the linings of baking ovens. Bread baked in those ovens had gravestone inscriptions pressed into the bottom crust, which locals called 'tombstone bread.' The fort was demolished after British withdrawal in 1783; the cemetery was restored and the adjacent Presbyterian Church was rebuilt. The site was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1981.

$ All Ages Family: High

Lake Placid — 4

John Brown Farm and gravesite, North Elba, New York, with iron fence around graveyard
Museum / Historical Site

John Brown Farm State Historic Site

Lake Placid, NY

John Brown came to North Elba in 1849 to participate in a land program organized by abolitionist Gerrit Smith, who was distributing acreage in the Adirondacks to Black property owners. Brown built the surviving farmhouse in 1855 and used the property intermittently as his base of operations. He was executed at Charlestown, Virginia, on December 2, 1859, following the failed Harpers Ferry raid; his body was returned to North Elba and buried at the farm on December 8, 1859. The site became a New York State historic property in 1896.

$ All Ages Family: High
Aerial survey view of Lake Placid — Pulpit Rock (Mabel Smith Douglass Site)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Lake Placid — Pulpit Rock (Mabel Smith Douglass Site)

Lake Placid, NY

Mabel Smith Douglass (1874–1933) was the founding dean of the New Jersey College for Women at Rutgers—later renamed Douglass College in her honor—who disappeared while rowing alone on Lake Placid on September 21, 1933. Thirty years later, on September 15, 1963, scuba divers discovered her remarkably preserved remains 95 feet below the surface near an underwater shelf called Pulpit Rock. Authorities ruled the death accidental drowning.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Photo of Olympic Center (Herb Brooks Arena)
Museum / Historical Site

Olympic Center (Herb Brooks Arena)

Lake Placid, NY

The Lake Placid Olympic Center opened in September 1979 and hosted the 1980 Winter Olympics, most famously the ice hockey tournament that produced the 'Miracle on Ice.' The main arena was renamed Herb Brooks Arena in 2005. On November 20, 1995, two-time Olympic pairs gold medalist Sergei Grinkov died of a heart attack in the facility during Stars on Ice rehearsals—one of figure skating's most public deaths, occurring in the same arena where he had competed at the international level.

$ All Ages Family: High
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Stagecoach Inn

Lake Placid, NY

Built in 1815, the Stagecoach Inn at 3 Stage Coach Way is the oldest surviving structure in Lake Placid village. Known originally as Lyon's Inn and later as North Elba House, it functioned as a community gathering place, post office, and stop on the stagecoach route before rail transport arrived in the area. Melville Dewey, inventor of the Dewey Decimal System, lived here for a period.

$$ All Ages Family: High

Plattsburgh — 4

True Crime Site

Clinton County Courthouse

Plattsburgh, NY

The Clinton County Courthouse stands at 137 Margaret Street in downtown Plattsburgh on ground tied to the county's earliest jail. The first county building here was a log blockhouse originally raised as a jail, and the site has carried a courthouse-and-jail function through several rebuildings, including the present-era courthouse dating to roughly 1889-1890.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Ghost Tour / Walking Tour

Greater Adirondack Ghost & Tour Company

Plattsburgh, NY

The Greater Adirondack Ghost & Tour Company runs guided walking tours of historic downtown Plattsburgh from April through November. It was founded by Matt Boire, an eighth-generation Plattsburgh resident, and uses costumed narration to connect the city's real history to its ghost lore.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
USGS aerial view of the former Plattsburgh Air Force Base in Plattsburgh, New York, taken May 4, 1994, showing the Cold War-era base layout near Lake Champlain
Battlefield / Military Site

Former Plattsburgh Air Force Base (Old Gym)

Plattsburgh, NY

The land was part of the U.S. Army's Plattsburgh Barracks, near the 1814 Battle of Plattsburgh. It became Plattsburgh Air Force Base in 1953-54, served Strategic Air Command through the Cold War, and closed on September 30, 1995, under the 1993 BRAC round. The site has since been about 99% redeveloped for civilian use.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Museum / Historical Site

Macdonough Hall (SUNY Plattsburgh)

Plattsburgh, NY

Macdonough Hall is a four-story Georgian-style building on the SUNY Plattsburgh campus, built in 1951 as a campus center with dining and administrative space and fully renovated in 2005 into student residences. Its location near Riverside Cemetery and a former 19th-century public hanging ground, and graves uncovered during its construction, underpin its haunted reputation.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Batavia — 3

General view of Historic Batavia Cemetery on Harvester Avenue, Batavia, New York, showing tree-lined burial grounds and 19th-century monuments
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Historic Batavia Cemetery

Batavia, NY

Established in 1823 to replace an overcrowded earlier graveyard, Batavia Cemetery contains over 8,000 burials across 9 acres. It is the resting place of Joseph Ellicott—the Holland Land Company agent who laid out Batavia and Buffalo—as well as Civil War General John H. Martindale, railroad president Dean Richmond, and William Morgan, whose 1826 disappearance after threatening to expose Masonic secrets triggered a national political movement.

$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of Seymour Place (GO ART! Building)
Museum / Historical Site

Seymour Place (GO ART! Building)

Batavia, NY

Hezekiah Eldredge built the Bank of Genesee at 201 East Main Street in 1831, one of the earliest banking houses in western New York. The Batavia Club, a fraternal men's organization, purchased the building in 1886 and occupied it for over a century, adding a dining room and bar. The club donated the property to the Genesee-Orleans Regional Arts Council (GO ART!) in 2002. The building was designated Seymour Place in 2010.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Aerial survey view of Tonawanda Creekside North (Old Pioneer Cemetery Site)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Tonawanda Creekside North (Old Pioneer Cemetery Site)

Batavia, NY

Batavia's first burial ground, the West Main Street Cemetery, was established in 1806 beside Tonawanda Creek. Frequent flooding made the site untenable, and in 1823 burials were relocated to the new Batavia Cemetery on higher ground. Local tradition holds that not all remains were moved, and businesses now occupy the original creekside site.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Beacon — 3

Aerial survey view of Matteawan State Hospital Cemetery
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Matteawan State Hospital Cemetery

Beacon, NY

The Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane opened in 1892 in Beacon, New York, designed by New York State architect Isaac Perry. The institution held infamous patients including Harry Thaw, who murdered architect Stanford White in 1906; George Metesky, New York City's 'Mad Bomber'; and Izola Ware Curry, who stabbed Martin Luther King Jr. in 1958. The hospital practiced electroshock therapy and lobotomies before its 1977 closure; its surviving buildings now house Fishkill Correctional Facility. The on-grounds cemetery contains nearly 1,000 numbered graves.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Mirbeau Inn & Spa Beacon

Beacon, NY

The neo-Gothic Tioronda mansion at Beacon, New York was built in 1859 for Civil War General Joseph Howland. In 1915 it was converted into Craig House, which became the first privately licensed psychiatric hospital in the United States. Among its patients were Zelda Fitzgerald (admitted March–May 1934), Rosemary Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, and Truman Capote. Craig House closed in 1999. The property stood vacant for over 25 years until a $73 million restoration reopened it as Mirbeau Inn & Spa Beacon in May 2026.

$$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Bannerman Castle ruins on Pollepel Island in Hudson River near Beacon New York
Outdoor / Natural Site

Bannerman Castle (Pollepel Island)

Beacon, NY

Pollepel Island is a 6.5-acre uninhabited island in the Hudson River about 50 miles north of New York City. Frank Bannerman VI, a Scotland-born munitions dealer, purchased it in 1900 and personally designed a complex of Scottish-baronial-style warehouses, walls, and outbuildings to store military surplus. An August 1969 fire of unknown origin destroyed the buildings. The Bannerman Castle Trust has stabilized the ruins; the island has been open for guided tours since 2004.

$$$ 12 and up for tours Family: Moderate

Cooperstown — 3

Ghost Tour / Walking Tour

Cooperstown Candlelight Ghost Tours

Cooperstown, NY

Cooperstown, incorporated in 1807 at the southern tip of Otsego Lake, was founded by William Cooper and is most associated with his son, novelist James Fenimore Cooper. The Cooper family's extensive landholdings and estate network in and around the village form the backbone of the ghost tour's historic stops. The National Baseball Hall of Fame, opened in 1939, rounds out the tour's range of Cooperstown landmarks.

$ All Ages Family: High
Hyde Hall — neoclassical National Historic Landmark mansion on Otsego Lake, Springfield Center NY, photographed December 2007
Haunted House / Historic Home

Hyde Hall

Cooperstown, NY

Hyde Hall is a neoclassical mansion covering approximately 22,000 square feet, built between 1817 and 1834 for George Clarke on the northeastern shore of Otsego Lake in Springfield Center, Otsego County. Designed in three phases by Albany architect Philip Hooker, it was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1986 and is now operated as a house museum open late May through Halloween.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum on Main Street in Cooperstown, New York
Museum / Historical Site

National Baseball Hall of Fame

Cooperstown, NY

The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum opened June 12, 1939 in Cooperstown, New York, as the official repository for baseball's artifacts and player tributes. The building spans three floors and contains more than 40,000 objects, three million library items, and 130,000 hours of recorded media. It has been part of the Cooperstown Historic District since designation.

$$ All Ages Family: High

Elmira — 3

Aerial survey view of Elmira Civil War Prison Camp (Hellmira)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Battlefield / Military Site

Elmira Civil War Prison Camp (Hellmira)

Elmira, NY

The Elmira Prison Camp operated from July 1864 to July 1865, confining over 12,000 Confederate soldiers on a 40-acre site in upstate New York. Poor planning, insufficient shelter, contaminated water, and deliberately inadequate rations produced a death rate approaching 25 percent — nearly 2,973 men died in a single year. The 2,973 Confederate dead were interred in Woodlawn National Cemetery under records kept by formerly enslaved sexton John W. Jones. Survivors and prisoners called the camp 'Hellmira.'

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Monument at Woodlawn National Cemetery in Elmira, New York, marking the Confederate burial section of soldiers who died at the Elmira prison camp
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Elmira Prison Camp (Woodlawn National Cemetery)

Elmira, NY

Woodlawn National Cemetery in Elmira, New York contains 2,973 Confederate soldiers who died at the Elmira prison camp between July 1864 and July 1865. The graves were recorded with exceptional precision by John W. Jones, a formerly enslaved man from Leesburg, Virginia who had reached Elmira via the Underground Railroad and served as sexton of the Woodlawn cemetery. Jones personally managed each burial and kept records so complete that only seven of the nearly 3,000 soldiers interred here are listed as unknown. Jones is himself buried at Woodlawn.

$ All Ages Family: High
Aerial survey view of Woodlawn Cemetery (Elmira)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Woodlawn Cemetery (Elmira)

Elmira, NY

Woodlawn Cemetery in Elmira is a Victorian civilian cemetery best known as the burial place of Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and his family. It is distinct from the adjacent Woodlawn National Cemetery, which holds Confederate prisoners who died at the Elmira prison camp.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Jamestown — 3

The Gov. Reuben Fenton Mansion, an 1863 Italianate villa with a four-story tower, home of the Fenton History Center in Jamestown, NY
Museum / Historical Site

Fenton History Center (Gov. Reuben Fenton Mansion)

Jamestown, NY

The Gov. Reuben Fenton Mansion was built in 1863 in the Italianate villa style as the residence of Reuben E. Fenton, New York's 22nd governor (1865-1868) and later U.S. senator. The city of Jamestown acquired the property in 1919, and after a period of decline a historical society organized in the early 1960s to preserve it. The mansion has housed the Fenton History Center since 1964 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Aerial survey view of Hollen Beck Cemetery
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Hollen Beck Cemetery

Jamestown, NY

Hollenbeck Cemetery is a small 19th-century family burial ground on Moon Road in the Town of Ellicott, Chautauqua County, NY, with roughly 25–35 burials of the Hollenbeck, Aldrich, Brown, Moon, and other early-settler families. The headstones were stolen in 1995 and replaced with a township memorial in 1996.

$ All Ages Family: Low
Photo of Lucille Ball Little Theatre (Allen's Opera House)
Theater / Performance Venue

Lucille Ball Little Theatre (Allen's Opera House)

Jamestown, NY

Allen's Opera House opened September 3, 1874 at 18 East Second Street in Jamestown. The original building was destroyed by fire in 1881 and rebuilt by owner Abner E. Allen. A second fire in 1894 led to the building's sale to Charles Samuels in 1898. The Shea theater circuit took over in 1919, and the structure was extensively rebuilt in 1927 by architect Victor A. Rigaumont in Spanish Revival style. The Little Theatre of Jamestown purchased the property in 1968 and renamed it for Lucille Ball in 1991.

$$ All Ages Family: High

Kingston — 3

Museum / Historical Site

Hudson River Maritime Museum — Haunted Rondout Boat Tour

Kingston, NY

The Hudson River Maritime Museum sits at 50 Rondout Landing on Rondout Creek in Kingston, New York, and is dedicated to the maritime history of the Hudson River and its tributaries. The museum operates the Solaris, a solar-powered tour boat it built in-house, and runs seasonal programming including the October Haunted Rondout boat tours. The site is part of the Haunted History Trail of New York State.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Photo of Old Dutch Church Cemetery (Kingston)
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Old Dutch Church Cemetery (Kingston)

Kingston, NY

The Old Dutch Church of Kingston was formally organized in 1659, making it one of the oldest continuously active Reformed congregations in North America. Its churchyard holds Dutch settlers, enslaved people, and residents whose homes were burned by British forces in October 1777, when they torched Kingston — then New York's first state capital — in retaliation following the Battle of Saratoga. New York's first governor George Clinton is buried here, reinterred from Washington in 1908.

$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of Rondout Lighthouse
Other Dark Tourism Site

Rondout Lighthouse

Kingston, NY

Three successive lighthouses have marked the mouth of Rondout Creek on the Hudson River since 1837. The current yellow-brick structure dates to 1915 and remains an active navigational light. Its most consequential chapter began in 1856, when keeper George W. Murdock drowned returning from a supply run — and his wife Catherine took over, ultimately serving 51 years without interruption.

$$ Minimum 8 Family: Moderate

Montauk — 3

Photo of Camp Hero State Park
Outdoor / Natural Site

Camp Hero State Park

Montauk, NY

Camp Hero was commissioned by the U.S. Army in 1942 as a coastal artillery installation designed to prevent German naval attack on Long Island. In a deliberate deception, the base was built to resemble a fishing village from the air and sea. After WWII, it was reactivated in the early 1950s as the Montauk Air Force Station, housing a Cold War AN/FPS-35 radar installation. The military presence ended in the 1980s; the park opened to the public September 18, 2002.

$ All Ages Family: Low
Photo of Montauk Manor
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Montauk Manor

Montauk, NY

Indianapolis Speedway co-developer Carl Fisher purchased 10,000 acres of Montauk in 1925 with plans to build a world-class resort. His centerpiece was a 178-room English Tudor hotel atop Signal Hill, which opened in spring 1927. Fisher's Montauk development collapsed in the Depression and the Manor stood largely unused for nearly two decades. During World War II the building served the Navy. The property was renovated in the 1980s into 140 condominium units and operates today as a condominium resort.

$$$ All Ages Family: High
Montauk Point Lighthouse standing at the easternmost tip of Long Island, with rocky coastline in the foreground
Museum / Historical Site

Montauk Point Lighthouse Museum

Montauk, NY

Congress authorized this lighthouse on April 12, 1792 under President George Washington. Construction ran from June to November 1796, making it the first public works project completed under the new federal government. Keeper Jacob Hand lit the lamps in April 1797. The U.S. Coast Guard automated the station February 3, 1987, and President Clinton transferred ownership to the Montauk Historical Society in 1996.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Niagara Falls — 3

Aerial survey view of Devil's Hole State Park (Battle of Devil's Hole Site)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Battlefield / Military Site

Devil's Hole State Park (Battle of Devil's Hole Site)

Niagara Falls, NY

Devil's Hole is a 42-acre state park overlooking the Niagara Gorge, marking the site of the September 14, 1763 Battle of Devil's Hole, the single largest British military defeat of Pontiac's War. Two companies of the British 80th Regiment — 81 soldiers killed, 8 wounded — were ambushed by Seneca warriors in one of the most decisive engagements of the pan-tribal uprising against British colonialism in the Great Lakes region.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Red Coach Inn

Niagara Falls, NY

The Red Coach Inn opened on August 30, 1923, as a luxury Tudor-style hotel designed to serve Niagara Falls' reputation as the honeymoon capital of the world. Built by William Schoellkopf and Charles Peabody, modeled on the Bell Inn in Finedon, England, it has operated continuously for over a century and appeared in the television series The Office.

$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Theater / Performance Venue

The Rapids Theatre

Niagara Falls, NY

The Rapids Theatre opened September 1, 1921 as the Bellevue Theatre, a luxury movie house and vaudeville stage. After decades as the Shea-Publix circuit and later a discothèque, the building was purchased for $85,000 in 2007 and restored at a cost of $1.8 million, reopening in December 2009. The City of Niagara Falls acquired it from foreclosure for $800,000 in late 2024.

$$ All Ages (varies by show) Family: Moderate

Ogdensburg — 3

Museum / Historical Site

Frederic Remington Art Museum

Ogdensburg, NY

The Frederic Remington Art Museum in Ogdensburg, New York occupies an 1810 mansion built by David Parish. Established in 1923 from the estate of Eva Remington, widow of the Western artist Frederic Remington, it holds the largest collection of his work. The museum is a featured stop on the Ogdensburg Ghost Walk.

$$ All Ages Family: High
Ghost Tour / Walking Tour

Ogdensburg History Museum Ghost Walk

Ogdensburg, NY

The Ogdensburg Ghost Walk is a seasonal evening program run by the Ogdensburg History Museum. It departs from the steps of the Ogdensburg Public Library at 312 Washington Street and threads through the downtown waterfront city, a former French and British trading and military post on the St. Lawrence River that grew into a 19th-century manufacturing center.

$$ Minimum 13 Family: Moderate
Haunted Hotel / Inn

The Claire House

Ogdensburg, NY

The Claire House at 709 Franklin Street in Ogdensburg is a stone building constructed in the 1880s (some accounts give 1844) as the rectory for the original St. Mary's Cathedral. Priests lived in it for about 76 years. When the cathedral was destroyed by fire in 1947, relics were carried out and stored in the rectory's basement. Hal and Rachel Kench bought the house in 2019 and run it as a bed-and-breakfast.

$$ Minimum 13 Family: Moderate

Poughkeepsie — 3

Brick facade and marquee of the Bardavon 1869 Opera House on Market Street in downtown Poughkeepsie, New York
Theater / Performance Venue

Bardavon 1869 Opera House

Poughkeepsie, NY

The Bardavon opened in 1869 as the Collingwood Opera House, built by lumber dealer James Collingwood and designed by architect J.A. Wood. It is the oldest continuously operating theatre in the Hudson Valley, was renamed the Bardavon in 1923, and was saved from demolition in 1975 before being listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977.

$$$ Varies by production Family: High
Aerial survey view of Christ Episcopal Church
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Other Dark Tourism Site

Christ Episcopal Church

Poughkeepsie, NY

Christ Episcopal Church is an active Poughkeepsie parish whose congregation traces to 1773. The current brick Gothic Revival building, designed by architect William Appleton Potter, was completed in May 1888 on a site that had been the city's old English Burial Ground, whose graves were relocated to Poughkeepsie Rural Cemetery.

$ All Ages Family: High
Museum / Historical Site

Vassar College — Main Building

Poughkeepsie, NY

Main Building opened in 1865 as the original home of Vassar College, founded by brewer and merchant Matthew Vassar in Poughkeepsie. Designed by James Renwick Jr., the Second Empire structure originally housed the entire college — classrooms, library, dormitories, and dining — and remains a central academic and residential building and a National Historic Landmark.

$ All Ages Family: High

Rome — 3

Museum / Historical Site

Erie Canal Village

Rome, NY

Erie Canal Village is a reconstructed nineteenth-century settlement in Rome, New York, built on the site where construction of the Erie Canal began on July 4, 1817. The grounds also lie near Fort Bull, a British supply fort destroyed in a 1756 French and Indian War attack, which is commemorated on the site.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Entrance drawbridge and reconstructed timber walls of Fort Stanwix National Monument in downtown Rome, New York.
Battlefield / Military Site

Fort Stanwix

Rome, NY

Fort Stanwix National Monument occupies 16 acres in downtown Rome, New York. The current structure is a 1970s full-scale reconstruction of the 1758 British fort that, under Continental command in August 1777, withstood a 21-day siege by British, Loyalist, and Iroquois forces during the Saratoga campaign.

$ All Ages Family: High
Theater / Performance Venue

Rome Capitol Theatre

Rome, NY

The Rome Capitol Theatre opened in 1928 as the premier movie house in Rome, New York, with about 2,500 seats, a theatre organ, and twin projectors built for the new era of sound film. Now operated as the Rome Capitol Arts Complex, it remains an active film and performance venue and a stop on the Oneida County Haunted History Trail.

$$ Varies by event Family: High

Salamanca — 3

Haunted Dining / Bar

Myers Steakhouse & Inn

Salamanca, NY

The building at 460 Wildwood Avenue in Salamanca was established around 1900 as a railroad hotel, originally called the Wildwood House, providing rooms and meals for railroad workers between assignments. It has operated continuously since, including a long ownership by Ted Barczack from 1945 to 1994, and today runs as Myers Steakhouse & Inn.

$$ All Ages Family: High
Museum / Historical Site

Salamanca Area Historical Society & Museum

Salamanca, NY

The Salamanca Area Historical Society was founded in 1995 to preserve local history beyond the city's existing rail and Iroquois museums. It occupies the restored Salamanca Trust Company bank building, built in 1882. The society leased the structure in 2002, renovated it through 2003–2004, and opened the museum in 2005.

$ All Ages Family: High
Asylum / Hospital

Wildwood Sanitarium

Salamanca, NY

The stone building at 71 Prospect Avenue was constructed in 1900 and purchased in 1903 by osteopaths Dr. John Henderson and Dr. Carol Perry, who opened it as a private holistic hospital offering baths and light therapy. The state forced the doctors to convert it to a tuberculosis sanitarium in 1923. Both physicians died in 1941, after which the property became apartments. A local family bought and restored it in 2017.

$$ Minimum 13 Family: Moderate

Sleepy Hollow — 3

Exterior of the Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow, a 17th-century fieldstone church on Broadway in Sleepy Hollow, New York
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow and Burial Ground

Sleepy Hollow, NY

Frederick Philipse I, carpenter turned merchant and the first lord of Philipsburg Manor, began construction of the Old Dutch Church in 1685. The fieldstone structure was completed by roughly 1699. The burying ground was used as a field hospital and cemetery during the Revolutionary War; Washington and the Continental Army halted at the church on July 2, 1781. Washington Irving, who is buried in the adjacent Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, featured the church in his 1820 story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

$ All Ages Family: High
Exterior view of Philipsburg Manor in Sleepy Hollow, New York, showing the stone manor house and mill complex
Museum / Historical Site

Philipsburg Manor

Sleepy Hollow, NY

Frederick Philipse I received a royal charter for 52,000 acres of Hudson Valley land in 1693. He and his descendants operated the manor as a commercial enterprise for generations, shipping goods from a wharf on the Pocantico River and milling grain for export to the Caribbean. At the heart of the operation was enslaved African labor: Adolphus Philipse's 1750 probate inventory listed 23 enslaved men, women, and children as the estate's most valuable property. Historic Hudson Valley has operated the site since the 1940s with a mission centered on the stories of those workers.

$$ All Ages Family: High
Washington Irving family graveplot at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, New York, the historic Hudson Valley burying ground
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Sleepy Hollow Cemetery

Sleepy Hollow, NY

Sleepy Hollow Cemetery was incorporated in 1849 as Tarrytown Cemetery and renamed in 1865. The 90-acre nonsectarian burying ground is the resting place of Washington Irving, who co-founded the cemetery, along with Andrew Carnegie, Walter Chrysler, and several generations of Hudson Valley families. The cemetery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2009.

$ All Ages Family: High

Tarrytown — 3

Haunted Hotel / Inn

King House Mansion at Tarrytown House Estate

Tarrytown, NY

The property known as Uplands was developed in the 1840s as a private estate on the Hudson River hillside above Tarrytown. The King family acquired it in the early 20th century; Sybil Harris King, daughter of American Tobacco Company executive William Rees Harris, lived there for most of her life and died on August 1, 1955. The estate was later converted to a conference and hotel property now operating as Tarrytown House Estate on the Hudson.

$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Photo of Patriot's Park (André Capture Site)
Battlefield / Military Site

Patriot's Park (André Capture Site)

Tarrytown, NY

Major John André was a British officer serving as General Henry Clinton's adjutant general, conducting secret negotiations with Continental Army General Benedict Arnold. On September 23, 1780, André was stopped on the Albany Post Road near Tarrytown by three local militiamen — John Paulding, Isaac Van Wart, and David Williams — who found incriminating documents hidden in his stockings. Arnold's plot to surrender West Point was exposed. André was tried by a military tribunal convened by George Washington and hanged at Tappan on October 2, 1780.

$ All Ages Family: High
Exterior of the Tarrytown Music Hall, a brick Queen Anne theater built in 1885 on Main Street in Tarrytown, New York
Theater / Performance Venue

Tarrytown Music Hall

Tarrytown, NY

Candy manufacturer William L. Wallace built the Music Hall in 1885, designed by architects Theodore De Lemos and August Cordes — the same firm behind Grand Central Palace and the Macy's Herald Square building. It opened December 12, 1885 with Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado. Tarrytown at the time was the Millionaire's Colony, home to Rockefellers, Goulds, and Vanderbilts. The theater is the fifth-oldest in New York State, predating Carnegie Hall.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Watertown — 3

Exterior of the Roswell P. Flower Memorial Library in Watertown, New York
Museum / Historical Site

Flower Memorial Library (Roswell P. Flower Memorial Library)

Watertown, NY

The Roswell P. Flower Memorial Library opened in 1905 in Watertown, New York, after construction from 1903 to 1904. Emma Flower Taylor donated it to the city as a memorial to her father, Roswell P. Flower (1835-1899), the 30th governor of New York. The marble-faced building is built in a Grecian style with a central octagonal dome and rotunda and remains the city's public library.

$ All Ages Family: High
The Paddock Mansion, a Victorian Stick-Eastlake house museum in Watertown, New York
Museum / Historical Site

The Paddock Mansion (Jefferson County Historical Society Museum)

Watertown, NY

The Paddock Mansion in Watertown, New York, was built between 1876 and 1878 for banker Edwin L. Paddock and his wife Olive. Designed by architect John Hose in the Stick/Eastlake style, the brick house has a three-story corner tower. Olive Paddock left the house to the Jefferson County Historical Society on her death in 1922, and it opened as the society's museum in 1924. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Aerial survey view of Thompson Park (Thompson Park Vortex)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Thompson Park (Thompson Park Vortex)

Watertown, NY

Thompson Park is a hilltop public park in Watertown, New York, laid out to a design by Frederick Law Olmsted, the landscape architect behind New York City's Central Park. The park has long carried a local legend of a spatial 'vortex' said to disorient and relocate people within it, a story the city has acknowledged publicly. It is a stop on the Haunted History Trail of New York State.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Amityville — 2

Dutch Colonial house at the former 112 Ocean Avenue (now 108) in Amityville, New York, site of the 1974 DeFeo murders
Haunted House / Historic Home

Amityville Horror House (112 Ocean Avenue)

Amityville, NY

The address 112 Ocean Avenue, Amityville, was the original number of the Dutch Colonial home where the DeFeo family was murdered on November 13, 1974, and where the Lutz family briefly lived in late 1975 and early 1976. The street address was renumbered to 108 Ocean Avenue in 1977 after the publication of Jay Anson's The Amityville Horror brought sustained tourist traffic to the property. The house itself was not relocated.

$ View from public street only — private residence Family: Low
Dutch Colonial house at 108 Ocean Avenue (originally 112) in Amityville, New York, site of the 1974 DeFeo murders and the Amityville Horror story
Haunted House / Historic Home

Amityville Horror House

Amityville, NY

On November 13, 1974, Ronald DeFeo Jr. shot and killed his parents and four siblings as they slept in the Dutch Colonial home at 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, New York. The Lutz family purchased the property in December 1975 and departed after 28 days, generating the claims that became Jay Anson's 1977 book The Amityville Horror and a long-running film franchise.

$ View from public street only — private residence Family: Low

Auburn — 2

Museum / Historical Site

Auburn Correctional Facility (Site of First Electric Chair Execution)

Auburn, NY

Auburn Correctional Facility opened in 1816 as New York's second state prison and became the birthplace of the Auburn System of penal discipline — enforced silence and regimented labor that influenced prison design across the country. On August 6, 1890, Auburn became the site of the world's first execution by electric chair when William Kemmler was put to death in a procedure witnesses described as taking two shocks over eight minutes. Fifty-five men were executed at Auburn by electric chair over the facility's subsequent history.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
William H. Seward House Museum at 33 South Street, Auburn, New York — circa 1816 Federal-style home and National Historic Landmark
Museum / Historical Site

Seward House Museum

Auburn, NY

The Seward House was built circa 1816 by Judge Elijah Miller and became the lifelong home of William H. Seward — U.S. senator, two-term governor of New York, and Secretary of State under Lincoln and Andrew Johnson. Declared a National Historic Landmark in 1964, it preserves the night of April 14, 1865, when Lewis Powell entered the house and attacked Seward with a Bowie knife while Lincoln was being shot at Ford's Theatre.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Dunkirk — 2

Dunkirk Light at Point Gratiot — 61-foot 1875 rubblestone lighthouse tower on Lake Erie, Chautauqua County NY
Museum / Historical Site

Dunkirk Historical Lighthouse & Veterans Park Museum

Dunkirk, NY

A lighthouse has guided ships to Dunkirk Harbor on Lake Erie since 1827; the current 61-foot rubblestone tower was lit in 1875 after the earlier structure deteriorated to the point of collapse. Automated in 1960, the property was restored by local residents and now houses a veterans museum covering WWI, WWII, and Korea, with the rare third-order Fresnel lens still operational.

$ All Ages Family: High
Aerial survey view of Ivy League Psychic Academy (Rhodes House)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Other Dark Tourism Site

Ivy League Psychic Academy (Rhodes House)

Dunkirk, NY

The Rhodes House was built in 1882 by Francis and Grace Rhodes, who operated it as a funeral home for more than 55 years before the building was vacated. After sitting empty for 16 years, it was acquired by psychic medium Ivy Rivera and converted into the Ivy League Psychic Academy and a paranormal investigation venue, listed on the Haunted History Trail of New York State.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Eagle Bay — 2

Big Moose Inn (now Big Moose Lakeside) on Big Moose Lake in Eagle Bay New York, the 1903 Adirondack lodge with 16 rooms
True Crime Site

Big Moose Inn

Eagle Bay, NY

Big Moose Inn is a historic Adirondack lodge built in 1903, located on the shores of Big Moose Lake near Old Forge, New York. The property gained notoriety as the setting of one of upstate New York's most sensational murder cases: the July 1906 killing of Grace Brown by Chester Gillette, which inspired Theodore Dreiser's 1925 novel An American Tragedy.

$$ All ages, though history is adult-appropriate Family: Moderate
Big Moose Lake in the Adirondacks of Herkimer County New York with reflective water and tree-lined shore
Outdoor / Natural Site

Big Moose Lake

Eagle Bay, NY

Big Moose Lake in the central Adirondacks is the site of one of New York's most infamous murders. On July 11, 1906, Chester Gillette murdered his pregnant girlfriend Grace Brown on the lake, causing a crime that captured national attention, inspired Theodore Dreiser's 1925 novel An American Tragedy, and contributed to the psychological landscape of early 20th-century American letters.

$ All ages Family: Moderate

East Bethany — 2

Brick exterior of Rolling Hills Asylum, the former Genesee County Home and Infirmary in East Bethany, New York
Asylum / Hospital

Rolling Hills Asylum (Genesee County Home and Infirmary)

East Bethany, NY

Rolling Hills Asylum opened in 1827 as the Genesee County Poorhouse on a 200-acre farm in East Bethany, New York. The institution operated for 147 years, becoming the Genesee County Infirmary in 1938 and the Genesee County Nursing Home in 1964 before closing in 1974. More than 1,700 deaths are documented on the property. The building reopened in 1992 and now operates as a documented paranormal-tourism site on the Haunted History Trail of New York State.

$$ All Ages for daytime tours; ghost-hunt experiences typically 18+ Family: Low
Rolling Hills Asylum in East Bethany New York, former Genesee County Poorhouse exterior
Asylum / Hospital

Rolling Hills Asylum

East Bethany, NY

The Genesee County Board of Supervisors established the county's poorhouse in East Bethany on December 4, 1826, and it opened in a converted stagecoach tavern in January 1827. For nearly 150 years, the facility housed orphaned children, the elderly, the physically disabled, the mentally ill, and those convicted of vagrancy. The 200-acre working farm required able-bodied residents to contribute labor. Operations cost approximately $1.08 per resident per week by 1871. The poor farm closed in 1965; the nursing home facility closed in 1974.

$$ 18+ with valid ID; 14-17 require parental accompaniment Family: Not Recommended

Fort Edward — 2

Haunted Dining / Bar

Anvil Inn Restaurant

Fort Edward, NY

The Anvil Inn at 67 Broadway in Fort Edward occupies a blacksmith shop built in the early 1840s by Alexander Burke. The building sits on the outer defensive walls of colonial-era Fort Edward, a major French and Indian War military installation constructed in 1755. The structure was converted to a restaurant in 1975 and has been chef-owned and operated since 1986.

$$ All Ages Family: High
Exterior of the Old Fort House Museum in Fort Edward, New York, a gambrel-roofed wood-frame structure built in 1772
Museum / Historical Site

Old Fort House Museum

Fort Edward, NY

Patrick Smyth built the Old Fort House in 1772 using timbers salvaged from the original Fort Edward, a British fortification that had anchored the region since 1755. The structure served as tavern, courthouse, and military headquarters during the Revolutionary War, hosting General Benedict Arnold and future presidents George Washington and James Madison.

$ All Ages Family: High

Geneva — 2

Belhurst Castle — Romanesque Revival sandstone mansion on Seneca Lake in Geneva, New York
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Belhurst Castle

Geneva, NY

Belhurst Castle is a Romanesque Revival mansion on the western shore of Seneca Lake, designed by the Albany firm Fuller & Wheeler and built between 1885 and 1889 for Carrie Harron Collins. The property became the Belhurst Hotel in 1932 and is now a member of the Haunted History Trail of New York State, operating as a hotel, restaurant, and winery.

$$$ All Ages (hotel and winery); some restaurant areas may have minimum age in evening Family: High
Open Graph image from www.hws.edu
Museum / Historical Site

Hobart and William Smith Colleges

Geneva, NY

Hobart and William Smith Colleges trace their origins to Geneva Academy, founded in 1796 on the western shore of Seneca Lake. Renamed Hobart College in 1852 to honor Bishop John Henry Hobart, the institution later incorporated William Smith College in 1908 as a coordinated women's college. Its affiliated Geneva Medical College made history in 1849 when Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to earn a medical degree in the Northern Hemisphere.

$ All Ages Family: High

Glen Cove — 2

Photo of Glen Cove Mansion Hotel and Conference Center (The Manor)
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Glen Cove Mansion Hotel and Conference Center (The Manor)

Glen Cove, NY

The Manor was designed by architect Charles A. Platt and built in 1910 as the residence of John Teele Pratt, an oil heir and son of Standard Oil founder Charles Pratt, and his wife Ruth Baker Pratt. Ruth Baker Pratt served as New York City's first female Alderman and, in 1928, became the first woman elected to Congress from New York. She died at the mansion in 1965. The estate became one of the first conference center hotels in the United States in 1967 and has operated under the name The Mansion at Glen Cove since 1985.

$$$$ All Ages Family: High
Photo of Winfield Hall (Woolworth Estate)
Haunted House / Historic Home

Winfield Hall (Woolworth Estate)

Glen Cove, NY

Frank Winfield Woolworth commissioned architect C.P.H. Gilbert to design Winfield Hall, completed in 1916. The 56-room Italian Renaissance mansion cost approximately $9 million, with the marble grand staircase alone running $2 million. Woolworth died at the estate in 1919, having lived there barely two years. On May 2, 1917, his daughter Edna died by suicide at The Plaza Hotel in New York City; she had discovered her husband's infidelity. The estate later served as a research laboratory (1945), a business school for women (1963), and a private residence before suffering fire damage in January 2015.

$ All Ages Family: High

Himrod — 2

Haunted Dining / Bar

Miles Wine Cellars

Himrod, NY

Miles Wine Cellars operates in a Greek Revival mansion on Seneca Lake built around 1802, where a historic ferry crossing once stood. Doug Miles and Suzie Hayes have managed the property since the early 1980s, operating it as a winery, inn, and event venue. The building's most significant historical event — the 1850 renovation deaths — is documented on the winery's own website.

$$ All Ages (wine tasting 21+) Family: High
Aerial survey view of Morton Salt Mine & Plant (Himrod)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Morton Salt Mine & Plant (Himrod)

Himrod, NY

Morton Salt sank two shafts to over 2,100 feet below the surface near Himrod, Yates County, to reach a deep salt bed beneath Seneca Lake. Mining operations began in 1968 but encountered severe pressurized water flows throughout construction and operation. Morton's executives abruptly shut the mine down in May 1976 due to the combined environmental and geological challenges. Today little remains above ground at the site.

$ All Ages Family: High

Hyde Park — 2

Springwood, Franklin D. Roosevelt's home in Hyde Park New York, east facade exterior
Museum / Historical Site

Springwood (Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site)

Hyde Park, NY

Springwood, the lifelong home and burial site of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, is preserved as the Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site in Hyde Park, New York. The estate was acquired by James Roosevelt in 1867, expanded by FDR in 1915 with architect Francis L. V. Hoppin, and donated to the federal government on FDR's death in 1945.

$$ All Ages Family: High
South Portico of the Vanderbilt Mansion at Hyde Park, New York — McKim, Mead & White Beaux-Arts design, 1896-1899
Haunted House / Historic Home

Vanderbilt Mansion National Historic Site

Hyde Park, NY

Frederick W. Vanderbilt and his wife Louise commissioned the Hyde Park estate in 1895, retaining McKim, Mead & White for the design. The 54-room Beaux-Arts mansion was built between 1896 and 1899. Frederick Vanderbilt died in 1938; his niece Margaret Van Alen inherited and transferred the property to the federal government, and the National Park Service has administered it as a public historic site since 1940.

$ All Ages Family: High

Irvington — 2

Photo of Church of St. Barnabas
Other Dark Tourism Site

Church of St. Barnabas

Irvington, NY

The Church of St. Barnabas began as a chapel on land purchased by Rev. John McVickar near Washington Irving's Sunnyside estate. Dedicated on June 2, 1853, it became the first Episcopal parish in Irvington when the school it served was abandoned in 1858. The congregation's expanded building — adding a tower, transept, and chancel — was designed by James Renwick Jr., whose firm also built Grace Church and St. Patrick's Cathedral. The church was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on March 24, 2000.

$ All Ages Family: High
Exterior view of Washington Irving's Sunnyside cottage in Tarrytown, New York, showing the Dutch-style architecture and riverside grounds
Haunted House / Historic Home

Washington Irving's Sunnyside

Irvington, NY

Washington Irving purchased a rundown cottage on the Hudson River in 1835 and spent the rest of his life expanding and renovating it, naming the property Sunnyside in 1841. He died here on November 28, 1859, of a heart attack in his bedroom, shortly after completing his five-volume biography of George Washington. By the time of his death, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. had written that Sunnyside was 'next to Mount Vernon, the best known and most cherished of all the dwellings in our land.'

$$ All Ages Family: High

Ithaca — 2

Photo of Clinton House
Museum / Historical Site

Clinton House

Ithaca, NY

The Clinton House was built between 1828 and 1829 in the Greek Revival style by Henry Ackley, Jeremiah Beebe, and Henry Hibbard. Described at its opening as a hotel 'equaled by few and surpassed by none in the State,' it was Ithaca's first professional office building and its most prominent hotel for decades. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971. The building now houses offices and New Roots Charter School.

$ All Ages Family: High
Ghost Tour / Walking Tour

The History Center in Tompkins County (Haunted History Tours)

Ithaca, NY

The History Center in Tompkins County at 110 North Tioga Street in Ithaca is the county's primary historical archive, operating since the mid-twentieth century. Its haunted history walking tour draws entirely from the Center's archival collections to document Ithaca's history of violent crime, including the case of Edward C. Rulloff — convicted of murder, believed responsible for additional killings, and executed by public hanging in Binghamton in 1871.

$ Minimum 13 Family: Moderate

Jericho — 2

Haunted Hotel / Inn

Maine Maid Inn

Jericho, NY

The Maine Maid Inn was built around 1800 for Valentine Hicks, a prominent Quaker abolitionist who became the second president of the Long Island Rail Road and the son-in-law of nationally known preacher Elias Hicks. The property functioned as a station on the Underground Railroad, featuring a concealed stairway behind a linen closet leading to an attic shelter; a wagon with a false bottom was used to transport those seeking freedom. The building operated as a restaurant and inn through much of the 20th century before closing. It received local landmark designation in 2012.

$ All Ages Family: High
The historic Milleridge Inn sign at the entrance in Jericho, New York
Haunted Dining / Bar

Milleridge Inn

Jericho, NY

Mary Willets of the Quaker Willets family built the original two-room structure with a central fireplace in 1672. British and Hessian soldiers were quartered at the inn for nearly eight years during the Revolution. The property is believed to have served as a stop on the Underground Railroad in the 1800s. It became a tavern under Quaker minister Elias Hicks around 1783 and has operated as a dining establishment for more than 80 years.

$$ All Ages Family: High

Lily Dale — 2

Entrance gate to the Lily Dale Assembly spiritualist community in Lily Dale, New York
Other Dark Tourism Site

Lily Dale Assembly

Lily Dale, NY

Lily Dale began in 1879 as the Cassadaga Lake Free Association, a summer camp for Spiritualists and freethinkers. Renamed 'The City of Light' in 1903 and 'Lily Dale Assembly' in 1906, it grew into the world's largest community devoted to Spiritualism, a religious movement centered on the belief that the living can communicate with the dead.

$ All Ages Family: High
Open Graph image from www.lilydaleassembly.org
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Maplewood Hotel

Lily Dale, NY

The Maplewood Hotel was built in 1880 as a converted horse barn in the heart of Lily Dale, New York — a Chautauqua County hamlet established in 1879 as a camp meeting ground for the American Spiritualist movement. Lily Dale Assembly is now the world's largest Spiritualist community, drawing thousands of visitors each summer for lectures, healing sessions, and demonstrations of mediumship.

$$ All Ages Family: High

New York City — 2

Facade of the historic New Amsterdam Theatre on 42nd Street in Manhattan, New York City
Theater / Performance Venue

New Amsterdam Theatre

New York City, NY

The New Amsterdam Theatre at 214 West 42nd Street opened on October 26, 1903, designed by architects Henry Herts and Hugh Tallant in an exuberant Art Nouveau style immediately dubbed 'The House Beautiful.' From 1913 to 1927 it served as the home of Florenz Ziegfeld's Follies. After decades as a movie theater and subsequent abandonment, The Walt Disney Company undertook a $34 million restoration beginning in 1995, reopening the theater in 1997.

$$$ All Ages Family: High
Exterior of NYU Brittany Hall at 55 East 10th Street, a 1929 Gothic Revival apartment hotel across from Grace Church in Greenwich Village
Other Dark Tourism Site

NYU Brittany Residence Hall

New York City, NY

Brittany Hall at 55 East 10th Street was built in 1929 as a luxury apartment hotel, designed by Farrar & Watmough in a Gothic Revival style that mirrors the adjacent Grace Church. The building became an NYU residence hall and has housed notable alumni including Al Pacino, Jerry Garcia, and Adam Sandler.

$ All Ages Family: High

Oswego — 2

Earthwork ramparts of Fort Ontario overlooking Lake Ontario in Oswego, New York
Museum / Historical Site

Fort Ontario State Historic Site

Oswego, NY

Fort Ontario stands above Lake Ontario at the mouth of the Oswego River, a star-shaped earthwork first built by the British in 1755 during the French and Indian War. The fort served through the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Civil War, and both world wars. It now operates as a New York State Historic Site.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Aerial survey view of Railroad Tracks Behind Fort Ontario
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Railroad Tracks Behind Fort Ontario

Oswego, NY

Fort Ontario, built in 1755 in present-day Oswego, New York, played roles in the French and Indian War, the American Revolution, the War of 1812, and both World Wars. The disused rail line that ran along the shore between the fort and Lake Ontario served the city's industrial waterfront before declining with the rest of Oswego's port economy.

$ All Ages Family: High

Palmyra — 2

Historic brick commercial streetscape in the East Main Street Historic District of Palmyra, New York
Museum / Historical Site

Historic Palmyra

Palmyra, NY

The William Phelps General Store at 132 Market Street in Palmyra, New York was built in 1826, serving multiple functions as a boarding house, tavern, bakery, and general store. William Phelps purchased the building in November 1868 and completed renovations by 1875. His son Julius locked the doors in 1940, creating an intact 19th-century commercial time capsule. The last Phelps family member, Sibyl, lived in the house without electricity or indoor plumbing until her death in 1976.

$$ All ages for ghost tours; investigation events by arrangement Family: Moderate
The three-story brick Wm. Phelps General Store on Market Street in Palmyra, New York, with green window shutters and a decorative wrought-iron balcony
Museum / Historical Site

Wm. Phelps General Store and Home

Palmyra, NY

The Wm. Phelps General Store and family residence in Palmyra, New York was built in 1826 and operated as a general store, boarding house, tavern, and bakery in the busy Erie Canal era. William Phelps renovated the property in 1875, and the family ran the store until 1940, when Julius Phelps closed it abruptly. Sibyl Phelps lived in the home until her death in 1976.

$ All Ages Family: High

Saranac Lake — 2

Exterior of Hotel Saranac, 100 Main Street, Saranac Lake, New York
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Hotel Saranac

Saranac Lake, NY

Hotel Saranac opened in 1927 on the site of the old Saranac Lake High School, built by architects William Scopes and Maurice Feustmann in Colonial Revival style. The six-story brick building was marketed as the first fireproof hotel in the Adirondacks. Paul Smith's College operated it as a hospitality training facility from 1962 to 2006, after which it stood vacant until a $35-million renovation returned it to service in 2018 as a Hilton Curio Collection property.

$$$$ All Ages Family: High
Asylum / Hospital

Prescott House

Saranac Lake, NY

Prescott House was built in 1905 as the Mary Prescott Reception Hospital for tuberculosis patients too ill for Dr. Edward Trudeau's Adirondack Cottage Sanitarium. Founded and personally subsidized by Mary R. Prescott, a recovered TB patient, the hospital cared for 3,384 patients over 44 years before closing in 1949. It later served as a college dormitory and now operates as a guesthouse.

$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Schenectady — 2

Ghost Tour / Walking Tour

Schenectady Historic Stockade District

Schenectady, NY

The Stockade District is the oldest continuously inhabited neighborhood in New York State, settled in 1661 by Dutch fur traders on a wedge of land between the Mohawk River and the Binnekill. On February 8, 1690, French-Canadian forces and Mohawk allies attacked the sleeping settlement, killing 60 residents and taking 27 prisoner in what became known as the Schenectady Massacre.

$ All Ages Family: High
Aerial survey view of Vale Cemetery
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Vale Cemetery

Schenectady, NY

Historic Vale Cemetery in Schenectady, New York, was established in 1857 and covers roughly 100 acres along State Street. The first burial, in November 1857, was a four-year-old child, Noah Vibbard Van Vorst. Today the rural-movement cemetery holds more than 33,000 interments and includes the African American Ancestral Burying Ground. It is maintained by the nonprofit Vale Cemetery Association.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Smithtown — 2

Aerial survey view of Blydenburgh Park Historic District (Blydenburgh Grist Mill)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Blydenburgh Park Historic District (Blydenburgh Grist Mill)

Smithtown, NY

In 1798, Isaac and Susannah Blydenburgh acquired the land and created 180-acre Stump Pond by damming the headwaters of the Nissequogue River with help from cousins Joshua Smith II and Caleb Smith II. The mill complex that followed included a grist mill, saw mill, and later a fulling mill. The grist mill was expanded in the 1880s with roller millworks and a third floor, and operated until 1922 — the last of the family's mills to close. The property was sold to David and Molly Weld in 1939 and acquired by Suffolk County Parks in 1965. The historic district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on August 11, 1983.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Haunted Dining / Bar

Katie's of Smithtown

Smithtown, NY

This East Main Street address in Smithtown was home to the Trainor Hotel, which burned in 1909. The site later housed a speakeasy during Prohibition, operated in part by Charlie Klein — a bootlegger who served time in prison and died by suicide in 1933. The current bar, Katie's of Smithtown, operates on the same footprint and has been the subject of multiple televised paranormal investigations.

$ 21+ Family: Low

Southampton — 2

Museum / Historical Site

Southampton History Museum (Rogers Mansion and Halsey House)

Southampton, NY

The land beneath the Rogers Mansion was allotted in 1648 to William Rogers, one of the original English settlers of Southampton. The current Greek Revival structure reflects a redesign completed around 1843 by Captain Albert Rogers; a later renovation by architect Grosvenor Atterbury in 1926 moved the house 100 feet back from Main Street. The Thomas Halsey Homestead, built circa 1683 by Thomas Halsey Jr., is recognized as the oldest English wood-framed house in New York State still standing on its original site.

$$ All Ages Family: High
Museum / Historical Site

Stony Brook University Southampton Campus Windmill

Southampton, NY

Built in 1713 in Southampton Village, this English-style post windmill is the sole survivor of three windmills originally constructed in the area. It served as a navigational landmark for vessels until 1890, when the Hoyt family relocated it five miles to Shinnecock Hills. In 1896, New York linen magnate Arthur Brigham Claflin purchased the property and commissioned architect Grosvenor Atterbury to build a Gilded Age estate. The windmill was restored and repurposed as a playhouse and guest cottage. Stony Brook University took over the campus from Long Island University in 2006.

$ All Ages Family: High

St. James — 2

Museum / Historical Site

Deepwells Farm Mansion

St. James, NY

Deepwells Farm mansion was built circa 1845 for Joel L.G. Smith, a descendant of Richard 'Bull' Smith who founded Smithtown. The estate takes its name from two 125-foot brick wells sunk on the property. William J. Gaynor, Mayor of New York City from 1910 until his death in 1913, owned the property during his mayoralty. Suffolk County acquired the estate, and it is now a historic site managed by Suffolk County Parks; the Deepwells Farm Historical Society produces events and community programming on the grounds.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate
Photo of St. James General Store
Museum / Historical Site

St. James General Store

St. James, NY

Ebenezer Smith built the St. James General Store in 1857 at the corner of Moriches and Harbor Hill Roads in St. James. Smith was a descendant of Richard 'Bull' Smith, who founded Smithtown in the 17th century. The store served as a general merchandise hub, post office, and social center for the hamlet. It attracted celebrity patrons in its heyday — the Barrymores, Buster Keaton, Irving Berlin, and Myrna Loy all maintained accounts there. The store was enlarged in the 1890s and has been structurally unchanged since 1894. Suffolk County Parks purchased it in 1990 and it operates today as a museum. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as part of the Saint James Historic District (1973).

$ All Ages Family: High

Stony Brook — 2

Exterior of the 1710 Country House Restaurant colonial building in Stony Brook, New York, with a holiday red bow on the door
Haunted Dining / Bar

Country House Restaurant

Stony Brook, NY

Built around 1710, the Country House Restaurant in Stony Brook is one of Long Island's oldest surviving domestic structures. The building served as a private residence and farm before British troops occupied it during the Revolutionary War. Over its three centuries of use it has housed a tavern, a private home, and its current incarnation as a full-service restaurant.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate
The 1751 Stony Brook Grist Mill on Harbor Road, a wooden working colonial gristmill in Stony Brook on the north shore of Long Island, New York.
Museum / Historical Site

Stony Brook Grist Mill

Stony Brook, NY

The Stony Brook Grist Mill occupies a site that has hosted a functioning mill since approximately 1700. The original structure was destroyed in a storm around 1750, and the replacement mill built on the same footprint remains standing today. It is maintained by the Ward Melville Heritage Organization and operates as a working mill during Sunday tours from April through October.

$ All Ages Family: High

Syracuse — 2

Exterior of Loew's State Theatre (now the Landmark Theatre) at 362 South Salina Street in downtown Syracuse, New York, on a snowy December afternoon
Theater / Performance Venue

Landmark Theatre

Syracuse, NY

The Landmark Theatre opened in February 1928 as Loew's State Theatre, a 2,908-seat Indo-Persian fantasy movie palace designed by Thomas W. Lamb. Built at a reported cost of $1.5 million by Marcus Loew's theatre chain, it was advertised at its debut as 'the last word in theatrical ornateness and luxuriousness.' After narrowly escaping demolition in 1977, it was rescued by community activists and now operates as a regional live-performance venue.

$$ All Ages Family: High
1909 postcard view of the entrance and Victorian monuments at Oakwood Cemetery in Syracuse, New York
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Oakwood Cemetery

Syracuse, NY

Oakwood Cemetery was dedicated in November 1859 and designed by Howard Daniels, a New York City landscape gardener whose picturesque plan made Oakwood one of the most notable examples of the American rural cemetery movement. Adjacent to what would become Syracuse University, the 160-acre cemetery is the last of Daniels' fifteen rural cemetery designs and remains an active burial ground today.

$ All Ages Family: High

Troy — 2

Haunted House / Historic Home

The Enslin House

Troy, NY

The house at 562 Fifth Avenue in Troy's Lansingburgh neighborhood was built in 1925 by the Feyl family, Bavarian immigrants who settled there in the early twentieth century. The family ran what was described as a supper club during Prohibition, and notorious Albany-area bootlegger John T. 'Legs' Diamond reportedly dined there.

$$$ All Ages Family: Low
The Victorian Gothic exterior of West Hall, the former Troy Hospital, on the RPI campus in Troy, New York
Other Dark Tourism Site

West Hall (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)

Troy, NY

West Hall, the oldest building on the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute campus in Troy, New York, was built in 1869 as Troy Hospital, operated by the Sisters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul. In 1923 it became a Catholic high school, and in 1953 it was incorporated into RPI, where it now houses the school's arts and humanities programs.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Warwick — 2

Aerial drone view of the main building of the former Mid Orange Correctional Facility in Warwick, New York, surrounded by the Ramapo Mountains
Prison / Reformatory

Mid Orange Correctional Facility

Warwick, NY

The Mid Orange Correctional Facility in Warwick, New York opened in 1932 as the New York State Training School for Boys, prior to which the site served as America's first inpatient substance abuse treatment center. The facility was converted to a medium-security adult prison in 1977 and closed in 2011 alongside six other state prisons. The property was acquired by the Town of Warwick in 2014 and became the Hudson Sports Complex in 2019.

$$ 18+ (16+ with responsible adult) Family: Not Recommended
Haunted Dining / Bar

Demarest Building (Former National Hotel)

Warwick, NY

The Demarest Building stands on Railroad Avenue in the Village of Warwick, New York. The earlier National Hotel was built on the site in 1863 to serve travelers arriving on the newly completed Warwick Valley Railroad. The current four-story brick and terra-cotta Demarest House was erected on the site in 1887.

$ All Ages Family: High

Albion — 1

Theater / Performance Venue

Pratt Event Center (Grand Opera House)

Albion, NY

The Pratt Event Center comprises three connected historic buildings at the corner of North Main Street in Albion, Orleans County: the Stone Building (dating to the 1840s–1860s), the Day and Day Building, and the Grand Opera House completed in 1890. The 1902 stage expansion made it the largest performance space between Buffalo and Rochester for many years.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Alexandria Bay — 1

Boldt Castle six-story stone mansion on Heart Island in the Thousand Islands of New York
Museum / Historical Site

Boldt Castle

Alexandria Bay, NY

Boldt Castle is an unfinished six-story stone mansion on Heart Island in the Thousand Islands region of upstate New York. Hotelier George Boldt commissioned it in 1900 as a gift to his wife Louise. When Louise died unexpectedly on January 7, 1904, at the age of 42, Boldt halted construction by telegraph and never returned. The structure stood abandoned until the Thousand Islands Bridge Authority purchased it in 1977 and began ongoing restoration.

$$ All Ages Family: High

Amsterdam — 1

Aerial survey view of Widow Susan Road
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Widow Susan Road

Amsterdam, NY

Widow Susan Road in the Town of Amsterdam, Montgomery County, is named for Susan DeGraff, a Scottish immigrant who married Harmanus DeGraff in 1838 and was widowed around 1848. She raised her children and ran the family farm at the foot of the road, later moving to Michigan, where she died in 1892. She is buried in Green Hill Cemetery in Amsterdam.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Annandale-on-Hudson — 1

Blithewood Mansion at Bard College — 1900 Zabriskie family estate house in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
Haunted House / Historic Home

Bard College

Annandale-on-Hudson, NY

Blithewood Mansion was built in 1900 by National Guard captain and real estate developer Andrew C. Zabriskie as his family residence. One of his daughters fell to her death from a window in Zabriskie's New York City apartment under unclear circumstances. In 1951, the mansion was donated to Bard College, which uses it as a library facility. The estate's gardens still contain three statues of Zabriskie's daughters commissioned during his ownership, with a notably empty pedestal marking the fourth daughter.

$ All Ages (college campus) Family: Moderate

Appleton — 1

Haunted Dining / Bar

Winery at Marjim Manor

Appleton, NY

Shubal Scudder Merritt purchased 205 acres from the Holland Land Company in 1834, initially building a log cabin. By 1854 he had replaced it with a brick mansion. In 1865, after returning from hunting, Merritt accidentally shot and killed his son Lewis in the doorway of the home. The property later passed to Dr. Charles Ring, then to the Sisters of St. Joseph (1933–1993), before becoming a winery in 2004.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Astoria — 1

Photo of The Astor Room at Kaufman Astoria Studios
Haunted Dining / Bar

The Astor Room at Kaufman Astoria Studios

Astoria, NY

Kaufman Astoria Studios was established in 1920 by Famous Players-Lasky as a production facility convenient to Manhattan's theater district. Rudolph Valentino filmed at the studio in 1924 during the production of Monsieur Beaucaire; the Marx Brothers filmed The Cocoanuts (1929) and Animal Crackers (1930) there. A restaurant called the Astor Room opened in the studio's historic basement commissary space, which retained the original 1920s tilework. The restaurant was renamed George's at Kaufman Astoria Studios in 2018 and permanently closed in May 2019.

$ All Ages Family: High

Aurora — 1

Aurora Inn at night in Aurora New York, 1833 historic Cayuga Lake village inn
Haunted Hotel / Inn

The Aurora Inn

Aurora, NY

The Aurora Inn was built in 1833 by Colonel Edwin B. Morgan, a co-founder of the New York Times and one of the village's founding entrepreneurs. The inn served stagecoach, Erie Canal, and rail travelers throughout the 19th century. After decades of decline, it was restored by the Aurora Foundation and reopened in May 2003 as part of the Inns of Aurora resort.

$$$$ All Ages Family: High

Baldwinsville — 1

Aerial survey view of Whiskey Hollow Road
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Whiskey Hollow Road

Baldwinsville, NY

Whiskey Hollow Road is a roughly five-mile dirt road cutting through the woods of the town of Van Buren in western Onondaga County, near Baldwinsville. Notably, no homes or businesses sit along its length, and it is famously closed to traffic after dark, a fact that has helped fuel its reputation as one of Central New York's most storied 'haunted roads.'

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Ballston Spa — 1

Streetscape view of the village of Ballston Spa, New York, in Saratoga County, with historic downtown buildings.
Haunted House / Historic Home

Ballston Spa

Ballston Spa, NY

The Crandall House was constructed in the 1800s as a Victorian mansion for Sylvester Crandall, an unsuccessful stockbroker, and his wife Julia. On a winter night in 1887, Crandall murdered Julia's mother and stepdaughter with a shotgun, fatally shot his wife, and then walked to the cupola where he shot himself. The building now operates as an apartment complex.

$ All Ages Family: Low

Bayside — 1

The exterior stone walls of the unroofed Water Battery at Fort Totten, looking east toward Long Island Sound in Bayside, Queens, New York
Battlefield / Military Site

Fort Totten

Bayside, NY

Fort Totten was begun in 1862 to defend the East River approach to New York Harbor, paired with Fort Schuyler across the water. Never finished as a masonry fort, it served various military roles for over a century and was named in 1898 for Brevet Major General Joseph Totten, a distinguished Army engineer. Much of the site is now a New York City park, with portions still used by the FDNY/EMS academy and the Army Reserve.

$ All Ages Family: High

Bellport — 1

The Gateway Playhouse building as seen from the parking lot exit in Bellport, New York
Theatrical Haunted Attraction

Gateway's Haunted Playhouse (Gateway Playhouse)

Bellport, NY

The structure at 215 South Country Road in Bellport dates to 1827, built for Charles Osborn and later purchased in 1884 by J.L.B. Mott, who hired Stanford White to design a new wing. In 1941 Harry C. Pomeran converted the property into a summer resort; theatrical programming began in 1950 with a production of The Taming of the Shrew staged in the barn. By the 1960s the Gateway had become a professional regional theater.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Bergen — 1

Haunted House / Historic Home

The Bergen House

Bergen, NY

The Bergen House is an 1858 farmhouse in Genesee County, New York, situated adjacent to the Bergen-Byron Swamp — a wetland estimated at over 10,000 years old. The property was purchased by the Heglund family in the 1950s. Current owner Cathy Heglund grew up in the house and has documented paranormal activity there since childhood.

$$ All Ages (varies by event) Family: Moderate

Bolton Landing — 1

Photo of The Sagamore Resort
Haunted Hotel / Inn

The Sagamore Resort

Bolton Landing, NY

The Sagamore Resort opened in 1883 on Green Island in Lake George, at the southern edge of the Adirondack Mountains. The original building burned in 1893 and was rebuilt; that structure also burned in 1914. The current building is the third on the site. The resort is a member of Historic Hotels of America and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

$$$$ All Ages Family: High

Brentwood — 1

Pilgrim Psychiatric Center campus buildings in Brentwood, Long Island, New York
Asylum / Hospital

Pilgrim Psychiatric Center (Long Island Psychiatric Museum)

Brentwood, NY

Pilgrim State Hospital opened October 1, 1931, in Brentwood, New York, on approximately 1,000 acres. It was the largest hospital of any kind in the world at the time of its opening and at its postwar peak in 1954 housed 13,875 patients. The facility performed lobotomies and electroconvulsive therapy procedures beginning in the 1950s. It remains a partially active state psychiatric facility operating under the New York State Office of Mental Health, with 14 current beds.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Brewster — 1

Aerial survey view of Federal Hill Road
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Federal Hill Road

Brewster, NY

Federal Hill Road runs through the rural border between Brewster, New York, in Putnam County and Danbury, Connecticut, where it continues as Joe's Hill Road. The route's most notable landmark is Morefar Back O'Beyond, a private golf course associated with the American International Group corporate empire, designed by Edward Ryder and Val Carlson and opened in 1962.

$ All Ages (drive-by only) Family: Moderate

Broadalbin — 1

Historic Hotel Broadalbin building exterior on West Main Street in Broadalbin New York
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Broadalbin Hotel

Broadalbin, NY

The Historic Hotel Broadalbin is a restored 1854 establishment in Broadalbin, New York. Originally built as a glove factory, it became the Kennyetto Inn before operating as Dr. H.C. Finch's Keeley Cure Hospital (1895-1898), a controversial inebriate treatment facility. Renovated and reopened as a full-service hotel in July 2019, it features 12 guest rooms, a restaurant, and bar.

$ All ages Family: High

Brunswick — 1

Aerial survey view of Forest Park Cemetery (Pinewoods Cemetery)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Forest Park Cemetery (Pinewoods Cemetery)

Brunswick, NY

Forest Park Cemetery, locally called Pinewoods Cemetery for its location on Pinewoods Avenue, is an abandoned cemetery in Brunswick, New York, just east of Troy. The Forest Park Cemetery Corporation incorporated it in 1897 on land used for burials since at least 1856, with grand ambitions to surpass Troy's Oakwood Cemetery. It was designed by Garnet Douglass Baltimore, the first African American graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

$ All Ages Family: Low

Burt — 1

Van Horn Mansion brick Colonial Revival historic home, Burt/Newfane, New York
Haunted House / Historic Home

Van Horn Mansion

Burt, NY

Judge James Van Horn built the mansion at 2159 Lockport-Olcott Road in Niagara County in 1823. The property passed through the Van Horn family and later the Noury Chemical Company before the latter donated it to the Newfane Historical Society in 1987. The Society has maintained and restored the four-story mansion, hosting Victorian teas, historical tours, and paranormal events. It is managed entirely by volunteers.

$ All Ages (under 18 must be accompanied by adult for evening tours) Family: Moderate

Camillus — 1

Skeletal concrete ruins of the Semet-Solvay rock crusher at Split Rock Quarry
Outdoor / Natural Site

Split Rock Quarry

Camillus, NY

Split Rock Quarry, west of Syracuse, New York, was the site of a Semet-Solvay Company TNT plant that supplied roughly a quarter of the United States' explosives during World War I. On July 2, 1918, a fire in the main TNT building triggered explosions that killed approximately 50 workers and effectively ended the operation.

$ All Ages (parental judgment recommended) Family: Moderate

Carmel — 1

Exterior of the historic Smalley's Inn building on Route 52 in Carmel, New York, overlooking Lake Gleneida in Putnam County
Haunted Dining / Bar

Smalley's Inn & Restaurant

Carmel, NY

Smalley's Inn was a tavern, restaurant, and former hotel in Carmel, New York, founded in 1852 by James Smalley, who also served the town as sheriff, coroner, and treasurer. The building survived major fires in 1924 and 1974 and operated for over 160 years before closing in January 2020.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Cazenovia — 1

Haunted Hotel / Inn

The Brae Loch Inn

Cazenovia, NY

The Brae Loch Inn occupies the William Burr Estate, a Federal-style house built circa 1805 on Cazenovia Lake in Madison County. Adam 'Scotty' Brown and his family relocated to the property in 1950 and opened it as a Scottish-themed inn, renaming the Burr estate's successor property the Brae Loch. The inn is listed on the New York State Haunted History Trail.

$$$ All Ages Family: High

Center Moriches — 1

Front view of the Terry-Ketcham Inn, a colonial two-story timber-frame building in Center Moriches, New York
Museum / Historical Site

Ketcham Inn (Terry-Ketcham Inn)

Center Moriches, NY

Samuel Terrell built the original one-room timber-frame cottage at this site in 1693. The property was expanded roughly in 1710 and again in 1790, eventually becoming a 15-room stagecoach inn and tavern. Benjamin Havens managed the inn during the Revolutionary War period and maintained connections that historians have linked to the Culper Spy Ring. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison stayed here in 1791 while visiting General William Floyd in Mastic.

$ All Ages Family: High

Chester — 1

A train passes parallel to the Orange Heritage Trail rail-trail in Chester, Orange County, New York
Outdoor / Natural Site

Orange Heritage Trail (Chester Section)

Chester, NY

The Orange Heritage Trail is a 19.5-mile rail-trail in Orange County, New York, running along the historic Erie Railroad Main Line from Harriman to Middletown. The Chester section passes through landscape settled by Europeans in the early 1700s, including small protected cemeteries.

$ All Ages Family: High

Clinton Corners — 1

Aerial survey view of Fiddlers Bridge Road
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Fiddlers Bridge Road

Clinton Corners, NY

Fiddlers Bridge Road in the Town of Clinton, Dutchess County, takes its name from an early-19th-century legend. According to local tradition recorded by the Town of Clinton Historical Society, an old fiddler returning home from a dance on September 7, 1808 was robbed and murdered, his body left on a small bridge along the then-unnamed road connecting Pleasant Plains and Schultzville. The bridge no longer stands, but the road preserves his memory.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Cobleskill — 1

Exterior of the 1802 Bull's Head Inn at 105 Park Place in Cobleskill, New York
Haunted Dining / Bar

Bull's Head Inn

Cobleskill, NY

The Bull's Head Inn building at 105 Park Place in Cobleskill is the oldest standing structure in the village, built in 1802. It has operated in various capacities for over two centuries — as a private residence, a tavern, and a restaurant. The building is currently open for lunch and dinner Tuesday through Sunday as a traditional American restaurant and pub.

$$ All Ages Family: High

Cohoes — 1

Cohoes Music Hall Second Empire brick facade in Cohoes New York
Theater / Performance Venue

Cohoes Music Hall

Cohoes, NY

Cohoes Music Hall opened November 23, 1874, built by businessmen William Acheson and James Masten at a cost of $60,000. The four-story building housed retail on the first floor and a 475-seat theater on the third and fourth floors. After the National Bank of Cohoes took over in 1905 and the hall sat unused for over 60 years, the city acquired the building for $1 in 1968 and invested more than a million dollars in restoration before reopening it on March 7, 1974.

$$ All Ages Family: High

Corfu — 1

A view of Indian Falls, as seen in January 2023 from the parking lot of the Indian Falls Log Cabin Restaurant in the town of Pembroke, New York (the only publicly accessible view of the falls from land). Locally renowned as a fishing spot, this 20-foot curtain cascade is located at the point where T
Outdoor / Natural Site

Indian Falls

Corfu, NY

Indian Falls is a 20-foot waterfall on Tonawanda Creek in Genesee County, New York, located in the hamlet of Indian Falls within the town of Pembroke. The region was home to the Seneca Tribe of the Iroquois Nation; Ely Samuel Parker, who became Ulysses S. Grant's Adjutant General during the Civil War and later Commissioner of Indian Affairs, was born here in 1828.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Cortland — 1

The 1890 House Museum at 37 Tompkins Street, Cortland NY — exterior view of Chester Wickwire's Victorian stone mansion, photographed July 4, 2018
Museum / Historical Site

The 1890 House Museum (Wickwire Mansion)

Cortland, NY

Chester Franklin Wickwire, inventor and industrialist, built this Victorian stone mansion at 37 Tompkins Street in Cortland, New York in 1890. Wickwire's wire cloth manufacturing operations made Cortland a center of wire production in the late nineteenth century. He died of a stroke at the dining table in 1910; his descendants Ardell and Frederic Wickwire occupied the house until it became a museum.

$$ All Ages Family: High

Crown Point — 1

Ruins of Fort Frederick at Crown Point, New York, circa 1900
Battlefield / Military Site

Crown Point State Historic Site

Crown Point, NY

Crown Point occupies a strategic peninsula on Lake Champlain where the French built Fort St. Frederic between 1734 and 1737. The British demolished it and erected His Majesty's Fort at Crown Point beginning in 1759, at the time the largest British fortification in North America. During the Revolutionary War, the site served as a staging ground and, in 1775–76, a hospital camp where a smallpox epidemic devastated the Continental Army.

$ All Ages Family: High

Cutchogue — 1

True Crime Site

Wickham Farmhouse

Cutchogue, NY

The Wickham Farmhouse was built in 1704 on Route 25 in Cutchogue and represents mid-18th century Cape Cod architecture on Long Island's North Fork. In the early hours of June 3, 1854, an Irish farmhand named Nicholas Bain used an axe to murder James Wickham and his wife Frances at the farm. Bain, who had been dismissed for stealing money from a female servant, was captured after a 1,000-person manhunt on June 6 and hanged on December 15, 1854. The farmhouse was donated to the Cutchogue-New Suffolk Historical Council in 1965 and moved to the Village Green.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

East Aurora — 1

Roycroft Inn exterior in East Aurora New York, Arts and Crafts era hostelry
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Roycroft Inn

East Aurora, NY

Elbert Hubbard opened the Roycroft Inn in 1905 in East Aurora as a hostelry for visitors to his Arts and Crafts community. Hubbard had established the Roycroft campus in 1895 as a printing and craftsmanship collective inspired by William Morris's English Arts and Crafts movement. He died on May 7, 1915, aboard the RMS Lusitania. The Inn was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1986 and continues to operate as a hotel and restaurant.

$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

East Islip — 1

Museum / Historical Site

Brookwood Hall (Islip Art Museum)

East Islip, NY

Brookwood Hall was built in 1903 by H.K. Knapp on the former site of Stellenwerf's Lake House Hotel in East Islip. The Thorne family purchased the estate in 1929. In 1941 the mansion was converted to institutional use, and from 1942 to 1965 it operated as the Orphan Asylum of Brooklyn, housing more than 500 children. After foster care programs reduced demand, the orphanage closed. The Town of Islip assumed ownership; today the building houses Islip town offices and the Islip Art Museum, which began as the Islip Art Gallery in the early 1970s and was formally established as a museum in 1985.

$ All Ages Family: High

Elbridge — 1

Haunted Dining / Bar

Wayside Irish Pub (Former Webber's Wayside Inn)

Elbridge, NY

The building has housed travelers since 1830, when Squire Munro built the Munro Hotel and Tavern on the Jordan-to-Skaneateles stagecoach route. Frederick Weber purchased and renovated the property in 1967 as Weber's Wayside Inn. The Wayside Irish Pub is the current operator.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Ellicottville — 1

Aerial survey view of Hencoop Schoolhouse and Cemetery
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Other Dark Tourism Site

Hencoop Schoolhouse and Cemetery

Ellicottville, NY

Hencoop Hollow Road in Ellicottville, Cattaraugus County, was home to a one-room schoolhouse that served the rural farming community in the 19th century. Like many such structures across Western New York, the building was eventually decommissioned and converted into a private residence as school centralization took hold in the mid-20th century. A small community cemetery adjacent to the road dates to the 1850s.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Fairport — 1

Exterior of the Henry DeLand House / Green Lantern Inn, an 1876 Second Empire mansion in Fairport, New York
Haunted Dining / Bar

Green Lantern Inn (Henry DeLand House)

Fairport, NY

Built in 1876 by Fairport baking-soda industrialist Henry DeLand, the mansion at Main and Church Streets is one of western New York's largest surviving Second Empire residences. After DeLand lost his fortune in a Florida orange-grove freeze, the home passed through multiple uses before reopening as the Green Lantern Inn in 1925. It has since been rebranded as the DeLand House on Main.

$$ All Ages Family: High

Fire Island — 1

The 168-foot black-and-white-banded Fire Island Lighthouse tower rising above the barrier island dunes on Long Island, New York.
Museum / Historical Site

Fire Island Lighthouse

Fire Island, NY

Fire Island's first lighthouse, a 74-foot tower, was built in 1826 but proved inadequate for navigating the treacherous barrier island coastline. The current 168-foot stone tower entered service in 1858 and operated under U.S. Coast Guard management until 1974. The Fire Island Lighthouse Preservation Society formed in 1982 and raised over $1.2 million to restore the structure, which the Coast Guard returned to service as an active aid to navigation in 1986.

$ All Ages (tower requires 42" minimum height) Family: Moderate

Fort Covington — 1

Haunted House / Historic Home

The Dupree House (Dunwich Manor)

Fort Covington, NY

The Dupree House, also called Dunwich Manor, is a Victorian-era mansion in Fort Covington, New York, a hamlet on the Canadian border in Franklin County. It is best known as the former residence of occult writer Gerina Dunwich, who moved into the house in December 1993.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Fredonia — 1

Haunted Hotel / Inn

The White Inn

Fredonia, NY

The White Inn at 52 East Main Street in Fredonia dates to 1868, when the 25,000-square-foot building was constructed as a private residence by members of the White family. It became an inn around 1920 and operated for decades as a hotel and restaurant. After a period of vacancy, a multi-million-dollar restoration backed by Empire State Development returned the building to use, and it reopened as a 24-room hotel in 2024.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Frewsburg — 1

Aerial survey view of Gurnsey Hollow Cemetery
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Gurnsey Hollow Cemetery

Frewsburg, NY

Gurnsey Hollow Cemetery is a small, remote burial ground near Frewsburg in Chautauqua County, with graves dating to the 19th century, including several children. Reached by dirt roads and forest paths, its isolation and old children's graves contribute to a long-standing reputation as one of New York State's most haunted sites — New York Makers magazine ranked it the state's second most haunted in 2017.

$ All Ages Family: Low

Garrison — 1

Historic Bird and Bottle Inn colonial stagecoach stop in Garrison New York
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Bird and Bottle Inn

Garrison, NY

The Bird and Bottle Inn originated as a stagecoach stop established in 1761 on the Old Albany Post Road in the Hudson Valley. The building was later reopened as an inn and restaurant in 1940, and continues to operate today as a boutique inn, restaurant, and event venue. The structure retains significant original Colonial architecture and fixtures from its centuries of operation.

$$ All ages for dining; overnight guests 18+ Family: High

Gasport — 1

Haunted Hotel / Inn

Graestone Manor Bed & Breakfast

Gasport, NY

Land on this property was acquired by Silas Newcomb starting in 1833. The present Victorian mansion was built in 1865 by a subsequent owner, and the Root family—wealthy thoroughbred breeders—later operated Roots Trotting Park, a quarter-mile racetrack on the adjacent grounds. Curtis Root died in March 1889 from injuries sustained involving one of his prized racehorses, Playboy.

$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Glen Haven — 1

Aerial survey view of The Screamer of Glen Haven
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

The Screamer of Glen Haven

Glen Haven, NY

Glen Haven, at the south end of Skaneateles Lake, was the site of a famous 19th-century water-cure (hydropathic) sanitarium. The city of Syracuse bought the property in 1911 to protect its drinking-water supply and demolished the buildings; the wood was carried away by 1913. The area's haunted reputation grew among campers at nearby Lourdes Camp on Ten Mile Point.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Glen Spey — 1

Haunted Hotel / Inn

Burn Brae Mansion

Glen Spey, NY

Burn Brae Mansion was built in 1908 by Margaret Ross Mackenzie Elkin, daughter of George Ross Mackenzie — third president of the Singer Sewing Machine Company. It was the last of seven grand summer mansions built by the Mackenzie children in Glen Spey, and one of only three to survive. The design is attributed to Henry J. Hardenberg, who worked on other projects for Singer executives. Margaret outlived several of her children, and the estate passed through various uses before reopening as a paranormal bed and breakfast.

$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Glenmont — 1

Hudson River frontage and picnic area at Henry Hudson Park in Glenmont New York
Outdoor / Natural Site

Henry Hudson Park

Glenmont, NY

Henry Hudson Park is an 85-acre Town of Bethlehem park on the Hudson River, located off Route 144 in the Cedar Hill section of Glenmont, New York. The park includes boat launches, picnic facilities, and ball fields. It was expanded through partnerships with Scenic Hudson and the Mohawk Hudson Land Conservancy.

$ All Ages Family: High

Glens Falls — 1

Photo of Chapman Historical Museum
Museum / Historical Site

Chapman Historical Museum

Glens Falls, NY

The Chapman Historical Museum occupies the DeLong House, a brick Victorian mansion at 348 Glen Street that hardware merchant Zopher DeLong built in 1867. The building was donated to the community by Juliet Chapman, a relative by marriage, and received a permanent charter from the New York State Board of Regents in 1968. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.

$ All Ages Family: High

Grand Island — 1

Aerial survey view of Whitehaven Cemetery
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Whitehaven Cemetery

Grand Island, NY

Whitehaven Cemetery in the Town of Grand Island, Erie County, was established in 1865 and is one of the island's oldest burial grounds. It lies near the area of the former Whitehaven settlement, a 19th-century logging community. The cemetery sits close to the present-day Holiday Inn, a site famous for its own well-documented ghost story rooted in an 1962 mansion fire.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Greene — 1

Exterior of the 1913 Sherwood Hotel at 25 Genesee Street in downtown Greene, New York, a historic stagecoach inn
Haunted Hotel / Inn

The Sherwood Hotel

Greene, NY

The Sherwood Hotel anchors downtown Greene, New York, on a site occupied by an inn since 1807, when stagecoach operator Isaac Sherwood built a tavern at the edge of a cedar swamp to headquarter his coaching business. After an early 20th-century fire, the present structure was rebuilt in 1913 and remains in continuous operation as a hotel, restaurant, and bar.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Greenport — 1

The Townsend Manor Inn at 714 Main Street in Greenport, an 1835 whaling-captain's residence on Long Island's North Fork
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Townsend Manor Inn

Greenport, NY

The Townsend Manor Inn occupies a residence built in 1835 by whaling captain George Cogswell on the Greenport waterfront. Cogswell left for the California Gold Rush in 1849. The widow of Joseph Lawrence Townsend, Lillian Cook Townsend, purchased the property in 1925, giving the inn its current name and connecting it to a Townsend family lineage that traces back to 1638 Salem.

$$$ All Ages Family: High

Highland — 1

Aerial survey view of Washington Cemetery, North Chodikee Lake Road
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Washington Cemetery, North Chodikee Lake Road

Highland, NY

Washington Cemetery near North Chodikee Lake Road in Highland, Ulster County, New York is a small, difficult-to-find 19th-century burial ground adjacent to farmland on a spade-shaped 100-acre lake whose name derives from an Algonkian phrase meaning 'the place of the signal fire.' The area's history spans Indigenous use by the Esopus, a circa-1800 religious commune led by Jemima Wilkinson's Pang Yang settlers, the early-20th-century Riordon all-boys academy, and 1940s bootlegging operations.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Homer — 1

Haunted Hotel / Inn

The Glen Haven Hotel

Homer, NY

The Glen Haven Hotel sits on the southern shore of Skaneateles Lake, directly across from the former site of the Glen Haven Sanitarium, which operated from 1847 until it burned in 1911. The current four-story building began as a tearoom in the early 1900s, then operated as a speakeasy during Prohibition, before becoming a guest house and eventually the B&B, restaurant, and marina that operates today.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Hunter — 1

Aerial survey view of Devil's Kitchen (Indian Head Wilderness)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Devil's Kitchen (Indian Head Wilderness)

Hunter, NY

Devil's Kitchen is a rugged gorge and campsite in the Platte Clove area of the Catskills, within the NYSDEC-managed Indian Head Wilderness in Greene County. The name comes from the turbulent, cauldron-like pools beneath the clove's waterfalls. During the 1800s the surrounding hills were dotted with bluestone quarries that supplied stone for New York City's sidewalks before cement replaced it.

$ All Ages Family: Low

Jamesport — 1

Haunted Dining / Bar

Jamesport Manor Inn (The Dimon Estate)

Jamesport, NY

The Dimon family acquired land on what became Manor Lane in Jamesport in 1704, and the second Jonathan Dimon built the original farmhouse and barns around 1750. The family produced Minutemen, War of 1812 militiamen, and the renowned clipper ship builder John Dimon, whose firm Smith & Dimon launched the Rainbow (1845) and Sea Witch (1846). John F. Dimon remodeled the manor into a Second Empire mansion in the 1860s. The building burned in 2005 and was rebuilt before reopening as the Jamesport Manor Inn and later as The Dimon Estate.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Kent — 1

Museum / Historical Site

Oak Orchard Lighthouse Museum

Kent, NY

The original Oak Orchard Harbor Lighthouse was built in 1871 at Point Breeze, at the mouth of Oak Orchard Creek on Lake Ontario. It operated until May 1914 as local commercial shipping declined, and was completely destroyed in a violent winter storm on December 23, 1916. In 2010, community volunteers rebuilt a historically accurate square pyramidal replica near the original site.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Keuka Park — 1

Open Graph image from www.keuka.edu
Other Dark Tourism Site

Keuka College — Ball Hall

Keuka Park, NY

Keuka College was founded in 1890 by Reverend George Harvey Ball in Keuka Park, New York, on the shore of Keuka Lake in the Finger Lakes region. Ball Hall, the original campus building, housed all student residences and classrooms when it opened. It was renamed for the founder in 1921 and underwent a major restoration in the late 2000s that earned a Citation Award from the American Institute of Architects.

$ All Ages Family: High

Lake Ronkonkoma — 1

Historic 1901 view of the North Beach at Lake Ronkonkoma, a kettle pond on Long Island, New York
Outdoor / Natural Site

Lake Ronkonkoma

Lake Ronkonkoma, NY

Lake Ronkonkoma is the largest freshwater lake on Long Island, a roughly 240-acre kettle pond at the geographic center of Suffolk County. Four towns meet at its shoreline. The lake's persistent local folklore concerns a Native American figure remembered as the Lady of the Lake, with a documented historical marker erected by the Pomeroy Foundation.

$ All Ages Family: High

Lancaster — 1

Lancaster Opera House and Town Hall, three-story 1896 Italianate brick building in Lancaster, New York
Theater / Performance Venue

Lancaster Opera House

Lancaster, NY

The Lancaster Opera House was built in 1897 in Lancaster, New York, designed by architect George J. Metzger as a combined town hall and music hall. After decades of use as a community anchor — including serving as a food distribution center during the Depression and a parachute-packing facility during World War II — it fell into disuse before a volunteer nonprofit reopened it on September 20, 1981.

$$ All Ages for performances; 18+ for ghost hunts Family: Moderate

Lewiston — 1

Exterior of the Frontier House in Lewiston, New York, a Federal-style stone building constructed in 1824
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Frontier House

Lewiston, NY

Benjamin and Samuel Barton and Joshua Fairbanks constructed the Frontier House in 1824 using stone quarried from the Bay of Quinte, with 18 workers taking 18 months to lay up the 30-inch solid stone walls. Within a few years it had earned a reputation as the finest hotel in the United States west of Albany, hosting Jenny Lind, Henry Clay, Charles Dickens, and Presidents DeWitt Clinton and William McKinley.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Little Falls — 1

Beardslee Castle, a stone manor near Little Falls, New York
Haunted Dining / Bar

Beardslee Castle

Little Falls, NY

Beardslee Castle is a stone manor at 123 Old State Road near Little Falls, New York, built in 1860 by Augustus Beardslee as a replica of an Irish castle. It was gutted by fire in 1919 and again in 1989, rebuilt after each, and now operates as a restaurant and event venue.

$$$ All Ages Family: High

Lyons — 1

Prison / Reformatory

Museum of Wayne County History (Old Wayne County Jail)

Lyons, NY

The Wayne County Jail and Sheriff's Residence was built in 1856 at 21 Butternut Street in Lyons and operated as the county lockup for 104 years, until 1960. The structure contained 24 cells arranged so the sheriff and his family, who lived in the attached residence, could serve as role models for inmates. In 1860 it was the site of the first and only legal execution in Wayne County history: the hanging of William Fee, convicted of murdering a woman found in the nearby town of Galen on September 26, 1859.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Massena — 1

Haunted Dining / Bar

Spanky's Diner

Massena, NY

Spanky's Diner opened in 1956 in Massena from a converted rail car, founded by Al Nicola. The diner operated for 69 years before closing around late 2025. It sits adjacent to Pine Grove Cemetery and the former site of Massena's first hospital, two factors locals cite as explanations for its persistent ghost reports.

$ All Ages Family: High

Menands — 1

Victorian funerary monuments and rolling landscape at Albany Rural Cemetery in Menands
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Albany Rural Cemetery

Menands, NY

Albany Rural Cemetery was established October 7, 1844 in Menands, just north of Albany. Designed in the rural-cemetery movement landscape style, the 467-acre grounds were laid out by architect Daniel Bouton and are considered among the finest examples of the form in the country. The cemetery is the final resting place of more than 135,000 people, including President Chester A. Arthur. It is a designated National Historic Landmark.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Middle Village — 1

Gatehouse of Lutheran/All Faiths Cemetery along Metropolitan Avenue in Middle Village, Queens
Cemetery / Burial Ground

All Faiths Cemetery (General Slocum Mass Memorial)

Middle Village, NY

All Faiths Cemetery (established 1852 as Lutheran Cemetery) in Middle Village, Queens contains the mass memorial and burial vault for 61 unidentified victims of the General Slocum steamship disaster of June 15, 1904, in which approximately 1,021 of 1,342 passengers — overwhelmingly women and children from Manhattan's Little Germany neighborhood — died when the excursion boat caught fire in the East River near Hell Gate.

$ All Ages Family: High

Middletown — 1

Asylum / Hospital

Middletown State Homeopathic Hospital

Middletown, NY

Middletown State Homeopathic Hospital opened in 1874 as the first psychiatric hospital in the United States run on homeopathic medical principles. At its peak the campus held 3,686 patients across more than 100 buildings on 200 acres. The hospital closed in 2006 and portions have since been acquired for redevelopment.

$ All Ages Family: High

Monroe — 1

The Federal-era McGarrah Stagecoach Inn in Monroe, New York, built around 1799
Museum / Historical Site

The McGarrah Stagecoach Tavern Inn

Monroe, NY

Built around 1799 by John McGarrah, the Stagecoach Tavern Inn is one of the oldest buildings in Monroe, New York. It operated as an inn for nearly a century, served as a Freemason meeting place from 1817 to 1826, and houses what the Cornerstone Masonic Historical Society describes as the oldest Masonic lodge room in New York State. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1998.

$ All Ages Family: High

Montebello — 1

Aerial survey view of Spook Rock Road
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Spook Rock Road

Montebello, NY

Spook Rock Road takes its name from a large Proterozoic granite boulder that Dutch settlers labeled with their word for hobgoblin. A 1931 newspaper account documented the rock as a sacred ancestral gathering place for Indigenous peoples of the region. The Dutch settlers applied the supernatural name after the Indigenous population had largely been displaced from the area.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Mount Morris — 1

Museum / Historical Site

Mount Morris Tuberculosis Sanatorium (Murray Hill Campus)

Mount Morris, NY

The Mount Morris Tuberculosis Sanatorium was built 1932–1936 as a state tuberculosis treatment campus; Eleanor Roosevelt visited the site while Franklin Roosevelt was governor of New York. The WPA supplied approximately 240 artworks to the campus in 1937. The sanatorium operated until 1971, then transferred to Livingston County, which converted it to offices and a gallery housing the New Deal collection.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Mount Sinai — 1

Aerial survey view of Chandler Estate (Satan's Trails)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Chandler Estate (Satan's Trails)

Mount Sinai, NY

The Chandler Estate operated as a waterfront resort overlooking Mount Sinai Harbor during the 1940s and 1950s, attracting celebrity guests including Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller. After Mr. Chandler's death, the property transitioned to affordable housing for musicians and students before falling into disuse. Suffolk County purchased the property in 2001 and established it as the Chandler Preserve. The main residence burned in a fire in 2004, leaving a concrete foundation. All remaining cottages were subsequently demolished.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Napanoch — 1

Historic Shanley Hotel building on Main Street in Napanoch, New York
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Shanley Hotel

Napanoch, NY

The Shanley Hotel in Napanoch, New York traces its origins to 1845, when Thomas Ritch built a hotel on the site that housed an exclusive gentlemen's club. A fire destroyed the original structure in 1895, and the rebuilt hotel was purchased by Irish immigrant James Shanley in 1906. Shanley married Beatrice Rowley at the hotel in 1910, added a barn-like wing housing a barbershop and later a brothel's gentlemen's quarters, and concealed secret rooms and cellar tunnels during Prohibition to hide contraband from authorities.

$$ 18+ or 16 with responsible adult Family: Low

Naples — 1

Haunted Hotel / Inn

The Naples Hotel

Naples, NY

The current brick structure at 111 South Main Street was built in 1895, replacing an earlier Lyon Tavern that had operated on the same site since 1818 as a stop on the stagecoach line between Geneva and Bath. The hotel has operated continuously in the Finger Lakes since then.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

New Hartford — 1

Aerial survey view of New Hartford Senior High School
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Other Dark Tourism Site

New Hartford Senior High School

New Hartford, NY

New Hartford Senior High School in Oneida County, New York sits on land that has included a burial ground since 1788. A 1952 addition was constructed on the cemetery space, with historical records indicating that not all remains were relocated prior to construction. In 2009, remains were discovered on the grounds during maintenance work.

$ All Ages Family: High

New Paltz — 1

Photo of Historic Huguenot Street
Museum / Historical Site

Historic Huguenot Street

New Paltz, NY

Historic Huguenot Street preserves one of the oldest intact early-American streets in North America. The Huguenot Patentees — French Protestants who fled persecution following the 1685 revocation of the Edict of Nantes — settled here in the 1670s and built the surviving stone houses in the early 18th century. The district was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1965.

$$ All Ages Family: High

New Windsor — 1

Haunted House / Historic Home

Plum Point on Hudson Condominiums

New Windsor, NY

Plum Point on Hudson is a private condominium community on the Hudson River shoreline in New Windsor, New York, with townhomes first built in 1978 and expanded in phases through the 1980s and 1990s. The condos occupy former estate grounds that were once home to a girls' home and orphanage. The adjacent Kowawese Unique Area (Plum Point Park) opened to the public in 1996.

$ No public access; private residential community Family: High

Newark — 1

Museum / Historical Site

Fox Sisters Property / Hydesville Memorial Park

Newark, NY

On March 31, 1848, sisters Kate (age 11) and Margaretta 'Maggie' Fox (age 14) reported communicating with a spirit through a series of knocking sounds in their Arcadia Township farmhouse, touching off the American Spiritualist movement. The sisters later confessed the raps were produced by cracking their toe and knee joints. The cottage was moved to Lily Dale, NY in 1916 and destroyed by fire in 1955; Wayne County preserves the stone foundation as a public park.

$ All Ages Family: High

Newburgh — 1

The pond and reflections at Downing Park in Newburgh, New York, the last Olmsted and Vaux collaboration
Outdoor / Natural Site

Downing Park

Newburgh, NY

Downing Park is a 35-acre public park in Newburgh, New York, designed in 1889 by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux as a gift to the city, on the condition that it be named for their mentor Andrew Jackson Downing, the Newburgh-born landscape designer who died in 1852. The park opened in 1897 and was the last design collaboration between Olmsted and Vaux.

$ All Ages Family: High

Nichols — 1

Haunted Hotel / Inn

Fainting Goat Island Inn

Nichols, NY

The Fainting Goat Island Inn occupies an 1850 building on a 17-acre island in the Susquehanna River near the New York–Pennsylvania border. The structure served the Erie–Lackawanna Railroad era as a hotel and previously functioned as an ice house, post office, foundry, and reportedly a brothel before falling vacant. Current owner Marnie Streit purchased it in 2007 and reopened it as an inn in 2017.

$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

North Creek — 1

Aerial survey view of Barkeater Chocolates
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Other Dark Tourism Site

Barkeater Chocolates

North Creek, NY

The building at 3235 State Route 28 was constructed in 1884 as a private residence and occupied by a single family from 1947 to 2013, a span of more than 65 years during which multiple deaths occurred on the property. Barkeater Chocolates began operating in the building in 2013; it is now an official stop on the New York State Haunted History Trail.

$$ All Ages Family: High

North Tonawanda — 1

Theater / Performance Venue

The Ghostlight Theatre

North Tonawanda, NY

Built in 1889 as Deutsche Vereinigte Evangelische Friedens Gemeinde—a German United Evangelical Peace Congregation serving immigrants separated from their community by the Erie Canal—the building served as a church for over a century before its congregation relocated to Amherst in June 2000.

$$ All Ages Family: High

Nyack — 1

Haunted House / Historic Home

Ackley House (1 LaVeta Place) — The Legally Haunted House

Nyack, NY

This large Victorian house in Nyack, New York became the subject of the 1991 New York State Appellate Division ruling Stambovsky v. Ackley, in which the court declared the property legally haunted as a matter of law. Owner Helen Ackley had repeatedly promoted the home's poltergeist residents in Reader's Digest and local newspapers between 1977 and 1989; when she sold the house without disclosing the haunting to buyer Jeffrey Stambovsky, the court allowed him to rescind the contract.

$ All Ages Family: High

Old Bethpage — 1

Museum / Historical Site

Old Bethpage Village Restoration

Old Bethpage, NY

Nassau County established the village restoration in 1963 when it acquired the Powell property, opening the public site in 1970 as a recreation of a mid-19th-century Long Island farming community. Buildings were relocated from across Long Island rather than built new, preserving structures that would otherwise have been demolished during suburban development.

$ All Ages Family: High

Oneida — 1

Oneida Community Mansion House in Oneida New York, historic 1862 brick Victorian communal home
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Oneida Community Mansion House

Oneida, NY

The Oneida Community Mansion House in Oneida, New York, served as headquarters for the 19th-century utopian Oneida Community from 1848 to 1880. Built in stages between 1862 and 1914, the 93,000-square-foot National Historic Landmark sits on 33 acres and now operates as a museum and 14-room guesthouse adjacent to the city of Sherrill.

$$ All Ages Family: High

Orangeburg — 1

Asylum / Hospital

Rockland Psychiatric Center (Abandoned Campus)

Orangeburg, NY

Rockland State Hospital opened in 1931 on a 600-acre farm campus in Orangeburg, Rockland County. By 1959 it held approximately 9,000 patients and practiced insulin shock therapy, electroconvulsive therapy, and lobotomies until 1968. Deinstitutionalization reduced the population substantially from the 1970s onward; most buildings were abandoned while a small active facility remains on the grounds.

$ All Ages Family: High

Oriskany — 1

Oriskany Battlefield State Historic Site grounds and monument near Rome, New York
Battlefield / Military Site

Oriskany Battlefield State Historic Site

Oriskany, NY

Oriskany Battlefield marks the site of the August 6, 1777 Battle of Oriskany, one of the bloodiest engagements of the American Revolution. Tryon County militia under General Nicholas Herkimer, marching to relieve the siege of Fort Stanwix, were ambushed in a ravine by Loyalist and allied forces. It became a New York State historic site in 1927 and a National Historic Landmark in 1963.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Ossining — 1

Photo of Sing Sing Prison Museum
Museum / Historical Site

Sing Sing Prison Museum

Ossining, NY

New York purchased land at a bend in the Hudson in 1825 and sent 100 men from Auburn Prison to build a new facility using marble quarried on-site. What they built — and what their labor shaped — became one of the most consequential prisons in American history. Over 614 people were executed by electric chair at Sing Sing between 1891 and 1963, including Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on June 19, 1953.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Owego — 1

Haunted Hotel / Inn

1867 Parkview Inn

Owego, NY

The Cameron brothers built what became the Exchange Hotel at 145 Front Street in Owego in 1867 and hired Irish immigrant Hugh Dugan to manage it. Dugan later purchased and renamed it the Dugan House. The property passed through several owners over 150 years — including a nearly four-decade tenure by Joseph and Louise McTamney — before Beth and Mark Johnson took over in 2011 and undertook a 2019 renovation that uncovered sealed fire-damaged rooms.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Oyster Bay — 1

The 1738 Raynham Hall Museum on West Main Street in Oyster Bay, New York, former home of the Townsend family
Museum / Historical Site

Raynham Hall

Oyster Bay, NY

Raynham Hall is a 20-room historic house museum in Oyster Bay, New York, owned by the Town of Oyster Bay and accredited by the American Alliance of Museums. The Townsend family home served as quarters for British officers during the Revolutionary War and figured in the Culper Spy Ring's interception of the Benedict Arnold plot.

$ All Ages Family: High

Ozone Park — 1

Historic Bayside Cemetery in Ozone Park, Queens, New York — a 19th-century Jewish burial ground with some 35,000 interments
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Bayside Cemetery

Ozone Park, NY

Bayside Cemetery is a roughly 12-acre Jewish cemetery in Ozone Park, Queens, established in the mid-19th century with about 35,000 interments. Once a stately burial ground for New York's Jewish community, it suffered decades of neglect and vandalism in the mid-1900s before restoration efforts began in 2012.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Pine Plains — 1

True Crime Site

Dutch's Spirits at Harvest Homestead Farm

Pine Plains, NY

During the final years of Prohibition, Arthur Flegenheimer — known in the press and criminal world as Dutch Schultz — financed a large-scale bootlegging operation beneath a rural farm in Dutchess County. Federal agents raided the property on October 10, 1932, discovering an extensive underground infrastructure: concrete tunnels, two 2,000-gallon stills, 15,000 gallons of mash, and 10,000 pounds of sugar. It was reported in the local press as the largest bootlegging operation ever uncovered in the county.

$ All Ages Family: High

Providence — 1

Asylum / Hospital

Saratoga County Homestead (Homestead Sanitarium)

Providence, NY

The Saratoga County Homestead opened in 1914 as a tuberculosis sanitarium on land donated by Horace Carpentier in the hamlet of Barkersville, Providence, New York. A wooden original structure was replaced by the brick building standing today in 1932. After TB treatment ended in 1960, it reopened as the Saratoga County Infirmary for geriatric patients until 1973, when it closed permanently. The property sat abandoned for over 45 years before a private buyer acquired it at tax auction in 2019.

$ All Ages Family: Low

Raquette Lake — 1

Haunted Hotel / Inn

Brightside Hotel

Raquette Lake, NY

The Brightside Hotel was a prominent resort in the Adirondacks during the early 20th century. The hotel ceased business approximately twenty years ago (circa 2000s). The building remains standing but abandoned, with original furnishings preserved in situ.

$ All ages Family: Not Recommended

Red Hook — 1

Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome in New York, 1990 — vintage aircraft on the field
Museum / Historical Site

Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome

Red Hook, NY

Cole Palen founded the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome in 1958 after assembling a collection of pioneer and Great War aircraft, running the first air show in 1960 and incorporating formally in 1966. The aerodrome became what it bills as America's first flying museum of antique aircraft. Two fatal crashes occurred during airshows: Vincent Nasta on August 17, 2008, and board member Brian T. Coughlin on October 5, 2024.

$$ All Ages Family: High

Rhinebeck — 1

Photo of Beekman Arms & Delamater Inn
Haunted Hotel / Inn

Beekman Arms & Delamater Inn

Rhinebeck, NY

The Beekman Arms traces its founding to 1766 when it operated as a tavern serving travelers on the Albany Post Road. During the Revolutionary War the inn hosted a range of figures including George Washington, who used it as a headquarters on multiple occasions. It is recognized as the oldest continuously operating inn in the United States by Historic Hotels of America.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Roslyn Harbor — 1

Photo of Cedarmere (William Cullen Bryant Estate)
Museum / Historical Site

Cedarmere (William Cullen Bryant Estate)

Roslyn Harbor, NY

William Cullen Bryant, editor of the New York Evening Post for nearly half a century and one of the most prominent American poets of the 19th century, purchased a small house at Cedarmere in 1843 and expanded it into a 7-acre estate over subsequent decades. Bryant named the property for the cedar trees surrounding a millpond. He hosted Thomas Cole, James Fenimore Cooper, and Edwin Booth there among others. Bryant died at Cedarmere in 1878. A fire in 1903 damaged the upper stories; his daughter Julia sold the property to her nephew Harold Godwin in 1891, and the Godwin family donated it to Nassau County in 1975. It operates as a historic house museum, with the house currently closed for interior restoration.

$ All Ages Family: High

Roxbury — 1

John Burroughs Gravesite- overlooking Ford Lot (named in honor of Henry Ford- his friend and traveling companion
Cemetery / Burial Ground

John Burroughs Gravesite

Roxbury, NY

John Burroughs Memorial State Historic Site in Roxbury, New York marks the birthplace and burial ground of naturalist John Burroughs (1837–1921), whose 27 books of nature and philosophical essays shaped American conservation thought. Burroughs was interred at the foot of Boyhood Rock — a boulder he had played on as a child — on what would have been his 84th birthday.

$ All Ages Family: High

Sackets Harbor — 1

Madison Barracks historic military complex aerial view in Sackets Harbor, New York
Haunted Dining / Bar

Madison Barracks Pub

Sackets Harbor, NY

Madison Barracks in Sackets Harbor, New York was established in 1815 following the War of 1812, built to garrison 600 troops at one of the nation's key northern defense posts. Named for President James Madison, the limestone complex hosted notable figures including General Ulysses S. Grant, General Mark Clark, and General Henry 'Hap' Arnold, founder of the modern U.S. Air Force.

$ All Ages Family: High

Saint James — 1

Aerial survey view of Mary's Grave (Long Island)
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Mary's Grave (Long Island)

Saint James, NY

Mary's Grave is one of Long Island's longest-running urban legends, claimed across at least seven towns. The most concrete location cited in tradition is along Shep Jones Lane in Saint James in Smithtown's Head of the Harbor area, though no documented grave matches the lore.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Sands Point — 1

Execution Rocks Lighthouse standing on a rocky outcrop in Long Island Sound
Museum / Historical Site

Execution Rocks Lighthouse

Sands Point, NY

Execution Rocks Lighthouse was constructed in 1849-50 on a cluster of granite ledges in Long Island Sound between New Rochelle and Sands Point, New York. The federal lighthouse service lit it first in 1850; it was automated on December 5, 1979. Since 2009, the nonprofit Historically Significant Structures, Inc. has held the deed and opened the site to summer tours and overnight stays.

$$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Sauquoit — 1

Orchard Hall in Sauquoit New York, the 180-year-old historic tavern home to the ghost named Julia upstairs
Haunted Dining / Bar

Orchard Hall

Sauquoit, NY

Orchard Hall at 2955 Oneida Street in Sauquoit has operated as a community gathering place since 1843, cycling through uses as a homestead, hotel, and restaurant. The Puleo family owned and operated the restaurant for 33 years before retiring in October 2025; new ownership assumed operations under the same name. A Rome Sentinel feature documented the building's connection to local figures including a George Washington visit to the vicinity.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Seneca Falls — 1

Museum / Historical Site

Seneca Falls Historical Society (Becker Mansion)

Seneca Falls, NY

Edward Mynderse, a local businessman, built a small wooden structure on the Cayuga Street site around 1823 and replaced it with an Italianate brick home in 1855. In 1875 the Partridge family purchased the property and undertook extensive remodeling that transformed the Italianate house into a three-story, 23-room Queen Anne mansion. The Norman Becker family acquired it in 1890 and held it until Florence Becker sold the property to the Seneca Falls Historical Society in 1961–1962.

$ All Ages Family: High

South Glens Falls — 1

Museum / Historical Site

Parks-Bentley Place

South Glens Falls, NY

Parks-Bentley Place was built in 1776 by Daniel Parks, a French and Indian War veteran, and expanded circa 1830–1840. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1994, it is one of the oldest structures in the region open to the public and serves as headquarters for the Historical Society of Moreau and South Glens Falls.

$ All Ages Family: High

South Wales — 1

Nighttime view of Goodleburg Cemetery on Goodleburg Road near South Wales, New York
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Goodleburg Cemetery

South Wales, NY

Goodleburg Cemetery (correct spelling; the Shadowlands entry uses Gootleburg) is an inactive historic burial ground on Goodleburg Road in the Town of Wales, Erie County, New York. The cemetery was active from 1811 to 1927 and contains approximately 69 documented memorial records. Many of the original settlers of Wales and surrounding areas are buried here.

$ All Ages (daylight only) Family: Moderate

St. Bonaventure — 1

Haunted House / Historic Home

St. Bonaventure University (Devereux Hall)

St. Bonaventure, NY

St. Bonaventure University is a Franciscan institution near Olean in Cattaraugus County. Devereux Hall, built in 1926, is one of the oldest buildings on campus and its longtime residence hall. Its fifth floor, once student housing and club space, is now off-limits. The hall is the most storied site in the university's collection of campus legends.

$ All Ages Family: High

Strykersville — 1

Aerial survey view of Goosehill Cemetery
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Goosehill Cemetery

Strykersville, NY

Goosehill Cemetery — also recorded as Goose Hill Cemetery or St. John's Cemetery — sits on the summit of Goose Hill in Wyoming County, New York, just west of the four corners where Dutch Hollow Road meets Centerline Road, north of Strykersville. The cemetery is associated with St. John's Evangelical & Reformed Church (now part of the United Church of Christ) and contains approximately 30 graves. Burials were regular from the first settlement of the surrounding area until about 1867, after which the ground was largely abandoned.

$ All Ages Family: Low

Sylvan Beach — 1

Aerial survey view of Sylvan Beach Amusement Park
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Sylvan Beach Amusement Park

Sylvan Beach, NY

Sylvan Beach Amusement Park sits on the eastern shore of Oneida Lake in Oneida County. The first amusement park opened here in 1886, and the resort grew through the 1880s and 1890s into what was nicknamed the 'Coney Island of Central New York.' It is one of the oldest continuously operating amusement parks in the United States.

$$ All Ages Family: High

Thiells — 1

Abandoned brick building at Letchworth Village in Rockland County, New York, photographed in December 2011
Asylum / Hospital

Letchworth Village

Thiells, NY

Letchworth Village opened in 1911 in Thiells, Rockland County, as a model residential institution for people with developmental and physical disabilities. Within decades it became severely overcrowded and was the site of documented abuse, medical experimentation, and unmarked burials. Geraldo Rivera's 1972 reporting helped catalyze national reform, and the facility closed in 1996.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Ticonderoga — 1

Fort Ticonderoga seen from Mount Defiance, Ticonderoga, New York
Battlefield / Military Site

Fort Ticonderoga

Ticonderoga, NY

Fort Ticonderoga was constructed by the French between 1755 and 1757 as Fort Carillon, designed to control the strategic narrows between Lake Champlain and Lake George during the French and Indian War. It changed hands three more times — to the British in 1759, to American forces under Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold in May 1775, and back to the British in 1777 — before falling into disuse. The Pell family purchased the ruins in 1820 and undertook decades of restoration; the Fort Ticonderoga Association now operates it as a National Historic Landmark.

$$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Tonawanda — 1

Signage along the Tonawanda Rail Trail near its intersection with Brighton Road, Tonawanda, New York, 13th January 2020.
Cemetery / Burial Ground

Elmlawn Memorial Park

Tonawanda, NY

Elmlawn Memorial Park in the Town of Tonawanda was established in 1901 as a not-for-profit cemetery serving the Buffalo metropolitan area. The 100-acre grounds now contain over 70,000 burials and mausoleum entombments. A church adjacent to the cemetery grounds has been the setting for a persistent local legend about a bride struck by a carriage on her wedding day.

$ All Ages Family: High

Victor — 1

Aerial survey view of Boughton Hill Park
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Boughton Hill Park

Victor, NY

Boughton Hill Park in Victor, New York sits on land with documented Colonial history. According to local tradition, a woman accused of witchcraft was buried just outside the park's northern boundary during the 17th century.

$ All ages Family: High

Wappingers Falls — 1

Maple sap collecting at Bowdoin Park in Dutchess County, New York.
Outdoor / Natural Site

Bowdoin Park / Old Haunted Mansion Site

Wappingers Falls, NY

Bowdoin Park in Wappingers Falls occupies Hudson River shoreline with a complex history. The property once included structures and facilities connected to military detention and prisoner-of-war treatment. The paranormal accounts reference a prisoner who died at an on-site facility, possibly from forced labor or inhumane treatment methods.

$ All ages Family: High

Waterville — 1

Haunted House / Historic Home

Sanger Mansion (Sangerfield House)

Waterville, NY

The Sanger Mansion, also called Sangerfield House, is a 52-room stone manor built in 1906 by Colonel William Carey Sanger Sr. on West Hill above Waterville, New York. The grounds were laid out by the Olmsted firm. The house served as a Stigmatine monastery from 1960 to 1970 before returning to private ownership.

$ All Ages Family: High

West Bay Shore — 1

Sagtikos Manor mansion seen from the driveway in West Bay Shore, New York
Museum / Historical Site

Sagtikos Manor

West Bay Shore, NY

Sagtikos Manor was built in 1697 by Stephanus Van Cortlandt on land purchased from the Secatogue people, making it one of Long Island's oldest surviving estates. The manor served as British General Sir Henry Clinton's Long Island headquarters during the Revolution, and hosted President George Washington during his 1790 Long Island tour. The rear of the property contains the Gardiner-Thompson family cemetery alongside several unmarked burial plots of formerly enslaved people.

$ All Ages Family: High

West Hills — 1

Aerial survey view of Sweet Hollow Road
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Sweet Hollow Road

West Hills, NY

Sweet Hollow Road runs approximately 3 miles through West Hills County Park in Huntington, western Suffolk County, Long Island. The road and surrounding area has a documented history of violent incidents, including the 1976 unsolved murder of a 13-year-old girl found strangled near the road, and multiple teenager deaths from the Northern State Parkway overpass in the 1970s. The road became one of Long Island's most-circulated haunted locations through local legend-telling that intensified over decades.

$ All Ages Family: Moderate

Westchester — 1

Aerial survey view of Buckhout Road
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Outdoor / Natural Site

Buckhout Road

Westchester, NY

Buckhout Road is a wooded backroads location in Westchester County, New York dating to the 1600s. The site is historically significant as a location of alleged witch executions in colonial America, and later the location of grave crimes and murder. The road's dark history spans centuries, from witchcraft trials through 19th-century violent crimes, creating layers of documented tragedy.

$ All ages Family: Not Recommended

Westfield — 1

The 1818 Federal-style McClurg Mansion on East Main Street in Westfield, New York, home of the Chautauqua County Historical Society
Museum / Historical Site

McClurg Museum

Westfield, NY

McClurg Mansion was built in 1818 by James McClurg, the son of a Pittsburgh industrialist, in what was then frontier western New York. Contemporaries called it 'McClurg's Folly' for its ambitious scale — large rooms and high ceilings at odds with the surrounding log cabins. The 14-room Federal-style mansion was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984 and has housed the Chautauqua County Historical Society since 1951.

$ All Ages Family: High

Whitehall — 1

Grey-sandstone Victorian Gothic facade of Skene Manor on Skene Mountain above Whitehall, New York, built 1872-1874
Haunted House / Historic Home

Skene Manor

Whitehall, NY

Skene Manor is a Victorian Gothic mansion built from 1872 to 1874 for New York State Supreme Court Justice Joseph H. Potter, designed by Philadelphia architect Isaac H. Hobbs and built by local contractor A. C. Hopson at a cost of roughly $25,000. The hill it sits on was once part of land tied to Philip Skene, the British officer who founded Whitehall (originally Skenesborough) in 1759. The grey-sandstone house later operated as a restaurant before being acquired and restored by the nonprofit Whitehall Skene Manor Preservation. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Judge Joseph Potter House.

$ All Ages Family: High

Willard — 1

Asylum / Hospital

Willard Asylum for the Chronic Insane

Willard, NY

The Willard Asylum for the Chronic Insane opened in 1869 on the shores of Seneca Lake to provide low-cost custodial care for patients deemed incurable. Over its 126-year operation, more than 50,000 patients passed through the institution, which closed in 1995. After closure, staff found 427 suitcases packed by patients in the attic — now housed at the New York State Museum in Albany.

$ All Ages Family: High

Yonkers — 1

Aerial survey view of Lee Avenue
Aerial survey · USDA NAIP
Other Dark Tourism Site

Lee Avenue

Yonkers, NY

Lee Avenue is a short residential street in Yonkers, Westchester County, New York. The block became the subject of documented paranormal accounts when author Donna Parish-Bischoff published The Lee Avenue Haunting, first released in 2012, chronicling her family's five-year experience in a two-family home on the street from 1974 to 1979. Prior occupants of the home had died by suicide — the owners' mother had hanged herself in the house, and a previous downstairs tenant had also died by suicide.

$ All Ages Family: High

Youngstown — 1

Old Fort Niagara French Castle, Youngstown New York
Battlefield / Military Site

Old Fort Niagara

Youngstown, NY

Old Fort Niagara guards the mouth of the Niagara River where it meets Lake Ontario. The 1726 French Castle, called the "House of Peace," remains the oldest building in the Great Lakes region and anchors a fortification that flew French, British, and American flags between 1726 and 1815.

$$ All Ages Family: High

By type

Museum / Historical Site (83) Haunted Hotel / Inn (42) Haunted Dining / Bar (38) Cemetery / Burial Ground (37) Outdoor / Natural Site (37) Haunted House / Historic Home (31) Other Dark Tourism Site (24) Theater / Performance Venue (22) Asylum / Hospital (17) Battlefield / Military Site (15) True Crime Site (8) Ghost Tour / Walking Tour (8) Theatrical Haunted Attraction (2) Prison / Reformatory (2)