A Civil War-era coastal fort begun in 1862 on the Queens shore of the East River, now a NYC park; visitors and EMS staff report disembodied voices, self-opening doors, and a woman in white said to be a general's grieving wife.
Totten Avenue (Fort Totten Park), Bayside, NY 11359
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free public NYC park; some buildings have restricted access and active uses (FDNY/EMS, Army Reserve). Guided tours and seasonal events available.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Park grounds with paved paths, historic fortifications, and waterfront; some areas uneven or off-limits.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1862 · Civil War-era (1862) coastal fortification guarding the East River approach to New York Harbor · Named for Brevet Major General Joseph G. Totten, U.S. Army chief engineer · Now a NYC park; partly used by FDNY/EMS and the Army Reserve, with the Bayside Historical Society in the 'Castle'
Fort Totten occupies a peninsula at the eastern edge of Queens, where Long Island Sound meets the East River, in the Bayside/Bay Terrace area. Construction began in 1862 during the Civil War as part of a pair of coastal fortifications — with Fort Schuyler in the Bronx across the channel — intended to guard the approach to New York Harbor. The granite water battery was never completed to its original design, as advances in artillery quickly made such masonry forts obsolete.
Over the following century, Fort Totten served many military functions, including as an engineering school and an anti-aircraft and Nike missile command post during the Cold War. In 1898 it was named for Brevet Major General Joseph Gilbert Totten, a career Army engineer who served as chief engineer in several conflicts including the Civil War.
Today much of Fort Totten is a New York City public park managed by NYC Parks, encompassing the historic battery, officers' housing, and other 19th-century structures. Several buildings remain in active use, including facilities for the FDNY/EMS training academy and the U.S. Army Reserve, and the Bayside Historical Society operates from the Gothic-style 'Castle.'
The fort's age, military history, and atmospheric old buildings have made it one of Queens' best-known haunted sites, documented by Wikipedia, NYC Parks, urban-exploration writers, and local media. Each Halloween the site leans into its reputation with ghost tours and events.
Sources
Fort Totten's haunted reputation is among the most documented in Queens. Visitors and workers report disembodied voices — including a voice speaking in a foreign language and a woman's voice in restrooms — footsteps with no source, and auditorium doors that swing open by themselves. A firefighter with FDNY Battalion 53 has been quoted saying that nearly everyone who works alone in Building 305, used by the EMS training academy, hears voices, sometimes right beside them and sometimes from behind closed bathroom and classroom doors that prove empty when opened.
The site's signature apparition is a woman in white seen floating across the grounds. Local legend holds she is the wife of a general who hanged herself upon learning of her husband's infidelities. No specific person is named in this story, and the historical record does not confirm it, so HauntBound presents it as folklore.
The original Shadowlands submission adds a guard's account of two transparent, laughing men appearing on either side of his patrol car, as well as a claim of an 'Indian burial ground' beneath a soccer field. HauntBound includes the witness-style apparition reports as part of the documented lore but omits the burial-ground claim, which is unverified, culturally sensitive, and unsupported by any historical source. The fort's broad haunted reputation is corroborated across Wikipedia-adjacent histories, urban-exploration journalism, local media, and the park's own seasonal ghost programming.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
Explore the 1860s coastal battery and historic buildings of Fort Totten, a NYC park with a strong haunted reputation. Guided tours and seasonal events such as 'Terror on Totten' recount its spectral soldiers and the woman in white.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPMansfield, LA
The Battle of Mansfield on April 8, 1864 was the decisive engagement of the Union's Red River Campaign and the last major Confederate victory of the Civil War. Confederate General Richard Taylor's 9,000-man force routed a 13,000-man Union army under General Nathaniel Banks in the afternoon fighting, inflicting over 2,200 Union casualties and capturing 20 artillery pieces and several hundred supply wagons. The defeat ended the Union's strategic threat to Confederate Texas and its cotton supply.
Lawrence, KS
At dawn on August 21, 1863, William Quantrill led approximately 400 Confederate guerrillas into Lawrence, Kansas — the symbolic center of Kansas antislavery politics — and spent four hours killing approximately 150 men and boys and burning most of the town. Lawrence had been targeted specifically for its abolitionist identity. The massacre was one of the largest single-day atrocities committed against civilians in the Civil War.
Mackinac Island, MI
Fort Mackinac was built by the British in 1780 on a limestone bluff above Mackinac Island Straits. Surrendered to the United States in 1796 per Jay's Treaty, it was briefly retaken by the British at the outset of the War of 1812 before being returned to American control in 1815. During the Civil War the fort served as a confinement post for Confederate sympathizers. A typhoid fever outbreak in the late nineteenth century killed multiple children on the grounds.