REBEKAH ROBINSON, HOST:
Mayor Eric Adams says he has ghosts in his house. He’s referring to Gracie Mansion, the over-200-year-old building on the Upper East Side that serves as the mayor’s official residence. Adams revealed the haunting truth at a recent Yankee game.
ERIC ADAMS: I don’t care what anyone says, there are ghosts in there, man.
ROBINSON: So our reporter Lucy Grindon headed to the mansion to see if she could detect any paranormal activity.
LUCY GRINDON, BYLINE: Alan Chemerinsky walks his dog Marshmallow in the park surrounding Gracie Mansion every night. When I meet them walking towards the mansion on East 88th Street, Marshmallow seems pretty calm, but Chemerinsky says that when they're in the park, Marshmallow always goes crazy. She might be barking at rats, he says, but he can't be sure
ALAN CHEMERINSKY: Who knows? Because, I don’t see the rats. And she does actually usually pull me towards the mansion
GRINDON: Really!? Do you think she might be detecting supernatural beings there?
CHEMERINSKY: I’m not an expert, so I don’t feel able to say either way.
GRINDON: About five seconds after Chemerinsky and Marshmallow walk away from me, I decide to follow them into the park, to see if Marshmallow will detect anything… and I swear to God… When I turn around to follow them, they’ve vanished! Nowhere to be seen. I’m kinda freaked out.
But outside the mansion, The NYPD officers standing watch are not even a little bit scared. Or if they are scared, they don't show it.
AMBI
GRINDON: If the mayor is hearing ghosts, like hearing noises of people walking around in the mansion, couldn’t that be an intruder? Isn’t that cause for concern?
GRINDON: The only response I get is a gate closed in my face.
GATE SOUND
GRINDON: So, if you want information about how the NYPD protects the mayor from ghosts, who you gonna call? One of the officers said I should call the Deputy Commissioner of Public Information.
The only ghost expert I could find was John Deckers. He gives ghost tours of Greenwich Village. I met him last night in Washington Square Park. He believes in spirits and says that it's entirely possible Gracie Mansion is haunted. And it doesn’t even have to be from a gruesome murder that happened there.
JOHN DECKERS: You could die at like, the ripe old age of 90, you know, of natural causes, but let's say maybe you had like a traumatic event that happened to you, that happened at a specific instance, maybe your spirit will be drawn to that part because there’s a lack of closure for some reason there. Maybe someone had a conflict with one of the mayors and for some reason is drawn to that location.
GRINDON: Deckers says that Spirits can come back to haunt the places that caused them grief in life. So that means, anyone who’s ever gotten stuck in a hot subway car….. or been pushed around in Times Square….. or paid too much for their apartment…. might be pulled after death toward Gracie Mansion. I’ll see you all there.
Lucy Grindon, Columbia Radio News