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New York City has never been known for its haunted houses...and for good reason: there aren't any here!!! Throughout the entire city, there's not one genuine haunted house of any fascinating distinction or old-fashioned merit. Ghosts and goblins never seemed to blend into the city's "melting pot" of fast-paced nine-to-five hours and meat-and-potatoes grittiness. Since the time that New York City was called New Amsterdam, and despite millions having resided and having passed-on into the "big sleep" of destiny, not one dearly departed resident is known to have ever dearly returned.

Shirley Jackson's Hill House, for instance, would have as much a chance as a snowball in hell next to the squeal of the IRT speeding through the ground and a construction crew boring through the ground for its haunted ambience. How the eerie peace and hallucinating quiet, crucial to ghost-seekers everywhere, would prove to be ultimately impotent. Henry James' Bly Manor would also fail NYC's stark reality; its governess, her two precocious charges and the alleged spooks influencing their play, fading into absurdity. Even the PSYCHO Home of "maternal devotion" would look more like another shack awaiting the wrecking-ball, and Norman Bates just another psychotic in a long list of similar psychotics (of course, not quite with Norman's versatility).

Which brings me to Alfred Hitchcock the Master of Suspense who, in 1956, came to NYC in search of an authentic haunted house, in his own playfully eccentric and ambitiously perverse manner.

Meyer Berger, a former columnist for the New York Times, wrote that "the town has gone so utterly modern in mid-twentieth century that, even with more than 8,008,000 souls in its 2,000,000 dwellings, researchers have not been able to turn up a single ghost for a haunted chamber." Hitchcock planned to host a "haunted house party" in the city along with such macabre touches apropos to its novelty: "coffin bars, spectral voices (hi-fi) behind drapes and old paintings" and all the other clever gimmicks and quaint devices that complement a haunted setting. But where would that setting be found?

Hitchcock had his publicists, Young and Rubicam, scour the town for a flat or house that was haunted by anyone or anything. He probably thought that a haunted house would be as easy to find in NYC as it may have been in his native Britain and, at first, his team "just asked around" for a richly haunted abode at a modest rental cost. After weeks of futile searching, Y and R were ready to settle for any house that "just looked haunted, even if it wasn't." At the suggestion of a colleague, Hitch began considering the abandoned wine cellars along the Manhattan end of Brooklyn Bridge.

"Hitchcock was delighted with the deserted old wine caverns. They were dank. Their walls had phosphorescent glow. Even whispers started noble rolling echoes in the place....Mr. Hitchcock could have complete freedom in these spooky precincts." There was one "hitch" to Hitch's sinister party plans: there was no plumbing which meant no washrooms...of course, the many women Hitchcock was expecting at his party would never attend such an inadequate affair, despite its ghostly potential. When he learned that temporary fixtures for the caverns would be too expensive, that location fell through.

Hitchcock then went to the Old Merchant's House at East Fourth Street, the former Tredwell Mansion, which is vaguely reputed to contain a ghost (albeit a somewhat feeble and senile one). The Tredwell kin who were running the place as a public museum, "coldly" turned Hitchcock down when they learned that the great director intended to use their property for a party. While still recovering from that disappointment, Hitchcock received more bad news when he consulted the American Psychic Research Society which reported that "there are no ghosts left in this city of chrome and concrete...though New York ghosts were active up to a decade ago." (This supports my own long-held belief that ghosts moved to the suburbs amidst the 1950s mass migration of adventurers).

Now Hitchcock REALLY became serious and took DESPERATE MEASURES: he advertised for a haunted house in the NY Times real estate section. After the usual string of phone calls that ranged from real estate agents to screwballs, Hitchcock narrowed his prospects down to three: a "house at West Forty-sixth Street with a built-in phantom lady; a private house in East Seventy-seventh street; a lovely old cobwebby mansion at East Eightieth Street, abandoned and gloomy." (this became Hitch's choice). While no actual spirits may have shown-up at the party, I'm sure that the spirits were flowing just the same...and for Hitch, what could have been better? But will someone please send in the ghosts!!!

(Source: The New York Times "Quest for Haunted Houses Here Finds Ghosts Shun Metropolis of Steel and Concrete" by Meyer Berger; originally published: February 29, 1956)