Ghost rider

Photo: Roxana Marroquin

The Merchant’s House Museum on East 4th Street feels like something out of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw. Built in 1832, it was home to the family of patriarch/hardware importer Seabury Tredwell, until the house opened as a museum in 1936. Since then, there have been numerous accounts of supernatural activity on the premises, so when Dan Sturges of Paranormal NYC invited TONY to join him for a night of ghostbusting, we decided to go see for ourselves.

The presence of period-dressed mannequins in the dark did little to buck up our courage. Sturges seemed unconcerned-—probably because he’s a former power-lifter. As he began to set up cameras, electromagnetic field detectors and other equipment to monitor disturbances in the ether, a motion detector on the wall suddenly blinked. Unsure of what this meant, I hid behind Sturges. Learning it was just a timer, I stopped cowering and followed him to the next room. “I think you’re safe,” he assured me.

When Sturges returned the next night, a spooked TONY wasn’t there. He told us later that he’d brought medium Richard Schoeller to conduct a séance in hopes of contacting the Tredwells. According to Sturges, the Tredwell paterfamilias got in touch only after Schoeller made the mistake of mentioning that the house might once have been a flophouse. “Suddenly, Richard is saying we have to get out because we insulted his home,” Sturges says. Sensing our skepticism, Sturges added, “Richard seemed like the real deal. The staff was impressed that he picked up on specific stuff about old furniture that’s no longer there. It’s not information you can look up on the Internet.” Perhaps, but we would be more convinced if he’d been slimed.—Drew Toal

For more info, see paranormal-nyc.com.