HAUNTED HISTORIES
Visiting those dark places
“She got on with her life as a widow, but all things considered, a relatively happy widow,” he said. The ghost stories came about, he speculates, because “a woman living alone happily just doesn’t fit in our culture.”
MERCHANT’S HOUSE: USING STORIES TO ENGAGE
Dickey also points out that the haunted-house industry has become important as a way to raise money to preserve old buildings. Many historic sites have embraced haunted tours as a fun way to engage visitors who will gladly pay for a ghost tour, but who might not sign up to learn about 19th century customs or antiques.
Take, for example, the Merchant’s House Museum on East Fourth Street in Manhattan. The 1830s row house was home to the family of Seabury Tredwell. Five of the eight Tredwell children never married. Seven people died in the house, the last of them Gertrude Tredwell in the 1930s. Regular tours of the Merchant’s House carefully stick to the facts, telling visitors only what is known from census records and other research about who lived in the house and when, or what can be gleaned from physical evidence, such as the dents left in the floor by furniture routinely laden with heavy plates of food.
But the Merchant’s House also advertises haunted tours and the theme is especially popular during the Halloween season.
Through Oct. 30, the site hosts an exhibition called Truly We Live in a Dying World: A 19th Century Home in Mourning, with displays of mourning clothes, a coffin covered with lilies and a mannequin of Seabury Tredwell laid out on his deathbed. You can even take a selfie in a coffin.
For decades, Merchant’s House staff members were warned against repeating ghost stories, according to spokeswoman Emily Hill-Wright. But in the last 10 or 15 years, the museum has embraced the opportunity to use ghost stories as “a wonderful way to bring in new audiences. People will come in because they hear that we’re haunted. Once we get them inside, they realize what a special place this is.”
She said the museum has no qualms about using “the interest in ghosts and morbid things in order to educate the public. “
“It’s not just that we’re raising money because of ghosts and having fun with that. There is an educational component. We do feel we’re fulfilling our mission,” Hill-Wright said.