One haunted island

Just a 15-minute boat ride from the Bronx section of New York City lies the Island of the Dead, a perfect place to spend Halloween evening. Except you can’t. Visitation to the island, officially Hart (Hart’s) Island, is strictly regulated. No Halloween parties allowed on this final resting place for over a million or so souls, about half of them children. Only one body has an individual grave marker. It reads “SC-BI, 1985,” and marks the grave of New York’s first infant AIDS victim.

This is New York City’s “potter’s field,” where the homeless, unclaimed, indigent, or simply unwanted are buried, about 1,500 each year. Located at the western end of Long Island Sound, it is about one mile long and one-third mile across at its widest point. From the air, it resembles the hindquarters and leg of a dog. A drone video taken in winter shows a stark landscape of dilapidated, deserted buildings and stunted trees. Not the sort of place most people would want to spend a night alone. A boat usually arrives on Thursdays with the latest arrivals, accompanied by a grave detail which, until recently, was composed of prison volunteers from Riker’s Island, but now a private contractor handles the gruesome task. Coffins are stacked three high, two across, end to end, in a long trench and covered with sand and dirt. I suppose that means they have to be shipped over in multiples of six.

If allowed, I expect some sinister entrepreneur would conduct tours of “Haunted Island” and host morbid Halloween gatherings there so that a hip New Yorker might say to a friend, “Where did you spend Halloween?” And the friend might reply, “Spookish party on Haunted Island, of course.” Hip New Yorker: “How ghoulish!” How ghoulish indeed.

JOHN McPHERSON

Searcy