Ghosts hunting, from The Dakota to Central Park to ‘Spook Central’

UPPER WEST SIDE — Meet the famous phantoms of Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

Authors Leanna Renee Hieber and Andrea Janes joined Localish to shed light on storied hauntings in their book “America’s Most Gothic: Haunted History Stranger than Fiction.” Hieber also guides tours for Janes’ company, Boroughs of the Dead. The walking tours revolve around the sites behind New York City’s ghost stories.

Hieber describes the Upper West Side as very vibrant – and that includes its paranormal scene.

The Upper West Side’s “got a lot of life, and so its stories of the afterlife are similarly vibrant and relational.”

The Dakota Apartments at West 72nd Street and Central Park West is a perfect example. It’s been the focus of ghost stories from the get-go.

One of the building’s notable ghosts belongs to the man who developed the Dakota in the 1880s.

“Edward Clark had made all his money by being the lawyer who helped Isaac Singer get the patents for the Singer Sewing Machine,” explains Hieber. “The Singer Sewing Machine money went into what at the time was known as ‘Clark’s Folly,’ a nickname given to the building by skeptics of its location on an all-but-barren Upper West Side.”

Clark died in 1882, before the building was completed. He’s said to have stuck around to make sure the building stayed up to snuff.

“Workmen have noticed a figure and when they see a picture of Edward Clark they’re like, ‘That’s the guy who was watching over some of the renovations through the years.”

A couple of the Dakota’s most famous tenants included John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Hieber said Ono has spoken of witnessing her late husband appear in their apartment and reassure her. The beloved former Beatle was shot to death outside the building’s entrance in 1980.

Appropriately, Boris Karloff, who played the original Frankenstein, once lived on the building’s basement level. Rumor has it, children were too afraid to visit for trick or treating.

Movie buffs might recognize the building’s exteriors from 1968’s “Rosemary’s Baby,” and just a few blocks away you’ll find “Spook Central” and Tavern on the Green in Central Park, a couple of sites featured in 1984’s “Ghostbusters.

Central Park’s Boat Pond is home to a pair of Victorian sisters, clinging to one of the period’s favorite pastimes.

“The Van Der Voort sisters are a ghost story that perpetuated after the 19th century,” explains Hieber. The duo is said to be spending the afterlife ice skating away… in the shadow of the Dakota apartment building, no less.

“America’s Most Gothic: Haunted History Stranger than Fiction” is available now at Amazon and other book sellers.

You can book at tour with Boroughs of the Dead at its website.