Inside Brooklyn’s City of the Dead

Tis the season to be spooky and perhaps nothing is eerier than a good old fashioned graveyard.
 
Just don’t tell that to the folks at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.
 
“We're sorry to disappoint, but there are no ghosts here. In fact, there's nothing really spooky about this place actually, except of course maybe that it's a cemetery,” said Lisa Alpert, director of development and marketing at Green-Wood.
 
Even so, she stressed, while there were no ghosts haunting Green-Wood Cemetery—at least to her knowledge, muah-ha-ha-ha—it remains one of Brooklyn’s most interesting attractions.
 
“The grounds are like a 'who’s-who' in American history with some big names and fascinating characters interred here," she said, adding, "The mausoleums are incredible as well.”
 
Indeed, as one walks the campus at Green-Wood, it begins to feel as though the real story behind this cemetery is in the .
 
Nevertheless, if there were any unsettled spirits roaming the well-manicured lawns of Green-Wood, Patch was going to find them.
 
And on we went on the guided tour, hoping to find something supernatural skulking along the pathways inside this cemetery.
 
Marching some of the 478 sprawling acres of pasture in Green-Wood, we were confident that among the nearly 560,000 residents laid to rest inside its gates, there were sure to be a haunting ghoul or too.
 
We soon learned otherwise.
 
“I don't know of any ghost stories of people buried here at Green-Wood and I've been doing this for quite some time," said Marge Raymon, a tour guide at Green-Wood Cemetery.
 
Still, we had our suspicions, and pushed Raymon on what she meant by, 'there are no ghosts at Green-wood.'

We soon found out (insert a gratuitous clap of thunder), that though Raymon didn't personally know of any ghost stories, she did have a great deal of incredibly off-beat, Halloween conversation starters, about this beloved Brooklyn burial ground, to share.

Like the Legend of Niblo’s Garden (insert another gratuitous clap of thunder).
 
"The story goes, William Niblo, a Broadway producer from the nineteenth century, would invite friends here to his mausoleum while he was still alive," she said, pointing out a white marble, lakeside tomb on a Wednesday afternoon.

Directing the eyes of everyone aboard the grave-site trolley tour to a tiny spring lake adjacent to Niblo's Garden, she continued. 
 
"In fact, archival pictures show people relaxing by that pond," Raymon said. "The Victorians liked to picnic in Green-Wood because there were no other green space available for New Yorkers prior to Central park and Prospect Park," she added.

As our tour ended on that sunny afternoon, our thirst to find the macabre was left unsatisfied, and would lead us straight to Jeff Richman, Green-Wood Cemetery historian.

"There's a great volume of interesting facts about Green-Wood. From murder cases, like the story of John Anderson, inspiration for Edgar Allen Poe's 'The Mystery of Marie Roget,' Richman said. 

Then pausing for a minute, he pondered out loud.

"I think probably among my favorite stories would be about the Prentiss Brothers, who fought during the Civil War," Richman continued.

The legend goes; one brother fought for the north, the other the south. They would go the whole war without seeing the other, until April 2, 1865, when they meet, mortally wounded on the same battlefield.

They were then treated by Walt Whitman.

"Of the 100,000 patients of so that Whitman treated during the war, he only wrote about 50. The Prentiss brothers were among that group," Richman marveled.

In the end, our excursion to uncover the evil secrets buried beneath the hills of Green-Wood Cemetery, would net no ghosts.
 
Nonetheless, we might have found the Shangri-La of all Brooklyn haunts. 

"There are so many great stories here. You could spend a lifetime, trying to learn them all," Richman said.