The most haunted restaurants and bars in NYC

While the terminal beyond may be haunted only by earthly commuters who just missed their train, travelers of less flesh are as about as confirmed as they get at Grand Central’s elegant The Campbell. Once the office of old-timey rail tycoon John Campbell (the old-timiest rich guy job of all), this storied space has served as a couple of luxe, similarly-named bars over the decades. Its staffers reported eerie sounds and sensations for years before paranormal investigators visited to second that emotion in 2011. Specter sightings seem to have died down since The Campbell's most recent ownership switch in 2017, but, perhaps most frightening of all, maybe even ghosts aren’t impervious to rising cocktail prices. 

Romance, have you heard of it? Seems like maybe not if you were Aaron Burr in 1794, who purchased the building at this very address before famously killing local newspaper founder and Broadway star Alexander Hamilton just a decade later. Today, the ghost of politics past might just linger in the candlelit dinner destination, messing with the electricity and snatching jewelry. Would we come back to menace a space we once called home centuries after departing this mortal coil simply because our even longer-dead rival got more famous than us? Yes. Does Burr? Maybe! Who knows! 

More than a few restaurants and bars have staked a claim as New York’s original this or that, but The White Horse Tavern humbly asserts its status as the city’s second oldest tavern. All we know is that it’s pretty old, and that the writer Dylan Thomas perished right around this time of year in 1953 at the age of 39 after imbibing a few too many at this storied location. It’s said that his spirit might still haunt the place, rattling glasses and perhaps imbuing your very own manuscript with a bit of his signature style–and motivation to make it to a 40 under 40 list before it's too lateee . . .

Another one of the “oldest operating drinking establishments in New York City,” The Ear Inn’s name alone carries a certain disembodied charm. It may also be infused with the literal disembodied, otherwise known as spirits. Sidle up to the bar to find out for yourself, and don’t forget to order an extra drink for the erstwhile, and possibly otherworldly, guest known as Mickey, who’s rumored to remain, propositioning patrons just trying to catch a buzz. Rude! 

Aspiring literatis might be keen to imagine themselves around the Algonquin Round Table, but, if those would-be geniuses knew that the same clique also became known as The Vicious Circle, they might not be so excited to join. And this group of pre-Twitter frendsies were likely to have been even more biting than anything seen on social media, including the famed dame Dorothy Parker, whose portrait purportedly popped off a wall during a renovation. 

Not only is The Waverly haunted by middling celebrities of the late 2000s, it might also be inhabited by spirits, according to NY Ghosts. Look out for a Prohibition-cosplaying specter and foggy figures of West Village lore, but do not mistake those vapors for the indoor cigarette smoke of C-list ghouls of a more recent origin.