A blog about New York City, my books, and my cats. Mostly.
I hope to be back with a video of a spectacular Halloween display I saw last night. A skeleton dog howling. You have to see it. It’s indescribable, it must be seen.
In the meantime, a shot I took yesterday. That’s a zombie girl in her Communion outfit, no?
Years ago I posted a ghost story on my blog for my book Unbelievable: Investigations into Ghosts, Poltergeists, Telepathy, and Other Unseen Phenomena from the Duke Parapsychology Laboratory. A ghost was said to haunt a building on Bank Street in the West Village, a few blocks from where I live. The picture you see here is of a tin of ashes that I scanned from one of Hans Holzer’s books (a once famous ghost hunter). The ashes fell from the ceiling in the Bank Street Building and belonged to Elizabeth Bullock, who everyone believed was the ghost who haunted the building.
Because I live when I do, and have things like the internet, I was able to find out more about Elizabeth Bullock and everyone else connected with this story than they were able to when the story broke in the 1960’s. I could probably find out more now, come to think of it. I love this kind of thing. I could research stories like this all day long, every day.
It’s ultimately a sad story, as ghost stories so frequently are. If you start looking you’ll find that beneath the scariness is almost always love and loss. You can read what I discovered here.
Visited Bloomingdales on my way back from the Weill Cornell Medicine Archives. It was a nostalgia stop, I used to shop there in the 1980s. Weirdly, it has hardly changed, except I couldn’t get on the subway from within the store, unless I forgot and went the wrong way. I planned to take more pictures but I was only inspired the the art deco elevator doors.
It’s time for the Choral Society of Grace Church Holiday Concert! This year we’re singing a wonderful selection of music spanning six centuries including Bach’s Cantata No. 34, my favorites Palestrina and Victoria, and many others along with our regular audience carol sing. If you buy tickets from me, you get a discount (they’re $25 vs $30). Just let me know how many tickets you would like and for which performance, the dates and times are below:
Friday, November 30, 8:00pm, Saturday, December 1, 3:00pm
10th Street and Broadway
