008: Shadows of Gotham
Pleasing Terrors
Mike Brown
4.9 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 4 November 2016
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The city of dreams, the city that never sleeps, the city with streets paved with opportunities… for many of us, New York represents a glittering place where absolutely anything is possible. Yet for all its glamour and sparkle, there are dark secrets lurking within its shadows, and history has done little to wash away the blood that once soaked New York's prosperous streets.
They say the population of New York City reaches nearly 8.5 million people. Does that count the haunted souls whose ghosts still roam the streets?
Episode Highlights:
- Bloody history of the Empire State Building
- A Beautiful Suicide: Evelyn McHale
- Visiting the House of Death in Washington Square
- The Hangman's Elm
- Walking with Edgar Allan Poe
- Charred bodies in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory
- A beating heart in 14th West 10th Street
- The Bartell Experience
- Mediums and paranormal researchers
- The tragedy continues
Resources:
"Beautiful Suicide" photograph of Evelyn McHale
Haunted Greenwich Village: Bohemian Banshee, Spooky Sites and Gonzalez Ghost Walks by Tom Ogden, published by Globe Pequot Press, 2012
"Gang of Ghosts Ready to Rumble" by William Grimes, New York Times article, published October 29, 1993
"Terror on 10th Street" by Tim Donnelly, New York Post article, October 28, 2012
Spindrift: Spray from a Psychic Sea by Jan Bryant Bartell
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Some stories were never supposed to be told. |
| 0:06.0 | Stories that exist in the twilight between science and the supernatural, |
| 0:13.0 | between history and horror, |
| 0:16.0 | stories that speak of terrifying things, |
| 0:20.0 | stories that you want to hear, stories that you want to hear, |
| 0:24.0 | you need to hear, stories that will sink their teeth in |
| 0:30.0 | and never let you go. |
| 0:32.0 | My name is Mike Brown, |
| 0:35.0 | and this is pleasing terrors. |
| 0:39.0 | Episode 8, |
| 0:42.0 | Shadows of Gotham |
| 0:47.0 | A number of years ago, a number of years ago, |
| 0:52.0 | a visitor walked onto the observation platform of the 86th floor of the Empire State Building in New York City. |
| 1:00.0 | While admiring the view, she noticed a strange woman standing on the platform. |
| 1:06.0 | The woman was dressed in clothing, reminiscent of the 1940s. |
| 1:11.0 | She seemed distraught. The visitor tried speaking with her, but the woman ignored her. |
| 1:18.0 | The strange figure removed her coat, walked over to the barrier fence, and passed through, seemingly jumping to her death. |
| 1:27.0 | The horrified tourists didn't notice at the time that the woman's coat was now gone as well. |
| 1:34.0 | The visitor was quite upset, but was unsure what she had just seen or what to do about it. |
| 1:40.0 | She stumbled to the restroom and upon entering froze in her tracks. |
| 1:46.0 | The strange woman was standing there in front of the sink, using the mirror to attend to her makeup. |
| 1:57.6 | She then walked past the stunned tourist out onto the platform |
... |
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