Haunted Albany: Spirits of the Capital City, Part Two | Guest Maeve McEneny-Johnson

The Grave Talks | Haunted, Paranormal & Supernatural

Ghost Stores, Haunted, Paranormal & Supernatural Stories

Science, Religion & Spirituality, Society & Culture, Personal Journals, Spirituality, Natural Sciences

4.6 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 5 August 2025

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Albany, New York, isn’t just the state capital—it’s one of the oldest cities in America, layered with centuries of untold stories, buried secrets, and forgotten cemeteries hiding beneath modern streets. In this episode, we’re joined by Maeve McEneny-Johnson, Director of Community Engagement with Discover Albany and a seventh-generation native of the capital city whose love for its past runs deep. Maeve shares how her childhood—riding shotgun with her father, the local historian—sparked a lifelong passion for preserving and sharing Albany’s overlooked history.

From colonial scandal at Cherry Hill, Abraham Lincoln’s eerie local ties and hauntings to the 1911 Capitol fire—and the Civil War veteran night watchman some say never left his post—Maeve brings Albany’s rich, strange, and sometimes unsettling stories to life in a way few others can. Whether you crave folklore, true crime, or a good historical, paranormal rabbit hole, this episode uncovers the heartbeat of a city that refuses to be forgotten. This is Part Two of our conversation.

For more information on tours, visit their website at albany.org.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Today on The Grave Talks, we continue our conversation about Haunted Albany Spirits of the Capitol City with Maeve McKenney Johnson.
0:10.9	So I was giving an outdoor tour last year, regular tour. I haven't been a capital tour guide in years.
0:16.8	And somebody starts laughing and they said, oh, they thought that was a bit on the tour.
0:21.6	Like it was a joke.
0:22.4	And I said, oh, that's so funny.
0:23.8	They were on my tour years ago.
0:25.1	And they went, no, no, they were just on a recent capital tour.
0:28.2	And the door opened behind that.
0:30.1	Oh, wow.
0:30.6	So it's happened more than once.
0:34.3	At least more than once.
0:35.9	But it's pretty notoriously known as a haunted location, isn't it?
0:40.3	It is.
0:41.3	It's a haunted location.
0:42.3	It's a beautiful.
0:44.3	The story goes, though, is that, as I mentioned, those stone carvers, is there a reason?
0:50.3	You know, we couldn't finish the building.
0:52.3	There's a secret demon that's no bigger than my thumbprint that local legend says maybe it was a stone carver who was fired and didn't think it was fair that he was fired.
1:02.3	But you need a tour guide with a flashlight to find it.
1:06.5	And actually, we tell that that we've been telling that story so long.
1:09.3	His nose is still black from when we used matches to highlight them.
1:13.4	Oh, so people would be like, look at this, way back in the day before flashlights.
	...

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