Spooky Season? All Year Long on the Upper West Side

By Yvonne Vávra

There’s a little boy sitting in my building’s lobby, ready to chew on a severed hand. He’s still dead—not plugged in yet. But soon he will be. Then he’ll move, talk, and do all the other things I’ve managed to repress since last Halloween. He’ll get me one day. And it’s the not knowing when that’s the scariest part.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Hexmas on the Upper West Side. A few cobwebs, skeletons, and ghosts here and there—it’s all still subtle; we’re just getting into the mood. And yet, I already had a rather unsettling moment in Central Park. There was a witch with terrible posture and a face full of drama riding a broom. A jack-o’-lantern peeked out from under her skirt, terror carved into its face. Beside her: a little cottage, and what might be… a palm tree? I’m not an expert, just a city kid.

But the disturbing part wasn’t the scene itself—it was that this wasn’t a Halloween decoration. The witch is carved into the stone at the top of the staircase leading down to Bethesda Fountain. She’s been here for over 150 years, and I’ve walked past her countless times. How did I never see her? In my defense, it’s hard to look at anything else once Bethesda Fountain comes into view.

Halloween marks the moment when the boundary between the living and the dead grows thin. Things long buried, half-gone, and forgotten cross over into our world—and we dress up and decorate to confuse the spirits. If you can’t beat them, join them.

Maybe that’s why I finally noticed the witch. All the eerie sights popping up around us tune our senses to the uncanny, and once your eyes adjust to the dark, you start noticing more of it. Strange things began creeping into my consciousness. Turns out, they’re among us all year.

Dare to lift your head, and you’ll find yourself staring straight into the bizarre faces watching us all day. Gargoyles and grotesques lurk on Upper West Side buildings, screaming down from above the entrance of the Lucerne on 79th Street, glaring from the 73rd Street entrance of the Apple Bank Building, snarling from the Ansonia, or mocking you from both sides as you step into the Britannia at 527 West 110th Street. There are more big-fanged beasts, bearded men, and horned creatures in the neighborhood than anyone should try to count. And dragons—so many dragons.

My favorite sits atop a Corinthian column at 104 West 70th Street. It’s hard to describe what’s going on here. Imagine a Martian, terrified eyes about to pop right out of its head, something like lettuce growing from its forehead, curtains draped over its nose, and a toothless mouth frozen in an eternal silent scream. I’d scream too, little guy. You’re dealing with a lot.

These gargoyles are everywhere—wherever you turn, there they are. Other eerie creatures keep a lower profile. Like my friend, the rusty pipe hanging on for dear life on 78th Street near Amsterdam, just below street level. The half an arm’s length that’s left of it thins out as it descends toward the ground, becoming less and less—until it simply stops being. Any day now, it’ll slip into the land of the dead.

The pipe isn’t the only ghost withering into nothingness. There’s a little staircase in Central Park that leads to nowhere. You’ll find it near the Ramble Stone Arch close to 79th Street. Once you pass the arch and head toward the lake—and (you didn’t hear this from me) maybe hop a railing and scramble over a few boulders—you’ll spot a rocky staircase leading down to … a brick wall wedged between giant boulders. It’s probably nothing. Right?

Oh, it’s something all right. Behind that wall lies a hidden cave once known as the Indian Cave. When Central Park was being built in the late 1850s, construction workers discovered a cavity and blended it into the planned landscape by surrounding it with massive rocks. It quickly became a popular spot for all kinds of adventures.

Once, a 15-year-old girl ran away from her family and is said to have lived in the cave for a month. In the early 20th century, it became the site of darker events: robberies, assaults, a murder, a reported suicide by two gunshots to the heart, and several arrests for men “annoying women,” as the charges were listed at the time. And then there’s the story from February 1908, when police rescued a 25-year-old man in the cave, his throat slit with a razor. Why? “One of the sparrows told me to do it,” he said, as the New York Herald reported. “I didn’t want to, but I had to obey.”

In 1934, the city had had it and sealed up the cave with bricks, boulders, and dirt. But the staircase remains, waiting for someone to listen to its story of where it once led.

We’re actually about to lose one of our resident ghosts. The spirit of Cafe Lalo—trapped inside the shuttered space on 83rd and Amsterdam since its sudden, mysterious closure in 2020—may finally be moving on. I’m sure it’ll come visit. Fine by me. After all this haunted wandering, I’ve crossed over into full spooky season mode. So go ahead, bring out the ghouls and ghosts. Plug in the creepy kid in my lobby. I’m ready.Yvonne Vávra is a magazine writer and author of the German book 111 Gründe New York zu lieben (111 Reasons to Love New York). Born a Berliner but an aspiring Upper West Sider since the 1990s (thanks, Nora Ephron), she came to New York in 2010 and seven years later made her Upper West Side dreams come true. She’s been obsessively walking the neighborhood ever since.

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