BROADCASTS.com

Brooklyn is the setting for this quartet of classic ghost stories, all set before the independent city was an official borough of New York City. \xa0This is a Brooklyn of old stately mansions and farms, with railroad tracks laid through forests and large tracks of land carved up, awaiting development. \xa0These stories also have another curious resemblance -- they all come from local newspapers of the day, reporting on ghost stories with amusement and more than a little skepticism.\n\n-- The\xa0Coney Island and Sea Beach Railroad\xa0took passengers to and from Brooklyn's amusement district. \xa0But nobody was particularly amused one evening to be stopped by a horrific gangly ghost upon the tracks near the neighborhood of\xa0Mapleton.\n\n-- In\xa0Clinton Hill,\xa0a plantation-style house built in the early years of the\xa0Brooklyn Navy Yard\xa0has survived hundreds of unusual tenants over the years, but certainly the scariest days in this historic home occurred in 1878 with a relentless, invisible hand that would not stop knocking.\xa0\n\n-- The\xa0Oceanic Hotel\xa0was one of Coney Island's first great hotels, an accommodation for almost 500 near the increasingly popular beaches of\xa0Brighton Beach. \xa0But in 1894, the hotel was virtually emptied out and reportedly haunted. \xa0Did it have something to do with the murder upstairs in Room 30?\n\n-- And finally, the area of\xa0Bushwick\xa0nearest the Queens border are populated with various burial grounds like the\xa0Evergreens Cemetery, borne of the rural cemetery movement which transplanted thousands of previously buried bodies from Manhattan to Brooklyn. \xa0In 1894, with Bushwick prepared for a spate of new development, the sudden appearance of an oddly dressed spirit threatens to disrupt the entire neighborhood. \xa0During one evening, a drunken party of 300 ghost hunters, brandishing swords and revolvers, come across one terror that proved to be very real indeed.\n\nALSO: Secrets of\xa0The Sentinel, a 1977 horror film set in an old house along the\xa0Brooklyn Promenade.\n\nSupport the show: https://www.patreon.com/boweryboys