Chatting with the Dead, A Steampunk Haunted House, the Village Halloween Parade and Other Events For Halloween Week in New York

From the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century many prominent scholars and writers professed a faith in spiritualism, the idea that one could communicate with departed spirits through a gifted "medium." Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, was an early believer. So, too, were evolutionary biologist Alfred Russel Wallace, New York physician John Franklin Gray and American psychologist William James. Many followers came from the middle and upper-middle classes, holding seances in their living rooms, while many popular mediums lectured in concert halls to sell-out audiences. While spiritualism had its heyday in the Guilded Age, clairvoyants are still popular, showing up for appearances on Larry King and such. Even one fictional medium, a typical suburban mom, is assigned to an Assistant District Attorney's office in a popular TV drama. For those seeking answers for questions about life after death, the appeal of spiritualism is understandable, albeit a little disconcerting.

In perusing the many events for this autumnal Halloween week in New York City, I spotted a listing for Concetta Bertoldi, a woman who claims to communicate with other people's deceased friends and relatives. The picture of her on her website does not meet conventions about the overall general appearance of such a spiritually gifted individual. In fact, she looks more like an opera diva, but watching her videos she talks like a nice regular middle-aged lady from Newark, New Jersey. She'll be appearing at the Gramercy Theatre on E. 23rd St. on October 31 at noon. 

The full list for special events for Halloween in New York would take up a hundred pages, but here's a handful of events to get started: 


Wednesday, October 28, 2009
At 7 p.m. House of Usher (1960). Vincent Price stars in the Poe classic directed by Roger Corman. 70 min. At 9 p.m. Corman's The Pit and the Pendulum, also based on the Poe story. 80 min. Anthology Film Archives (32 Second Ave at 2nd St.).

For New York Yankees fans, I don't have to remind you of tonight's opening game of the World Series. If the Phillies take an early lead, this event, too, could become scary.

Steampunk Haunted House
I'm rather fascinated with steampunk culture, not really sure where it came from or why. Yet, I find the aesthetics of steampunk, with its emphasis on mechanical parts, hauntingly lovely. I'm thrilled, then, to learn of a haunted house made of clock pieces and such stuff. From Third Rail Projects at the Abrons Art Center/Henry Street Settlement, 466 Grand St at Pitt St.; Oct 28, 29 6 pm–9:30 pm; Oct 30, 31 8 pm–11:30 pm; $25

E. L. Doctorow's Homer & Langley

Homer & Langley, the sweet, funny and often heartbreaking novel by E. L. Doctorow, is inspired by the true story of the famous Collyer Brothers, Homer & Langley, reclusive siblings shuttered behind the doors of their Fifth Avenue mansion in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan in the early decades of the twentieth century. The shocking discovery of their deaths in March 1947, the police finding their bodies amidst an extraordinary amount of useless hoarded debris and clutter, raised profound questions about the lives of these two particularly eccentric brothers. The inventory of the clutter alone raised questions about the motive and purpose for the clutter - dozens of pianos of every type (Homer is the musician), a Model T Ford, their doctor father's jars of human specimen parts, tens of thousands of newspapers stacked from floor to ceiling, eight feral cats, sewing machine parts, a baby carriage and more. By imagining their story through the eyes of Homer, the blind brother, picking up clues from the inventory of what they left behind, Doctorow restores dignity to the poor fraternal souls.

At the outset of the story Homer and Langley live the typical privileged life of Gilded Age New Yorkers, sons of a prominent physician and his wife. After the flu epidemic claims their parents, Homer comes to depend more on Langley, a man who mind is damaged by mustard gas while fighting in World War I. As the Jazz Age unfolds, they continue to enjoy the world at large and employ a company of rotating housekeepers, though they stumble in their relationships with women. The Great Depression brings new challenges, but they're agile in adapting creatively to each decade. Hearing about the famous "rent parties" popular with their neighbors, they decide to host tea parties in their mansion. Yet, troubles start to accumulate, so the speak, as Langley brings home odds and ends as well as every single edition of the daily newspaper. Homer can only hope for the best with his clearly deranged sibling.

"I love this dirty town": J.J. Hunsecker and the New York of Sweet Smell of Success (1957)

Sweet Smell of Success is one of the great and final dramatic noir films set and filmed in an alluringly dangerous New York. Directed by Alexander Mackendrick with a brilliant script by Ernest Lehman and Clifford Odets, the 1957 classic, shot in glorious black and white by master cinematographer James Wong Howe, is a dark tone poem about the moral hazards accompanying the nearsighted pursuit of power, fame and fortune. At center stage of the drama is the relationship between two cold warriors of smears and innuendo, the powerful newspaper columnist J.J. Hunsecker, played by Burt Lancaster, and Sidney Falco, a sycophantic press agent, played by Tony Curtis. The pulsing neon lights of Broadway, the Theatre District and Times Square provide the unnatural illuminations for their corrupt and bereft power plays. The city brings out the rawest of motivations - sex, power, and control, all wrapped in the tinsel of blackmail and full-length mink coats. 

Everyone in town fears J.J. Hunsecker, the columnist. He makes breaking careers his sport, and Lancaster, repressing his athletic build behind dark suits, bathrobes, and spectacles, uttering his dangerous knowledge in smooth flat tone, could not be more fiercely menacing. He's wrapped his one prized possession, his pretty sister, in an expensive fur coat, and he's got his pretty press boy and student, Sidney, wrapped around his finger. All J.J. wants is to stop his sister from running off with Steve Dallas, her wholesome plain-coated jazz guitarist boyfriend. Curtis plays press boy Sidney as a neurotic mess of nervous energy and ambition, playing off Lancaster's cool slow drones with frenetic beats. The film is an extended jazz riff on Sidney's drive to be "way up high" in the "big game" with the "best of everything." With music onscreen by the Chico Hamilton Quintet, and Elmer Bernstein furnishing the rest, the cool hep cats play their own dirges. When Sidney thinks he's done his evil deed for J.J., planting a false blind item with another columnist, he remarks "The cat's in a bag, and the bag is in the river."

Gumshoes: A Partial Lineup of New York Detectives in American Crime Fiction

The word gumshoe can be used as an intransitive verb, meaning to work as a detective, but more commonly gumshoe refers to the investigators themselves. While the etymology is a little murky, the term most likely refers to the new soft-soled gum that replaced leather on some shoes in the late 19th century. The soft rubber shoes, precursors to sneakers, sounded quiet on the pavement, allowing the wearer to sneak (get it?) around. In popular parlance, gumshoes may have originally referred to the perp, like a sneaky thief. By the early 20th century, gumshoes in literature mainly referred to detectives. The Oxford English Dictionary credits the first instance to A. H. Lewis's 1906 Confessions of a detective, a feisty little book full of New York street slang. Here, the word characterizes both a sneaky criminal - "One of Red Bob's gang had crept upon me, gumshoe fashion, and dealt me a blow with a sandbag" (33) and a detective - "Cull, you're d'gum-shoe guy I was waiting' fer, see!" Like gumshoe, a slang term for police officer is "flatfoot."

Great detective fiction thrives on the streets of a big city. Criminal activity unfolds in every nook and cranny, not just in the dark crowded streets and bars of the slums and backroom poker joints, but inside Fifth Avenue mansions, Wall Street boardrooms, luxury apartment buildings, and inside and outside the theaters of the Great White Way. The great detectives know their streets as well as they know the back of their hands and the soles of their gumshoed feet. Many of the great detectives, however, do without the footwear. They may be part-time sleuths, or in cases like Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe, they rarely leave the house. Nevertheless, the geography of the streets reflects the interior mental map that detectives use to solve their crimes and, in the case on the winding cobblestone paths of the city's older sections, the mysterious labyrinths of human nature.

A Selected List of Writers and Their New York Detectives

Some of the books quoted below may be found in full or limited previews on Google Books. See my library for more details. Let me know in the comments section who else we need to put in the lineup.

• Anna Katharine Green (1846-1935)
Detective: Ebenezer Gryce, a lawyer
Quote: "As for his jurymen, they were, as I have intimated, very much like all other bodies of a similar character. Picked up at random from the streets, but from such streets as the Fifth and Sixth Avenues, they presented much the same appearance of average intelligence and refinement as might be seen in the chance occupants of one of our city stages. Indeed, I marked but one amongst them all who seemed to take any interest in the inquiry as an inquiry; all the rest appearing to be actuated in the fulfilment of their duty by the commoner instincts of pity and indignation." - The Leavenworth Case (1878)

A Month of New York Mysteries, Ghosts, Detectives, Gothic Tales and Noir

Thursday afternoon, the first real chilly day of the season with strong west winds, I visited two bookstores that specialize in mysteries. The chilly day, coupled with the passing of dark clouds, signaled the advent of many beloved autumn pleasures - sweaters, apple and pumpkin pies, hearty soups, and cozy bookstores. In October the residents of the island turn inward, leaving the sunny shoreline of Manhattan for comfortable places indoors. So, I was in one of those autumn moods, gathering stories of the mysterious, ghostly or noir variety to bring home and place next to a comfortable chair inside. In sync with the season, the gathering felt like a literary harvest.

Taking the train to the W. 4th. St. station, flipping through an anthology of classic mystery stories, I noticed three NYPD officers standing in my subway car. They looked nonchalant, occasionally yawning and staring at their feet, but of late New Yorkers have been asked to be alert to yet another security threat. I knew the authorities were keeping close watch on affiliates of a man recently detained on suspicion of a plot against the subways, so I tried to shrug off a growing anxiety by returning to my book. Leaving the train, I started walking faster than normal, but as soon as I reached the stairs near W. 8th to leave the station, I nearly stepped on a little rat nibbling on a piece of food. Walking now quite briskly across Washington Square Park, I happened to glance behind me. The same police officers from the train had taken up new positions on the western side of the park. More concerned that I had almost stepped on a rat, I got home as quickly as possible.