The Strange History Podcast “Ghosts of the Speakeasy Tunnels: The Haunted Side of New York’s Underground” Part 2

0:00 Speaker 1: Welcome back, dear listeners, to the world Beneath the world.

0:03 Speaker 1: In our last episode, we explored the hidden speakeasy tunnels

0:07 Speaker 1: of Prohibition era New York, the secret passages where flappers, mobsters,

0:12 Speaker 1: and jazz musicians kept the party going when the law

0:15 Speaker 1: said absolutely not. But tonight we're staying after last call

0:20 Speaker 1: because when the lights went out and the music stopped,

0:23 Speaker 1: something else stayed behind. These tunnels may be bricked over, forgotten,

0:28 Speaker 1: and flooded, but according to construction crews, bar owners, and

0:32 Speaker 1: a few unfortunate plumbers, not everything that moves underground is alive.

0:38 Speaker 1: So grab your EMF reader and your gin. This is

0:41 Speaker 1: Ghosts of the Speakeasy Tunnels, the haunted side of New

0:44 Speaker 1: York's underground.

0:46 Speaker 2: The echoes beneath mcsorley's.

0:49 Speaker 1: We begin where so many stories do, with a creaky

0:53 Speaker 1: wooden floor, a pint of ale, and an Irish ghost

0:56 Speaker 1: who refuses to mind his own business. Mcsorley's Old Alehouse

1:01 Speaker 1: has been around since eighteen fifty four, and beneath it,

1:05 Speaker 1: workers uncovered a hidden storage tunnel lined with kegs and bottles,

1:10 Speaker 1: sealed shut since Prohibition, but ever since that, discovery staff

1:15 Speaker 1: and patrons alike have reported phantom footsteps from below, especially

1:20 Speaker 1: after midnight. A longtime bartender once said he heard a

1:25 Speaker 1: voice say pull one for me when he was closing

1:28 Speaker 1: up alone. No one was there. The next morning, a

1:31 Speaker 1: full mug of ale sat on the bar, still frothy.

1:35 Speaker 1: Either the ghost wanted a drink, or it's just the

1:37 Speaker 1: most polite bar spirit in Manhattan. Either way, I'd tip it.

1:42 Speaker 3: Booze be Gone ghost Spray. Tired of your haunted bar

1:46 Speaker 3: patrons not paying their tabs, try Booze be Gone. Ghost Spray,

1:51 Speaker 3: scientifically proven to remove ninety eight percent of restless spirits

1:55 Speaker 3: and one hundred percent of customers named Chad. Now available

1:59 Speaker 3: at select Bodega's right next to the sage bundles and

2:03 Speaker 3: expired red bulls. Booze be Gone, because not all spirits

2:07 Speaker 3: are friendly.

2:09 Speaker 2: The Cotton Club and the Phantom Band.

2:12 Speaker 1: In the nineteen thirties, Harlem's Cotton Club was the epicenter

2:15 Speaker 1: of jazz and danger. Its owner, Gangster Ony the Killer Madden,

2:22 Speaker 1: used tunnels to sneak liquor and occasionally himself out of

2:25 Speaker 1: police raids, but musicians who've performed there in modern times

2:29 Speaker 1: swear the club still swings. After hours, when the lights

2:32 Speaker 1: are off and the sound system dead, Faint trumpet solos

2:36 Speaker 1: have been heard drifting through the floor. One janitor even

2:39 Speaker 1: recorded it on his phone, a haunting version of it.

2:42 Speaker 1: Don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing.

2:46 Speaker 1: Experts claim its echoes from the subway below, but jazz

2:50 Speaker 1: lovers prefer to think it's Duke Ellington himself, still riffing

2:54 Speaker 1: from the other side the Afterlife's most exclusive gig, and

2:58 Speaker 1: you just know Saint Peter's up. They're like Duke, buddy,

3:01 Speaker 1: it's been eighty years clock out already.

3:04 Speaker 2: The twenty one Club's locked room.

3:07 Speaker 1: The twenty one Club, perhaps the most famous speakeasy of all,

3:10 Speaker 1: has its own resident apparition. During renovations in the nineteen eighties,

3:16 Speaker 1: workers uncovered a small, bricked over chamber in the sub basement,

3:20 Speaker 1: filled with broken bottles, melted candles, and an old stool

3:24 Speaker 1: facing the wall. The story goes that a watchman guarding

3:28 Speaker 1: the liquor stashed during prohibition vanished one night and was

3:31 Speaker 1: never seen again. Now staff say that the motion sensors

3:35 Speaker 1: in that part of the building go off at two

3:38 Speaker 1: twenty one am every night, despite no one being there.

3:43 Speaker 1: One guard even claims he followed the sound of shuffling

3:45 Speaker 1: footsteps into the tunnel, only to find a bottle of

3:49 Speaker 1: nineteen twenties whiskey sitting upright on the floor with a

3:52 Speaker 1: cork halfway out. Some people leave notes, some leave voicemails.

3:57 Speaker 1: Others just leave Bourbon.

4:00 Speaker 3: After Life Insurance. This episode is sponsored by after Life Insurance,

4:05 Speaker 3: the only policy that covers hauntings, hexes, and unexpected apparitions.

4:11 Speaker 3: Tired of paying rent with a ghost roommate who doesn't

4:14 Speaker 3: chip in, We've got you covered. Plans start at just

4:19 Speaker 3: six dollars and sixty six cents a month because eternity

4:22 Speaker 3: is expensive. After Life Insurance, because dying shouldn't mean losing

4:27 Speaker 3: your deposit.

4:29 Speaker 2: The subway that's sang.

4:31 Speaker 1: Not all ghost stories involve old bars. Some are buried deeper.

4:36 Speaker 1: In twenty eleven, maintenance workers under Canal Street discovered a

4:40 Speaker 1: sealed service tunnel with remnants of tile mosaics and strangely,

4:46 Speaker 1: dozens of empty whiskey bottles dated between nineteen twenty two

4:50 Speaker 1: and nineteen thirty one. But that wasn't the strange part.

4:54 Speaker 1: When they opened the tunnel, one worker said he heard

4:56 Speaker 1: what sounded like a full band, tuning up brass, shuffling feet,

5:02 Speaker 1: then silence. They thought it was reverb from nearby trains

5:07 Speaker 1: until they realized the tracks above were inactive. The tunnel

5:10 Speaker 1: was recealed, but to this day, subway conductors on the

5:14 Speaker 1: late night shift report unexplained music under Canal Street a

5:18 Speaker 1: kind of ghostly swing band in perpetual rehearsal. Imagine being

5:23 Speaker 1: a ghost and still stuck playing second trumpet. That's the

5:27 Speaker 1: real punishment.

5:28 Speaker 2: The Whisky Wells of Brooklyn.

5:31 Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety four, during restoration work in the Brooklyn

5:34 Speaker 1: Navy Yard, workers uncovered several hidden passageways once used for

5:39 Speaker 1: smuggling whiskey off ships during Prohibition. Inside one chamber, archaeologists

5:44 Speaker 1: found two rusted flasks engraved with initials JM and l R,

5:50 Speaker 1: along with a pocket watch frozen at eleven forty seven pm.

5:55 Speaker 1: When the watch was cleaned and inspected, it began ticking

5:58 Speaker 1: again briefly, then it stopped. Locals claimed that the two

6:04 Speaker 1: initials belonged to Joseph Mancini and Lewis Rocco, bootleggers who

6:08 Speaker 1: drowned in a warehouse flood in nineteen twenty eight. People

6:12 Speaker 1: say that if you stand near the old tunnel entrance

6:14 Speaker 1: after midnight, you can hear men laughing followed by the

6:17 Speaker 1: sound of rushing water. Ah Yes, the classic Brooklyn love

6:21 Speaker 1: story Two guys, one heist, and a bad case of

6:26 Speaker 1: drowning while drunk.

6:27 Speaker 2: The ghosts of Chumley's.

6:30 Speaker 1: Chumley's, the literary speakeasy on Bedford Street, has long been

6:34 Speaker 1: haunted by more than just the ghost of Hemingway's ego.

6:38 Speaker 1: After renovations reopened it in the two thousands, staff began

6:41 Speaker 1: noticing strange occurrences, books flying from shelves, glasses shattering when

6:47 Speaker 1: no one was nearby, and most chillingly, the sound of

6:51 Speaker 1: a door creaking open to a tunnel that no longer exists.

6:55 Speaker 1: Paranormal investigators claim there's residual energy from patrons who won

7:00 Speaker 1: it fled police raids. Some EVP recordings even picked up

7:04 Speaker 1: voices saying eighty six it the old slang forget out.

7:10 Speaker 1: You know you've made it as a bar when even

7:11 Speaker 1: your ghosts are shouting last call.

7:14 Speaker 3: Spirited security systems are your motion detectors going off, but

7:18 Speaker 3: you live alone. Protect your haunted home with spirited security

7:22 Speaker 3: systems featuring twenty four to seven ghost monitoring and sage

7:26 Speaker 3: scented air fresheners, because when the dead one in will

7:30 Speaker 3: make sure they knock first.

7:32 Speaker 2: Modern ghost hunts in old tunnels.

7:35 Speaker 1: Paranormal investigators across the city have turned these tunnels into

7:39 Speaker 1: their playgrounds. The New York Paranormal Society once explored an

7:43 Speaker 1: abandoned tunnel beneath Mulberry Street rumored to have been part

7:47 Speaker 1: of an Italian speakeasy. Using thermal cameras, they captured what

7:52 Speaker 1: looked like two glowing figures, one seated at a table,

7:56 Speaker 1: the others standing behind a bar. When they tried to

8:00 Speaker 1: re enter weeks later, the tunnel had mysteriously flooded with

8:04 Speaker 1: clean clear water, even though every other nearby passage was

8:08 Speaker 1: bone dry. Meanwhile, urban explorers in Harlem recorded the sound

8:12 Speaker 1: of piano keys echoing through an inaccessible basement near one

8:16 Speaker 1: hundred twenty fifth Street. The building above once a jazz

8:20 Speaker 1: club raided by the FEDS in nineteen twenty nine. You

8:23 Speaker 1: can shut down a speakeasy, but you can't shut up

8:26 Speaker 1: a jazz ghost.

8:27 Speaker 3: Spirit Box Bar Edition want to contact the other side

8:31 Speaker 3: and order a cocktail? Introducing spirit Box Bar Edition. It's

8:36 Speaker 3: part ghost detector, park drink mixer. Just say Gin and Tonic,

8:42 Speaker 3: and maybe, just maybe your great grandfather will join you

8:45 Speaker 3: for one spirit box, because who doesn't want a haunted

8:50 Speaker 3: happy hour?

8:52 Speaker 1: New York has always been a city of stories, and

8:54 Speaker 1: some of them just don't stop even after death. These

8:58 Speaker 1: tunnels were built to hide the wildest parts of human nature. Joy, defiance, laughter,

9:04 Speaker 1: and of course gin. Maybe that's why their ghosts remain

9:08 Speaker 1: not as warnings, but as reminders that life, even underground,

9:12 Speaker 1: was worth celebrating. So next time you're in a bar

9:16 Speaker 1: that feels just a little too old and you hear

9:18 Speaker 1: faint jazz when there's no band playing, don't panic. Just

9:22 Speaker 1: raise your glass. Someone somewhere might be toasting back. I'm

9:27 Speaker 1: Amy and this has been the Strange History Podcast. Stay curious,

9:32 Speaker 1: Stay spooky, and if you hear a trumpet under your feet,

9:36 Speaker 1: maybe pour one out.