Eric Adams Seemed Pretty Convinced That Gracie Mansion Was Really Haunted

The office of mayor of New York City has been inhabited by people with strong personalities for decades, but even by that standard, Eric Adams, the city's last mayor prior to Zohran Mamdani, broke the mold. In addition to accusations of corruption and frequent appearances at clubs, Adams also insisted that Gracie Mansion, the residence of the New York mayor, was haunted.

Adams's claims might have seemed strange, but he's not the first person to suggest that the residence might be packed with ghosts. Here's what we know about whether Gracie Mansion is really haunted.

During an appearance in the Yankees press box in 2022, Adams insisted that the mansion was not just haunted, but absolutely packed with ghosts. “I don’t care what anyone says, there are ghosts in there, man,” he explained.

The residence is more than 220 years old, and officially became the mayor's residence in 1942. Adams explained that, since becoming mayor, he had seen things move on their own and heard footsteps in the manor.

Although it might be easy to chalk up Adams's claims to another quirk of his personality, he's not the first person to suggest that there are ghosts in the residence.

Former first lady Chirlane McCray claimed that the house was haunted during a 2017 interview timed around Halloween. "There are times when doors open and close by themselves, and the floorboards creak as though someone is walking through the rooms," she told Metro.

Of course, your mileage may vary on whether you think ghosts are even real. If you do believe them to be real, though, it seems reasonable enough to suspect that this ancient New York structure might have a few.

One person is known to have died in the building before it became the New York mayor's residence. Elizabeth Wolcott, the wife of the man who built the mansion, apparently died of "apoplexy" when she was just 24.

Curbed actually visited the mansion with a medium, and the medium suggested that it was Elizabeth's ghost was still haunting the halls of the building. Cathy Towle, the medium in question, claims that Elizabeth haunts the halls in part because she disagrees with the official cause of death. “Elizabeth thinks she was poisoned," she explained. Cathy also said, though, that Elizabeth's might not be the only ghost haunting the place.

If someone spent a lot of time in a place, their energy is there,” she said. “I felt La Guardia’s presence there, but did not experience his spirit residing there.”

Per the Curbed article, the house is "vibrating with spirit," so it certainly seems like there's at least one medium in the city who agrees with the former mayor.

Ultimately, whether you think the house is haunted or not might be more about your personal beliefs than anything else. What seems clear, though, is that this is not just one of the many strange things that Eric Adams has said in his life.