THE GRAVEYARD IN SAINT PAUL’S

Balladeer’s Blog presents another neglected American horror legend in honor of Halloween Month.

THE GRAVEYARD IN SAINT PAUL’S

Manhattan in the 1600s

This story dates back to around 1661, when New York was still New Amsterdam and the Dutch still controlled it, not the British.

A Dutchman named Dirck Van Dara would often drink and carouse in the taverns with his friend Jahn Rooney until late at night (for the time period). At eleven o’clock one night a tavern on what is now Wall Street was empty of all customers except Van Dara and Rooney (“Did ya ever notice how this guy always puts Rooney’s name after Van Dara’s?”).  

The two drinking buddies left and set out to find a tavern that might still be open. A cold autumn drizzle was falling and not even Broadway showed lights on in any of its establishments. The chill and the rain were even forcing the scattered guardsmen to seek shelter in doorways.  

Van Dara and Rooney decided to make for their homes on Leonard Street, a route which took them past Old Saint Paul’s. When they were directly across the street from the graveyard adjacent to Saint Paul’s they heard the unmistakable sound of screams issuing forth from among the tombstones.  

Dirck Van Dara was so drunk that he was filled with bravado and told his friend Jahn Rooney that they should jump the wall into the graveyard and see if any of the dead women wanted to dance. Rooney was aghast at this notion and insisted one should never associate with the dead. A priest had told him doing so would add one hundred years to your sentence in Purgatory no matter how many prayers were offered up in your name. 

Van Dara scoffed at that claim and by repeatedly questioning his friend’s manliness eventually succeeded in getting him to scale the wall with him and enter the graveyard. Once arrived on the other side of the wall the two Dutchmen realized they were in for more than they had reckoned. 

Spirits of the dead walked all around the graveyard, moaning and screaming as if they could feel how decayed their former bodies had become. Van Dara and Rooney immediately tried to escape back over the wall but found their shoes too wet from the rain and soaked grass of the graveyard to get a sufficient foothold.

They had no other way out than to make their way to the other end of the cemetery and the gate that seemed a mile away in their frightened condition. Spirits of the dead crowded around them and chastised them for intruding in their resting place.

Dirck’s former bravado returned as, with each step the phantoms swirling around him and his companion seemed incapable of doing them any actual harm. Instead harsh words seemed to be all they could muster. 

Van Dara began insulting the spirits in return, teasing them about their awful appearance and lack of physical bodies. Jahn Rooney begged him to stop it but Dirck had worked himself up into foolhardy courage and redoubled his insults.

On the other side of a very tall tombstone the pair started at the sight of a ghostly woman stirring broth in a phantasmal cauldron. The irreverent Van Dara asked her what she was making and the unliving woman replied it was a soup of mourner’s tears and graveyard rainwater.  

She offered the two Dutchmen a ladle-full to try but even Van Dara was too superstitious to risk it. In response the woman splashed the two of them with the ladle’s contents. Dirck and Jahn screamed with agony as the liquid hit them. At first they thought the assault might be fatal but slowly they felt their pain fade away.  

Dirck taunted the elderly- looking ghost about the futility of her gesture but she smilingly informed him that the broth she had spattered the two Dutchmen with made it possible for her fellow spirits to touch them.

Alarmed, Rooney immediately began running toward the distant gate, but Van Dara, still a bit skeptical, didn’t believe the spirit’s claim until he felt the cold, clammy hands of the ghosts clutching at him. Tearing himself free he followed Rooney as quickly as he could.   

Forced to dodge the remaining ghosts in their way for fear of being caught and held for some sinister purpose, Van Dara and Rooney eventually reached the cemetery gate and fled the premises. The two friends kept running for quite a time after leaving the graveyard far behind them but finally stopped to catch their breath.

In the distance they could see the spirits from the cemetery following them. Praying aloud now Dirck and Jahn ran away from their pursuers but found themselves hopelessly lost in the dark streets and alleyways. At length the church bells rang Midnight. 

At the twelfth and final stroke the pursuing spirits lit up like lamps and the two Dutchmen found themselves surrounded. They now recognized their location as the Battery but little good it did them.

Van Dara and Rooney fled in opposite directions and, though Rooney successfully fought off all the clutching hands Van Dara was not as lucky. Daring one last backward glance Jahn saw Dirck in the arms of a female ghost wearing a macabre smile. “You said you wanted to dance” she taunted him. Van Dara could only scream.

The final glimpse the fleeing Rooney ever had of his old drinking friend was of the spirits closing around him, clawing him, buffeting him with blows and scorching his face with ghostly torches. No living soul ever again saw Dirck Van Dara after that night. 

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