Five Points Tour (Downtown Manhattan)

The Five Points. New York has never known a more wretched hive of scum and villainy…which makes it the perfect place for W. M. Blackwood, rakish libertine and infamous purveyor of macabre stories and true crime. They will tell you tales of ghosts and hauntings spawned from the bloody and violent history of this notorious area of the city, including stories of P. T. Barnum’s museum of curiosities which was doomed to burn down (twice), a hungry, chinless ghost in a basement, the inspiration for Edgar Allan Poe’s The Oblong Box, & Lenape spirits heard in subway tunnels. Power-hungry political bosses, street toughs, gangsters, even the headless ghost of a great actor—all await you on your visit with W. M. Blackwood to Manhattan’s infamous Five Points!

New York City. They say if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. And to make it in the Five Points, you had to be tough as nails. W. M. Blackwood will regale you with tale of those who refuse to stay down, even in death.

Meeting Location

Exact meeting location details will be provided in an email sent the afternoon of your tour.

Meet Your Guide

W.M. Blackwood

W. M. Blackwood, publisher & purveyor of macabre fiction & true crime stories, has haunted Manhattan’s Five Points for longer than you might guess, given their rakish good looks and debonair manner.

They’ve seen it all, having dined with the dandies and danced with skells…often in the same night. Blackwood will share some of the darkest stories of the history of New York’s “Bloody Sixth Ward,” dreadful and tragic and downright gruesome episodes that continue to resonate down through history…

Learn why one of the most famous actors of the early 19th century may still be wandering St. Paul’s churchyard (hint: he’s missing an important body part), why the Brooklyn Bridge was once called “the bridge of death,” why a rotund ghost has been sighted around the Department of Education’s offices, and what’s buried in City Hall Park—and why. The spirits of one of the city’s most notorious early neighborhoods come alive, as told by the debonair W. M. Blackwood!