Haunted Queens: Fort Totten

As we get closer and closer to Halloween, I thought it would be fun to discover some of the more "haunted" sites around Queens. The New York area comprises some of the oldest sites in American history - so there are bound to be a few ghosts hanging around...

Fort Totten

In 1857, the US government purchased the fort at Willets Point, just north of Bayside from the Willet family. Five years later construction began on what would become Fort Totten, which played a major role in protecting the entrance to the East River between the Civil War and World War I. In 1898, it was renamed for Brevet Major General Joseph Totten, a man with a distinguished military career who fought and served as chief engineer in several wars, including the Civil War. Throughout the years the site has been used as the headquarters of the Eastern Defense command's Anti-Aircraft Command, headquarters for the Air Transport Command's North Atlantic region, headquarters for more than half of the Nike missle sites in the nation, and home to the 77th Regional Readiness Command of the US Army Reserves.

In 2004, the federal government transferred 49.5 of Fort Totten's 147 acres over to the City of New York Parks and Recreation Department, which officially opened Fort Totten Park the following year. It includes 11 historic buildings plus a pre-Civil War battery and a 13-acre parade ground. It is also home to the Bayside Historical society and the EMS Academy (Battalion 53) Fire Department of the City of New York.

A fireman with Battalion 53 claims that nearly everybody who works there hears voices in Building 305 when they are alone. Sometimes the voices are right beside them, and sometimes they are coming from behind the closed doors of bathrooms and classrooms for the EMS training academy. But when the doors are opened, the rooms are found vacant. Lights and bathroom fixtures turn themselves on, and television sets change channels on their own. Shadows are sometimes seen under doors, as if someone is walking by on the other side of the door in an empty room. An actual apparition of a woman in white has been seen floating across the grounds. The legend is that the wife of a general hanged herself when she learned of her husband's affairs. The two-story, red-brick office building known as Building 323 is currently boarded up, but photographs and temperature readings taken by a team of paranormal investigators led the team to believe that 323 is haunted as well...