MAYFLOWER
Location: Closed down since its 2003 fire, the old Mayflower
Department Store is located at 621 Sixth Street on the corner of Sixth Avenue
and 18th Street (now the Avenue of the Americas) on Manhattan, one of the
boroughs of New York City.
Description Of Place: The Mayflower Department Store is a 12 -story
Fifties-style high-rise with a strong Gothic Romanesque rooftop facade in an
area best known for Neo-modern structures and old turn-of-the-century
brownstones. Built to include forty-two separate merchandise departments, it included
in its hey day a first floor eatery, fifteen public bathrooms, five elevators,
four escalators, a rear delivery area and storehouse plus basements and
sub-basements. Populated with mannequins across several floors, it also included
counter areas, work areas, an employee locker room and break area and numerous
corridors, stairwells and concealed stairways. The main entry way as well most
of the customer areas were remodeled with an Egyptian motif as numerous mirrors
when it was converted from the static style of the Tuttle to the recent
Mayflower. Both stores employed between 350 to 500 part-time, recurring and
full-time employees.
Ghostly Manifestations: Large darkened rooms, long shadowy
corridors, balconies that seem to break off into nothingness... security guard
Ben Carson is well familiar with these surroundings. He is one of a consecutive
revolving door of ever-changing retired police officers and former military
personnel who have tried working as security guards for the old Mayflower
Department Store on Sixth Street, the very same building hidden behind the
iron-wrought facade which young adults refer to as "Castle Dracula" or
"Dracula's Penthouse."
"For the past two months," Carson confided to Lizzie Spellman of the CGS. "I've been quickly learning why no one wants to work here." He refers to the continuing slow process of restoration, repair and renovations that the Mayflower has been in since 2008 when it was partially burned down due to what was considered temporary employee neglect on the location. In that time, Ben has learned he is the seventeenth assistant security guard to work with Lorenzo Sapelli, the seventh in his position.
"You either deal with it." Sapelli adds. "Or you don't let it get into your head, but there's a lot of strange noises in the building after the electricians and workmen leave the site. We get footsteps where there are no people, we chase shadows into empty rooms, security cameras telling us where people are not supposed to be and the feeling of being watched. You get the idea someone is watching you from a doorway or balcony, but when you try looking at them, guess what? They're not there."
"I asked Lou..." Lou is Ben's nickname for Lorenzo. "Maybe people are seeing the old mannequins brought up out of storage by pranksters trying to scare us, but we never find the mannequins or the pranksters. What we do get is this... weird odd palpable energy of... just something we can't ignore."
"Like people around us we can't see." Lorenzo adds.
Ben Carson understands that feeling. In the beginning, he really didn't take the concept of ghosts and hauntings seriously, but after his first week, he started to get an idea of how things aren't exactly as they should be. He has seen non-existent people in mirrors in addition to his reflection. He has heard the sound of conversation coming from over his head on the upstairs balcony, but he has been unsuccessful in tracking it down. The basement storage area has been in a perpetual state or repair and ruin over the years. Workmen often find their work stations disturbed. Platforms get moved, tools disappear and turn up in odd places and containers of paint or caulk are found overturned. Ben regularly patrols the area without touching anything, only rattling the doors and checking the loading bay, but no one is getting in that way.
"The only portion of the place that really bothers me is the storage area." Ben mentions. "There's mannequins all over the place on displays, in changing room chairs and in other areas, but down there is a cage are full of all these naked mannequins and in front of it are these large carts crowded both both whole mannequins and parts. When you're looking at them in the dark, you can't help but get the feeling that one of them is looking at you. I mean, if I was a kid exploring a creepy department store, it would be the ideal place to stand in the open and not get immediately noticed, so you learn to start counting them and checking the number every time you walk through the area. Now, I don't know if the restoration crews have to move them from time to time, but sometimes they change positions or their numbers change. Just in the last few of days, one crowd of them went from five to four and I thought Lou had moved it to a restroom to scare me, but it turned up again and I'm thinking, are they moving or are I just not seeing the obvious answer."
Sapelli knows Ben is not the first assistant security guard to have a problem with that area. Ben's predecessor, Gary Lewis, didn't like that area either and thought there was a red-haired mannequin following him around the store, showing up in other rooms and displays, but as he knows, red hair is a recurring if not popular hair color for the figures.
"The photo booth on the second floor landing has a mind of its own." He adds. "I've been here twelve years, and I recall one summer, I was seeing bursts of lights from up there I couldn't figure out for the life of me. I see the flash of light, I race up the stairs of the escalator, and there's nothing there. One day, I was just passing through the second floor and I realized it was the photo booth. I think it's been there since the place was a Tuttles; it takes your picture for a quarter. I pull the curtain back to peek inside, but there's no one there. It still goes off by itself, but is it a short? I don't know. Maybe something likes getting their picture taken."
Sapelli confides with Carson and the CGS that one attribute that may be behind the strange activity is the numerous mirrors which adorn the lobby and entryway. Their proximities tend to cast reflections of individuals from several directions. Carson himself often catches people entering the room and has taken a moment to realize it is his reflection from another angle fifth to sixth times reflected. One mirror in particular, Ben points outs, has a handprint on it from within the glass. Sapelli thinks it is just a factory defect, but Ben has claimed he has sometimes seen what looks like individuals watching him from the other side of the glass.
Sapelli mentions other tales by other previous guards he has worked with. "Most of their stories are similar...." He adds. "They all feel like they're being watched or they've chased people who vanish into no where. Footsteps are heard from empty halls, but there are other stories that only happen once."
Sapelli told us about former security guard Jerry Kiniski, who said he constantly heard the sound of loose change being jingled. He described it as if someone had a pocket full of coins rattling as they walked along beside him, but he was very much alone. One day, Kiniski was surprised by a nickel rolling out from behind a counter and quit that night. Another guard, Jonathan Bobeck said he heard the elevator coming down with voices coming from in it, and despite the fact it didn't work, he fled the building before it opened on his floor. Another guard, Harvey Wick, worked with Sapelli for all of eleven days; during which time he refused to believe the place was haunted and mocked the ghosts with offensive jokes. On the eleventh day, Sapelli met Wick racing down the stairs to the executive offices white as a sheet and crying like a baby as if something had "turned his world inside out." He never reported what he saw.
"His wife turned in his uniform for him the next day."
It was Carson who showed the CGS the sub-basement of the old store. Flooded from the combination of a ruptured pipe and the fire department hoses during the 2003 fire, the old corridors are all that is left of the old hospital that once stood on the site. The walls are still in its original architecture plan, and signs still point toward now forgotten rooms and operating theaters as well as an old morgue.
"I've never been all the way down here." He claims. "But it doesn't look very safe. Any how, I've heard what sounds like people from down there. Sounds of conversation, even what sounds like a scream, but I won't go all the way into it... I mean, who would?"
Assuming that if the ghosts originated with the old hospital and predated the modern store, the CGS tried to find any old Tuttle employees who recalled the old building being haunted to before the 2003 fire. Not many of them could be found, and many of them denied experiences or just disavowed the place ever being haunted. However, Lizzie then tracked down Rachel O'Brien, a former Tuttles employee who had taped an unused interview for the short-lived cable program, “True and Real Ghost Stories of the Supernatural,” in 2012. Rachel re-told her story:
"It was in 1994. I was working through a temporary agency as a data entry clerk. I was assigned to work at the Mayflower on Sixth, taking credit applications over the phone. They were having what they called "Monday Madness Sales." These sales sometimes start from 6:00 am and end after Midnight.
"I was working the evening shift in the credit department. Just before 9PM, the computers for the credit card applications went down so nearly everyone in that department were told to take breaks. So I decided to get up and stretch my legs and head for the ladies room and do what girls do, refresh my make up. I told a co-worker where I was heading and asked her to come and get me as soon as the computers came back up.
"I believe I was on the ninth floor. Over the years the Mayflower had been remodeled several times and so many of the floors had changed but still had the old building layout. The employee's restrooms were in an area of the store where they placed and stored un-used inventory. There was a very long narrow hall way that you had to walk down that was dimly lit and lined with storage lockers for the employee's. I believe this area was where the customer restrooms were located during the early years of the store when it was Tuttles. That night, I made my way to the ladies rooms. The doors of these old restrooms where old metal doors that were very heavy and noisy when they opened and closed.
"When you entered this particular restroom, it was divided into three parts. To your left were the hand sinks and a large mirror above them and along side the wall was a full dress mirror. In sort of in the center of the room was another door, this door was very heavy and noisy. It led to another room that housed the toilet stalls, there are no exits and no windows in this area so you have to leave the same way you came and to the right was a sort of dressing area with a small sofa and chairs.
"I entered the restroom and went straight to the mirror and started removing my make up from my purse. Before I could pull all of it out, the door behind me opened and in walked a little old lady. She was about five feet tall with pale skin and wearing a pea green skirt set with a lime colored scarf. She had a matching hand bag that had a pair of dark cream color gloves protruding from the flap of the purse. Her hair was so perfectly white and well groomed that not one hair was out of place. Around her neck was the largest pearl necklace trimmed in gold that I had ever seen. Her ear rings and bracelet also matched. She also had on pea green leather shoes with large square gold buckles on top of them and her legs were pale, pale white like her face. I turned from the mirror and looked at her directly and I assumed that she was a lost customer and said "Ma'am you really shouldn't be in this area of the store, this area was meant for employees only."
"She never turned her head to look at me. She walked up to the wall mirror just in front of her and placed two large bags in front of it and said really loudly "Gal, watch my bags and have a warm damp towel ready for me when I come out." I just sort of arched my eyebrows and watched as she went into the stall area without another word. I was bewildered and looked down at the bags. They were Christmas bags, filled with Christmas gifts and children's toys. Not plastic toys but wooden ones and a few of them were covered with Christmas wrapping paper. I didn't touch them, but I did think that it was odd.
"Not less then five minutes had gone by when the door behind me opened again. It was my co-worker; she just walked in halfway and said "The computers are back up now." I stopped her before she could leave and then I heard one of the toilets in the other room behind the door flush. I explained to her that I couldn't leave just yet, and that there was a little old lady in the stall area, and I was watching her bags. I pointed to the two large bags on the floor in front of the dressing mirror. She said, "You know better then that! The customers or not suppose to be on this floor." My co-worker finished pushing her way in and rushed to the other big heavy door and opened it. She went immediately from stall to stall and I could hear her calling out for this lady. Eventually, she came right out and stated that there wasn't anyone in the stall area. I said, "Yes, there is, she hasn't come out for her bags." We both looked at the area where the bags were, and by now, there was nothing there. My co-worker looked at me, and said, "You must have moved the bags?" I said, "To where, and you saw how big those bags were, and they were full, and you heard the toilet flush."
"She looked at me, and her eyes became as large as golf balls as she backed her way out of the room and while at the same time looking at me. Once she got past that door, she went down that storage room hall way so fast that I had to break out running to catch up with her. She refused to speak to me or look back after I called out her name."
Afterward, Rachel never used that restroom again in order to avoid a repeat
experience, but her co-worker must have written it up as a report for J.R.
Quimby, the
store manager, a man she recalled who had no patience for the pecular happenings
that occurred in the building. To him, these things never happened the way they
were described or they didn't happen at all. Nevertheless, Rachel O'Brien still
retains an eidetic memory for the incident and can describe the elderly lady
she encountered down to the scent of her powdered make-up and soft spice
perfume. She adds, "Every now and then I smell this scent, and it reminds
me of her. Every Halloween, as the news outlets try to boost ratings by
describing the local New York haunted structures, I wonder if this presence is
still in that ninth floor bathroom."
History: The Mayflower started out as the old Tuttle Department
Store, which was built atop the site of the old St. Matthews Hospital in 1953.
With an original structure built in 1907, Tuttle was one of the most prosperous
shopping hubs in New York City during the Forties to the Sixties with its
crowning glory being the twelve-story structure on Sixth Street until Barbara
Tuttle, the owner of the store chain, closed it along with its stores in
Baltimore, Albany and Raleigh due to waning interest and falling profits. The Albany store was taken over by
Prince & Company out of Philadelphia, and the Baltimore store was taken over by
Winfred-Lauder from Ohio, but the Sixth
Street store became the Mayflower in 1983, opening March 13, 1984 after
significant renovations. It prospered for almost sixty years until a fire
claimed the building on October 13, 2003. Since then, insurance
negotiations have delayed full-scale renovations. Several of the preserved
fixtures have been moved to other Mayflower stores in New Orleans, Nashville,
Pasadena, Miami and Atlantic City.
Identity Of Ghosts: It has been rumored by former Tuttle and
Mayflower employees that the apparitions and activity attributed to the building
are linked to the old St. Matthews Hospital that once existed on site. Built in
1907, it was constructed as a tuberculosis hospital until the Forties when the
patients were moved to more remote locations, such as Letchworth and Greystone.
It stayed active afterward as housing for homeless and mental patients taken off
the street, eventually swelling to as many as 400 to 500 patients in a structure
only meant for 300 patients. Among its most notorious patients were former
physician Adolph Brunrichter, who once performed human experiments in a house in
Pittsburgh, Ezra Caine, the "Mad Butcher," and Anna Escher, a twelve-year-old schizophrenic. On October 6, 1952,
the patients broke into the main hall attacking the staff and each other. Anna
was reportedly killed in the melee, her ghost reportedly being the identity of
the female figure seen in the structure, but modern research reveals she had
actually been released from the hospital two days prior. No one is quite sure
what caused the fracas, but by time hospital staff reacted, it had already
abated with thirty-seven patients brutally murdered and another almost eighty
with critical injuries. It closed down the following month.
Source/Comments: Mirrors (2008/2010) - Activity based on the Trails
Store in Tempe, Arizona, the ZCMI Department Store in Salt Lake City, Utah, the
Foley's Department Store in Houston, Texas, the Old Eureka Department Store in
Little Rock, Arkansas and the Old Broadway Department Store in Rowland Heights,
California.