When a sleek, gleaming tower appears to sprout from the earth every week in New York City, it’s easy to forget that Gotham is in many ways a ghost town — quite literally. Centuries of New Yorkers have lived (and died) here, from the earliest indigenous Algonquians to the 17th century Dutch fur traders that deemed these parts Nieuw Amsterdam.

We’ve rounded up the best NYC neighborhoods for Halloween, whether you want to indulge in some innocent family fun (pumpkin photoshoots are as required in October as pie on Thanksgiving) or ride a broomstick to a graveyard in Brooklyn.

“Before I had a kid, I didn’t really care about Halloween, but after having my daughter we find the neighborhoods that have brownstones and stoops,” says Julia Romero, licensed real estate salesperson for Cantor and Pecorella and a StreetEasy Expert. “They are really fun for Halloween because oftentimes the owners of those houses will decorate their stoop, sit out, and hand out candy.”

Here are the most boo-tiful spots that make up the best NYC neighborhoods for Halloween.

Greenwood, Brooklyn

If you always (ahem) creep it real, you can’t NOT visit Green-Wood Cemetery, a sprawling 478-acre cemetery set on the site of a 1776 Revolutionary War battle. Found within Greenwood, Brooklyn — which ranked second on StreetEasy’s list of 10 NYC Neighborhoods to Watch in 2025 — this is one of the city’s best nabes for Halloween because it’s every bit as eerie as it is legendary. The graves of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Leonard Bernstein, and more are on the Green-Wood Cemetery premises.

But we’d wager that one of the most important graves here is one that reminds us war is ghastly, for all ages: the final resting place of 12-year-old Clarence David McKenzie, a drummer boy who became the first Brooklyn resident to die in the Civil War. McKenzie enlisted against his mother’s wishes, innocently telling her “I am only a little boy — they will not want to shoot me.” Rev. Luther Goodyear Bingham released a book on McKenzie titled The Little Drummer Boy, a compilation of recollections which is the source of the aforementioned quote.

The adjacent Greenwood neighborhood is expectedly chockablock with history, including many prewar apartments.

Upper East Side, Manhattan

“One of my favorite streets at Halloween is 76th between Fifth and Madison,” says Jacqueline Clair, an Upper East Side-based photographer who documents families and seasonal charm on her much-loved Instagram account. “There are several houses on the block that are gorgeous at any time of year, and lucky for us, they also go all out for spooky season. One of the houses (which I think is actually a school) does decorations all the way up their steps and they even include animatronic figures chattering and cackling — which kids seem to love!”

Another of Clair’s favorites this time of year is 70th Street between Lexington and Park. “A few of the houses decorate, but the star of the block is this one house that every year has what I can only describe as the most chic of Halloween decorations. One year they did black and white painted pumpkins that were truly unforgettable. Their decor is often somewhat understated, yet elaborate and unique—always something you won’t see at any other house.” We’re certainly under their spell!

Battery Park City, Manhattan

One could call it Eerie Island. A ferry ride away from Battery Park City, you just might get “the creeps” the minute you step foot in Ellis Island’s circa-1900 structures, which processed upwards of 12 million immigrants in the shadow of Lady Liberty between 1892 and 1954. Whether you’re wandering the vaulted ceiling registry room or taking in the stacks of baggage that your tired, your poor, your huddled masses once schlepped to NYC, the aura of ghosts feels like it’s everywhere.

If you really want to have a bone-chilling experience, book a Hard Hat Tour of the abandoned Ellis Island hospital, which once housed those suffering from everything from the flu to tuberculosis. It lays in a state of eerie disrepair, including broken windows at every turn.

Back on mainland Manhattan, Battery Park City is one of the best NYC neighborhoods for Halloween. Among the city’s oldest nabes, it took its name in the 17th century when it housed a “battery” of protective cannons fronting the water.

Roosevelt Island, Manhattan

Before Roosevelt Island became one of NYC’s best-kept secret enclaves for gleaming glass-walled apartments, it was renowned for something else. The Roosevelt Island Octagon Tower was once an 1834 mental hospital (or what previous generations might have called an “insane asylum”), a smallpox hospital that treated 7,000 patients a year (and buried hundreds), and a science lab that reportedly performed menacing and dangerous experiments on unwitting patients.

When she voluntarily stayed in the asylum in 1887, enterprising female journalist Nellie Bly deemed it a “human rat trap…easy to get in, but once there it is impossible to get out.” Now, it’s one of the best NYC neighborhoods for Halloween — and a great place for a hair-raising tour of the ruins.

Greenwich Village, Manhattan

Greenwich Village is already legendary, but the Village Halloween Parade? That, darlings, is iconic. Heidi Klum herself would stand in awe of the costumes dreamt up by revelers at this annual parade, which has been turning heads since 1974.

The theme for the 2026 event, which is the 53rd annual Village Halloween Parade, is Body & Soul. It will also celebrate the Year of the Horse with a new performance, “Firehorse,” featuring a special puppet. The parade is free to watch or participate in — ideally, wearing an extravagant homemade costume — but expect long lines to form in advance of the 7pm start time. To skip the line or get VIP access, tickets are available for purchase, but are not required.

Fordham and Knightsbridge, Bronx

You can kill two birds with one creepy, crawly stone in the Bronx, where blood-curdling history makes two of the borough’s neighborhoods some of the best for Halloween. For one, Edgar Allen Poe — yes, the author of eternally spine-tingling poems like “The Raven” and “Annabel Lee” — lived in a rented circa-1812 cottage in Fordham that is perfectly preserved and open for tours. (That he lived there with his cousin he married at age 13 who died in the house, well — we won’t dwell on that.)

For further dips into petrifying waters, head north to Van Cortlandt Park, adjacent to the Bronx neighborhood of Riverdale. The enormous 1,146-acre spread, founded in 1888, is where a reported 40 indigenous people (largely of the Mohican, Wappinger, and Munsee tribes) were massacred by British Loyalist forces during the Revolutionary War. When exploring the park, don’t miss stopping by the Van Cortlandt House Museum, a circa-1748 compound that was once the Van Cortlandt family’s plantation for three generations — and where paranormal activity is, reportedly, a frequent occurrence.

What can we say: ghouls just want to have fun!

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