If you’re looking for something different this Halloween, how about a trolley tour discovering the haunted, hidden past of New York City? Madame Morbid’s Trolley Tours explore over 400 years of spooky mayhem in Brooklyn. NBC New York’s Linda Gaudino reports.
If you are looking for something different this Halloween, how about a trolley tour discovering the haunted, hidden past of New York City?
Madame Morbid's Trolley Tours is hosted on a revamped Victorian trolley that explores over 400 years of mayhem in Brooklyn, ranging from unmarked graves to infamous murders.
"Madam Morbid's Trolley Tours is a trolley tour in Brooklyn that features dark history, ghost stories, vampire tales and alien abductions. There's humor and a lot of history," said Matt Zaller, Madame Morbid's Chief Operating Officer, to NBC New York.
According to CEO Allison Huntington Chase, Brooklyn was once a large potter's field for the New York metro area. Over time, facilities were built over much of the land where now restaurants and businesses stand over buried bodies.
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Brooklyn was called the 'City of Churches' in which every church had its own cemetery, and its because of this, that we have so many hidden cemeteries. When they were closed, that area for the graveyard was then built over
Allison Huntingtin Chase
CEO | Madame Morbid's Trolley Tours
The drive takes visitors across various neighborhoods in Brooklyn, including Williamsburg, Navy Yard, DUMBO, Boerum Hill, Gowanus, Park Slope and Prospect Park.
The trolley tour was first launched in 2017 after renovating an old vehicle purchased from a shop in Wisconsin. As Zaller says, Huntington Chase is a second generation "haunt entrepreneur," whose father has built haunted houses in Connecticut.
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Originally, the tours had been operating year-round. However, the COVID-19 pandemic had halted operations from March of 2020 and into September of this year.
To Huntington Chase, business was booming right at the start of the pandemic, which was unheard of for the tour in March. As soon as the duo ordered a thousand new brochures to keep up with demand, Madame Morbid was forced to shut down due to COVID protocols.
"It was a bummer to shut down. There was a lot of miscommunication from the city because we have to do stuff with the Department of Consumer Affairs and the Department of Transportation. They didn't know, we didn't know, and it was painful because we didn't know if we were going to come back," he said.
If the tour had not reopened this summer, the team had sights set potentially in Providence, digging up the haunts of Rhode Island.
Since the return, reception from the public has been positive. Huntington Chase believes it's because this Halloween is the first holiday where people may feel safer to celebrate. On top of that, there is a "morbid community" that is intertwined when it comes to spooky activities and spreading the word.
For more information on Madame Morbid's Trolley Tours, click here.
