Exclusive | From a 44th St. phantom to Staten Islands ghostly secrets: NYCs most haunted spots revealed

New York City has 8 million living residents — and countless dead.From Edgar Allan Poe’s eerie Bronx cottage to streets where the dead are said to roam, the five boroughs are packed with ghost stories, restless spirits and things that go bump in the night.“The city is haunted as hell,” Andrea Janes, scholar, author, and founder of macabre tour company Boroughs of the Dead, told The Post.Blame centuries of history, a shortage of space and a city built atop the literal and figurative bones of those who came before.“We just reuse these spaces over and over again, even if those previous usages were for a burial site or a site of sickness or suffering; we will just build on top of them,” she pointed out.According to Janes, the combined weight of history, death, and repurposing “creates a psychic force field where we’re surrounded by spirit energy,” which serves to explain why the city goes so hard for Halloween.Janes helped The Post dig up the creepiest corners of all five boroughs — where the past is never really past, and some New Yorkers may not be the only ones walking the streets.Many Bronx residents — and more than a few hopeful goth teenagers — swear the Edgar Allan Poe Cottage at 2640 Grand Concourse is haunted by the ghost of its morbid, mustachioed former resident.Poe moved into the white clapboard cottage in 1846 with his wife/first cousin, Virginia, who succumbed to tuberculosis a year later.He wrote his magnum opus, “Annabel Lee,” in the house, which tells a chilling story about the death of a beautiful woman.“There is a wide variety of opinions on whether the Poe cottage is actually haunted or not, but either way there’s definitely a vibe,” she said.

That vibe is only heightened by the presence of Poe’s original furniture, including the bed in which his wife, Virginia, died.“It’s a hundred percent worth visiting,” she attests.While Janes said most of Manhattan is haunted, City Hall Park is her pick for peak spookin...