zvxr:nws:metrognome10-5:

//metrognome logo//

PICTURES SUPPOSEDLY SHOT SATURDAY AFTERNOON. GERSH IS BEEPABLE


It was Halloween night and Soho's Manhattan Bistro was empty -- so empty, in fact, that the staff decided to close up early.

"It's just dead tonight," said manager Tommy King.

King picked the perfect word -- dead. After all, what else would you expect on Halloween at a restaurant that has a ghost residing in the basement?

Occultists, paranormals and other assorted weirdos have long proclaimed the existence of the "Spring Street Ghost," the haunting specter of a murdered hatmaker named Elma Sands who was dumped in a well three days before Christmas, 1799 near the current-day intersection of Spring and Greene streets.

From time to time, people claim they've seen lights go on or off or plates crash to the floor even though no one is in the room, but the supposedly haunted well was believed to have been lost to the ravages of time.

But it was not lost. It's in the Manhattan Bistro basement.

For almost two centuries, the basement of the 19th-century building -- which was once at street level -- was filled with dirt, concealing the historic well, whose walls were eight-feet above the street to prevent New Yorkers from throwing trash into them (the more things change...).

But with business booming, owner Marie DaGrossa cleared out the dirt with the intention of turning her basement into a lounge or a second dining room.

DaGrossa's no archeologist, but she knew she'd uncovered something important. A cursory investigation, plus a visit from experts from the Landmarks Conservancy, provided a rationalization for years of ghostly occurrences.

"I've seen ashtrays just fly off the table and crash into the wall," said King, who believes that his restaurant is, indeed, haunted. "Maybe Elma's ghost doesn't like smoking."

And sometimes, King said, a bottle will come flying off a shelf -- especially if a bad employee is in the room.

"She doesn't like certain people," said King, who, for now at least, is not personally haunted by Sands. "I think she's angry. I would be, too, if I was murdered, dumped in a well, and the guy who killed me never went to jail." (Then again, maybe she just doesn't like scallops au gratin, a Manhattan Bistro dish.)

No, Elma Sands' killer never went to jail. Even in 1800, America's legal system had matured so that everyone understood that a rich guy with good lawyers must always beat the rap.

The facts of the case have not dulled over time: Elma Sands, a 21-year-old milliner, was living at a boarding house at the corner of Greenwich and Franklin streets, across the hall from Levi Weeks, a carpenter from a prosperous family of builders.

When Sands disappeared, evidence started mounting against Weeks. First, it was revealed that Weeks had promised to marry Sands and that the couple had been intimate as a result.

Then, before Sands' body was discovered in a well at the northeast corner of Lispenard's Meadow, Weeks pulled a Condit, asking one of Sands' cousins to sign an affidavit testifying that he "paid no more particular attention to Elma than to any other female in the house." She refused.

To defend himself the first "Trial of the (19th) Century," Weeks hired a "dream team" -- Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. True, Hamilton and Burr were such bitter rivals that they couldn't even agree on the weather, but they mounted a defense that first depicted Sands as promiscuous (apparently grounds for murder in those days) and then claimed that she committed suicide when Weeks withdrew his proposal.

When the jury came back with an acquittal, Weeks was so hounded by the public and press that he fled to Natchez, Mississippi, where he became a prominent businessman.

Meanwhile, Sands' friend, Catherine Ring, was so disturbed by the verdict -- and Hamilton's role in securing it -- that she screamed at him, "If thee dies a natural death, I shall think there is no justice in heaven."

Hamilton, of course, died four years later from wounds he acquired in his quite unnatural duel with Burr, so at least the ghost of Catherine Ring walks the earth at peace.

But what of the ghost of Elma Sands? On Halloween night, she didn't turn up (much to the chagrin of this reporter), but that doesn't mean she has left the building.

"I don't know if I believe in ghosts," said DaGrossa, "but sometimes really weird things happen here."

--30--

email: gershny@yahoo.com