The church itself is a beautiful old building – not one you’d call inherently spooky. But it is surrounded by graves and above-ground crypts running back to pre-Revolution dates and there is indeed a thicket of dark old hemlocks that form a cross-shaped path. Taken as a whole, you can see why people tend to assume that there are creepy supernatural things afoot – the site is pretty much a haunting stereotype. I’m pretty confident that the general sense of unease people feel is just the setting triggering some basic fears.

As for actual “sightings”, the most common report is apparitions in the windows. One look at those windows in the daylight gives a very logical explanation. The glass is all original. After more than 200 years, it has become very irregular (glass is, after all, technically a liquid). It will distort any reflection significantly. I have personally seen what headlights of passing cars can do and if you’re already wrapped up in the legends and creeped out, I can see where you might be fooled – I’m on the skeptical side of curious and it stood my hair on end the first time.

If you want to get beyond paranormal and get into real, cool facts: There is a tunnel below the church. Now sealed, it reportedly ran from the church to a home about 1/4 mile to the south west on Church street and was used as part of the Underground Railroad. Take this for what it is worth, but the home belonged to a friend of my brother, who confirmed that there was indeed a tunnel was passable all the way to the church until it collapsed when Church street was paved in the 1940s. My brother says he was shown a circular area in the home’s stone foundation that had been sealed with brick. The Underground Railroad connection is supported by very old graffiti carved into the wood on the upper balcony – confirmed by a member of the Brooklyn Historical Society as being carved by escaped slaves that used the church as a way-station on their trip to Canada.

To me, that’s way better than ghosts.

Old Trinity Church is a pretty creepy place. Yes, Brooklyn is a pretty boring town, but Old Trinity Church is far from boring. A group of friends of mine would go there every weekend. We would park our car along the street where the houses are, and we would walk down the street to Trinity. We played Hide & Go Seek in the woods and even went into the woods where THE CROSS is. Its a very interesting place. Some of the gravestones are even interesting, people dying on Halloween in like 1885. Pretty cool if you asked me. They should do atleast a documentry on that place or something.