The Dakota

The Dakota at 1 West 72nd Street has at least five documented ghosts spanning different eras, from the building's 1880s developer to a little girl in a yellow dress to John Lennon, whose ghost Yoko Ono says she saw sitting at his white piano after his 1980 murder.

An electrician working in the Dakota's basement in the 1930s saw a short man in a wig four separate times. On the last visit, the figure glared at him, yanked the wig off his own head, and shook it angrily in the electrician's face. Then vanished. The description, a short man with a large nose, beard, and wire-frame glasses, matches Edward Cabot Clark, the developer who commissioned the building in 1880 but died in 1882, two years before it was finished.

Clark never got to live in his masterpiece. The Dakota sits at 1 West 72nd Street on the Upper West Side, and when it was built, the location was so far north of developed Manhattan that people joked it might as well be in the Dakota Territory. The name stuck.

The building has at least five documented ghosts, and they were showing up long before the one everyone thinks of.

The oldest recurring figure is a little girl in a yellow taffeta dress, white stockings, and patent leather shoes with silver buckles. Workmen first spotted her bouncing a red ball down a corridor. She told them "It's my birthday," smiled, and disappeared. No child matching that description lived in the building. As recently as 2015, residents reported seeing her waving from lower floor windows.

In the 1960s, a construction worker encountered something different on the upper floors: a figure with an adult's body but the face of a young boy. It didn't speak, just watched.

After actress Judy Holliday died, repairmen in her former apartment felt watched and spotted a similar young-faced man.

The Weinstein family, who lived in the building for years, reported rugs sliding across floors on their own, furniture rearranging overnight, and a chandelier that lit up in a room where no light fixture had been installed. A heavy metal bar in the basement once flew across the room and landed at a porter's feet. When he tried to pick it up, it was too heavy to lift.

John Lennon moved into the Dakota with Yoko Ono in 1973. Before his murder, he told Ono about seeing a "Crying Lady Ghost" walking the hallways. Multiple residents had seen her. Some identify her as Elise Vesley, the building's property manager from the 1930s through the 1950s.

On December 8, 1980, Mark David Chapman shot Lennon four times in the back and shoulder in the Dakota's archway. Lennon staggered forward and collapsed. He was 40.

Three years later, musician Joey Harrow reported seeing Lennon's ghost standing at the building's entrance, surrounded by light. Ono herself said she saw Lennon sitting at his white piano in their apartment. He told her, "Don't be afraid. I am still with you."

The building also served as "The Bramford" in Roman Polanski's 1968 film Rosemary's Baby. Some residents believe the film attracted something new to the building, though the ghosts were already well documented by then.

What's striking about the Dakota is how many completely different spirits share the same address, from different eras, with different personalities. Edward Clark shaking his wig in rage. A birthday girl bouncing a ball. An invisible force sliding rugs. A murdered rock star at his piano. It's less one haunting than a whole population of ghosts who happen to share very expensive Manhattan real estate.

The Dakota is a private residential building and not open to the public. You can see the exterior from Central Park West and 72nd Street, and the archway where Lennon was killed is visible from the sidewalk.