The Chelsea has a reputation as being a welcoming haven for spirits--of both the living and th
e dead variety. We asked longtime resident Tim Sullivan what he knew about the ghosts who inhabit the Chelsea.
Tim is a big man, with a gray tuft of beard and brown hair—which you don’t usually notice since he almost always wears a baseball cap. A rock guitarist, Tim comes off as a regular guy, plainspoken, without pretension. When asked about the primal force that is reputed to inhabit the basement, he says, “That wouldn’t surprise me at all. Parts of that basement are like a cave. I’ve seen some really weird stuff down there.” He goes on to add, “This area is the lowest point on the island, marshland. Some people believe the Chelsea may be sitting on top of an ancient Indian burial ground.”
Tim discovered the Chelsea in the early eighties when he was checking out the Guitar store on the ground floor of the building. He looked into the lobby and sensed a weird energy; it drew him to the place, and when, a few years later, he had a chance to move in, he didn’t hesitate. “The Lobby has always had a very sad vibe,” Tim says, when asked of ghost sightings there. “It used to be filled with down-and-outers, drug addicts and punk rockers hanging out. This used to be a very bad neighborhood.” Tim believes that ghosts are just powerful memories. (And he doesn’t intend to leave one!) “It may be that the ghosts come with the guests,” he says, which would explain the more recent lightening of the vibe in the lobby. “Now this neighborhood is like Columbus Avenue,” Tim says. “Once they painted the lobby and brightened it up, it released the bad energy and a lot of the spirits moved on.”
We’re betting there are still more than a few left! Tim had three specific ghost stories to share with us:
Betty Boop
In a room on the fourth floor, a tourist awoke late one night, sensing a presence. Getting up, she chanced to glance in an old mirror, and was startled enough to call the front desk and demand another room. “Oh my God!” she said. “Who lived here before? I looked in the mirror and saw an image of a woman who looked like Betty Boop!”
Though the tourist couldn’t have known, the desk clerk she spoke to did, and her words sent a chill down his spine. The room had belonged to an old woman named Tatianna, who had been a prostitute in her prime. She had indeed looked like Betty Boop, wearing the clothes of a flapper, the bobbed hair, and the old 1920s era hats. She had died 16 or 17 years prior to this incident.
“If you live here all the time you get used to the energy, so you may not see it as an apparition,” Tim explains. “Guests, on the other hand, can sometimes see the real spirit behind the energy.”
Nancy Spungen
Tim doesn’t believe that Sid killed Nancy. He thinks instead it was a drug dealer named Rockets Redglare, a notorious bastard, who lived, coincidentally or not, in the room right next to the 
Betty Boop room. In any event:
After Nancy was killed, Stanley had her apartment split up between two other apartments so punks wouldn’t come around looking for it. He tried to rent the rooms out to people who didn’t know about the tragedy. I was visiting a couple in one of the apartments and I noticed that they had a room closed off, so I asked them what was in there. They said nothing, that they didn’t use the room at all and didn’t keep anything in there. They said that the room had a bad energy, and the wife said she had seen an eerie glow in there. They were Portuguese and had never even heard of Sid and Nancy.
The guy who lived in this apartment next tried to sublet it when he went to stay in France, but the woman he sublet it to called him as soon as he got there and said she absolutely refused to stay there another minute.
The Preacher
This next one doesn’t take place at the Chelsea, but it’s a good one, and it happened to Tim himself, so we include it:
I was at a friend’s house in California. He gave me my own room to sleep in. That night I dreamed that a big, stern-faced old man, dressed in black, was sitting on top of me, pushing down on my chest. I awoke screaming, really terrified. I didn’t mention it to my friend at the time, but I couldn’t get it out of my head. I thought about it for three or four months. When I finally mentioned it, my friend said it sounded like his grandfather, who had been a preacher in life, in a Holy Roller church. The old preacher had been sleeping in that very same room when he died, and I had been there on the anniversary of his death as well, which my friend remembered because it had been Father’s Day.
I’m glad that old preacher isn’t floating around the Chelsea! Although, who knows, maybe he followed Tim here. This is a hotel after all, and ghosts, like guests, seem to be able to check in and out at will. So I don’t know about you, but I still plan to be on the lookout!
Tim Sullivan's latest CD is due out early next year. I don't think it will be about ghosts, but without a doubt it will be influenced by the rockin' supernatural energy of the Chelsea. So stay tuned to the blog, and we'll let you know and maybe even have a snippet for you to play.
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