The Atlas Obscura Podcast · Thursday, October 29, 2026
Writer and tour guide Christina Rae Stanton explains that James J. Walker Park in lower Greenwich Village sits on top of an estimated 10,000 bodies that were never removed when the former St. John's Burying Ground was converted into a park at the turn of the century.
“Because beneath those benches and beneath those tables and beneath that soccer field are 10,000 bodies.”
“Those bodies were never taken out of the cemetery. Their tombstones and the vaults were just bulldozed over, pavement put on top of it,”