Quiet neighbors: Real estate website digs up the ghosts of Queens

How close is Cypress Hills Cemetery to your home? Eagle photo by Lore Croghan.

By Jonathan Sperling

How would you like some quiet neighbors?

Real estate platform Localize.city will now alert you if the home you’re looking for is located close to a cemetery. And with the border between Queens and Brooklyn referred to as the “cemetery belt,” there are plenty of ghosts to go around. 

"Queens has significantly more dead bodies as residents than living residents, I've always said the worst place to be during a zombie uprising would be the Jackie Robinson Parkway," said Localize.city spokesperson Aaron Ghitelman. "That itself is quite spooky.”

Cap off this year’s spooky season by channeling the spirit of Harry Houdini, who is buried at Machpelah Cemetery in Glendale. Or, if you’re looking for a place in Ridgewood, see if you might rub elbows with the spirits that haunt The Evergreen Cemetery.

Thanks to the Rural Cemetery Act, passed by the New York state legislature in 1847, there’s no shortage of the dead in neighborhoods like Middle Village and Maspeth. The bill helped commercialize burials by authorizing nonprofits to build cemeteries on rural land and sell burial plots. Nonprofits that did so were exempted from property taxes.

Localize.city’s search tool won’t just show your home’s proximity to large cemeteries, however. The feature also shows small plots, many in churchyards that predate the Rural Cemetery Act.