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Halloween

A Gang of Despicable Ghouls Takes Over a Cathedral in NYC

On the eve of Halloween, this church will shake your spirits.
All photos by Stan Honda, courtesy the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, unless otherwise noted

Every year since 1990, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine—the fourth largest Christian church in the world, located in New York City’s Morningside Heights neighborhood—hosts an event one wouldn’t expect to witness on holy grounds. At the Cathedral’s Halloween Extravaganza, visitors are greeted by a ghoul playing the cello and a giant, quivering spider hanging on the Rose Window.

The evening begins with a screening of a silent classic (F. W. Murneau’s Nosferatu this year), whose score is performed on the Great Organ. After the final credits, the ghouls emerge: one by one, a gang of macabre creatures step out of a Hellmouth, engulfed in fog, and process down the central nave of the Cathedral as the organ pipes fill the space with a loud, devilish tune.

The majority of the puppets have been crafted by Ralph M. Lee, who runs the Mettawee River Theatre Company with his wife Casey Compton. Lee is responsible for the first-ever Greenwich Village Halloween Parade held in 1974, which he then directed for 12 years. Many of the costumes from the procession of the ghouls at the Cathedral were originally created for the parade—making some of them about 40 years old.

“I had been doing various kinds of events at the Cathedral starting in the 80s, when there was a lot of adventurous stuff going on up there. Then they approached me about working on this Halloween event. I had the puppets and costumes in stock, and they were rumbling and making signs that they wanted to be out in the world again.” The spider in the Rose Window, for example, had originally been made for the tower of the Jefferson Market Library. A giant skeleton, which would rise up in the arch at Washington Square during the parade, was repurposed and rigged to the Cathedral ceiling.

Photo by Catherine Bonnet