A ghost hunter shares chilling stories about the most haunted houses in Manhattan

He’s not afraid of the ghosts of Gotham.

the Merchant House Museum So haunted that his staff has actually hired his own ghost hunter — who leaked his grisly secrets to The Post before Halloween.

“Manhattan’s most haunted house“, located at 29 East Fourth Street between the Bowery and Lafayette, was owned for more than a century by Seabury Treadwell, a wealthy merchant who lived there with his wife and eight children – and Paranormal investigator Dan Sturgess He says the family never left.

Sturges, who has conducted more than 100 investigations into the house, which was built in 1832 and purchased by Treadwell in 1895, says he has recorded the sounds of footsteps, piano playing, and even the sounds of deceased residents speaking.

“We’re capturing these strange, anomalous sounds that were not heard at the time of the recording,” he told The Post.

“I got straight answers to questions saying, ‘Mr. Treadwell, do you know how to play the piano?'” And we recorded, “Yes. I’m hitting the keys straight.”

“A girl in Mrs Treadwell’s room asked permission to use a mirror and asked: ‘Mrs Treadwell, do you think I look pretty?’ And we recorded a female voice saying: ‘Nice enough.’”

Museum staff there also reported after-hours unexplained activity.

“One of the employees was working late in the third floor offices,” said Emily Hale-Wright, director of museum operations. “At about 10 p.m., she clearly heard the footsteps of several children running upstairs and jumping down the stairs. She heard no sounds, just children’s footsteps, which is what she decided to call it night.”

The Treadwell family’s eighth child, Gertrude – the last remaining member of the family to have lived alone in the Noho House for 24 years – kept the house in its original condition, “as Papa would have wanted.”

In 1933, Gertrude died in the house, and “according to legend, the house was (in) the same bed in which she was born,” Sturges said.

After her death, her cousin bought the residence, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and in 1936 turned it into a museum.

During its renovation, workers reported seeing a ghost, and in 2002, she was seen there again.

“The same woman in the same brown dress, drinking a cup of tea and staring out the kitchen window, was reported by different people decades apart,” Sturgess said.

One of the last examples of late Federal and Greek Revival architecture, this approximately 10,000-square-foot 19th-century brick and marble home has five floors for guests to visit, as well as a foreclosed attic and basement.

There are seven bedrooms, but only two, plus the servants’ quarters, are open to guests.

It is the only house in the city that has been preserved inside and out, as the furniture, dishes, and clothing there are all the same as those used by the Treadwells.

Hill-Wright recalls a case in which a museum curator found some family belongings – of which there are 3,000 pieces on display – that had been mysteriously moved.

“He set up a display of teacups, saucers, and teapots for the Treadwell family… As soon as his task was completed, he was summoned by telephone to the gift shop, down the hall… On his return, a minute or two later, he found all the china completely rearranged. However, he heard nothing, and was unaware that no one else had been in the room during his absence,” Hale-Wright said.

In his investigations, Sturges uses multiple recorders, electromagnetic field detectors, and directional microphones specific to the rooms there — and all of his findings are sent to digital forensic examiners, photography experts, and audio analysts for confirmation.

He even arranged a seance at the Merchant’s House in 2007 and hired a psychic Richard Schullerwho was picked up from Penn Station and not told where he was going.

Schuller “blowed everyone’s minds” when he provided information about the Irish servants who lived there, which was later verified by census records at the New-York Historical Society.

“He would come up with the first names, the last names of the servants, the dates they worked there. And the correct cities those girls came from,” Sturgis marveled.

Schuler also mentioned a red S-shaped sofa, a piece of furniture missing from the home.

“When he brought this up, the museum director said, ‘There is no one in the world who knows this information except me and the person I was talking to in my office.’”