vip in the city

Trinity trick-or-treating

At Trinity Church Wall Street for the Halloween celebration of “Ghouls, Games and Graves.” From 4PM onwards, the North Churchyard — the oldest surviving churchyard in the city, with stones dating to the early 18th century — hosted a series of family-friendly events. Adorably costumed kids (and their guardians) were out in full force this mild late afternoon for treats, games, crafts, and face-painting. The “ghost” of Alexander Hamilton (buried here at Trinity; Aaron Burr is safely entombed across the river in Princeton Cemetery) roamed among the guests telling stories of New York’s past.

Had I stayed on past dark, I could have attended Trinity Church’s screening of the 1922 silent vampire classic Nosferatu — the earliest surviving screen adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Adding to the spooky ambiance, in place of dialogue, the film was to be accompanied by Cameron Carpenter on the church’s state-of-the-art electronic organ, which was installed in 2003 to replace the Aeolian-Skinner damaged on September 11, 2001. (The controversial “virtual pipe organ” uses digital samples of actual pipe organ timbres, sent through speakers hidden behind dummy pipes.)

Watch Carpenter perform his own arrangement of John Williams’s Raiders of the Lost Ark  theme on the Trinity organ.

Tags: Cameron Carpenter, costumes, Halloween, kids, organ, Trinity Church