Investing time and effort in New York City, even for those who have anchored in its waters momentarily, can be defined by the handheld pairing of bloodshed and ambition that have skipped and kicked through the city’s history.

Superstition was a ubiquitous distraction in the Victorian era. Efforts to communicate with the dead were well-practiced before and after the Civil War, but esoteric pastimes, in a departure from old-fashioned magical beliefs, became elevated by pseudoscientific experimentation.