Why NYC Has Become a Ghost Town This Season

The playwrights behind a trio of horror shows on why the genre is so scarily popular right now

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Levi Holloway was just 5 years old when his father took him to see the original A Nightmare on Elm Street, Wes Craven’s seminal cinematic slasher that introduced Freddy Krueger. That frightening yet formative experience is what inspired Holloway to become a storyteller.

“It was a different time,” he says of seeing an R-rated horror flick at such a tender age. Yet his dad took note of “the effect it had on me. He showed me how the sausage was made, got me a subscription to Fangoria magazine, and I was hooked.”

Decades later, Holloway is seemingly the premier playwright of the genre. He made his Broadway debut in 2023 with the spine-tingling thriller Grey House about a couple stranded by a snowstorm in a very creepy cabin. Now he’s back on Broadway with Paranormal Activity, a theatrical extension of the found-footage franchise about ordinary folks plagued by a murderous demon. Rather than adapt one of the seven films, Holloway penned a new tale about American newlyweds James and Lou (Travis A. Knight and Cher Álvarez), who relocate to London to try to escape what haunts them. It doesn’t work.

“The first question people usually ask in a story about a couple beset by something in a home is, ‘Why don’t they run?'” Holloway says. “So, the obligation is on the writer to figure out why they can’t. For this story, I figured you can’t run from something that’s attached to you. It doesn’t matter where you go.”

Playing through February 28, 2027 at the August Wilson Theatre, Paranormal Activity isn’t the only scary story on stage this season. A Ghost in Your Ear at Audible’s Minetta Lane Theatre through December 12 and  2:22 – A Ghost Story at the Lucille Lortel Theatre through January 17, 2027 complete the unholy trinity.

While Paranormal Activity is full of eye-popping illusions and jump scares, playwright-director Jamie Armitage’s A Ghost in Your Ear takes an aural approach to fear. Theatregoers are given headphones so they can experience the supernatural tale through 360-degree binaural sound, a technique pioneered a decade ago in Simon McBurney’s The Encounter.

“It’s very intentionally a classic ghost story, which feels like it’s of an older generation, being told in a way which is deliberately technology led and modern,” Armitage says about the play, which centers on an actor (The Pitt‘s Lucas Iverson) recording a terrifying tale about an abusive father that begins to bleed over into real life.

Armitage became a horror fan at age 12 when he saw London’s long-running hair-raiser The Woman in Black. He credits the genre’s enduring popularity to the power of suggestion, not gruesome violence.

“The ones which are particularly psychological and feel like dramas that use horror as a lens to explore other ideas, I find really interesting,” he says. “I think it’s just another approach of deepening the experience of a story.”

Danny Robins’ 2:22 – A Ghost Story is also more interested in psychology than shocks. Hamilton‘s Jasmine Cephas Jones plays Jenny, who’s convinced her new home with husband Sam (Finn Jones) is haunted. When their friends (Anna Camp and Martin Marquez) come over to toast their new abode, they get into a tense, alcohol-fueled debate about whether ghosts exist.

“Within the history of the paranormal, there is this quite sexist trope of the hysterical female who can’t be trusted and might be imagining things,” Robins says. “A lot of cases seem to revolve around a female who then is investigated by older, wiser male figures—with heavy inverted commas around older and wiser. I think it’s interesting looking at that extending out into who is listened to and who is trusted when people are reporting things that frighten or worry them.”

Holloway also explores those gender dynamics in Paranormal Activity, with James initially deeply skeptical of his wife’s concerns. “I think I often write about the space men take up and the way we can sometimes be toddlers with chainsaws in our relationships,” he says. “I think that it’s our responsibility in our partnerships to be seen and see fully, and I think that can be the scariest thing. My intent was to wrap this marriage story in genre, but to really keep at its core something honest about the ways we fail to see each other.”

Although 2:22 – A Ghost Story is Robins’ first play, he’s a horror vet who created the hit podcasts Haunted, The Battersea Poltergeist, The Witch Farm and Uncanny, which was also turned into a TV series. Like Paranormal Activity and A Ghost in Your Ear, 2:22 – A Ghost Story debuted in the UK before spawning other engagements, including in Australia, Singapore and the Czech Republic. The fact that these three plays have arrived in New York simultaneously illustrates the ever-increasing appeal of the genre.

That’s no surprise to Robins, especially during this fraught time. “Ghosts are a safe space, I guess, compared to politics and the culture wars out there,” he says. “I think we live in uncertain times, and I think inevitably we go searching for answers to some of the big questions in these moments. The more our world feels frightening, the more we seek out another world outside of it. I think our culture reflects that fear, and scary things become more popular in scary times.”

Armitage believes sharing that fear in a theatre helps release it. “Horror does something specifically theatrical, which is to give a congregation of strangers the same emotional experience,” he says. “It’s fun because fear is contagious, and therefore you feel it moving around the room. That adds to the pleasure, and I think that is why horror is kind of having this moment.”

Holloway agrees. “Gathering these people and making a tribe in the dark—it’s cathartic,” he says. “It’s kind of joyous. It’s not that different from a comedy. It’s nice to laugh together. But sometimes it’s even better to scream together.”

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TDF MEMBERS: At press time, discount tickets were available for A Ghost in Your Ear. Log in to browse our latest discounts for theatre, dance and music.

Paranormal Activity is frequently available at our TKTS Discount Booths.