The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen

I would like to thank first and foremost my incredible editor, Jennifer Besser, for guiding this project from its inception through many close revisions into the weird and wonderful story it has become. I’m grateful also to my agent, Suzanne Gluck, for whom I would take a bullet, together with all her colleagues at William Morris Endeavor, most particularly Clio Seraphim, Laura Bonner, and Ashley Fox. I feel so fortunate to be published by the incredible group at Penguin, whose commitment to quality literature for young adults makes our culture better. My thanks to all of them, but especially Don Weisberg, Marisa Russell, and the amazing Andrea Lam over at Penguin for grown readers.

A number of people graciously lent their expertise to this story so that I could attempt to write with authority about things of which I understand but little. Kaye Dyja provided laser-eyed commentary on teenage slang and point of view. Professor Rosanne Limoncelli graciously took the time to show me around Tisch and give me insight into the in-jokes and everyday lives of the NYU film program (but I hasten to add that any mistakes, be they technical or psychological, are mine). The excellent Andrew Semans read and reread chapters to correct my misapprehensions about films and the teenage boys who make them.

Many friends and colleagues supported me during the writing of this project, and I’m grateful to all of them for keeping me sane. Particular thanks are owed to Sibyl Allston, Irina Arnault, Sandy Barry, Julia Bates, Shaine Cassim, Michael Deckard, Heather Folsom Prison Blues, Julia Glass, Connie Goodwin, Will Heinrich, Jon Harrison, Eric Idsvoog (my secret weapon), Juliet Mabey, Veronica McComb, Jane Mendle, Ginger Myhaver, Matthew Pearl, Brian Pellinen, Eric Reid (my weapon of secrets), Colleen Rowley, and George Spisak. Thanks also to Annabel Teague for being an early teen reader, Eli Hyman for crushing the 10 percent, Phyllis Bloom for being my tireless street team of one, and Ruth Ferguson and Peter Wright for telling me about the footsteps in the dust on their stairs to nowhere. My love and thanks also to the denizens of the Springfield Street Table, the Tuesdayistas, the Ménage, the Third Sarah Battle Whist Club of Boston (Ithaca Chapter), and End Times Island, without whom my year would be a bleak vista indeed.

A number of institutions and scholars also made the historical aspects of this book possible. I would like to recognize in particular the New-York Historical Society’s exhibition Slavery in New York from 2005, and its attendant exhibition catalogue and website, as well as the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 2001 Art and the Empire City. The Merchant’s House Museum’s meticulously preserved 1830s interior allowed me a clear imagination of the inside of Annie’s house, and I’m grateful to them for working to preserve the rare heritage of nineteenth-century architecture in New York City. Both the New York Marble Cemetery and the New York City Marble Cemetery remind us of all the New Yorkers who have trod the streets before us. I’m grateful also to Judith Richardson for her terrific book Possessions: The Uses of Haunting in the Hudson River Valley, which first spurred my interest in thinking about ghosts in New York, and to Siddhartha Lokanandi for bringing it to my attention.

Thank you to Rand Brandes and the Lenoir-Rhyne Visiting Writers series for hosting me as writer in residence during the final edits and revisions of this book, and to the American studies program at Cornell for offering me the opportunity to teach a class on ghosts in American culture as this book was first percolating. My most profound thanks to the undergrads at Lenoir-Rhyne University and Cornell who consented to think, talk, and write about ghost stories with me, and to the readers kind enough to encourage me to keep writing.

Finally, my gratitude as always to my parents, George and Katherine S. Howe, for meeting my career choice with just the right combination of bemusement and pride, and of course, to Louis Hyman. Boo.