THE FUNERAL PARLOR
Meryl Van Meter, a 33-year-old comedian, dreamed of moving to Brooklyn’s coveted Carroll Gardens neighborhood four years ago.
“Our broker was like, ‘I have this great space, it’s a loft, it’s beautiful,’ ” Van Meter says. And the building is indeed stunning, with a huge brick facade, manicured garden and flagpole out front.
The catch? It’s over a funeral parlor.
While some house hunters would have balked at the thought of sharing their address with the recently departed, the deal was too good to pass up.
“My husband and I thought it was very funny, so we were like, ‘Great!’ ” she says.
When choosing their move-in cards to mail to friends, the couple took the logo for the show “Six Feet Under” and modified it to say “Six Feet Above.”
“I have a pretty ridiculous sense of humor, so it doesn’t bother me, but it definitely takes getting used to,” Van Meter says. She recalls how, when her family owned a dog, they’d have to walk the pup through crowds of mourners. “We’d be like, ‘Sorry! We live here.’ ”
THE HELLS ANGELS’ HQ
One 30-year-old dancer (who doesn’t want to give her name, for reasons that will become obvious) moved with her wife from Boston to a charming apartment on East Third Street. When they first viewed the apartment, the broker took them down the street in one direction; when the couple moved in, they came from the other. And that’s when they saw the neighboring brick building with flames painted on the door and motorcycles piled out front.
They had moved in next door to the Hells Angels, the notorious motorcycle club with a reputation for drug trafficking, murder and assault.
Things started off well enough: While moving in, the women chatted amiably with the bikers.
“They told us it was the safest block in Manhattan, and that we wouldn’t have any trouble,” the dancer says.
After about 45 minutes, the Angels shifted gears and started spilling tales of crime and who-stabbed-who.
“Like, ‘don’t f – – k with us’ sort of stories,” the dancer says.
Mostly, the clubhouse isn’t a bad neighbor. Except for when she and her wife are holding hands and Angels visting from out-oftown lob lesbian jeers their way.
So would she ever visit the clubhouse?
“Uh,” she says, hesitating, “I’d probably let someone know first.”
THE CREEPY AUTHOR’S PAD
Nellie Kurtzman, a book publicist, used to live in a house at 169 Clinton St. in Brooklyn Heights, where she heard a strange humming coming from the floor. A picture she was hanging suddenly flew off the wall — and the hammer she was using to hang it mysteriously disappeared.
The suspected culprit? Former resident and horror author H.P. Lovecraft, who allegedly couldn’t quit the scare game, even in death.
Kurtzman says she wondered if the spirit of the notoriously racist Lovecraft was being a jerk to the two Jews living there. She also had weird dreams about her ex-boss, who had given her that fly-off-thewall picture years ago.
“I have not had such vivid dreams [until] I moved in,” Kurtzman says. “That could have been me just adjusting to the apartment, or it could be a message from H.P.”
THE HAUNTED HOTEL
Ed Hamilton, author of the book “Legends of the Chelsea Hotel: Living With Artists and Outlaws of New York’s Rebel Mecca,” has lived in the famous residence since 1995.
Although he remains a skeptic, he admits: “If any place will make you believe in ghosts, it’s the Chelsea.”
He’s gotten used to the elevator that stops and opens mysteriously, sans passengers.
“Even though Sid Vicious didn’t die here, residents joke that it’s Sid’s ghost getting on,” he says of the rocker, who many believe killed his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, at the hotel in 1978.
In 2006, Hamilton’s friend brought a medium through the hotel to try to track down a female ghost that actor Michael Imperioli (a k a Christopher on “The Sopranos”) claims to have seen. Allegedly, it’s the spirit of a woman named Mary, whose husband died on the Titanic.
The medium, who reported seeing a woman with Gibson-girl hair and wearing a hat with a plume, noted the ghost was acting like the residents were disturbing her aloof, “self-absorbed nature.”