Long before becoming one of Manhattan's best-known public gathering places, the land now occupied by Washington Square Park passed through several very different uses. The area included marshland associated with Minetta Creek and lay near the Lenape settlement of Sapokanikan. During the seventeenth century, land in this part of Manhattan was farmed by people of African ancestry, including formerly enslaved people who had received grants under Dutch rule. The landscape that would eventually become the park therefore has a substantially longer and more complex human history than the nineteenth-century burial ground with which its modern ghost traditions are most closely associated.

In 1797, as New York expanded northward and yellow fever repeatedly struck the city, the Common Council purchased approximately 90 lots for use as a public burial ground. The potter's field occupied roughly the eastern two-thirds of the modern park and primarily received people who died poor, unidentified, alone or without access to private burial. Exceptions also allowed several churches to use portions of the ground during periods when epidemics placed unusual pressure on existing cemeteries. Nearly 700 people had been buried there by the end of its first year.

Interments continued until 1825. Although surviving figures cannot provide a perfect census, historical and archaeological assessments estimate that approximately 20,000 people may have been buried in and around what became Washington Square Park. Yellow fever outbreaks in 1797, 1798, 1801 and 1803 contributed significantly to demand for burial space. Most of those remains were never systematically removed when the area's use changed, leaving substantial portions of the former cemetery beneath the modern landscape.

The burial ground was also the site of at least one documented public execution. In 1820, Rose Butler, a young Black woman convicted of arson, was executed on a gallows in the potter's field and buried nearby. This historical event later became entangled with the legend of the so-called Hangman's Elm, the centuries-old English elm standing near the northwest corner of the modern park. Despite the tree's ominous nickname, historical research has found no evidence that executions actually took place from its branches. During the potter's-field period the tree stood on private farmland separated from the burial ground by Minetta Creek, and the documented execution of Rose Butler occurred roughly 500 feet away. The familiar identity of the elm as a hanging tree is therefore folklore rather than established execution history.

After burials ceased in 1825, the landscape was transformed. The city developed the area first as a military parade ground and later as a landscaped public square. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, pathways, monuments, fountains and eventually the Washington Square Arch helped establish the park as the civic and cultural center familiar today. These successive construction projects altered the surface extensively without removing all of the burials beneath it.

Archaeology has repeatedly demonstrated that the cemetery survives beneath the modern park. Construction of the original Washington Square Arch exposed human burials in 1890. More recent reconstruction between 2008 and 2017 uncovered additional human remains, including intact burials that were protected in place. Fragmentary remains recovered from disturbed contexts were respectfully reinterred in Washington Square Park in 2021 through work involving NYC Parks, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission and Green-Wood Cemetery. The burial-ground history is therefore supported not simply by folklore or old maps but by surviving archaeological evidence.

Against this unusually strong historical background, Washington Square Park developed a persistent supernatural reputation. Modern accounts describe human apparitions, shadow-like figures, unexplained voices, sudden cold sensations and figures encountered around paths or areas associated with the former cemetery. Some stories connect supposed apparitions with yellow fever victims or people buried in the potter's field, while others concentrate on the Hangman's Elm and alleged executed prisoners. Such identifications should be treated carefully. Establishing that thousands of people were buried beneath the park does not establish that an unidentified figure reported centuries later represents one of those dead.

Modern ghost-tour literature has added further specificity, including stories of nineteenth-century figures, children and people allegedly encountered near the Hangman's Elm. The problem is that these accounts are often presented without names, precise dates or contemporary documentation. Recent articles continue to describe Washington Square Park as actively haunted, but continued publication of an older tradition is not equivalent to a sufficiently documented recent paranormal event. Gothic.Black consequently treats the haunting as a recurring historical tradition while leaving both the earliest and latest documented paranormal reports unresolved.

The physical setting also creates numerous ordinary opportunities for ambiguous experiences. Washington Square Park is one of Manhattan's busiest public spaces, surrounded by residences, university buildings, traffic and nightlife and routinely occupied by performers, visitors and other park users. Human voices, movement through trees and pathways, artificial lighting, shadows and changing nighttime conditions complicate attempts to associate an isolated sight or sound with a paranormal cause. The presence of burial remains beneath the surface is historically significant but does not itself supply an explanation for unusual experiences above ground.

The relationship between confirmed history and later folklore is what makes Washington Square Park particularly valuable as a Gothic.Black case. There is no serious dispute that thousands of people were buried beneath the park, that epidemic victims were among them, or that human remains continue to be encountered archaeologically. At the same time, popular traditions concerning executions from the Hangman's Elm demonstrate how easily a genuine history of death can acquire dramatic details that the archival record does not support. Establishing when the park's first recognizable ghost stories appeared, and whether particular modern reports can be connected to identifiable witnesses and contemporary records, remains the central research problem.