I went on a Christmas-themed ghost tour of New York City and definitely felt a chill down my spine

As someone who enjoys exploring and writing about haunted places, I couldn't wait to see where this tour would take me.

Boroughs of the Dead was founded by Andrea Janes, author of "Boroughs of the Dead: New York City Ghost Stories." I was lucky enough to have her as my tour guide for the East Village Christmas-themed walking tour.

My ticket cost $37.54 total with tax and fees through Eventbrite. Boroughs of the Dead also offers tours throughout Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and Roosevelt Island.

St. Mark's Church was built on the site of the Stuyvesant family chapel, where director-general of New Amsterdam Peter Stuyvesant is buried. Janes said his ghost has been spotted — and heard — by many parishioners over the years.

Known as a particularly raucous ghost, he is said to have disrupted Christmas sermons with loud renditions of Dutch Christmas carols and the sound of his peg leg thumping up and down the aisles.

When the church sexton went up to investigate, he found that the bell rope used to make the bells toll was missing.

"He was absolutely baffled, but got some clue as to who was ringing that bell when the next morning he came, opened the churchyard, and found lying over Stuyvesant's tomb that very same bell rope," Janes said.

"He's always been here, since he died in 1671, and he will always be here forevermore," Janes said of Stuyvesant.

In the 1850s, the East Village was known as Kleindeutschland, or Little Germany, and featured a population of over 150,000 German immigrants.

It was the first free public library in New York City, and it still operates as a public library today.

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert helped popularize the German tradition of Christmas trees when an illustration of them gathered around their tree was published in several magazines. And Santa Claus is a jolly version of the German Christmas devil Krampus, who is said to teach naughty children a lesson by beating them with a switch, putting them in a sack, and dragging them off to hell.

"We have got a lot to thank the Germans for when it comes to Christmas," Janes said.

My tour took place the day after SantaCon, a city-wide bar crawl in which patrons dress up as Santa. It turns out that such drunken debauchery dates back further than one might expect.

"On this tour we like to use [SantaCon] as a historical frame of reference, because rowdiness at Christmas is by no means a new phenomenon," Janes said, citing a letter written by New York Historical Society founder John Pintard in 1809 complaining of "calathumpian bands" at Christmastime.

In 1860, librarian Joseph Green Cogswell reportedly saw several ghosts roaming the halls of the library and asked Irving how to handle it. Irving recommended that he get a watchdog to guard the building overnight. When Cogswell opened the doors of the library the following morning, the watchdog is said to have run out and refused to come back.

A few days later, Cogswell reportedly saw the ghost of a man whose funeral he'd attended two weeks before. According to legend, Cogswell told the apparition he would have to pay double for a library membership since he was there after hours, and the ghostly man promptly vanished.

Also known as Colonnade Row, the buildings date back to the 1830s. Astor, a New York real estate mogul, was the wealthiest person in the US when he died in 1848. He bequeathed $400,000 to the city of New York to build the Astor Library, which opened in 1854.

Merchant Seabury Tredwell and his wife, Eliza Parker, purchased the house in 1835 and lived there with their eight children. Their youngest child, Gertrude, was born there and remained in the home until she died at age 93.

She is said to have died in the same bed where she was born ... and some say she never left.

The perfectly preserved Victorian home was turned into a museum after Gertrude's death. While working to install modern plumbing, construction workers reported seeing visions of Gertrude coming down the stairs.

Museum visitors have reported seeing ghostly members of the Tredwell family and hearing the sounds of piano music and footsteps. Mysterious figures have also been spotted at Christmas concerts hosted there.

Janes told us that a friend of hers who is a tour guide at the museum once heard the servant's bells ringing despite the fact that they were no longer functional and not attached to anything.

The Ghosts of Christmas Past tour featured more than just some eerie ghost stories. I ended up learning some fascinating bits of history about New York City and holiday traditions.

I wish we could have stepped inside some of the locations to take a look around, but remaining outdoors made for a particularly pandemic-friendly activity — and an authentic chill down my spine.