Top Haunted NYC Apartment Buildings

— -- Everyone knows real estate is king in New York City, even the places with a dark past. While many people would avoid living in a haunted house like the plague, some of the city's most expensive real estate is rumored to be haunted. NewYork.com has shared with ABC News its picks for New York City's top five haunted apartment buildings.

The Dakota

One of NYC’s most famous buildings is also one of its most haunted. This historic building located on the corner of Central Park West and W. 72nd Street dates back to 1880. In the 1960s, construction workers said they witnessed an apparition of a man’s body with a young boy’s face. Even today, residents claim to have seen a little girl, dressed in period clothing, greeting them with a smile and a wave. The Dakota is most notorious for being the site where Beetles’ icon John Lennon was gunned down by Mark David Chapman on Dec. 8, 1980. Yet, Lennon's spirit lives on at the Dakota -- Yoko Ono reportedly said she saw Lennon's ghost playing the piano at their apartment.

14 West 10th Street

Nicknamed “The House of Death,” this West Village townhouse was once a murder scene and supposedly inhabited by 22 ghosts. In 1937, the house was converted into apartments and multiple residents said they experienced hauntings and sightings of a lady in white, a young child and a gray cat. In 1987, former New York criminal defense attorney Joel Steinberg killed his daughter in his apartment. Literary legend Mark Twain, who lived there from 1900-1901, is the most notable spirit haunting the halls of his former apartment.

123 On The Park

Some patients never left the building at 123 On The Park, which was formerly the Caledonian Hospital from 1910 to 2003. Lining Prospect Park in Brooklyn, the hospital sat empty for a few years before turning into a luxury rental building in 2014. Since then, residents have reported strange voices and sounds of mysterious footsteps in the building and three doormen have fled the building since its opening. The remaining doorman reported to the New York Post that the building “is a messed-up place to work because it’s haunted” and it has since earned the reputation of being haunted by “anti gentrification ghosts.”

The Octagon

Formerly known as the New York Lunatic Asylum -- with a disturbing reputation of patient and staff neglect -- it’s no surprise that the asylum’s ghosts grudgingly linger this Roosevelt Island rental building. Built in 1834, the complex was emptied by the 1950s and was ruined by the early 2000s until a developer converted the building to apartments in 2006. Residents report unexplainable incidents and paranormal activity. Even pets have been said to refuse to walk up the stairs of the building.

320 Washington Avenue

Home to the spirits of women young and old, this brick building went from the 1851 Graham Home for Old Ladies to a prostitution house in the 1960s, known as the Bull Shippers Hotel. By the 1980s, the building was shut down after numerous reports of drugs and prostitution and sat empty for 15 years. Now a luxury condo, it still can’t shake its reputation as Clinton Hill’s very own haunted house.