I am all about atmosphere. As an occasional believer in the paranormal, if not exactly a “Ghost Buster” or a “Van Helsing,” I find it fascinating that gritty film-noir New York managed to magnetically draw two dedicated masters of the macabre, Edgar Allan Poe and Howard Phillips Lovecraft, to write here for a spell.Like literary Ray Bradbury, both writers represented real “belle lettres” rather than mere shameless schlock. There's a restaurant that I’m fond of in Manhattan’s “Nolita” on Bond Street called “Il Buco,” where Edgar Allan Poe wrote reams in their suitably dark and dank winecellar. A search for similar mysterious haunts of forlorn Lovecraft (who rarely left his apartment and had groceries delivered) came up with zero hits.
