“It’s slightly haunted…”
Felix Barrett, the creative director of immersive theater company Punchdrunk, made this comment during his July 2015 BUILD Series interview with Terri White at the AOL corporate headquarters in Manhattan.
He was referring to 530 West 27 Street—the address of the (then) McKittrick Hotel and Sleep No More NYC.
Barrett made his claim about ghosts haunting the show space upon mentioning the sleeping habits—and locations—of the original Sleep No More NYC cast.
The cast has slept in there. I personally wouldn’t want to… because… it’s slightly haunted.
Felix Barrett left the ghost talk there.
Barrett went on to explain the importance of presence and spirit in a space used for staging a Punchdrunk show. One method used in uncovering this was having the cast play a rigorous game of hide-and-seek in a given building. The McKittrick Hotel at 530 West 27 Street was no different.
Barrett explained the method like this:
When we start a show, [on]the cast’s first day in the building we play a game of hide-and-seek, where they get to be a child again. It’s probably three hours of hardcore hide-and-seek and everyone’s playing the building, almost in show-mode.
So we ramp up the aggression so it’s quite frightening, and they’re finding all the nooks and crannies, and their objective is to try and work out what the safest place in the building is and what the most threatening space is.
The safe spaces are then used for calm and intimate moments. And the threatening spaces are used for the sinister.
Felix Barrett further explained that Punchdrunk isn’t too choosey with locations when staging a show. What’s available is what they’ll work with.
But that doesn’t matter much, because Barrett believes every location has a narrative waiting to be told:
To be honest, in terms of buildings, we would use anything. If you find us a space, there’s always a show waiting to be done. And, actually, my favorite part of the job is walking around a building for the first time. Just responding to it…
But ghosts? That was all Felix Barrett said on the topic.
In this interview.
Cutting The Police Tape
Felix Barrett returned to the topic of ghosts at 530 West 27 Street and the McKittrick Hotel during a November 2017 interview with Brigitte Poupart of PHI.
When explaining how he and his (then) producers of Sleep No More NYC, Emursive, found the perfect show space, Felix Barrett said the following:
There was [this]amazing space [that]had been closed… it was an old nightclub and had been closed for a few years, but it had been the Bed Club in the 90s.
Apparently it was in Sex in the City; kind of a strange concept where you go onto the roof and you get into bed, tuck yourself up, and they’ll bring you a cocktail. Not particularly glamorous, but it was a thing.
And there had been an incident—there had been a scuffle one night and it was on the sixth floor. There had been a tussle with the bouncer, and the bouncer had pushed this customer who was drunk and aggro.
The lift—the elevator—doors opened and the lift wasn’t there, and so they’d fallen down the shaft. It was a terrible tragedy and that night they closed the building because he died.
And we were the ones to cut the police tape and move in again, so I feel strange doing the Scottish Play with all the baggage there.
The original American run of Sleep No More took place in Boston from October 2009 to February 2010. From there, Punchdrunk moved south to New York City later that year to start work on the McKittrick Hotel for an official opening of Sleep No More NYC in April 2011.
First, though, there was the matter of cutting that lingering police tape wardening off the original “Bed Club.”
Plummeted Four Floors
The “Bed Club” Felix Barrett referenced was B.E.D., a nightlife concept imported from the Netherlands to Miami in the late 1990s.
The sly acronym stood for Beverage, Entertainment, and Dining, and was exactly what it sounded like: a nightclub experience where patrons lounged around on beds while sipping on overpriced cocktails and nibbling at decadent cuisine.
B.E.D. debuted in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood in December 2004, mattresses and all. The New York City iteration of the club gained special notoriety after appearing in the sixth season of Sex in the City.
B.E.D. operated for about three years when the aforementioned death referenced by Felix Barrett took place in February 2007.
Granville Adams, an actor known for his portrayal of Zahir Arif on HBO’s Oz, was working as a B.E.D. manager at the time. Late Saturday night, 03 February 2007, Adams got tangled up in a deadly altercation with Orlando Valle, a patron at the club celebrating his birthday.
According to a 04 February 2007 report from ABC News:
Granville Adams, 43, was arrested late Saturday on criminally negligent homicide charges after a dispute at a posh New York nightclub sent another man plummeting down an elevator shaft.
According to police reports, the victim, Orlando Valle, was celebrating his 35th birthday at BED New York when he got into a dispute with Adams early Saturday morning.
According to police, Adams pushed Valle against the sixth-floor elevator doors — and the impact was so powerful the doors opened and Valle fell into the shaft.
Luz Ruiz was celebrating with Valle. He told the Associated Press Valle “tried to hold on with his left hand. He just fell. It happened so fast.”
Valle plummeted four floors, landing on top of the elevator car at the second floor of the converted warehouse space. He was taken to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
A 1010 Wins news item from June 2007 (via the Wayback Machine) reported on Granville Adams’s acquittal.
The report quoted Assistant District Attorney James Roberts as saying the following:
The people cannot prove that the defendant, by his actions, failed to perceive a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the elevator door would give way.
Granville Adams later died of cancer in October 2021 at age 58.
Something Weird Going On
Whether related to the 2007 death of Orlando Valle or not, Felix Barrett of Punchdrunk commented that something strange was going on during the initial staging of Sleep No More NYC.
Continuing what Barrett said during his 2017 PHI interview with Brigitte Poupart:
Actually, when we were making the show, there was something weird going on. There was a door that we couldn’t keep closed, and in the show reports for the first four months, we got to the point where we’d position someone guarding it the whole time.
And when they’d have that 15 seconds when they’d switch people, it would be open.
Now it’s drilled shut.
So, I feel like it was the perfect space for a tale of witches and omens.
That was years ago, though. Who knows what still lingers, if anything did to begin with.
But maybe we will find out, sooner than later, since The Death of Rasputin is moving into the space with rumored previews starting in December 2026.
What spirits will that show wake up?
