The Phantoms of the Follies

In 1997, a security guard making his rounds in the empty New Amsterdam Theater felt a prickle up his neck and turned around.

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He didn't expect to see a woman wearing a green shimmery dress in a 1920s style, sporting a flashy necklace. She held a flask in her hand. In the ultimate exit, she blew him a kiss and disappeared into a wall onto 41st Street.

Some believe the flirtatious phantom is the beautiful Olive Thomas, the Follies beauty who died in agony at the height of her fame. Many of the lovelies who came to work for Flo Ziegfeld, found that fame was fleeting, and ended their days in poverty or premature death; so many of them came to this end that there were whispers of a curse.

It could be said they were haunted. These are some of their stories played out in the tumultuous and heady days of the Jazz Era and Prohibition.