The third season of AMC's horror anthology The Terror, subtitled Devil in Silver, brings a new nightmare to screens: New Hyde Psychiatric Hospital, where Pepper — a working-class mover played by Dan Stevens — finds himself wrongfully committed. The season adapts Victor LaValle's 2013 novel, and unlike some studio-bound productions, it was shot at real locations in and around New York City.
The imposing fictional asylum is actually the Bayley Seton Hospital complex in Stapleton, on Staten Island. This is a place with genuine weight to it: the 20-acre, 12-building site dates back to 1831, when it opened as a U.S. Marine Hospital serving sailors. It later became a public health facility, and the Sisters of Charity renamed it after Elizabeth Ann Seton in 1981, shifting its focus to mental health and substance abuse services. After years of financial trouble and changing hands, it closed for good around 2020, with the Salvation Army still using parts of it at reduced capacity until then. The show's creepy Behavioral Unit entrance is the rear façade of the main 1930s building.
Film buffs may recognise the place. The derelict sections of Bayley Seton previously stood in for Arkham Asylum in the TV series Gotham, and it also featured in Amazon's Hunters. Its abandoned wards have accumulated plenty of paranormal lore over the years, fuelled by a genuinely grim history of mob attacks, quarantines and patient deaths.
Not everything was shot on the island. The house Pepper clears out in his day job sits on North Henry Street in Greenpoint, the northernmost neighbourhood of Brooklyn. And the scene where Pepper loses control was filmed at a condominium building on Hinckley Place in Kensington, Brooklyn — a six-storey mid-rise with 82 units, built in 1927 in the New Law Tenement style.
For travellers, this is a good example of how horror locations double as offbeat city exploration. Staten Island's north shore is easy to reach on the Staten Island Ferry — free from Lower Manhattan — and Stapleton is a short ride away, offering a quieter, grittier slice of New York most visitors never see. Brooklyn's Greenpoint and Kensington, meanwhile, are liveable, food-filled neighbourhoods worth a day each: Polish delis and craft breweries in Greenpoint, a strongly Caribbean and Bangladeshi food scene around Kensington. Just note that Bayley Seton is closed and off-limits — admire the exterior from the street rather than trespassing on the grounds.
Fans of The Terror's earlier seasons, which tackled the doomed Franklin expedition and WWII internment camps, will find this urban, psychological chapter a different beast — and the real-world setting gives it an extra chill. If you're plotting a horror-themed New York trip, the Bayley Seton exterior and a walk through Greenpoint make an easy two-borough itinerary.
