Just a few blocks from Washington Square park in Greenwich Village, between 5th and 6th avenue is a 5- story brownstone known as the “House of Death” and where Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) lived in 1900-1901.
It’s reputably associated with 22 deaths.
While Twain was a vocal skeptic of the supernatural, he reported witnessing an odd occurrence inside the home. A piece of kindling, moving on its own near the fireplace, he grabbed a pistol and shot at the object. Though he found a few drops of blood on the floor there was no intruder or animal was ever discovered.
Twain even expressed his disbelief in a short story appropriately called “A Ghost Story” in which a ghost haunted his own fake corpse. He was subject to some frightenedly realistic visions when he was alive, visions which may arguably even have been what paranormal types refer to as “crisis apparitions”. He also wrote a bizarre novella called “Mysterious Stranger” in which he argues forcefully (from the perspective of satan himself no less) that there may be no life after death at all.
Former tenants and visitors have reported seeing the ghost of Mark Twain with wild hair, wearing his signature white suit on the first floor and staircase landing.
The building is also said to be haunted by a woman in a white dress, a young girl, a spectral gray cat and a malevolent energy documented by former resident actress Jane Bryant Bartell in her memoir “Spindrift Spray from a Psychic Sea”. She experienced intense paranormal activity, including visions and feeling of dread.
Later in the 1950s, the building was converted into 10 apartments.
The most widely known tale is the 1987 fatal abuse of six-year-old Lisa Steinberg by her illegally adoptive father, Joel Steinberg while he was high on drugs. He was convicted of beating her to death in the home.
Ghost lore galore in the Village.
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