- We typically picture Mark Twain aboard a steamboat on the Mississippi, but he spent several years in New York, and his spirit has stuck around Manhattan even longer than that.
- Twain’s most notable haunt is 14 West 10th Street, a gracious brownstone in Greenwich Village, where he lived from 1900-1901.
- People have reported sightings of Twain’s ghost at #14, standing in a white suit by the staircase.
- In the 1930s a mother and daughter reported that the spirit of Twain, seated by a window, told them “My name is Clemens and I have a problem here I gotta settle.”
- And Twain’s not the only specter haunting the house:
- The actress Jan Bryant Bartell sensed so many ghostly presences when she moved in, in 1957 she hired a medium and a paranormal investigator to cleanse the house of spirits.
- But the cleansing did nothing to prevent true monstrosity from stalking the House of Death: In 1987, Joel Steinberg beat 6-year-old Lisa Steinberg to death here.
- While Twain’s spirit might be a long-standing resident of #14, the man himself moved around the corner, to a once-glorious, now-long-gone 4 story home at 21 5th Avenue, on the corner of 9th Street.
- Completed in 1851, architect James Renwick Jr. designed that home, a stately Romanesque and Gothic-revival gem, as a residence for his parents. (You can see Renwick’s Grace Church a stone’s throw away at Broadway and 10th St.)
- Twain leased the property from 1904-1908 and dictated portions of his autobiography there.
- Despite its celebrated architect and famous occupant, 21 5th Avenue was razed in 1954. The Brevoort apartment building, which stands on the site today, was completed in 1955.
