The Most Hair-Raising, Haunted Spots In NYC

Location: 14 West 10th Street

History: This creepy brownstone on an otherwise picturesque West Village street was built in the 1850s, originally as a one-family mansion which has now been split into 10 units. Stories say the home has witnessed over 20 deaths throughout the years, including a gruesome murder-suicide and the coke-binge beating of six-year-old Lisa Steinberg at the hands of her adopted father, who was a prominent attorney in the 1980s. It's garnered the nickname "The House of Death," not least of all because so many of its former residents have stuck around.

Haunted Happenings: The most famous ghost on the property is none other than legendary author Mark Twain. Though he passed in Connecticut, the author, whose real name is Samuel Langhorne Clemens, lived there for a year in 1900 and has been spotted saying, “My name is Clemens, and I has a problem here I gotta settle,” before disappearing. Long-term residents have also witnessed women in flowing gowns floating between rooms, lights flickering, and even a phantom cat. 

One former tenant, Jan Bryant Bartell, who moved into the house in 1957, actually wrote a book about the more sinister experiences she had in her apartment, describing monstrous shadows no light would touch, horrible smells, mysterious shriveled grapes appearing in her dinner dishes, and even a confrontation with a male figure. When Bartell and her husband finally brought in a psychic medium, he became possessed by a 19-year-old Civil War widow who told the Bartells they had to leave. Needless to say, they did.