House of Death

Built in 1856, this Manhattan brownstone building has seen a great deal of tragedy in its time, with some claiming that as many as 22 individuals have suffered mysterious deaths within its walls. Spirits have been reported throughout the building, and in one peculiar incident during the 1930s a mother and her daughter claim to have seen the ghost of Mark Twain, who lived in the building from 1900 to 1901. According to one account, the mother was startled to see an old man with white hair in the living room one evening. She asked him who he was, and the man replied “My name is Clemens, and I has a problem here I gotta settle,” then disappeared. Half a century later, the House of Death was the site of a well document horror, in which a resident by the name of Joel B. Steinberg beat his 6-year-old daughter to death.