13. 14 West Tenth Street in New York City is haunted by several ghosts
No less a personage than lifelong skeptic Samuel Clemens – he once wrote “faith is believing what you know ain’t so” – resided for a time in the townhouse at 14 West Tenth Street. He reported encountering paranormal activity in the house, supernatural events which ran counter to his oft professed opinions over an afterlife. He lived in the house for a year, a time during which he was working on his biography of Joan of Arc, which he later claimed was his favorite of all of his works. Since his death his own spectral image has been reported in the house, climbing the stairs while dressed in his signature white suit, cigar in hand. If true, Twain is one of 22 separate spirits which have been reported to reside in the house over the years, by several different owners and occupants of the dwelling.
During the 1930s Twain reportedly spoke to a mother and daughter who found him sitting near a window on the first floor. Other ghosts reported by residents of the building, which was converted to apartments in 1937, include a lady dressed in white, young children, and at least one gray cat. The building has been the scene of a murder-suicide, the beating death of a young girl by her adoptive father, and several other unnatural deaths, earning it the sobriquet “The House of Death”. One resident of the house recorded her encounters with the supernatural there in the book Spindrift: Spray from a Psychic Sea, which describes her conversion from a skeptic to a believer in ghosts and the supernatural.