And if those don’t work, click here, here and here.

I’m in a group with Alicia and Mychael and we’ve decided to focus our final project on a classic brownstone house on 14 W 10th Street, also referred to as the “House of Death” built during the Civil War. The name comes because there has been a lot of paranormal activity that has happened in that house. Apparently 22 spirits haunt the house or haunted, the house is now split into 4 floors and 2 apartments on each side.

Jan Bryant Bartell wrote a book about her experience in the house, Spindrift: Spray from a Psychic Sea. She suffered through a psychological and physical torment living in the house, in order to help her she called a medium to get rid of the spirits. However, the medium got possessed by the spirit of Reenie Mallison, yelling that she will never leave because its her house. Another strange occurrence that happens with the book is that it keeps disappearing; Dennis a resident that lived in House 16, said that he bought the book about 10 times in Strands. In fact, even we had trouble getting our hands on this book. It wasn’t in Bobst or Strands and finding an online version was difficult, however we found it in the New York Public Library even if we couldn’t take it out. The book, just in a literary perspective is known for not being strong, it doesn’t capture the audience because its written well or have a good hook. What captures people is that she wrote it based off real-life experience. Even Dennis, says he can corroborate with the stories Jan Bryant Bartell says in her book.

Another famous incident that happened in the “cursed” house,  is the Joel Steinberg case. Joel Steinberg was a crime defense lawyer, who moved into the house with his girlfriend, and two adopted children Lisa and Michael. Joel and his girlfriend were under the influence of cocaine, he beat his daughter Lisa and his son was found tied up to a playpen soaked in his own urine. His girlfriend opened the door for the authorities with a black eye and bruises the next day, and Lisa passed away the next day. Till this day Joel claims that he is innocent and claims that he was possessed and that he didn’t commit those crimes.

Lastly, the House of Death is famously known to be the home of Mark Twain. His spirit has been seen in a white suit descending the staircase, even the tour guide mentioned how once she had a medium on her tour and the medium sensed a man in a white suit even before the guide started to explain the story. Mark Twain never died in the building but legend says he had unfinished business in there.

I have attached my essay here, a lot of my information is already repeated but I talked a little bit more about the whole process in general. And the poem I wrote for this project is here.