Mark Twain House

Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, and his wife Olivia built their Hartford home on the edge of the Nook Farm neighbourhood, a community of writers and reformers. Designed by the New York architect Edward Tuckerman Potter and completed in 1874, the Victorian Gothic mansion was paid for largely from Olivia’s inheritance. The family lived there until 1891, and Twain wrote several of his best-loved books in its upstairs billiard room, including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Life on the Mississippi. A redecoration in 1881 brought in Louis Comfort Tiffany’s firm.

Money troubles pushed the family to Europe in 1891, and the house never again felt like home. In August 1896, while her parents were abroad, their eldest daughter Susy died of spinal meningitis in the house at the age of twenty-four. Twain was far away on a lecture tour and could not return in time. The family sold the house in 1903, and over the following decades it was a school, apartments and a branch library before the non-profit Mark Twain Memorial rescued it in 1929. After a long restoration it opened as a museum in 1974 and is a National Historic Landmark.

The ghost stories are modest and mostly come from people who work there. Staff and guides have long told of footsteps, doors closing when no one is nearby, the sense of being watched, and the odd smell of cigar smoke in the billiard room where Twain liked to smoke and write. The figure most often named is Susy, a young woman in white. In 2009 the television team of Ghost Hunters spent a night in the house and said they saw a young woman in a long white dress, a sighting they linked to Susy; the episode aired that December.

The museum treats the subject with a light touch and a lot of context. Its seasonal evening tours explore Gilded Age Spiritualism, séances and mourning customs, and Twain’s own attitude: early in his career he attended séances in San Francisco, apparently to expose fraudulent mediums, while after Susy’s death the grieving family tried a séance of their own, hoping to reach her, without result. A story of a silver tray flying across the basement in 1967 circulates online but rests on a single blog and should be treated as unverified.

Staff and visitors describe disembodied footsteps and door sounds, the smell of cigar smoke, a feeling of presence, and a young woman in white thought to be Susy Clemens.

The billiard room and third floor (Twain’s writing room), the upper bedrooms associated with Susy, and the hallways and staircase, mainly during quiet times or evening tours.

The house appeared in a 2009 Ghost Hunters episode and is a regular stop in Connecticut ghost-tour and Halloween coverage. The museum’s October tours turn the legends into a lesson in Gilded Age Spiritualism and mourning.