Haunted Greenwich Village: Ghost Stories Behind the Brownstones
I first heard the story of Spindrift on a paranormal-themed podcast. An actress named Jan Bryant Bartell wrote about strange phenomena in her Greenwich Village apartment. Her story had a dark ending.
While building my Chelsea Waterfront / Meatpacking / Village tour, I learned that the Spindrift house was also the site of an infamous murder I remembered from the news decades later. The address was 14 West 10th Street, an apartment building now known as the House of Death.
I’d been within a baseball’s throw of it a hundred times without ever knowing. When I finally walked down the quiet block of West 10th Street, I found an unassuming façade with a plaque noting that Mark Twain once lived here.
Most people, even long time residents, will walk by a building without ever knowing how many stories hide behind the façade. Even when there’s a historical marker, few know what really happened inside. And for the ones without any marker at all, their layers of folklore, tragedy, and quiet infamy can remain completely invisible.
The House of Death at 14 West 10th Street – Mark Twain’s Haunted Home
You wouldn’t know it by looking at the outside, but it’s often called the most haunted house in New York City.
The house’s supernatural history goes back to around the year 1900 when Mark Twain lived here briefly. He claimed to have witnessed a piece of kindling rise on its own from a fireplace, and even shot at it in alarm. He never found the “rat” that must have been stealing the wood, but ever skeptical, he wrote off the encounter.
Decades later other residents claimed to encounter Twain himself standing at the foot of their staircase. But that encounter paled in comparison to those experienced by Bartell when she and her husband moved into a top floor apartment in the 1950’s.
Bartell detailed her experiences in a memoir, “Spindrift: Spray from a Psychic Sea”(1974), one of the most famous Greenwich Village ghost stories. In it she reported strange events including footsteps following her, foul odors appearing suddenly, cold spots, objects moving without cause, brushes with unseen figures, and eerie visions that left her physically drained. She described a heavy, oppressive presence in the house that she came to believe was an evil entity possessing the building.
As if to validate Bartell’s impression of evil, in 1987, criminal defense attorney Joel Steinberg brutally beat his six-year-old, illegally adopted daughter, Lisa, inside the family’s basement apartment, leaving her unconscious; she later died from her injuries. The crime stunned New York City, both for its brutality and because it took place in this seemingly ordinary Greenwich Village townhouse.
Some claim as many as twenty-two spirits linger here, although reports seemed to have died down since the Lisa Steinberg tragedy. Perhaps whatever was possessing the building has moved on? Or moved elsewhere?
The Shadow and the Gay Street Phantom – A Pulp Writer’s Ghost
A few blocks south, Gay Street bends between Waverly Place and Christopher Street. Barely half a block long, it’s the kind of place that feels more like a movie set than a street in the middle of a busy urban neighborhood. 12 Gay Street stands quietly in the middle of the short block. Like many in this neighborhood, it’s rumored to have doubled as a speakeasy during Prohibition, its basement hiding narrow tunnels that led who-knows-where beneath the street.
Between 1931 and the early 1940s, the writer Walter B. Gibson lived and worked here. Gibson was a professional ghostwriter for illusionists and a self-taught expert in the psychology of deception. He counted Harry Houdini as a friend and wrote manuals on stagecraft and psychic phenomena.
Under the pen name Maxwell Grant, Gibson created The Shadow, a pulp hero and main character of an eponymous radio show that opened every episode with the question, “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?” He wrote more than 280 Shadow novels, blending detective fiction with the misdirection of stage magic and the mysticism he studied.
The Shadow character’s true identity was Lamont Cranston, a wealthy man who had mastered “the power to cloud men’s minds.” This idea went on to shape the modern trope of the masked avenger with a hidden alter ego, influencing heroes like Batman and The Green Hornet.
Gibson sometimes joked that he wasn’t alone during long nights of writing. He claimed to sense a presence standing by his desk when no one else was home, and once quipped that the Shadow himself had stepped out of the pages. Over the years, that comment took on a life of its own. Some writers suggested that Gibson’s obsessive focus had “manifested” his creation, a notion tied to the Tibetan concept of the tulpa, a thought-form made real through belief and concentration.
After Gibson moved out, later residents began reporting strange happenings: the sound of footsteps on empty stairs, sudden cold drafts, and the outline of a tall, dark figure. This haunting has since been referred to as the Gay Street Phantom, a shadow left behind by a storyteller who may have literally brought his creation to life.
One If By Land, Two If By Sea – New York’s Most Romantic Haunted Restaurant
In the middle of nearby Barrow Street stands a Federal-style carriage house built in the 1830s that’s now home to One If By Land, Two If By Sea, a candle-lit restaurant, known as the city’s most romantic haunted dining room.
A carriage house was basically the 19th-century version of a garage: horses and carriages below, quarters for the coachman above. Many of these buildings were later converted into private homes or restaurants, and this one became one of the most famous. Local lore ties it to Aaron Burr, the former Vice President best remembered for killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel. Some say this was once part of Burr’s property, though no evidence supports that.
Patrons and staff have long reported strange happenings: glasses sliding off shelves, flickering lights, and objects shifting on their own. Bartenders mention drafts that rise from nowhere, and late-night workers describe the unnerving sense of being watched. Guests sometimes claim to hear soft piano music from the empty dining room, as if someone is still rehearsing.
Among the supposed spirits are Aaron Burr and his daughter, Theodosia. Her story is one of America’s enduring maritime mysteries. In 1813, while sailing from South Carolina to New York, Theodosia’s ship vanished without a trace. Most historians believe it sank in a violent winter gale, though folklore says she was captured by pirates and died on shore. Sightings of her ghost were later reported along the Carolina coast, and when a portrait resembling her turned up in North Carolina years later, the legend deepened.
At One If By Land, some diners say they’ve seen a woman’s figure drifting through the main room or seated quietly at a corner table, vanishing when approached. Whether it’s Theodosia or some other ghost entirely, no one can say. Neither she nor her father ever lived here but the story endures, proof that a legend doesn’t need to be true to leave its mark.
Discover the Ghosts of Greenwich Village on Foot
Greenwich Village has been reinvented many times, from Lenape, and then colonial Dutch farmland, to Bohemian literary haunt, to luxury zip code, but the layers never really disappear. The stories at the House of Death, 12 Gay Street, and One If By Land have endured because they reveal the strange overlap between imagination and the ordinary city around us. I can’t say whether any of these ghosts are real, but once you know their stories, the buildings themselves never look the same. If you’d like to experience these haunted Greenwich Village stories in person, join me on the tour, a small-group walk through the quiet streets where history and hauntings share the same address.
