S1 – 9: I Was More Dead Than Alive

I slept profoundly, but how long I do not know. All at once I found myself awake and filled with a shuddering expectancy. All was still all but my own heart. I could hear it beat Presently. The bedclothes began to slip away, slowly toward the foot of the bed, as if someone were pulling them. I could not stir, I could not speak. Still, the blanket slipped deliberately away till my breast was uncovered. Then with a great effort I

seized them and drew them over my head. I waited, listened, waited once more, that steady poll began, and once more I lay torpid a century of dragging seconds till my breast was naked again. At last, I roused my energies and snatched the covers back to their place, and held them with a strong grip. I waited by and by, I felt a faint tug, and took a fresh grip. The tug strengthened to a steady strain. It grew stronger and stronger. My hold parted, and for the third time,

the blanket slid away. I groaned. An answering groan came from the foot of the bed. Beaded drops of sweat stood upon my forehead. I was more dead than alive. Presently I heard a heavy footstep in my room, the step of an elephant. It seemed to me it was not like anything human, but it was moving from me.

There was relief in that I heard. It approached the door, pass out without moving bolt or lock, and wander away among the dismal corridors, straining the floors and joyce till they creaked again as it passed, and then silence reigned once more. This is an excerpt from a short story written by one Mark Twain or Samuel Clemens. The story is aptly named a ghost story, and I won't spoil it for you, but as many Mark Twain stories go, there is a very humorous whist to this one in

the end. Yet, while Mark Twain treated spiritualism with his usual cynicism and wit, when his own personal losses became unbearable, he like many others of the time, dabbled and spiritualism out of grief and desperation. That grief and desperation is said to still hang over a home he considered to be the happiest of any he had, until tragedy prevented him from ever returning in life anyway. I'm Amy Brunei, and this is haunted road of all the beautiful towns.

It has been my fortune to see. This is the chief. You do not know what beauty is if you have not been here. This was a quote by Mark Twain after he was introduced to Hartford, Connecticut by his publisher in the eighteen sixties. Samuel and Olivia Clemens worked with architect Edward Tuckerman Potter to design their dream home there,

with construction beginning in eighteen seventy three. The family moved in on September nineteen seventy four, while much work still remained, construction delays and the ever increasing costs of building their dream home frustrated Sam. The house is eleven thousand, five hundred square feet and boasts twenty five rooms over three floors.

It cost forty to forty five thousand dollars to build, but after renovations in eighteen eighty one, the homes total cost was seventy thousand dollars, almost one point nine million dollars in today's market. The art of this home is incredible. In addition to the team of artists Clemens brought into the home, the Tiffany and Company interior design firm was brought in. The styles reflect cultures from around the world. Clemens biographer Justin Kaplan has called it part steamboat, part

medieval fortress, and part cuckoo clock. The focal point of the master bedroom is the couple's elaborately carved bed, which they purchased in eighteen seventy eight in Venice, which Sam brought with him wherever he went. It's even rumored he died in that bed in nineteen They had some very notable neighbors like Harriet Beecher Stowe Hartford had become a

destination for successful figures of this ilk. Sam was known for his hosting and some of his guests included George Washington, Cable and Edwin Booth, the older brother of John Wilkes. The billiard room was Sam's office and favorite space, and it was reserved for men's cigars, alcohol, cursing, and the housekeepers. The pool table that is currently in the room was

a gift from a friend in nineteen o four. In that room, he also worked on many of his most notable books, including the Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Life on the Mississippi. In the Clemens family moved to Europe due to financial issues. They would never live in the Hartford home again, where the family enjoyed what was described as the happiest and most productive years. They moved to Europe,

where the cost of living was more accessible. Meanwhile, Clemens tried to make up these losses by embarking on a lecture tour through the continent, but it wasn't enough to get them back home. The Hartford house was rented out. He returned to the much loved family home once in As soon as I entered the door, I was seized with a furious desire to have us all in this

house again and right away. In the midst of the family's financial struggles and the lecture tour in Europe, Sam held out hope that the family would soon reunite in England. Daughters Jean and Susie were staying with friends in Hartford and sent a message across the pond to their parents and sister Clara. Susie had fallen ill with a fever. The trip was postponed, but there was much hope that

Susie would recover, albeit after a lengthy period. With this news, Olivia and Clara returned to the US, while Sam stayed to work on a book and find better housing for the family's return to England. Three days later, on August eighteen, alone in their rented house in Guildford, Sam received another telegram from the States. Susie was dead. Susie had been staying with friends in Hartford, but spent time in the

family home where she could sing and play piano. A fever came on, but Susie held out hope that a spiritual healer, not a doctor, which your her ailment. She was eventually overruled and a doctor was called in She was suffering from spinal meningitis, and the next two weeks were full of escalating delirium. Like a ghost, she wandered through the house of her childhood. She found a gown of livies hanging in a closet, and, believing it was her mother and that she had died, kissed it and cried.

As the infection made its way through her body, it took her sight and then her wakefulness. Susie was in a coma before she died at twenty four years old. Sam was across the ocean and devastated. Her mother and sister Clara were on a boat making the crossing, and they didn't know that Susie had passed when they landed. Letters from Sam awaited. He bore much guilt for her death. He wrote to his wife the day after Susie's death August nineteen eight. She died in our own house, not

in another's. Died where every little thing was familiar and beloved. Died where she had spent all her life until Mike Primes made her a popper and an exile. How good it is that she got home again. After her death, the Clemons family was too heartbroken to continue living in the home, it marked the end of an era. In nineteen o three, the Clemons sold the home to Richard Bissell and his family, who occupied the home until nineteen seventeen.

Between nineteen seventeen and nineteen twenty two, the Kingswood School for Boys rented the home. After the school was done, the home was purchased by a developer with an apartment complex in mind. Originally, they wanted to tear down the home and replace it with set apartment complex, but thanks to significant public outcry, they kept the structure and refitted the inside for their purposes. There were eleven apartments, and all with the basement serving as a large dining hall.

Each apartment had a fireplace and kitchenett. In nineteen twenty nine, the home was threatened with demolition, but was saved by Arriet Beecher Stowe's grand niece, Katherine Seymour Day. That year, the Friends of Hartford, with Katherine Seymour Day at the Helm, purchased the Clemens home with the purpose of saving and restoring Mark Quayne's house. From nineteen thirty until nineteen fifty six, the organization rented out the first floor to the Mark

Twayne Branch of the Hartford Public Library. The residential spaces of the home are rented out as apartments throughout the nineteen sixties. Finally, formal restoration of the house began in nineteen sixty three, the same year the Mark Twain House was designated a National Historic Landmark. Everything was completed in time for the one hundred year anniversary of the home's

construction in nineteen seventy four. The museum opened in two thousand three, and big renovations took place in the following year. Now as far back as the nineteen sixties. In nineteen seventies, there have been reports of ghostly happenings at the Mark Quayin House. But who could possibly still be roaming those old halls and why? There is rumor of at least one death in the home when it was divided into apartments. Supposedly someone died in a bathtub in one of the units,

but we were unable to verify this. Also, Mark Twain's bed that he supposedly died in is very much in the home and on display. In my experience, there are certain claims of apparitions that seem to happen over and over again. Probably one of the most commonly reported specters is a woman in white. However, this could actually be a location for the spirit of a woman in white

is actually justified. Over the years, there have been reports of employees and visitors seeing the apparition of a young woman in a long white dress roaming the halls, much like Susie actually did in her final days. Of course, Mark Twain himself is believed to linger in spirit form in the much beloved office from where he worked and played. The billiard room on the top floor is considered one of the most haunted where Twain smoked cigars, and to this day some aim they can smell the smoke and

the fire alarm will randomly go off. Apparently, Clemmons had a twenty to forty cigar a day habit. The third spirit is attributed to the family's long term butler, George Griffin. Griffin was born into slavery in Maryland, probably around the middle of the nineteenth century. After the Emancipation Proclamation, he acted as a body servant for a Union general during the Civil War. According to an unpublished manuscript of Clemens, his wife, Mary, was a dressmaker. They had one daughter together.

According to sources, Griffin was a deacon in the Methodist Episcopal Church, active political leader and family man. Clemens wrote quite highly of his butler of seventeen years, and it seems like he was more family than employee. George was an accident, he said, he came to wash some windows and remained for half a generation. He was a Maryland slave by birth. The proclamation set him free, and as a young fellow he saw his fair share of the

Civil War as body servant to General Devon's. He was handsome, well built, shrewd, wise, polite, always good natured, cheerful to gaiety, honest, religious, a cautious truth speaker, devoted friend to the family, champion of its interests, a sort of idol to the children, and a trial to Mrs Clements. Not in always button several. There was nothing commonplace about George. He had a remarkable good head. His promise was good, his note was good. He could be trusted to any extent with money or

other valuables. He had the respect and I may say the warm, friendly regard of every visiting intimate of our house. To me, that sounds like someone anyone would be lucky to have around. Although George died elsewhere he was closely linked to the family. Even after buying a home in the city, he maintained a room in the family home. So obviously, so much emotion in history tied in the

Market Queen House in Hartford, Connecticut. I have investigated and visited a few times and had some pretty crazy experiences in the process. Up next, we'll talk to Mallory Howard, one of the curators of the museum. She's got some amazing history to fill us in on and some pretty great ghost stories as well. So right now I am joined by Mallory Howard, who is the assistant curator at the Mark Twain House and Museum. I appreciate you taking a time to chat with me today, Mallory, Oh, no problem,

I'm excited to be here. One thing that has always stood out to me about the Mark Twain House, having been there quite a few times, is just how much you all seem to kind of embrace it's haunted history or its potential ghosts. How do you feel about that? Were you ready for that when you joined the team. I actually joined at a really pivotal time, I think

for embracing that aspect of our history. Prior to that, I think over the years, it was kind of kept quiet, and you know, people would have experiences and they would maybe talk to each other a little bit about it, but other than that, they really weren't supposed to chat with visitors or make it known. But when I came on board, that started to change where we really wanted to be more vocal about what people are experiencing and the history of the house and the history of Twain.

And I think it really evolved at the perfect time. You know, it's funny years ago. Actually, I think Adam and I did. I think it was either a conference call or a video call before COVID even it was with the Mark Twain House, and you all had kind of assembled a few other historic locations, and I feel like you all were just kind of trying to share the wealth and kind of say, you know, hey, this

has been really good for us. Obviously not exploiting or making up ghosts, but if you happen to be a historic location that is haunted, kind of being able to respectfully use that to your advantage. And I know that at the time you were kind of relaying that you had a really successful I think it's either like a ghost tour, ghost walk at night. That brought in a lot of extra revenue, which I think is huge for these historic spots, especially right now. Oh yes, absolutely. You know,

we weren't the first. Other places had done it before, and we started to look at them to get an idea of how we wanted to go about it, and then our ghost cours really took off. And even at a lot of museum conferences there are a lot of panels discussing whether ghost tours are a good idea, should you be doing it, what benefit do you have from doing it? And there's still mixed opinions. Some places really don't believe that they should be doing that sort of thing.

In other places that like us, have embraced it, and I for one especially, I'm so glad we're doing that

because it brings us an entirely new audience. You know, people come to the Mark Twain how for our ghost stories that have never visited before and had no interest in visiting, and so when they come and take a tour with us, you know, not only are we talking about the experiences that staff and visitors have had over the years, we're talking about, you know, the episodes of ghost hunters and what evidence was captured, but also the history of Mark Twain and the house and how he

felt about spiritualism and how he used ghost stories in his literature. So it's more than just oh, come and learn about hauntings. We've really connected it to being historical as well. I think that's huge, and I think it's really a big deal too for like a lot of young people. You know. I know that my father when I was a child definitely used my interest in the supernatural to take me to historic places under the guise

of them being haunted. But then at the same time I was learning so much about history, and so I could definitely see teenagers not maybe being as interested in casual daytime tour as you know, turning out the lights at night and walking around the Mark Twain House and learning about everything you just said, which I think that's really cool. I think it's a great opportunity. Yes, we've had people before that their first visit has been on a ghost tour and they're coming just to hear spooky

stories and see if they can experience anything. And we've had many people over the years come up to us after those tours and say that was fascinating. I'm definitely coming back for a daytime tour. I want to learn more about Mark Twain and his family and the house, and so ghost tours has been a way to get people hooked and then they become, you know, lifelong contributors or members or fans of the house. And so we've really expanded our base that way. I love that, and

that's really the premise for this podcast. You know, we always start the first half taking a really deep dive into the history of a place, and then we talk about the ghosts. So who do you think is haunting the Mark Twain House. I'm sure there's probably a few prospects. Yes. So the to that I think are doing the majority of it would be Susie Clemmens, who is Twain's oldest daughter who died at twenty four of spinal meningitis in the house, as well as George Griffin, who was their

African American butler. He was a former enslaved person that made his way up north after the Civil War. He was eventually hired as the family's butler and he worked here all the years the family lived in the house. I would say those two are probably the biggest people that we think are still around but there are also some things that could be attributed to Sam Clemens or Mark Twain himself. Right, And I mean, obviously he didn't die in the home, but the house seemed like it

was incredibly special to him and the family. Yes, the house in Hartford was the longest he lived anywhere. It was definitely the happiest and most productive years of his life. And he even went on to say he could never enter the house unmoved, that's how much it meant him. So I think truly if he was going to come back and have the ability to the Hartford houses where he would go. Right, that makes sense. No, what kind of activity are people experiencing in the home? What would

you say is the most common paranormal activity reported? I would say probably the most common activity would be cigar smoke is one of them, for sure. Um. I actually don't get in the house as much as I used to, but I had to take a few tours recently and unprompted, a woman said to me, did anyone else smells cigar smoke in the billiard room? And I said that you've

hit the nail on the head. I was like, we get that all the time, that people will smell this phantom cigar smoke only in the billiard room, and not everyone smells it. And we've even had the fire alarm go off in there and the fire department show up and run upstairs and nothing's going on. But we've had firefighter smelling cigar smoke and room in the middle of the night. So that is definitely one of the biggest claim. The other I would say it's kind of funny because

it seems like they're almost pranks. It's a lot of people saying that they feel like a child is tugging on their shirt or their jacket, their clothing. We've had jewelry fall off on their own only in the library specifically, you know, watches, bracelets that just come off and fall to the floor. And we've also had a sighting of what we call the woman in White several times throughout the house, which we believe to be Susie. So there's

a lot of different things. Footsteps, muttering or murmuring when no one else is in the house, So a very wide variety of things happening. Have you ever had any guests become so frightened that they've left, Yes, we've had that happen a few times, one of which was a woman who actually was heading up to the third floor landing of the house and felt a presence push her up against the wall, and she even started speaking differently, her voice tone changed. Her daughter was so freaked out

by it they ended up leaving the tour. We've also had several people who have said that they get extreme neck pain or stiffness and that they've had to leave the house during tours because of that, and as soon as they walk out the door, the pain dissipates. Would that have been like a symptom that his daughter would have experienced maybe yes, because of her spinal meningitis, that stiffness,

that neck pain would have been a symptom. Okay, that experience he's saying with like the pushing, that seems really kind of out of character. I'm assuming things like that don't happen very often. Yeah, that's one of the more unusual ones. There was also an incident where a security guard was closing up for the night and had a tray, a metal tray thrown at him and it hit a pipe over his head. So those three things things, you know, the woman being pushed against the wall, the neck pain,

and the trade being thrown are unusual for us. Most of the things that happen are sort of playful, like I said, pranks things like that, but very rarely are they dangerous or mean or anything like that. Yeah, so what would you say, are things that you do around the house that might make activity kind of spike? LETNA say, there hasn't seemed to be too much of a pattern for that. It's really seemed sporadic and random as far

as when things happen. They'll be periods where there'll be several tours in one week where people have experiences with cigar smoke or jewelry falling off or tugging, and then we'll go sometimes weeks months at a time with nothing, no reports. So there doesn't seem to be a real pattern of when the activity happens to spike and when it doesn't. How have things been during like the shutdowns and everything? I am assuming that you are posed for

a period of time. Did anything seem to respond to that, Not that I know of, especially because there weren't people going through the house. I don't know if that makes a difference or not. But there's been a couple of my colleagues who have gone through the house who have had a couple of things happened to them, you know, noises, muttering, known for lights to go on and off. Not sure

exactly what causes that. We had one security guard who went into vacuum and he turned for a second to turn the light off, and when he turned back, the vacuum cord was completely tangled and crazy not and he's like, there's no way that could have happened with my back turned for a second. So things still happened, but it seems that it slowed down once the house is really

shut down and no one was in there. Right. It's funny because some of the places that you know, we've investigated, when people came back, the activity almost started ramping up, almost like these spirits were lonely or they weren't confused. Yes, that's what's so weird, is you know, like I said, just a couple of weeks ago, I had to pitch in with tours and that woman, unprompted, said, oh, I did anyone else smell that. I smelled cigar smoke in the billiard room, and I thought, wow, I haven't been

in the house in a while. But it's just all of a sudden, it's the claim started coming back again. That's a really common report, the cigar smoke thing, and I've tried to debunk it so many times in other locations, and like sometimes people speculated it's like completely just seeped into the wood over so many years of smoking in there.

But like at some point it's so overwhelming it can't just be coming from the wood, because I have smelled it a few times in locations and I'm like, there's no way this is just coming from old wood, right, And especially the time we had the smoke alarm go off in the middle of the night enough to trigger it where the fire department had to come and respond to it, and then they all smelled that snat, So it just seems like it couldn't have just been from

sitting around. Yeah, exactly. Are all the artifacts in the building Are those original to the family or those things brought in from elsewhere? So it's a mixture. We have some objects and artifacts in the house that are original to the Clemens and the Langdon family, which is Olivia's family, and then the rest would be pieces from the Victorian period that they didn't necessarily own. What type of things that they would have purchased to decorate the house with.

And then do you think that any of those pieces might have something to do with activity happening in the house. Well, I think two of the pieces we're really important to him, one of which was the billiard table. It's the last one he owned before he died, so it wasn't the one originally that was in the Hartford house when he was living here, but is one that he owned. He loved to play billiards. We have photographs of him sticking kittens into the pockets of the billiard table when he's older, uh,

and he it's just something he really enjoyed doing. And the other piece would be the Angel bed. We call it in the bedroom for Sam and Livy, and it's the one they used when they were living at Hartford. He brought it with him when he moved to his last home and running Connecticut, and that piece is very special to them. The girls, their daughters would sleep in it when they weren't feeling well or they had bad dreams. We have photographs of him in that bed, so I

think that's a really meaningful piece as well. Is that the bed that they purchased in Venice, because I think I've read that he may have even passed away in that bed. Yes, that is the bed that they purchased in Venice. There's debate about whether that was the bed he slept in another one when he was in Running, Connecticut, so we were never able to confirm which bed is the one he died in. But it's definitely a possibility. Okay,

that's good to know now. It sounds like the death of Susie seemed very impactful for them, like it seemed very traumatic. I know they couldn't be there, and I know you said that you see this woman in white that people assume as Susie, and I feel like every good haunted location needs a woman in white. Is there any other activity that you've had surrounding her that's identifiable or that you think is specifically being caused by her ghost.

I think it's hard to tell because of the sort of childlike pranks I mentioned, with the tugging on the outfits and the jewelry falling off. So I'm not sure if Susie is a part of that, or maybe it's just her sisters, but I think definitely the woman in white is the one that is associated with her, especially because when she had spinal meningitis, she was known to

wander around the house sort of deliriously. She would even sing songs like the trolley Cars go up the Street from Mark Twain's daughter, and it just seemed like it fits so well that she would be coming back and sort of wandering around the house still espec actually, since both her parents and one of her sisters were not able to be with her during this illness and her death. Now, how involved was the Clemens family was spiritualism? Is that

a belief system that they subscribed to. It's interesting because Mark Twain kind of went back and forth about that. Earlier in his career. He actually worked for a newspaper in San Francisco and his job was to attend seances and try to debunk the spiritualists and prove that they were frauds and showcase how they did it. And most of them he was able to figure out. There are a couple that he just couldn't seem to prove how they did it. But for the most part during that

time period, he really was not a believer. But once tragedy really started to hit close to home, his tunes started to change a little bit. He had his youngest brother died in a accident on the Mississippi River and that really started to haunt him in a way and change his thought on it. And then, of course, and Susie died, Sam and his wife Olivia decided that they

wanted to try to reach out and contact her. So when they were in London a few years after she died, they actually went to a medium and hoped that the medium could reach out to Susie. They brought one of her brooches, hoping that that would help the connection, and

they sort of got a mixed bag. Sam wasn't really happy with the results of it, but it just shows that throughout his life he really went back and forth as to whether to believe or not, and I think he really wanted to, especially when he faced tragedy in his own life, right. I mean, I think that a lot of people struggled with that during that time period because it was so you know it spiritualism was completely fraught with fraud. But then there were you know, some

people who kind of um still left people stumped. So it's hard to tell, you know, who was legit and who was just taking advantage. Well, That's interesting because it makes me wonder. You know, when people go in and they're investigating, then the spirits there could be very familiar with what it is that they are trying to do. Have you guys ever done any seances in the house. No, not trying to reach out to anyone in the Clemens family. You know, We've had a one or two of private ones,

but nothing directly for the family. Although we did have Lorraine Warren visit a couple of times, and she believed that she was feeling sort of Susie spirit. She said that she felt ill, felt that there was sadness, that sort of thing, right, that would make sense Like I was saying before, that just sounded like it was just such a tragedy to the family and the fact that she was you know, I think she was on her own right. They weren't even with her. Yeah, it was

very interesting how it went about her family. Twain and his wife Livy, as well as their middle daughter Clara.

We're on a worldwide lecture tour for him to pay off some of his debt that he incurred, and Susie and the youngest daughter, Jean, were staying with family and Elmira and we're getting ready to meet the rest of the family in England, where they decided to stop in Hartford to visit some old neighbors and friends, and that's when Susie started to get sick and they decided to bring her into the house, which was being rented at

the time, thinking the surroundings would comfort her. And the family got the news in England that she was sick, and Olivia and Clara immediately headed back here to meet with her, and unfortunately they were about halfway across the ocean when Sam got a telegram saying that Susie was peacefully released today and his heart absolutely broke knowing that his wife and daughter were going to be greeted with the news, and he was never able to say goodbye.

He didn't attend her funeral, and this really was just a huge blow to him. Yeah, yeah, it seems that way. Well, the history of the home is fascinating and the ghosts are as well. And how can people find out more? What do you all have coming up, especially for fall? So if you are interested in any of our ghost tours, the best way would be to go to our website which is www dot Mark Twain House dot Org and that would have all the information about when we're having

our ghost tours. They're called Braveyard Shift tours, and obviously they ramp up a lot in September and October. Who knows what will happen with COVID unfortunately, but right now we're planning on moving forward with them. Okay, perfect, Well, I'm sure that people will be reaching out and I really do appreciate you taking the time to chat with me today. I love hearing the ghost stories. I love visiting the Mark Twain House. I can't wait to get back.

Last time I was there, I think I lived in California, and now I'm a new Englander, so there's no reason why I can't just pop over. Yeah, you have to come and see what's been happening since the last time you were a year. Yeah for are well, Thank you so much, Marie. I appreciate it. The Mark Twain House isn't some terrifying dark place, but it stands as not only an imperative piece of history, but also a perfect example of how some haunts are born not by tragedy

and darkness, but by love, nostalgia, and grief. I believe that the museum's work and bringing the home back to its original glory and keeping it aligned with the vision Clemens and his family had for it so long ago. Has very much acted as a beacon for him and anyone who was closely associated with the home. I also think there are many years of history left to research, and that some of those ghosts may be more modern

or left from some of the homes other incarnations. In the meantime, please go visit and take a moment to sit and softly ponder how dear the home was to the Clemmons family, and take a deep breath. Maybe you'll catch a hint of cigar smoke. I'm Amy Bruney, and this was Haunted Road. M Haunted Road is a production of I Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Mankey. The podcast is written and hosted by Amy Bruney. Executive

producers include Aaron Mankey, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. The show is produced by rema Ill Kali and Trevor Young. Taylor Haggerdorn is the show's researcher. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.