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Journalism of Courage
Ghosts were companions of Mark Twain throughout his life. They were something he encountered way back when he was a newspaper reporter in Nevada,writing of spectres starting up from behind tomb-stones,and you weaken accordinglythe cold chills creep over youour hair stands on endyou reverse your front,and with all possible alacrity,you change your base.
Later,they were the subject of one short piece of writing,A Ghost Story,in which three little spheres of soft phosphorescent light appeared on the ceiling directly over my head,clung and glowered there a moment and then dropped.
Even Huck and Tom visit a haunted house,sensing something weird and grisly about the dead silence in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. So it may not be a stretch to imagine spirits still roaming the large,fanciful Victorian in Hartfords West End,where Twain lived for 17 years.
Whispered about for years,the stories have accumulated enough to draw TVs popular Ghost Hunters to town for a full investigation. And the Mark Twain House & Museum is opening its doors this month to point out the spooky doings for a series of special Graveyard Shift night-time tours.
Every day people ask on the tours,Is it haunted? says Rebecca Floyd,manager of visitor services at the Mark Twain House. A number of unexplained stories have accumulated over the years: Lights that had been turned off suddenly turned on. The sound of children giggling when there were no children on a tour. A tug on the shirt of one guide. Lights that dimmed when a certain child was spoken of. Figures darting at the edge of the eyes,in corners and shadows. Loud,jarring noises. The smell of cigar smoke up in the pool room. The sound of footsteps above,in rooms known to be unoccupied. And most spectacularly,a tray flung towards a guard stationed in the basement.
Whole groups would hear unexplained loud noises. And one family taking night-time pictures was astonished to find children seeming to appear in one upstairs window. There had been a death in the home,of the oldest Twain daughter,Susie,at 24.
The Mark Twain House had been contacted over the years by paranormal investigators,but mostly they were turned down. After new management took over,the Smoking Gun Research Agency came up for an all-night investigation that stopped short of saying the place was haunted but concluded it was energetically active.
Then came the most famous amateur investigators. This is gorgeous. He lived in style here, Ghost Hunter Grant Wilson said when opening the front door to the house. Together,Wilson and Jason Hawes began the Atlantic Paranormal Society and got a TV show that started following their activities five years ago.
The ghost hunters spent a week at the Mark Twain House with some after-hours investigations at the Old State House. The men are used to crawling around in spiderweb-infested abandoned crawl spaces. The handsomely restored National Historic Landmark is more to their liking. Im more interested in the history of the place than paranormal activity, Wilson said.
