Mark Twain House & Museum Offering Friday Night

‘Graveyard Shift’ Ghost Tours

HARTFORD — I became conscious that my chamber was invaded — that I was not alone. I heard sighs and breathings about my bed, and mysterious whisperings. Three little spheres of soft phosphorescent light appeared on the ceiling directly over my head, clung and glowed there a moment, and then dropped — two of them upon my face and one upon the pillow. They spattered, liquidly, and felt warm. Intuition told me they had turned to gouts of blood as they fell — I needed no light to satisfy myself of that.­

—Mark Twain, “A Ghost Story”

 For years, staff and guests have experienced eerie phenomena in The Mark Twain House: children’s voices, fleeting figures, a woman in white, a whiff of cigar smoke, odd noises and flickering lights.

After recent paranormal probes, including one recently conducted by investigators from the Syfy Channel’s famed Ghost Hunters series, The Mark Twain House & Museum is opening its doors during the month of October for special “Graveyard Shift” nighttime tours.

Guides will relate haunted histories of the Clemens family and of the Victorian spiritualism so popular in Mark Twain’s Nook Farm neighborhoods, combined with ghostly details from eyewitness accounts of chilling encounters with the unexplained.

Tours conclude with a telling of Mark Twain’s favorite ghost story in the mysterious mansion’s little-visited basement, normally off limits to visitors.

Graveyard Shift tours will be held on four Fridays, October 9, 16, 23 and 30. They will take place at 6, 6:45, 7:30 and 8:15 pm.

The cost is $17 for adults and seniors, $15 for members, and $13 for children 10 to 16. The harrowing tour is not recommended for children under age 10. Tickets may be ordered by calling 860-280-3154.

The Mark Twain House & Museum has restored the author’s Hartford home, where the author and his family lived from 1874 to 1891. Twain wrote his most important works there, including Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.  

The house and museum at 351 Farmington Avenue. For more information, call 860-247-0998 or visit MarkTwainHouse.org.