Thursday, November 8, 2012

Terror on Tenth Street

Terror on 10th Street

"Just weeks after Jan Bryant Bartell moved in to the huge old mansion at 14 W. 10th St., off Fifth Avenue, in 1957, she felt a “monstrous moving shadow that loomed up behind” her. She turned and saw nothing there, but couldn’t shake the feeling that she was not alone, and maybe never would be, in the already aging house with fretted balustrades and Civil War-era glass in the windows.

The incident took several minutes, and several cigarettes, cups of tea and nips of brandy to shake off. But it wouldn’t be the last in the seven-year stretch of psychological and sometimes physical torment Bartell suffered from what she claimed were the icy hands of the house’s former inhabitants, reaching out from the afterlife to grab her."


The red building in the center is 14 West 10th Street, where Mark Twain lived from 1900 to 1901. 



The view of the street.



TheVillager

TheNewYorkTimes

Jan Bartell

No comments: