93. The House of Death
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That's N-O-O-M dot com. You're listening to an Ono Media podcast. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Into the Dark podcast. I am your host, Peyton Moreland, and I am so glad that you are here. If you are watching on YouTube, please turn on notifications. Please follow. Please leave a comment.

Leave a comment. It helps so, so much. And if you are listening on audio and can leave a review, I would appreciate it. Honestly, you guys, I look forward to filming Into the Dark every single week. I am so grateful for every one of you who listens and watches and supports the show. It means more than you will ever know.

Okay, before I jump into this week's 10 seconds, I did want to say for all of my YouTube watchers, I am so sorry that last week's episode was not uploaded on YouTube. My bad.

video file actually corrupted and I lost the entire video. And so if you want to listen to last week's episode, which was a really, really good one, can you please go over to the audio? You can find it there. I'm so sorry. And I genuinely hope this one is on YouTube and everything goes good.

That being said, I have a quick little story. So I was streaming again and you guys, once I get that mouse video, I will upload it, I promise. But a couple of days ago, I was streaming once again and Daisy had been missing for a little bit

And Garrett walked out to go get something. And then all of a sudden I hear Peyton get out here and I go out and Daisy had dug into my sweatshirt that was sitting on the couch and gotten into the pocket and found my lip gloss. Now there's two things that Daisy, well, three things that Daisy likes.

Now, Daisy is not typically a dog who gets into things. Okay, I've never had to worry with her around food. In fact, I'll even put her on the counter. She doesn't go for food. If I'm eating, she doesn't try to snatch my food. She really does not get into things. But one thing that that girl will get into is lip gloss. Okay, my little lip glosses are her favorite.

favorite. She can smell them on me anytime I have one in my pocket and she will go for it. Okay. So she had somehow used her sniffer to find this one that was sitting in my pocket on the couch and she had gotten into it. She has taught herself how to take the lids off of them. And then she not only took the lid off, she ripped the actual top off of the lip gloss and

and ate the entire tube of lip gloss. Like all the lip gloss out of the tube. She licked it out and emptied the tube. Okay, so I'm freaking out. I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm gonna have to pump her stomach. Like, is she gonna die?

So we come back in and we immediately get on the phone with a vet. We tell them what lip gloss it was. He was like, okay, everything is non-toxic in that lip gloss. You should be good. She might, you know, throw up or have a little diarrhea, but honestly, it shouldn't be super harmful. Just pay attention. If she starts doing X, Y, Z, then bring her in. And nothing, nothing happened. She did not have diarrhea or throw up. She just went about her day.

continued on, wasn't lethargic, nothing wrong, just ate an entire tube of lip gloss and continued on with her life. And honestly, that is inspiring to me. And so I want to be more like Daisy. Okay, that is my 10 seconds for this week. And so now let's jump into the episode. Now I do want to give a trigger warning that this episode includes discussions of domestic and child abuse.

So please listen with care. As you know, this is Into the Dark, okay? And there is nothing quite like a good ghost story. It's fun to be scared and to go on spooky tours or visit haunted houses and try to connect with something otherworldly. But behind the excitement of every ghost story is usually a real life tragedy.

Someone who went through something so terrible that they couldn't ever move on even after their death. And that's helpful to keep in mind with today's episode. As creepy and eerie as this story is at times, it has a dark, unforgettable loss at its core. And it's something that can never be made right.

So this story actually centers around 14 West 10th Street in New York City's Greenwich Village. And there at that location, a nearly 200 year old brownstone stands alongside the other historic buildings. And it's four stories tall and covered in big windows. Now the brick structure looks like it could be a charming, brightly lit place,

or it would be, if not for its dark history. So today, this house is actually famously known as New York's House of Death, which really just gives you a sense of its blood-soaked past. The house was built in 1856 by a man named James Borman Johnston.

And he was very, very wealthy. And more importantly, he was a big supporter of the arts. So when he decided to build a large fancy house on West 10th Street, he didn't design it with his family in mind. In fact, he, his wife and his daughters lived somewhere else entirely. This house was intended only for artists to live in.

Basically, if he saw a creative person who he wanted to support, he'd say, "Hey, come live in this house rent-free. You won't have to worry about dealing with landlords or paying your usual bills. Just focus on your work and I will support you as an artist." So all through James's lifetime and for several years after his death, it was actually artists that came in and out of his home.

He designed it to be full of galleries, studios, libraries, and anything else someone might need for inspiration.

And for the next 40 years or so, that's what the house was known for. There weren't a whole lot of other residences with this setup at the time. And the artists of New York City were grateful for this rare opportunity to have some stability while they developed their skills. But on August 9th, 1897, so this is about roughly 35, 40 years after it was built,

disaster struck. It would be the first disaster of many. A man named Fred H. Andrew was living in the house. And in addition to being a good enough artist to stay there, he was also an avid bicycle rider. So one day Fred was riding his bike up and down the street and honestly showing off. He wasn't paying enough attention to where he was going or who else was on the road. And he ended up hitting an eight year old boy.

Now, the good news is that the boy recovered from the accident. He broke his leg, but other than that, there was no serious or permanent damage. Still, Fred got arrested for reckless driving. And this incident, even though it may sound minor, actually ended up marking a bit of a shift.

Things around the house began to change. Almost like now that one of the residents had hurt someone and gotten in trouble for it, the house had bad karma. The news reports from around this time are pretty vague, so I don't have many specifics to share. All I can say is that the people who came to the house, either as residents or visitors, after this accident,

began to get a bad vibe from it. They would sense these eerie feelings or see things in dark corners that they couldn't explain. And rumors began to go around that this house that was made for artists was haunted.

And after all, a lot of people had lived in it over the years. There were constantly artists coming and going, and it made sense that some of them might have left a part of themselves behind. A restless spirit, a psychic wound, or something else that was trapped inside the building. And the more these rumors swirled around, the more this house came to be known as the House of Death.

So this gossip was spreading, but it didn't make the house any less appealing for creative types. Finally, in 1900, one of the house's most famous residents moved in. It was an author named Samuel Clemens, but he's actually better known by the pen name he used, which was Mark Twain.

Now, Mark didn't believe in ghosts. He thought they didn't exist. And he actually thought it was impossible for them to exist. And anyone who did believe in ghosts was just being superstitious.

which is why he wasn't scared to move into this haunted house. And he actually continued to not believe in ghosts even after he moved into the house of death and there reportedly saw spectral activity with his own eyes. See one night in either 1900 or 1901, Mark Twain was in his room and it had a stove in it where he could burn wood for extra heat.

And while Twain was alone with nobody else around, he happened to glance up and see a piece of wood had somehow just levitated. Like literally this piece of wood was hovering in midair, drifting across the room like an invisible ghost had picked it up and was carrying it away from the stove.

Now, according to some reports, Mark Twain refused to believe that this was evidence of supernatural activity. Again, he says it was just a piece of wood that began floating on its own. He claims there had to be some other rational explanation. He figured maybe a rat must have picked up the wood and just somehow was dragging it that high across the room. However,

It's hard to see how that would work. A rat was carrying the stick, but Twain couldn't see the rodent, its feet or its tail. Now, it's understandable that Twain wanted to come up with a rational explanation. I think any of us would if we saw a random piece of wood just floating in a room. But there was nothing rational about what he was seeing. But either way, it scared him enough that he actually grabbed his gun and fired it.

He fired at the wood, hoping that whatever was pulling it, which he thought was somehow a rat would die. And then he'd be able to confirm that his theory was right and that there was a grounded way to explain what he was seeing, except randomly.

when the gun fired, the wood dropped to the ground and a bit of blood sprayed out of it. But nothing else happened. No rat or mouse came running out and it was impossible to say where the blood had come from because there were no signs that there was any injured people or animals around. Still, Twain flat out refused to admit that he'd seen anything paranormal. He spent the rest of his life insisting, I know that happened and

I am saying it happened, but ghosts do not exist. And according to some reports, something very interesting actually happened after Mark Twain's death 10 years later in Connecticut in 1910. A part of Twain remained behind. According to some reports, Mark Twain became a ghost himself and he returned to the house of death to spend his afterlife there.

See, decades after Twain passed in 1930, a pair of residents, a mother and her daughter, were at the house one night when suddenly the mother saw a white haired man sitting in a chair by a window, just looking out the window.

Now, the mother immediately knew who he was. Mark Twain has a very recognizable face. And she also knew that he was dead. Before she could ask him what he was doing there, he turned to her and he announced, "My name is Clements and I have a problem here that I gotta settle." Then without another word, he vanished. Now later on, the daughter claims that when she was alone, she spotted Twain's spirit again this time in a bedroom.

She remembered that last encounter and it helped her realize that she was looking at a ghost and she was terrified. The little girl screamed and the specter vanished. Now this time, it didn't say anything to her. Even though Twain hadn't been aggressive or threatening, the mother and daughter actually decided to move out of the house after this right away and they claim it was because of the ghost of Mark Twain. And now because...

Because he said, I have a problem here, I got to settle, a lot of people assume that Twain had some kind of unfinished business in the house of death. Now, nobody is entirely sure what that unfinished business actually entails. But the point is, even now, in 2024, people claim that Mark Twain haunts this building.

Countless people have claimed to have spotted him on the first floor. He also likes to appear near the staircase as though he's about to head up or down it. And he's not alone. Other sightings have included a woman who always wears a white dress, a little girl, a gray cat. So if the reports are to be believed, pets can become ghosts. And one of them is spending its eternity in the house of death.

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And it's also worth noting that Mark Twain wasn't the only famous resident at 14 West 10th Street. See, in the mid 20th century, the people who owned the House of Death realized that they'd make more money if they turned it into an apartment complex rather than an artist's residence. So they built 10 units and began renting each of them out, charging the full amount of rent that they could.

And even though the property owners weren't actively seeking artists to live there anymore, they still had very nice units in a trendy New York neighborhood. So it was inevitable that rich, famous and accomplished people would find their way to the house of death to live.

And in 1957, someone named Jan Bartel and her husband, Fred, moved into the top floor apartment. Now, Jan was an actress who'd appeared in a number of small plays off Broadway. None of them were big enough to rocket her to fame, but Jan also enjoyed writing poetry and short essays, and that's how she really made a name for herself. She had a fairly successful career as a writer.

And that wasn't all that she had in common with the former resident, Mark Twain. She also didn't believe in ghosts. So when she was looking for a new apartment in a famously haunted house, Jan wasn't too worried at first. She was convinced that there was nothing to be afraid of.

Except then strange things started happening when she moved in. These were things that she couldn't explain away. And they began the moment she set foot in the house for the first time. She hadn't even seen the apartment yet or agreed to rent it. But when Jan walked up the long, narrow staircase to the top floor unit, she felt an odd sensation.

like the carpet was trying to suck her down into the floor, trapping her inside the house forever. Now, although spooked, Jan ignored the sensation at the time, but once she and her husband moved in, there were more incidents. The first night that she and her husband slept in their new home, Jan went to bed in a separate bedroom from Fred. He had terrible nightmares and sometimes screamed in his sleep, so they had separate rooms.

Well, as Jan was trying to fall asleep, she suddenly smelled something terrible, as though something rotten and decomposing had made it into her room. So she got up to open the window and let the room air out, and that's when she saw a bright flash of light. Now, it didn't have any obvious source, and it wasn't coming in through the window, but

It was as though a glowing orb had appeared in her room only to disappear a second later. Now, Jan was so startled by this orb, this flash of light, that she screamed out loud and it woke Fred who rushed in and tried to reassure her that she must have just been having a bad dream. After all, he had plenty of firsthand experience with nightmares and how terrifying they could be.

Fred also tried to explain it away when Jan heard footsteps late at night walking through their apartment long after everyone had gone to sleep. And when the family dog would just growl at empty patches of the wall, even though there was nothing there, Fred explained it away. He said the footsteps had to have been coming from other units. The other renters in the building were maybe pacing and the sound was carrying weirdly. So it sounded to Jan like someone was walking in a room.

And sometimes dogs just growl. That's what Fred said. There was nothing there and there was nothing to worry about. Except the more time went on, the stranger things got. Something was wrong with this apartment. Even other people could tell. On more than one occasion, visitors would comment on how nice it was to see her dog and cat getting along together. And this confused Jan because...

They didn't have a cat. It seemed that multiple guests had seen this gray cat in the house, which had befriended her dog.

Now, one time, Jan bought something and asked to have it delivered to her address. And when the delivery man arrived, he was in a panic, claiming that he'd heard someone follow him up the stairs, but he hadn't been able to see anyone in the stairwell. And another time, Jan's cleaning person quit without a notice after she claimed a voice was talking to her at a time when she was alone in the house. Plus, on several occasions,

rotting food just appeared in their kitchen. This included things like grapes, which Jan had never actually bought. She knew she hadn't just left something out on accident. And how could she leave out grapes if she never actually bought grapes and brought them into the home? It was getting to a point where she and Fred just couldn't deny it anymore. Something very strange was happening in the house of death.

And this was especially difficult for Jan to deal with because remember, she doesn't believe in ghosts. But now she had to acknowledge what was going on. I mean, everyone had talked about it. This house had a reputation and it was time for her to accept that the paranormal might be real.

Jan came to believe in ghosts and she also opened her mind to other ideas too, like reincarnation, astrology, and the idea that maybe she had psychic abilities. So Jan threw herself into solving the mystery and trying to figure out everything she could about the ghosts in her home and what they wanted. But she didn't just do this because she was curious or because she wanted to help the spirits out of the goodness of her heart.

No, Jan was genuinely terrified. She didn't want to live with a bunch of phantoms, and she also wasn't sure if they'd try to hurt her or do something to her eventually, especially because one of the family dogs passed away not long after they moved into the unit, and Jan was never sure if it was natural or something supernatural, but she had to prepare for the worst. So everything she did from that point on

was in an attempt on her part to understand and defeat something that she didn't understand. I mean, like literally this is taking over her life. She went so far as to hire a psychic who promised that he'd be able to help her. And he did a seance and claimed that he connected to all of the ghosts in the house of death. He says there were 22 of them. So this was a major haunting.

Now, according to the sidekick, one of the ghosts actually possessed their body for a brief portion of the ritual. And the spirit claimed that she'd lived during the Civil War era and she was shocked, absolutely shocked, to learn that Abraham Lincoln wasn't alive anymore. And when the ghost heard that Lincoln had been assassinated, she was even more astonished.

Anyway, the psychic gained control of the situation and asked all of the ghosts to move on and leave Jan and her neighbors alone. He even shouted, go and leave these people in peace. And then Jan heard a disembodied female voice answer,

"Never. I will never leave here. They will have to go. This is my home and I will never leave." And sure enough, by the end of the seance, the ghostly activity was still going and there were no signs that any of the spirits had listened and moved along. Now the haunting continued for seven more years and it got bad enough that in 1973, Jan and her husband decided it was time to move out.

Now, in fairness, there were other factors that made them want to leave Greenwich Village. There were more drugs and crime in the neighborhood. And in general, Jan didn't feel safe at home or when walking down the street. She regularly had nightmares about dying and she thought that the house or the spirits inside were to blame. So Jan left and she got a new home in another part of the city.

And to all appearances, she and Fred may have gotten out just in time. Because after they left the house of death, a series of tragedies struck their former neighbors. It started with an elderly renter who was old enough that his death wasn't especially surprising or suspicious. But then not long after he passed at the house of death, his wife went blind and then she died in her sleep.

And then shortly after that, another tenant lost his life in a mugging gone wrong. And then another woman who'd struggled with alcoholism died one night after drinking more than her liver could handle. And then finally, Jan's former landlady was struck by a sudden illness that turned fatal.

Now, all of these deaths connected to the house happened in under a year. It was literally one death after the other. It wasn't like they were spread out over years. And after Jan heard of all these tragedies, she could only conclude the house of death had to be cursed. And it was her responsibility to warn the world about what she knew. So she compiled all of the information she gathered and she wrote a book on

on her experience in the same year, 1973. And it was called Spindrift, Spray from a Psychic Sea.

But sadly, after she'd finished the manuscript and before it could be published, Jan passed away suddenly. She was just 52 years old and her death was only the latest in a long string of tragedies and loss of life associated with people who lived at this particular address.

I mean, if any apartment complex stays open for long enough, it is inevitable that someone who lived there will die. People get old, they get sick, and this is just a part of life. But so many people had passed in such a short amount of time that Jan's demise just felt like it was part of a pattern. And sadly, Jan's death wouldn't be the last or even the most notorious one associated with the house of death.

See, two years later, in 1975, a couple named Joel Steinberg and Hedda Nesbaum moved into a third floor unit together in the house of death. They'd only been dating for a few months, and it might sound like that was pretty fast to be living together, but Hedda and Joel told their friends that they planned to get married soon, and for what it's worth, they were married.

The wedding never happened, but they acted like a husband and wife in a lot of ways. Specifically, the kind of rich and powerful husband and wife who other people would admire. Joel was actually a lawyer and Hedda was an accomplished book editor. They never had any biological children of their own together, but in May of 1981, they adopted their daughter, Lisa. Well, Lisa.

Sort of. The couple had actually bent some rules to bring Lisa into their home. See, that spring, Joel got a call from a doctor friend of his, and the doctor had a patient who was pregnant. She didn't want to keep the baby. The mother wanted to put her child up for adoption, and the doctor brought Joel in to handle the legal side of the whole process.

So Joel met the birth mother and told her he'd handle everything. He'd find parents for the baby, he'd bring the newborn to them, fill out all of the paperwork, and the mother didn't have to worry about anything except the actual pregnancy and labor. It must have been such a relief to her, and so she agreed to the arrangement. She just had to sign a few short forms and then she could stop thinking about it entirely. But Joel didn't actually hold up his side of the bargain. Instead of finding new adoptive parents or filling out paperwork,

He waited until the baby was born, and then he took her home with him. And from that point on, he and Hedda raised her as their own daughter, who they named Lisa. They never actually formally legally adopted her. They also never notified any government agencies that they had brought this child into their lives.

And it's hard to say why exactly they did this. Like, why not just go through the proper channels? One theory is that they didn't want the state to know what they'd done. The laws in New York said that if a couple wanted to adopt, officials would have to interview the potential parents, make sure they'd provide a safe, stable home. And as it turned out, Joel and Hedda desperately wanted a baby, but they had skeletons in their closet.

I mean, on some level, they might have known that they wouldn't pass the interview. So they allegedly may have found a workaround that just let them skip it. The truth was that Joel, the husband and father, was physically abusive.

Hedda came to work with visible bruises all of the time, and her co-workers knew exactly what was going on. But this was the 1980s, a time when a lot of people tended to think that domestic violence was a personal matter and it was nobody else's business. Basically, everyone knew Joel was hitting Hedda, but almost nobody did anything to help her. And over time, there came to be signs that he was also hurting his daughter, Lisa, too.

By the time she was school age, she often came to class with bruises that she couldn't explain. But each time her teachers asked about it, Joel and Hedda had some type of excuse.

They'd adopted another baby by this point. And once again, it was another illegal adoption. So they claimed that Lisa fought with her baby brother a lot and the bruises were just a result of childhood roughhousing. They weren't able to convince everyone that this was true. And the police were called to Joel and had his apartment multiple times.

But no matter how often the detectives showed up, Joel and Hedda were always able to explain everything away. And all I'm saying is, how bad do the bruises on a child have to be for police to be called multiple times?

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You heard me. Free croissants in every box and $30 off your first box when you go to wildgrain.com slash dark. That's wildgrain.com slash dark or you can use promo code dark at checkout. But on November 2nd, 1987 at 640 a.m., the police came once more. Except this time it wasn't a concerned neighbor or teacher who'd asked them for help. It was actually Lisa's mother.

Hedda told the 911 operator that her daughter had choked on some food and now she wasn't breathing. Now when the police made it into the Steinberg's unit, they found it was filthy. And Lisa's baby brother was tied up inside of his crib. Tied to his crib. He was in a dirty diaper. He hadn't been bathed in a long time.

Lisa herself was in bed, not breathing, just like Hedda had told the 911 operator. She was also covered in bruises, which told the police that this probably was not a tragic choking accident. Someone had attacked her, and Hedda was lying to protect the person who'd hurt her. They rushed Lisa to the hospital, but I mean, I don't want to go into detail. By the time the doctors had examined her, she had been beaten so badly that she wasn't going to wake up from her injuries.

And based on what the police had seen in Lisa's home, they thought they knew what had happened to her. They believe that during a cocaine fueled binge, Joel had beaten her until she was comatose. And this was the night before. And then his wife had waited until the following morning to get help, which obviously means valuable hours where Lisa received no treatment. And I'm sorry, because this is so gross and devastating.

and despicable. Like I'm at a loss of words how someone could do this to a child. But eventually four days in the hospital, the city officials realized that it was almost impossible for Lisa to recover. So they decided to pull the plug and let her rest in peace. They didn't actually consult with Hedda or Joel who'd shown that they couldn't be trusted to put Lisa's interests first. She was only six years old.

when she passed away on November 6th, 1987. Lisa's father, Joel, was charged with murder. Her mother, Hedda, was also charged, but she convinced the state to drop her charges as part of a deal where she would testify against her husband.

Now, this was very controversial. She claimed that she wasn't responsible for Lisa's death because she was a victim too, that the abuse she had endured had warped her thinking too much for her to be a good mother. These were days when domestic violence just wasn't understood, victim blaming was rampant, but Hedda didn't help her case with the testimony she gave on the stand. It was bizarre. She claimed that Joel had hypnotized her, like he had magical powers and he'd forced her to do whatever he wanted.

According to her, they'd also been part of some kind of evil cult. In any other trial, you might dismiss this testimony as a lie. Like Hedda may have been saying whatever she could to get herself out of trouble. But then you think about all the deaths that have been tied to the house of death. To this one building. And now this disgusting story, this despicable story also happens here. It's just...

Weird. And even though Hedda avoided any prison time, she became a pariah. And as for Joel, he was found guilty of first degree manslaughter, not murder, and he was sentenced up to 25 years in prison. And after he was paroled in 2004, he spent the rest of his life living in obscurity in New York.

But as near as I can tell, he never returned to the old apartment where his adoptive daughter died. Either way, this case was a pretty huge story and it really rocketed the house of death to infamy in a way that none of the earlier tragic deaths had. You guys think of the history of death surrounding this building.

you understand why we are talking about it on Into the Dark. Now, no one has ever claimed to see Lisa's spirit lingering in the building, and we may never know what exactly happens when we die. But we can hope that for Lisa, she found her way to someplace nice and peaceful and safe, finally. And as for the other ghosts...

They are still spotted frequently. The stairwell seems like an especially popular place for supernatural encounters today. I mentioned before that Mark Twain's spirit is often seen there, but the other phantoms also show up on or near the stairs if reports are to be believed. One former renter named Dennis, who refused to publicly share his last name, said that the whole time he lived at 14 West 10th,

He kept seeing women running through the walls. It was creepy enough that he couldn't bring dates home with him. Anyone he tried to hook up with would get one look at these women that were running through the walls and refuse to ever come over again. And it's said that the houses that stand on either side of the house of death may also be haunted too. Like the energy residing in this building has somehow oozed into the surrounding ones.

People often notice the lights flickering, and there are many accounts of a woman in a long gown who shows up in the houses that are otherwise locked up and safe from intruders. So who knows? Maybe the ghosts from 14 West 10th take outings to the surrounding neighborhood every now and then. Now, of course...

That all assumes that you believe in ghosts and hauntings. And I understand plenty of people don't. I mean, this is kind of something that we talk about here on Into the Dark. But if you don't think there are spirits in the house of death,

You can't really deny that it has dark tragedies in its past. I mean, whether these spirits have stayed around, the history of this house is not good. Jan Bartel's experiences there left her unsettled and uneasy. And Lisa Steinberg lost her life far too young within its walls.

Which all goes to show that you don't need literal ghosts to accept that a building actually has a truly haunted history. And that is our coverage on New York's House of Death. It's almost one of those things where you wouldn't actually need to see a ghost to feel like, I don't want to live here. Just based on everything that has happened, I'm going to live here.

I'm staring clear. Let me know in the comments what you guys think about the house of death and if you believe in ghosts. And I will see you next time as we dive further into the dark together. Goodbye.