This Mark Twain Ghost Story Might Be Bunk, But Does it Matter?

  • Share
  • Read Later

But enough tomfoolery. Robbins blew out his candle, and as he described it, “all hell broke lose.” There were spirits, a few screams and even a few apparitions. The lights came back up on scatterings of frozen rose petals and torn-out pages of Tom Sawyer, “gifts from other side.”

John Groo/Mark Twain House

“It was a successful séance followed by cake,” Robbins said, and not just any cake. Shaped like the Twain House itself, the dessert was an elaborate creation by Charm City Cake’s Geof Manthorne of the Food Network’s Ace of Cakes fame. But tasty merits aside, what makes Mark Twain a good candidate for a ghostly connection, and more importantly, could it work?

The story goes that Mark Twain was something of a clairvoyant, or at least his mother thought so.

At three years old, the young Sam Clemens sleepwalked his way into his nine-year-old sister’s bedroom and “plucked at the coverlet” of her bed – a superstition of the time that marked a person for death. And so his sister did die, only a few days after. Employees and visitors have also reported strange happenings during their time inside the Mark Twain House, phenomena that was investigated by Syfy’s Ghost Hunters in the fall.

(More on Techland: The Posthumous Pleasures of Ghost Hunters International)

So what was it, a ghostly connection or a carefully planned ruse?

“Well, let me put it to you this way, he said. “A number of years ago, the Mark Twain House had a séance with a psychic or medium, and they all sat around a table and nothing happened. So I got a call because I’ve done these theatrical séances, a recreation of Victorian-era séances and he said, “We would like something to happen.” I said, “I can do that for you.”

It’s interesting that Robbins is a magician who will personally step up to slightly discredit his own tricks, but the way he explains it, whether it was or wasn’t real has little effect on an attendee’s experience. “What is the truth? Well, it’s a lot more fun to believe in the mysterious and other-worldly, and that’s really what this evening was all about.” Well said, but I wonder what Twain himself would have to say in regard to his own seance.

“Oh, he was very happy,” Robbins said. “He told me so. He enjoyed being in the limelight once again, even if it was in the dark.”

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. Next