Enslin Mansion

The Enslin House in Troy has been in one family for six generations and reportedly hosts nine ghosts, including a renter named Shirley whose voice was captured on a ghost box asking for help after she died falling down the basement stairs. The 1890 mansion once hosted gangster Legs Diamond during Prohibition and was featured on HGTV as America's scariest house.

Nine ghosts. That's the count, according to Michele Bell, whose family has owned the house at 562 Fifth Avenue in Troy for six generations. Five of those nine are her own relatives. The other four are less welcome.

The Enslin House was built in 1890 in the Lansingburgh neighborhood of Troy, purchased in 1919 by Bell's great-grandfather, a Bavarian immigrant named Frederick Anthony Feyl. Feyl ran a speakeasy out of the house during Prohibition, hosting supper club meetings and entertaining some notable guests. The most notable: Jack "Legs" Diamond, the bootlegger and gangster who was a rival of Dutch Schultz and who was eventually gunned down in Albany in 1931 while awaiting trial in Troy. Diamond drank in this house. Whether his ghost stuck around is unclear, but the house has had no shortage of spirits since.

The most active ghost is Shirley. She was a renter who fell down the basement stairs and died. The circumstances of her death are murky. During a paranormal investigation, a ghost box session reportedly captured a female voice asking for help, which investigators interpreted as Shirley suggesting she was pushed. Three male figures have been reported in the basement, which is where Shirley died and where the heaviest activity seems to concentrate.

Bell has described the other ghosts with the casualness of someone who's lived with them her entire life. Her grandfather is there. Her son is there. The family spirits don't cause problems. The non-family ones are a different story. Guests have reported seeing indentations on beds as if someone sat down when nobody was in the room. Flying orbs. Tall figures walking hallways at 3 a.m. Footsteps overhead when every living person in the house is accounted for on the first floor.

The house got national attention when HGTV featured it as "The Scariest House in America." It's also appeared on TLC and Discovery ID. When Bell put it on the market in 2021, the listing price was $444,444, a number that generated its own round of media coverage. The house now operates as a paranormal tourism destination, offering custom ghost tours, private investigation access for serious paranormal teams, and overnight stays.

The architecture helps the atmosphere. Neo-Classical Gothic, with the kind of dark wood and high ceilings that make shadows look intentional. The Lansingburgh neighborhood is old and quiet, the kind of place where a house with nine ghosts doesn't feel entirely out of place.

What makes the Enslin House more interesting than most haunted house claims is the specificity. Bell doesn't say the house is "haunted" in vague terms. She names the ghosts. She distinguishes between the family spirits (who she's comfortable with) and the others (who she's not). Shirley has a name, a story, and a recorded voice. The basement has three men. The numbers are consistent across interviews spanning years.

Skeptics will point out that a house marketed as haunted has financial incentive to stay haunted. That's fair. But Bell's family lived here for over a century before any cameras showed up, and the stories predate the tourism. Six generations in one house is unusual. Six generations of ghost sightings in one house is something else.

The speakeasy is closed. Legs Diamond is dead. Shirley is still in the basement.