Y’all, we are so excited! This is is our first joint post and we are so in love with this idea.

Maya the Pup lives close to the Mark Twain house in Hartford, Connecticut. She and her family visited and got these wonderful photos for us. Thanks for standing in for Snickers, Maya!

In 1873, Samuel Langhorne Clemens (pen name: Mark Twain) and his wife, Olivia, hired New York architect, Edward Tuckerman Potter, to built this stunner. Sam and his wife traveled while the house went up, finally moving in in September, 1874.

The massive structure features 25 rooms spread over three floors and 11,500 square feet. It cost between $40,000 and $45,000 to built and had all the bells and whistles of that time period.

Twain got his start as a newspaper writer, and went on to pen some of his most famous works — The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn — during his years in this house.

The author later said he spent that his happiest and most productive years were spent in the home. So, it’s heartbreaking the family (which included three children) was forced to move to Europe in 1891 due to financial strain stemming from bad investments.

While on a visit to the Hartford house in 1896, his 24-year-old daughter, Susy died from meningitis. Distraught over the tragedy, the family never lived in the house again and sold it in 1903.

Twain’s finances were up and down over the years, and his mood grew darker as he became fed up with imperialistic countries around the world. After much world travel, he served as the vice-president of the Anti-Imperialist League in the United States from 1901 until his death in 1910.

“To us, our house… had a heart, and a soul, and eyes to see us with; and approvals and solicitudes and deep sympathies; it was of us, and we were in its confidence and lived in its grace and in the peace of its benediction.” — Mark Twain

Aaaand, while researching, we discovered something else: This house is listed as one of the 32 most haunted houses in the United States by Conde Nast Traveler.

Reported presences include your standard, ghostly woman in white; feelings tugs or pats on the back; strange noises and whiffs of cigar smoke. (Twain smoked 20-40 of them per day.) The paranormal investigators on Ghost Hunters have also visited the house.

The house is on the National Register of Historic Places.