He Accidentally Bought Spider-Man's Childhood Home—Queens Owner Has Spent 3 Years Answering Fan Mail

A letter addressed to "Spider-Man" sits in the mailbox, mailed to 20 Ingram St. in Queens, New York. The one opening it is 64-year-old Jack Shi, a Chinese-American man who, three years ago, simply wanted to buy a house in Forest Hills.

According to a report by the New York Post, when Jack Shi bought the house, he had no idea it was established in Marvel comics as the home of Peter Parker and Aunt May. It was only after moving in that he gradually discovered Google Maps had literally tagged the address as "Spider-Man's Home"—meaning that whenever fans searched for Spider-Man related landmarks, they'd be navigated straight to his front door.

So a new item got added to his daily routine: strangers standing in front of his house taking photos. These fans don't just come from all over the U.S.—people have traveled from Ireland, the UK, and Italy just to snap a memorable shot in front of this ordinary house. Jack Shi's take on it: as long as people ask politely, he usually doesn't stop them. "Since I ended up living in Spider-Man's house," he says, "maybe I should take on a little responsibility for it."

That responsibility apparently extends to opening the mail. This past April, a kid named Julius from South Dakota wrote in asking: "Spider-Man, how do you do all that stuff, like saving the world?" Another kid, Cooper, sent a straight-up invitation to hang out and watch TV at his place—and threw in an invite for Deadpool too, just to cover his bases. The Kannon family from Nebraska went the formal route, mailing an actual invitation hoping Spider-Man could make it to their kid's 5th birthday party.

There's an interesting side story on this street too. Frank Torres, a 76-year-old retired detective who's lived in the area for 30 years, says a family named Parker actually did live near 20 Ingram St. at one point—and that family had personally mentioned this to him before. Torres suspects the comic's creators might have known something about the neighborhood, though there's no actual evidence confirming Peter Parker's name really came from that family. For now, it remains local lore.

Torres also mentioned that every time a new Spider-Man movie drops, another wave of pilgrims shows up in the neighborhood, with some even walking up to residents and asking point-blank, "Is this where Spider-Man's house is?" Worth noting: Tom Holland's film version places Peter Parker's stomping grounds in Astoria and Long Island City, on the western side of Queens—while this house in Forest Hills actually sits closer to the original comic book address. For die-hard comic fans, that discrepancy is exactly the kind of detail no movie set can replace.