Presidential X-Files: White House Ghosts
In an earlier entry in this series we discussed the many alleged appearances of the ghost of Abraham Lincoln at the white house. But according to an article in the Washington Post, Lincoln isn't the only spectre to revisit the White House from the afterlife. There have been reports of post-mortem visits from Abigail Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, as well as some uninvited guests. As Theresa Vargas of the Post put it, "the many accounts that have spilled out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue over two centuries give ghosts an undeniable place in the country’s history. They also make that address arguably the nation’s most famous haunted house."
Vargas studied the man sightings of alleged spirits that have been documented by scholars, reporters, White House occupants, and even some visiting world leaders. She interviewed Jared Broach, the founder of a company called Nightly Spirits, which offers tours of haunted areas in several cities, including the nation's capitol. Broach, who began his tours in 2012, claims that "The White House has the best ghost stories, and I’d call them the most verified. Honestly, we could do a 10-hour tour if we really wanted to.” When asked by Vargas if he believed in ghosts, Broach said “for sure”, adding “If I said no, I’d be calling about eight different presidents liars.”
Abraham Lincoln is of course the most frequent ghostly visitor sighted, but even before Lincoln's passing, Honest Abe himself reported receiving regular visits from his son Willie, who died in the White House in 1862 at age 11, likely from typhoid fever. Mary Todd Lincoln, who was so grief-stricken by the loss that she remained in her room for weeks. She also spoke of seeing her son’s ghost once at the foot of her bed.
After his assassination in 1865, it was Lincoln himself who was reported to like to roam the White House halls. First lady Grace Coolidge said in a magazine interview that she had witnessed Lincoln look out a window in what had once been in his office. Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands was sleeping in the Lincoln bedroom in 1942 when she reportedly heard a knock on her bedroom door, opened it, saw Lincoln on the other side of the door and fainted. Just two years earlier in 1940, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill claimed that he had just stepped out of a hot bath in that same room and was standing in his birthday suit smoking a cigar when he encountered Lincoln by the fireplace. With Churchillian wit, he reportedly said “Good evening, Mr. President, you seem to have me at a disadvantage.” He claimed that Lincoln seemed to enjoy the quip because a smile crossed his ghostly face before turning away and disappearing.
Broach told Vargas that according to his research, Lincoln was the most common visitor among the White House’s ghosts, and that his sightings coincided with times when the nation was experiencing troubled times. He said, “They say Lincoln always comes back whenever he feels the country is in need or in peril. They say he just strides up and down the second-floor hallways and raps on doors and stands by windows.”
In a 1989 Washington Post article, White House curator Rex Scouten told the Post that President Ronald Reagan had commented that his dog would go into any room except the Lincoln bedroom. “He’d just stand outside the door and bark,” Scouten said.
Another spectral sighting tied to Lincoln concerns alleged sightings of the ghost of Annie Surratt, daughter of alleged Lincoln assassination co-conspirator Mary Surratt, who was hanged with other conspirators for allegedly giving aid and comfort to the plotters. Vargas discovered that there are reports of Annie's ghost knocking on the front doors, pleading for the release of her mother.
But Lincoln and those from his era are not the only reported spectral visitors. There are also reports of her hearing Thomas Jefferson playing the violin and Andrew Jackson swearing. There are also accounts involving two presidents’ wives. Abigail Adams was the first first lady to live in the White House and she used the East Room to dry sheets. Since her death, there have been reported sightings of her likeness in that area. These reports describe her as walking with her arms outstretched as if she was holding clean linens.
During the Wilson administration, there were also reports of seeing the ghost of Dolley Madison taking care of the garden. Some of Wilson's staff members reported seeing her ghost as they were about to move the Rose Garden. Supposedly Dolley's intervention convinced them to leave the garden where it was. Broach also reports that Dolley's ghost has been spied at another famous Washington location. When the British burned down the White House during the War of 1812, she and President James Madison moved to the Octagon House on the corner of 18th Street and New York Avenue NW, making it the temporary White House. Unexplained occurrences there have been linked to the deaths of three women, including two daughters of the wealthy man who built the house. In both incidents, according to newspaper reports from the time, the women had argued with their father about who they wanted to marry and then fell from the same staircase. A 1969 story from the Post reads: “Bells could be heard in the house when no one was there to ring them. A specter of a girl in white could be seen slipping up the stairway; terrifying screams and morbid groans could be heard emanating from the house. Some insisted that it was impossible to cross the hall at the foot of the stairwell on certain days, without unconsciously going around some unseen obstacle on the floor.”
Another old Washington Post article from August 13, 1907 describes the police department’s battle with a paranormal villain with the headline: “Spooks Baffle Police.” The article goes on to read, “Despite the vigilance of Capt. Schneider and his officers of the Seventh Precinct, they continue night after night their weird and ghost-like tricks. The police are unable to stop the shower of gravel and stones, which appear to be the favorite means of manifestation of these materialistic ghosts; nor are they able to discover whence they came.”
But another 1903 Post story, claimed in its headlin “White House Ghosts: Changes in the Mansion Have Driven Them Away.” In the article, a longtime White House servant lamented how renovations had cleared the mansion of the spirits that kept him company on lonely nights. He claimed that before the renovations, he frequently witnessed these spirits gliding up public stairways and down private ones. The man named Jerry Smith, who worked at the home for a quarter century, told the Post reporter: “It’s the truth, the gospel truth. Times are not what they used to be about the house. Ever since I first went to the White House, I have seen the spirits of Mr. Lincoln and other Presidents as they died. But you know that they don’t like new places, and I never see a sight of Mr. Lincoln or General Grant.”
In 1911, President William Howard Taft's military aide, Archibald Butt, wrote a letter to his sister about the ghost of a young teenage boy who was seen by a White House maid. The maid claimed that she felt a slight pressure, as if someone was leaning on her. Butt decided to investigate the matter, but when he spoke to Taft about it, Taft told him that the first member of the White House Staff would be fired.
Mary Eban worked for Eleanor Roosevelt, and she reported seeing Lincoln on his bed, pulling on his boots. She screamed so loud that Secret Service agents came running. Eleanor Roosevelt, in a 1932 talk about life in the White House, told a group in San Antonio that she felt another presence when she worked in a room where many presidents had also worked. “I get a distinct feeling that there is somebody in the room."
Harry Truman wrote his wife Bess in 1946, about an eerie encounter he had. Truman went to bed at 9 p.m., and about six hours later, he heard three knocks on the door loud enough to wake him. He wrote to Bess in a letter that is archived in his presidential library and museum:
“I jumped up and put on my bathrobe, opened the door, and no one there. Went out and looked up and down the hall, looked in your room and Margie’s. Still no one. Went back to bed after locking the doors and there were footsteps in your room whose door I’d left open. Jumped and looked and no one there! The damned place is haunted sure as shootin’. Secret Service said not even a watchman was up here at that hour. You and Margie had better come back and protect me before some of these ghosts carry me off.”
After Truman wrote to his wife about this experience, his daughter Margaret wrote him back. She said that she and her mother were skeptical of the existence of ghosts, and she wrote her father saying so. Truman replied in his letter back to her, “I’m sure they’re here, and I’m not so much alarmed at meeting up with any of them. I am sure old Andy [Andrew Jackson] could give me good advice and probably teach me good swear words. And I’m sure old Grover Cleveland could tell me some choice remarks to make to some political leaders. So I won’t lock my doors or bar them either if any of the old coots in the pictures out in the hall want to come out of their frames for a friendly chat.”
Vargas studied the man sightings of alleged spirits that have been documented by scholars, reporters, White House occupants, and even some visiting world leaders. She interviewed Jared Broach, the founder of a company called Nightly Spirits, which offers tours of haunted areas in several cities, including the nation's capitol. Broach, who began his tours in 2012, claims that "The White House has the best ghost stories, and I’d call them the most verified. Honestly, we could do a 10-hour tour if we really wanted to.” When asked by Vargas if he believed in ghosts, Broach said “for sure”, adding “If I said no, I’d be calling about eight different presidents liars.”
Abraham Lincoln is of course the most frequent ghostly visitor sighted, but even before Lincoln's passing, Honest Abe himself reported receiving regular visits from his son Willie, who died in the White House in 1862 at age 11, likely from typhoid fever. Mary Todd Lincoln, who was so grief-stricken by the loss that she remained in her room for weeks. She also spoke of seeing her son’s ghost once at the foot of her bed.
After his assassination in 1865, it was Lincoln himself who was reported to like to roam the White House halls. First lady Grace Coolidge said in a magazine interview that she had witnessed Lincoln look out a window in what had once been in his office. Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands was sleeping in the Lincoln bedroom in 1942 when she reportedly heard a knock on her bedroom door, opened it, saw Lincoln on the other side of the door and fainted. Just two years earlier in 1940, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill claimed that he had just stepped out of a hot bath in that same room and was standing in his birthday suit smoking a cigar when he encountered Lincoln by the fireplace. With Churchillian wit, he reportedly said “Good evening, Mr. President, you seem to have me at a disadvantage.” He claimed that Lincoln seemed to enjoy the quip because a smile crossed his ghostly face before turning away and disappearing.
Broach told Vargas that according to his research, Lincoln was the most common visitor among the White House’s ghosts, and that his sightings coincided with times when the nation was experiencing troubled times. He said, “They say Lincoln always comes back whenever he feels the country is in need or in peril. They say he just strides up and down the second-floor hallways and raps on doors and stands by windows.”
In a 1989 Washington Post article, White House curator Rex Scouten told the Post that President Ronald Reagan had commented that his dog would go into any room except the Lincoln bedroom. “He’d just stand outside the door and bark,” Scouten said.
Another spectral sighting tied to Lincoln concerns alleged sightings of the ghost of Annie Surratt, daughter of alleged Lincoln assassination co-conspirator Mary Surratt, who was hanged with other conspirators for allegedly giving aid and comfort to the plotters. Vargas discovered that there are reports of Annie's ghost knocking on the front doors, pleading for the release of her mother.
But Lincoln and those from his era are not the only reported spectral visitors. There are also reports of her hearing Thomas Jefferson playing the violin and Andrew Jackson swearing. There are also accounts involving two presidents’ wives. Abigail Adams was the first first lady to live in the White House and she used the East Room to dry sheets. Since her death, there have been reported sightings of her likeness in that area. These reports describe her as walking with her arms outstretched as if she was holding clean linens.
During the Wilson administration, there were also reports of seeing the ghost of Dolley Madison taking care of the garden. Some of Wilson's staff members reported seeing her ghost as they were about to move the Rose Garden. Supposedly Dolley's intervention convinced them to leave the garden where it was. Broach also reports that Dolley's ghost has been spied at another famous Washington location. When the British burned down the White House during the War of 1812, she and President James Madison moved to the Octagon House on the corner of 18th Street and New York Avenue NW, making it the temporary White House. Unexplained occurrences there have been linked to the deaths of three women, including two daughters of the wealthy man who built the house. In both incidents, according to newspaper reports from the time, the women had argued with their father about who they wanted to marry and then fell from the same staircase. A 1969 story from the Post reads: “Bells could be heard in the house when no one was there to ring them. A specter of a girl in white could be seen slipping up the stairway; terrifying screams and morbid groans could be heard emanating from the house. Some insisted that it was impossible to cross the hall at the foot of the stairwell on certain days, without unconsciously going around some unseen obstacle on the floor.”
Another old Washington Post article from August 13, 1907 describes the police department’s battle with a paranormal villain with the headline: “Spooks Baffle Police.” The article goes on to read, “Despite the vigilance of Capt. Schneider and his officers of the Seventh Precinct, they continue night after night their weird and ghost-like tricks. The police are unable to stop the shower of gravel and stones, which appear to be the favorite means of manifestation of these materialistic ghosts; nor are they able to discover whence they came.”
But another 1903 Post story, claimed in its headlin “White House Ghosts: Changes in the Mansion Have Driven Them Away.” In the article, a longtime White House servant lamented how renovations had cleared the mansion of the spirits that kept him company on lonely nights. He claimed that before the renovations, he frequently witnessed these spirits gliding up public stairways and down private ones. The man named Jerry Smith, who worked at the home for a quarter century, told the Post reporter: “It’s the truth, the gospel truth. Times are not what they used to be about the house. Ever since I first went to the White House, I have seen the spirits of Mr. Lincoln and other Presidents as they died. But you know that they don’t like new places, and I never see a sight of Mr. Lincoln or General Grant.”
In 1911, President William Howard Taft's military aide, Archibald Butt, wrote a letter to his sister about the ghost of a young teenage boy who was seen by a White House maid. The maid claimed that she felt a slight pressure, as if someone was leaning on her. Butt decided to investigate the matter, but when he spoke to Taft about it, Taft told him that the first member of the White House Staff would be fired.
Mary Eban worked for Eleanor Roosevelt, and she reported seeing Lincoln on his bed, pulling on his boots. She screamed so loud that Secret Service agents came running. Eleanor Roosevelt, in a 1932 talk about life in the White House, told a group in San Antonio that she felt another presence when she worked in a room where many presidents had also worked. “I get a distinct feeling that there is somebody in the room."
Harry Truman wrote his wife Bess in 1946, about an eerie encounter he had. Truman went to bed at 9 p.m., and about six hours later, he heard three knocks on the door loud enough to wake him. He wrote to Bess in a letter that is archived in his presidential library and museum:
“I jumped up and put on my bathrobe, opened the door, and no one there. Went out and looked up and down the hall, looked in your room and Margie’s. Still no one. Went back to bed after locking the doors and there were footsteps in your room whose door I’d left open. Jumped and looked and no one there! The damned place is haunted sure as shootin’. Secret Service said not even a watchman was up here at that hour. You and Margie had better come back and protect me before some of these ghosts carry me off.”
After Truman wrote to his wife about this experience, his daughter Margaret wrote him back. She said that she and her mother were skeptical of the existence of ghosts, and she wrote her father saying so. Truman replied in his letter back to her, “I’m sure they’re here, and I’m not so much alarmed at meeting up with any of them. I am sure old Andy [Andrew Jackson] could give me good advice and probably teach me good swear words. And I’m sure old Grover Cleveland could tell me some choice remarks to make to some political leaders. So I won’t lock my doors or bar them either if any of the old coots in the pictures out in the hall want to come out of their frames for a friendly chat.”