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Local prof explores haunted history of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
By JAMES E. DUFFEY
Many today would call me crazy if I told them the White House was haunted, or maybe they’d be just mildly amused. One must be careful about making such claims. After all, Mary Todd Lincoln said she saw the ghost of President Andrew Jackson cursing in the presidential living quarters. She was later committed to an asylum, so you can see the risk that these admissions can bring!
Mary Lincoln was not the only one to witness apparitions while in the White House. Others, in fact, many others, have made the same claim over the years. Abigail Adams, wife of our second president, John Adams, regularly dried her laundry by hanging it in the East Room and many who spend time in that room today say they have experienced the smell of fresh linen while visiting there. Some claim to have actually seen Abigail dressed in a cap and shawl carrying wet clothes to the East Room.
There also have been claims of sightings of a British soldier walking the halls carrying a torch. He must have lost his way sometime during the War of 1812 when the British burned the White House. In the 1920s when Calvin Coolidge held the presidency, his wife, Grace, observed Lincoln looking out the window of the Oval Office.
Lillian Rogers Parks, a seamstress at the White House for three decades, retold the story of President Franklin Roosevelt’s valet, who claimed to have heard the voice of David Burns in the Yellow Oval Room. Burns was the man who sold the land to the govenment on which the White House is built. A White House guard during the Truman administration also says he heard the voice of Burns saying, “I’m Mr. Burns.” At first he thought it was Secretary of State James Byrnes until he found out that Byrnes had not been at the White House that day. Lillian Parks also related another episode where she heard pacing in a room above the one she was occupying. When she investigated and found no one there, another employee told her it was probably old Abe pacing the floor. Apparently, he was heard quite often by White House staff.
Several very well known and reliable people also have claimed to see ghosts at the White House. Adlai Stevenston II, two-time presidential candidate and former Ambassador to the United Nations, once told the story of being a guest overnight at the White House. Staying in the Lincoln bedroom, he reported to having seen the ghost of Lincoln enter the room as Stevenson sat on the bed. The record does not show whether he slept in the room the rest of that night or not. Another notable guest was Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands. She said she heard a knock on her chamber door late at night, and when she answered it, she saw Abe Lincoln in a top hat and frock coat standing there. She promptly fainted!
Winston Churchill was more composed when he met the deceased president during a World War II visit to the White House. Emerging from his nightly bath, in the buff, and clenching his cigar in his teeth, Churchill confronted President Lincoln who was sitting in front of the fireplace in his room. Churchill is reported to have said, “Good evening, Mr. President, you have me at a distinct disadvantage.”
Other residents of the White House may not have actually seen ghosts, but have experienced eerie feelings of a presence while living there. Eleanor Roosevelt used the Lincoln bedroom as her study while FDR was president. She claimed to have felt Lincoln’s presence as she worked there late at night. Another, more-recent first lady, Lady Bird Johnson, had the distinct feeling of Lincoln’s presence in the room as she watch a television special about his death.
Harry Truman also felt Lincoln’s presence as he worked late at the White House. He once wrote that while working on speeches and reading reports he could hear strange creaking and groaning in the halls of the mansion. He was sure they were ghosts. He said, “the floors pop and the drapes move back and forth — I can just imagine old Andy (Jackson) and Teddy (Roosevelt) having an arguement over Franklin (Roosevelt).” The strange sounds Truman heard may or may not have been ghosts. During Truman’s time in office architects discovered that the old White House had become so decrepit that the entire internal structure had to be gutted and rebuilt. Experts said the White House was probably still standing just out of force of habit.
The sounds Truman heard late at night when the mansion was very quiet were probably the support beams of the White House floors getting ready to collapse.
Perhaps the most bizarre ghost story regarding the White House comes from Abe Lincoln himself.
He said, “ About 10 days ago, I retired very late. I had been up waiting for important dispatches from the front. I could not have been long in bed when I fell into a slumber, for I was weary. I soon began to dream. There seemed to be a death-like stillness about me. Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. I thought I left my bedroom and wandered downstairs. There the silence was broken by the same pitiful sobbing, but the mourners were invisible. I went from room to room; no living person was in sight, but the same mournful sounds of distress met me as I passed along. I saw light in all the rooms; every object was familiar to me; but where were all the people who were grieving as if their hearts would break? I was puzzled and alarmed. What could be the meaning of all this? Determined to find the cause of a state of things so mysterious and so shocking, I kept on until I arrived at the East Room, which I entered. There I met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng of people, gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully. ‘Who is dead in the White House?’ I demanded of one of the soldiers, “The President,’ was his answer; ‘he was killed by an assassin.’ Then came a loud burst of grief from the crowd, which woke me from my dream. I slept no more that night; and although it was only a dream, I have been strangely annoyed by it ever since.”
He said, “ About 10 days ago, I retired very late. I had been up waiting for important dispatches from the front. I could not have been long in bed when I fell into a slumber, for I was weary. I soon began to dream. There seemed to be a death-like stillness about me. Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. I thought I left my bedroom and wandered downstairs. There the silence was broken by the same pitiful sobbing, but the mourners were invisible. I went from room to room; no living person was in sight, but the same mournful sounds of distress met me as I passed along. I saw light in all the rooms; every object was familiar to me; but where were all the people who were grieving as if their hearts would break? I was puzzled and alarmed. What could be the meaning of all this? Determined to find the cause of a state of things so mysterious and so shocking, I kept on until I arrived at the East Room, which I entered. There I met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng of people, gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully. ‘Who is dead in the White House?’ I demanded of one of the soldiers, “The President,’ was his answer; ‘he was killed by an assassin.’ Then came a loud burst of grief from the crowd, which woke me from my dream. I slept no more that night; and although it was only a dream, I have been strangely annoyed by it ever since.”
Ironically, it was Lincoln, foreshadowing his own death, who provided the most eerie account of events while living in the White House.
So you decide.
Are all these people just imaging things?
Or, is the White House really haunted?
–James E. Duffey, Adjunct Professor of History, Kent State University, Stark County Campus