Haunted DC: White House Seances, Lincoln’s Ghost, and More
We're diving into the two most haunted houses in DC, The White House and The Halcyon House. Who was the ghost that tormented Taft's staff, which first ladies are most often seen haunting the White House grounds, and who was the eccentric owner of one of DC's most haunted houses, The Halcyon House?
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SOURCES
https://www.history.com/topics/halloween/ghosts-in-the-white-house
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Room
https://www.ploddingthroughthepresidents.com/2018/10/abigail-adams-and-the-ghost-of-john-adams.html
https://www.history.com/topics/landmarks/white-house
https://www.whitehousehistory.org/press-room/press-backgrounders/white-house-ghost-stories
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/504800/thing-mysterious-teenage-ghost-haunted-tafts-white-house
https://www.whitehousehistory.org/seances-in-the-red-room
https://www.history.com/news/legend-of-abraham-lincolns-ghost-white-house
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archibald_Butt
http://iapsop.com/jbb/2010__buescher___across_the_dead_line.pdf
https://uvamagazine.org/articles/more_than_a_museum
https://www.newspapers.com/image/824763415/?terms=albert%20adsit%20clemons&match=1
https://www.newspapers.com/image/869758782/?terms=albert%20clemons&match=1
https://www.medicinenet.com/can_you_die_of_typhoid_fever/ask.htm
TRANSCRIPT
Harry lay in bed in the dead of the night. And at first, he doesn’t hear it.
theres a light tapping on his bedroom door. His wife and daughter are away, there’s no one who would need him right now, so maybe that’s why it doesn’t wake him up. But then, louder
This, he can’t ignore, and it pulls him out of his sleep. He slides into his slippers and stumbles out of bed. Why was someone at his bedroom door, it was 3am. Harry opens the door,
prepared to give someone a piece of his mind. But when the door creaks open, there’s no one there. Just the long, dark hallway, and family photos staring back at him.
Then he hears it again
There’s still sleep in his eyes, yet he wanders down the hall towards the noise, now coming from near his daughters room.
He swings the door open,
but nothing. Her room is in the same condition she left it in. The door swings closed, and Harry shuffles back towards his room, convinced he had just been hearing things. But as he’s halfway down the hall
Footsteps coming from inside the room where he just shut the door. That’s it, he thinks. This place is haunted
Welcome to heart starts pounding, a podcast of horrors, hauntings, and mysteries. I’m your host, Kaelyn Moore
If you’re new here, welcome. This is a community of people who like to follow their dark curiosity wherever it leads them. If you’d like to dive further into our community you can follow the show at heartstartspounding on tik tok and instagram. And you can check out our patreon, the rogue detecting society, there youll find some bonus content.
Today, I want to dive straight in because we’re talking about spooky Washington DC, the capitol of the US, but also a city with some of the best preserved history in the country. here you can walk down cobblestone streets that are nearly identical to how they looked in the 18th and 19th century. You can see buildings that used to be dance halls that were turned into military posts during the civil war, that were then converted into luxury apartments. It’s no wonder the area is so ripe with ghost stories.
To start, I want to talk about the most famous building in all of DC, which also happens to be the one with the most amount of terrifying tales associated with it. The White House
When Jared Broach, a ghost tour guide in DC was asked if he believed in ghosts, he replied “If I said no, I’d be calling about eight presidents liars”. And he’s right, many presidents have reported seeing ghosts in the White house since about the time it was constructed in 1792. And not just the presidents, but other world leaders who visited as guests have reported ghostly sightings as well.
In 1946, President Harry Truman awoke around 3am to the sound of knocking on his bedroom door. First quiet, and then a bit louder. The account of what happened next is documented in a letter he wrote his wife that reads:
“I jumped up and put on my bathrobe, opened the door, and no one there,” he wrote. “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.”
By the time that Truman had his experience with the White House ghost, stories of the hauntings were nearly 100 years old. So let’s start at the beginning.
The first people to live in the white house were second president of the united states John Adams and his wife Abigail, who moved in on November 1st, 1800. The house wasn’t even finished when they first moved in, and it certainly wasn’t anything like the white house we know today. years after the Adams moved in, the entire thing would be burned to the ground by the British during the war of 1812, and then entirely rebuilt. Additions would be put on over the years until we had the version that stands today.
When the house was rebuilt after the fire, some of the original, charred walls were incorporated into the new design. And maybe that’s why the spirits of those who lived in the original version of the house have still been seen throughout history.
Like Abigail Adams, who moved into a nearly empty white house. there was essentially no furniture in the entire place as it was brand new. and so, Abigail would spend a lot of time in the empty East Room, a beautiful ballroom that still stands today and is used for parties and events.
The East Room would actually stay empty for much of Adams time as president. Congress was worried that John Adams was too influenced by the decor of the monarchy, and that he’d decorate the East Room to look like a Throne room where a king would sit, so they never actually gave him the money to furnish one of the biggest rooms in the white house.
As a result Abigail took it over, using the big empty room with large windows to hang laundry out to dry. She’d use big bouquets of lavender in the room so all the laundry would smell fresh and floral.
When the white house burned down, Abigails laundry room was one of the only rooms that remained intact. The lack of furniture may have helped protect it from the fire that consumed much of the rest of the house.
Over the last two centuries, in room Abigail used, staffers have reported catching glimpses of her. Sometimes, a woman that looks exactly like Abigail appears out of nowhere with her arms outstretched, as if she’s reaching for something. It’s also been said that the room will start smelling like Lavender accompanied by the scent of wet laundry.
The next first lady to live in the White House has also been seen haunting the grounds. Dolley Madison was the wife of President James Madison, who moved in after John and Abigail. Dolley was in love with the gardens on the grounds, especially the rose garden. She’d spend her days wandering through them, tending to the roses, and was sad to have to let them go when she moved out of the house.
100 years later, during Woodrow Wilson’s presidency, Dolley’s favorite Rose Garden was supposed to be moved during construction. Only, when the staff went out to start the dig, they saw the spectre of Dolley Madison standing out among the roses. It scared them so badly that they refused to go back into the garden for the renovation. Over the years, the garden has grown and been redesigned by other first ladies and today remains an area where presidents give interviews
The ghosts of Dolley and Abigail, though frightening, seem harmless. Just two women caught in a loop of the activities they were known for at the house. They are also easily identifiable, since their photos have been memorialized on the grounds and when people see these spirits, they know who they are.
But not every spirit that’s seen can be identified, as was the case with the infamous spirit known only as “The Thing” that tormented the grounds in the early 1900s.
In the summer of 1911, Major Archie Butt, an aide to President William Taft, wrote a letter to his sister. It read “My Dear Clara, It seems that the White House is haunted.”
He wrote the letter to his sister after learning that a phantom had been tormenting white house aides for the last few months.. It had apparently become so much of an issue that someone decided they needed to tell Archie, who they knew had the President's ear.
Aides and staff had described the encounters as a pressure they could feel on their bodies.
They would feel a physical force on their shoulder, lighter than if someone were touching them, but the same type of sensation, only to turn around and see that the room behind them was completely empty.
Who was doing this was a mystery, until the personal maid of the First Lady finally caught a glimpse of the apparition.
She was sitting by herself sewing, when all of a sudden, she got a feeling that someone was leaning over her shoulder, watching her sew. There was no creak of the door being opened, no sound of someone approaching her, so the sensation sent a shiver down her spine. She turned around to see who it could be, and there, behind her, stood a boy, about 14 or 15, with light unkempt hair and sad, hollow blue eyes. Just as quickly as he appeared, he was gone.
Archie told the president about the mysterious teenage boy who seemed to be haunting the white house, and while Taft responded with rage, telling everyone to never mention the ghost again, in private he was very inquisitive about who the ghostly boy could be. Archie dedicated his time at the white house to researching teen boys who lived and possibly died at the white house, but never found anyone that exactly matched the description. And before he could figure out who it was, Archie boarded the RMS Titanic and was never heard from again.
Historians have also tried to figure out who the boy with the sad blue eyes could be, but most searches have turned up empty.
However, There is another young boy who is believed to haunt the white house, but he is always seen as 11 years old, and it’s very well known who he is. Because he died in the white house
The 11 year boy who has been seen for generations, is William Lincoln, President Abraham Lincoln’s son who died of possibly Typhoid Fever in the White House guest room.
Though the Lincolns were just a few of many, many people who lived and worked in the white house, when it comes to ghost stories, they’ve made the biggest impact. Most ghostly encounters in the White house have to do with their family, and it all starts with their son, William.
In February of 1862, William Lincoln came down with a fever that appeared to be typhoid. In a time before antibiotics, it had about at 20% fatality rate. Papers reported that for the 10 days that William, or Willie as he was known to his family, was sick, President Lincoln was by his side the entire time, hardly taking time off to even sleep.
But the president couldn’t save him, and on February 20th, Willie passed away.
The Lincoln’s were devastated, but Willie’s mother, Mary Todd Lincoln, couldn’t contain her grief. She had already lost a son years earlier when he was just a toddler, and couldn’t bear living her life without ever seeing Willie again. After Willie's death, she retreated to her room for weeks, hardly leaving even to eat. Her sobs echoed throughout the entire house.
But there was a school of thought that was popular at the time, which promised Mary she wouldn't have to go without seeing Willie again. Spiritualism, the practice of contacting spirits, which I’ve talked about on the show before.
A friend of Mary’s introduced her to The Lauries, two mediums who lived nearby in Georgetown. Under the cover of night, Mary would travel to the mediums home where they would host seances in order to communicate with the ghost of Willie. And soon, Mary was hosting Seances in the white house, which Lincoln himself attended.
And according to Mary, these seances were working. In the middle of the night, weeks after Willie’s passing, mary knocked on the door of her half-sister, Emilie, who was staying in the White House. Emilie answered, only half awake.
What is it? Emilie asked
“He lives” mary replied, her eyes wide and voice trembling
“He comes to me every night and stands at the foot of the bed with the same sweet adorable smile that he always has had. He does not always come alone. Little Eddie is sometimes with him.”
Eddie was Mary’s son who died years prior.
Emilie took to her diary after this meeting and wrote that what Mary was doing was quote, unnatural and abnormal. She said that it frightened her.
But nothing would stop Mary, and now Spiritualists and mediums were calling dozens of spirits onto the grounds. Typically Willie made appearances during the seances, but also the spirits of former presidents and abolitionists were called to help aid the president in his policy making. One night they swore they heard Andrew Jackson swearing and stomping around, another night they summoned someone who filled the room with Violin music.
The seances may have been having unintentional consequences, however. One night, Lincoln awoke in a cold sweat. A nightmare had terrified him so much, that days later with it still on his mind, he penned a letter to a friend.
It read:
“About ten days ago I retired very late…,” “I soon began to dream. There seemed to be a deathlike stillness about me. Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. I thought I left my bed and wandered downstairs ... I arrived at the East Room. 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, some gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face 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.'”
Did Lincoln’s dream predict his own assassination by John Wilkes Booth years later? Was he making contact with a spiritual world that was enlightening him to the future?
He also told his wife Mary, who was so steeped in mysticism and spirituality that she couldn’t help but believe the validity of the dream. But Mary also reminded him that this was not the first time he had a premonition about his own death.
A few years prior, Lincoln had been at his home in Illinois after recently being elected President. He was looking at his reflection in a mirror in the dark when out of the black space behind him, a shadowy, second face materialized next to his.
This face looked exactly like the presidents, but it was more sunken in, paler and more fragile. Lincoln stared at the second face, not frightened, but inquisitive. He thought the face represented a second term as president, but its pallid, deathly look meant he wouldn’t live through the end of it.
The strange spirituality and premonitions of the Lincoln’s haunted them in their life, perhaps brought on by the seances they were holding to contact Willie. Many now wonder if that’s the reason why the former President seemed to haunt the white house after his death as well.
There have been multiple high profile sightings of Lincoln’s ghost in the white house over the years. Calvin Coolidge's wife, Grace, once saw a tall, shadowy man with a top hat staring out of a window in what used to be Lincoln’s office. When she doubled back, he was gone.
Lincoln’s old office was turned into The Lincoln Bedroom, which was decorated as it would have been in the time of Lincoln’s presidency. Guests were often welcome to sleep in there, and one night in 1942, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands was laying in bed when she heard a faint tapping on the door.
Thinking it was someone fetching her for an important matter, she got out of bed and opened the door. It wasn’t one of her aides there, it was Lincoln, all 6 feet 4 inches of him. When she saw him, she screamed and fainted.
Two years before Wilhelmina’s sighting, Winston Churchill was sleeping in the lincoln room. He had just gotten out of the bath and had nothing on him except for the cigar in his mouth. When he walked back into the bedroom, he caught a glimpse of Lincoln sitting by the fireplace.
Good Evening, Mr. President. Churchill later recounted saying. You seem to have me at a disadvantage, he quipped.
By the time Ronald Reagan was president in the 80’s, he said his dog would go into any room in the white house EXCEPT the Lincoln bedroom. He would just sit outside of the room and bark, too terrified to enter.
Some say that the ghost of Lincoln returns whenever he feels the states need his help, others feel he’s cursed from dabbling in dark spirituality to haunt the grounds forever. But with how many other ghosts are seen on the property, it seems he has a lot of company.
The next place I want to talk about is in another DC neighborhood. It’s known as the Halcyon house, which I recently saw on a ghost tour.The house, build in the 1780’s is reportedly so haunted, that when US Navy Vet Bill Stearman lived there after returning from the Vietnam war he proclaimed, I never believed in ghosts, but I certainly do now. More, after the break
It’s 10pm on a Tuesday and I’m standing outside of 3400 Prospect St in Washington DC, also known as the Halcyon house, or Stoddard house, depending who you ask. The leader of the ghost tour I’m on, Jim, stops us across the street and asks us to pick out which house on the block we think is haunted.
The question almost seems rhetorical because the answer feels so obvious. In front of us, the Halcyon house sticks out like a gaudy, haunted thumb among the surrounding 19th century brownstones. For one, it’s giant. It looks, at least from the outside, to be at 5 stories high, and it’s width is about half of the block. Jim tells us that the backyard used to extend all the way down to the river when it was owned by its more eccentric resident.
The house was originally built by Benjamin Stoddert, the first secretary of the Navy, in the 1780’s. Through the 1800’s, the red brick giant was a socialite stop in DC. Dolley Madison, whose ghost haunts the rose garden at the White House used to go dancing at Halcyon house.
But by 1900, the house was sold to a man named Albert Adsit Clemons, and this is where the story starts to get strange.
Albert was an eccentric guy to say the least. He claimed to be the nephew of famed connecticut writer Samuel Clemons, aka Mark Twain. Only no one was ever able to confirm that story. Albert only sometimes spelled his last name the way Twain did, and a visitor once remarked it strange that Albert had no books written by his uncle in his entire home.
Regardless, Albert had money. Like capital M money. The source of that money was as mysterious as his ties to Mark Twain, but once Albert moved into the Halcyon house, he started putting that money to use.
He collected pieces that would normally belong in museums, like a 2000 year old marble greek statue, and a giant sculpture of a native american man which he put in the front of the house. Rumor had it that he purchased two mummies from Egypt that he kept in their sarcaphagus’s in a giant ballroom. According to him, they represented his lost youth and lost figure. What he meant by that, I can’t really be sure.
Walking by, his growing collection could be seen from the street, and neighbors recalled seeing wooden busts in the windows, the expressionless heads facing their homes.
Albert had this giant house largely to himself. His wife was often away and the only other person that lived on the grounds was a carpenter he had hired for renovations. Albert chose to live in the basement, becoming more reclusive the older he got, bringing the outside world to him through his collection rather than venturing outside.
As the world around Albert shrunk, his imagination seemed to grow, and soon he had wild ideas about what he wanted to do with the house. See, Albert was a little bit paranoid, and he had come to the conclusion that if he ever were to stop working on the house, he would die. So the solution he came up with, alongside his live-in carpenter, was to always have something to work on in the house. That way he would live forever
It started with additions. First, He added two wings, growing the already overwhelming size. Then he added a false front onto the house with large white columns. When Albert ran out of space to build things on the mansion's exterior, he turned inward and started building staircases that went nowhere, trap doors, rooms so small they could only fit a table and chair. There was a door on the top floor that opened into the outdoors, a 5 story drop below. Another door lead to a bathroom that was only 3 feet tall.
The once popular home was becoming a reclus’s solitary carnival attraction. One that was constantly padlocked, per Albert’s wishes. Albert also hated a new invention called electricity, instead opting for most of the house to be in total darkness at night while he lived in the basement.
Though Albert kept building, it could not stop his aging and declining health, and in 1938, he died. His final wishes were strange to say the least.
For one, he asked to be buried in a crypt that he had built in the backyard. It’s believed that this is where he eventually moved his mummies. And on top of that, he asked that a wooden stake be driven through his heart to ensure that he was dead. Maybe he had a fear of being buried alive, but if you told me at this point in the story that he was really a vampire, I would 100% believe you.
It’s unclear if the stake was driven through his heart, but his wish for being buried on the property wasn’t fulfilled.
Albert also wished for the home to be divided up into apartments, though that would be nearly impossible with the condition he had built the house into. If that were to happen, however, he asked that no children nor pets ever live in the house, and that no matter what, electricity must never be installed.
As the tour guide was telling us this part, I couldn’t help but notice the one light that was on in the house, as well as the streetlamp that lit the house from the outside. I really don’t think any of his wishes were taken seriously, at least it didn’t seem that way. Perhaps that’s why there seems to be a lingering presence within it’s walls
Over the years, the house has been converted into many different things, as well as gutted and rebuilt inside to be more liveable. There does seem to be a unifying thread that ties to gether the experience of everyone who has lived in the house, however. They’ve all said it’s haunted.
At one point the house was converted into a female dorm for Georgetown university, and the girls complained endlessly of moving objects and strange creaking throughout the night. In an article from 1955, the residents at the time said they were once telling their visiting friends about the spirits that lived in the house, when a door unlocked and opened by itself before their eyes.
And then there was Bill, the Vietnam war vet. He said the house is 100% haunted but it doesn’t bother him as much. What he saw in Vietnam will always be worse than whatever ghosts are in the apartment. One night though, Bill was having a dinner party when all of a sudden he and his guests heard a loud stomping coming from his bedroom upstairs. He ran up to see what it was, but no one was there. When he came down to comfort his guests and assure them it was nothing, they were all scared to tears and a few of them had to go home.
Bill mentioned in the article that he knew the person who owned his unit before him. It was a Georgetown professor, who only lasted a few months. He was sleeping in the bedroom, the same one that Bill heard the stomping coming from, when all of a sudden the bed frame started shaking so badly he was thrown onto the ground. He moved out almost immediately afterwards.
Standing down on the sidewalk, watching the house, I couldn’t help but wonder what was happening inside. Was there stomping happening right now. Was Albert’s restless spirit marching up and down the halls? I tried to close my eyes and listen, when I noticed a light flickering in front of my face.
There, on the street corner, right beside the 34th and prospect street signs, one street lamp flickered and then went dim.
You know, the tour guide Jim said, some people say that’s albert. He keeps trying to turn off that street lamp on his property because he hates electricity.
And I couldn’t believe it. The light would flicker, as if it were fighting to stay on, and then go dim. I’m going to include a video of it on the site and on instagram because it was wild to see. None of the other lights on any street flickered the entire night. Just the one below the Halcyon house street signs
We turned and walked away from the house, the light flickering once more, then going out.
There are honestly so many more DC ghost stories that I can’t wait to get to in future episodes. Walking down the streets, I felt like I was in a time capsule, like if someone dressed in 19th century garb walked out of one of the houses it would almost feel normal. It’s like you can feel the lives that were being lived 200 years ago still alive in the air. It’s really beautiful.
You won't be able to get a full night time tour of the white house to catch a glimpse of lincoln, but if you find yourself in DC, go check out the Halcyon house at night. Stand across the street and see if you can catch the street lamp flicker. It might just be albert trying to turn off the electricity in a last attempt to have one of his wishes fulfilled.
This has been heart starts pounding, written and produced by me, Kaelyn Moore. Sound design and Mix by Peachtree Sound. Shout out to our new patrons:
Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Greyson Jernigan, the team at WME and Ben Jaffe. Have a heart pounding story or a case request? Check out Heart Starts Pounding.com. Until next time, stay curious. OOOooooOOO!