The Syko Ward

One very famous theater, that is still haunted to this day, is Ford’s theater where Abraham Lincoln was fatally shot by John Wilkes Booth, actor turned assassin.

It seems fitting that since Lincoln’s ghost is forever tied to haunting the White House and it’s endless halls and rooms, so to that John Wilkes Booth be chained to the earthbound scene of the crime he committed.

Soon after Lincoln was killed by Booth, while he and his wife were watching the play Our american Cousin, stories of ghostly and haunting happenings began to circulate around Ford’s Theater.

More than a century after Lincoln was killed in the old theater, no more deaths have occurred there, yet many
still believe that Booth’s ghost is still trapped in its darkened halls and rooms. Many have reported hearing heavy footfalls made by heavy boots like those that Booth had worn that night. Once, While performing, an actor at the haunted theater went dry-mouth, ash white and forgot all his lines claiming that he had seen a a ghostly boot floating above Box Seven. There are many that have claimed that the spirit of Abraham Lincoln has been haunting the White House has been haunting the theater as well.

Also around this time, more than a century later, during a production of ‘Trumpets of The lord’, and actress in the production refused to return to the stage claiming she had seen light flickering on and off in the Box Seven. A public relations officer quickly said that that would have been impossible , since the box had remained sealed since Lincoln’s death.

It was also reported, by a lecturer on the Lincoln assassination, that he had seen the face of the dead president floating above the seat in Box Seven where Lincoln had been sitting when shot. And, a technician claimed that he had clearly heard what sounded to be the an audience applauding. She decided to investigate and had quickly climbed the stairs to the first balcony where she said she was greeted with the sounds of laughter. When she confronted a fellow coworker about what was going, he simply stared and said he had no idea what was she was talking about. There was no audience that night and he said he had heard no such laughter.
On the night of April 14th, 1865 The Lincoln’s were seated with other members of the presidential party in Box Seven of Ford’s Theater. It was here that Booth sneaked up behind the president and with a .44 caliber Derringer pistol shot the President in the back of the head. He then jumped from the box onto the stage below shouting “Sic semper tyrannis!” ‘Thus always to tyrannts’ in Latin.

Booth was a Northerner with strong sympathies for the South. As he hit the stage 10 feet below the box, he broke one of his legs and still managed to somehow struggle away, break free and escape.

It has been debated quite a bit whether the shot that killed him was from the soldiers that cornered him eleven days later in a wooden shed or it was the act of a desperate man who would rather commit suicide rather be captured.

Whether by execution or suicide, reports began to that his very troubled spirit has returned to Ford’s Theater, the scene of his cowardly crime. Many told chilling stories about glimpses and close encounters with Booth’s ghost including actors, stagehands and theatergoers.

It is said, that a few days after Lincoln was shot, Civil War photographer Matthew Brady photographed Box Seven. But when he developed the glass plates, They showed the shadowy figure of a man crouching behind the chair Lincoln had been sitting in when he was shot by Booth. Strangely, there had been nobody near that chair when Brady had taken the picture.

Nearly 30 years later after Lincoln’s death, when another tragedy happened to occur at the theater, people began to fear that Booth had reached from beyond the grave to once again commit another murder. In 1893, the theater was being used as a government warehouse office. With a crash and roar, the ceiling collapsed into a pile of masonry and lumber killing twenty-two federal employees and injuring another 65. Rumors quickly spread that it had the spirit of John Wilkes Booth inflicting his revenge on the North for the South’s defeat.

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