The Syko Ward

Perhaps, one of the most haunted cities in North America is Washington DC. Read on to see some examples.

Endless hallways of old homes, theaters, and even the White House its self are full of the restless ghosts that wander of First ladies, murdered Presidents, military officers and even assassins, seemingly oblivious to the matters of state being conducted by the mortal beings around them.

These spirits have frightened visiting members of state, presidential families, and visiting dignitaries as they prowl through the White House at night. They have even been seen by servants and tourists as well.

Abraham Lincoln, The Great Emancipator himself, who was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth is said to haunt the Lincoln Bedroom on the second floor of the White House. During World War Two, Queen Wilhelmina was so badly frightened by this apparition, that she fainted.

She was staying at the White House as a guessed of Franklin D. Roosevelt. She was woken and roused from a sound sleep when she heard a loud pounding at her bedroom door. Upon opening the door, Lincoln’s tall, lanky figure, with trousers, top hat and heavy coat confronted the drowsy Queen.

The poor royal became dizzy and fainted as the silent spectre of Abraham Lincoln glared down at her. What was the message that this ghost wanted to impart on Queen Wilhelmina? We will never know.

The following morning, over breakfast, as the Queen recounted the events of the previous night to the then President Roosevelt, he did not even bat an eyelash to her story. He in turn told Queen Wilhelmina how his wife has also heard the ghostly footfalls of the Civil War president and had felt his eerie presence on many occasions.

Mary Eben, Roosevelt’s secretary at the time, said she once saw the Ghost of Mr. Lincoln sitting at his bedside pulling on his boots.

Even Britain’s fearless wartime leader, Winston Churchill was once spooked by Abe’s ghost. During World War Two, Churchill made several trips to the White House and was Given the Lincoln room to stay, as it was traditionally set aside for visiting leaders. On several occasions, he claimed that the ghost of Lincoln had unnerved him so much, that he moved across the hall to sleep as he had grown to hating sleeping in his prepared accommodations because of Abe’s spectre.

The once no-nonsense chief executive, President Harry S. Truman, claimed to have been wakened on three occasions by the ghostly rapping of Lincoln’s ghost at his bedroom door.

He said, “I heard the knock and answered it about three O’clock in the morning. There wasn’t anybody there. I think it must have been Lincoln’s ghost walking the hall.”

Lillian Rogers Parks, in her book My 30 Years Backstairs at The White House, who worked at the executive mansions as a maid until the time she retired in 1960, wrote about her encounters with the ghostly spirits of our long dead presidents.

She wrote that once she had heard upstairs, in the unoccupied Lincoln room, the very distinct sound of booted feet pacing across back and forth. Wondering who could have been in the room at the time, since it was supposed to be empty, she ran upstairs to investigate and found no one there.

There were even several Secret Service men, and even President Theodore Roosevelt himself, who have acknowledged seeing and observing the shadowy spectral form of our beloved, assassinated president gliding from room to room and through the hallways at night in the White House.

Maureen Reagan, former president Ronald Reagan’s daughter, reported several unsettling brushes with a visiting Lincoln. She and her husband often stayed and slept in the Lincoln room when they visited. She had also confided to reporters of seeing an aura, usually red or sometimes orange in the room, during the early hours of the morning.

Strangely, President Reagan and his wife Nancy, never had any personal experiences with Lincoln himself. Although Nancy did admit once that their dog, Rex, occasionally stop outside the Lincoln bedroom and bark at the door and always refused to enter that particular room.

Even though the ghostly apparition of The Great Emancipator seems to be the most well known and busiest of all the White House ghosts, he is not the only past resident to spook guests. In the Oval Room, it is said that, the ghost of Thomas Jefferson has been known to play the violin. Also President Herbert Hoover remarked how fantastic some of noises he experienced in and around the mansion were.

Dolley Madison, who was the former wife of president James Madison, had a confrontation with the then current First Lady and wife of Woodrow Wilson in The Rose Garden. Dolley appeared to the White House gardeners and seemed to scolded them in an otherworldly warning against moving her favorite rose garden. Since then the rose garden has always remained in the same place.

There have been other occupants of the White House that have confided in hearing the ghostly moans of former president Grover Clevelands young wife as she went through her labor pains of having given birth to the first child born in the White House.

Abe Lincoln’s wife and troubled First Lady would often call upon her husband in seances performed in the White House to summon other spirits. In particular their dead son William who had died of a burst appendix while Lincoln was still president.

Mary Todd also said to friends how she had seen and heard the spirit of Andrew Jackson cussing like a sailor through the rooms and hallways he had roamed through in his former life as President.

A former administrative aid to President Lyndon Johnson confided in reporters, more than a century later, that she had heard, coming from the Rose Room which was once occupied by Jackson, ghostly hooting, cursing and hollering that could only have been from the hot-tempered, Battle of New Orleans hero.

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