Well, it’s almost Halloween,
which, as I’ve said before, is one of my favorite times of year.
Why?
The candy.
Obviously.
And as a close second, the ghost
stories.
While I start getting the house
ready with puffy paper ghosts and spiders and jack-o-lanterns, I thought I
might pass a few down, nothing gruesome, just a little spine-tingling stories
of the eerie and unexplained. And all,
hand-to-God, true.
So tuck the kids into bed, grab a
homebrew, and enjoy!
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| Isn't it spoooooky? |
Today, I thought, given the
upcoming election, I might start with one about a former resident of the White
House.
I know there is a legend about
Lincoln’s ghost haunting the White House, but I’ve never seen it. Ask Barack.
I’ll stick with the facts. When
Lincoln was alive, he was keenly aware of having some peculiar dreams, dreams
he thought were trying to send him a message.
One such dream occurred in the
early days of April, 1865. In the dream,
Lincoln found himself in the White House, but the house was dark, and quiet,
except for a muffled sobbing. He
searched the house until he came to the room from which the sobbing
emanated. Inside, he found a coffin
guarded by two soldiers, and a group of women in the corner, dressed in
black. He asked one of the soldiers,
“Who is dead in the White House?”
The soldier responded, “Don’t you
know? It is the President. He was killed by an assassin.”
Lincoln awoke, then, and was
unable to sleep more that night. About a
week later, he took his seat in Ford’s Theater, and his place in history.
Hogwash, you say? An invented story added to the memory of a
fallen president? Superstitious
nonsense? Perhaps, however…
Lincoln’s eldest son, Robert Todd
Lincoln, served as General Grant’s aid during the Civil War, and distinguished
himself as a smart and capable young man.
He went on to become Secretary of War under President James
Garfield. One night, after a cabinet meeting,
Garfield asked Robert Lincoln about the story of his father’s dream, and Robert
told it, just as I have.
The next day, while walking to
catch a train to meet his wife, who was recovering from a grave illness,
Garfield was shot in the back and soon after died.
I don’t know if Robert Lincoln
thought this was a strange coincidence, though he was undoubtedly shaken by all
the violence his life had so far seen. Certainly,
it was an eerie story to tell about being close to two fallen Presidents.
I have no proof that he told both
these stories to some traveling companion while visiting the Pan-American
Expedition in New York in 1901, on the same day that President McKinley was
shot, while also visiting the fair. But
I like to think that’s what happened.
Because that would tie Lincoln’s
prophetic dream to the deaths of three Presidents!
The moral of the story?
If you ever run into any of
Lincoln’s descendants, don’t ask them about their dreams!
What’s your favorite tale of
haunted presidents?
More true tales of the
unexplained, coming soon!
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