“One
soldier is known to have undergone excruciating pain one night during surgery
and he died on the operating table,” said Wallis. “So Capitol Police swear that
they hear moaning and see figures walking across the Capitol Rotunda, because
it was used as a makeshift hospital during the Civil War.” Rep. José Serrano (D-N.Y.)
“A
lot of Capitol Police swear they see and hear things, and it doesn’t surprise
me. The Capitol is a really old building. There’s been people who have been
shot in the building and it’s been a pretty violent place over history.” Anthony Wallis, research analyst, House
historian’s office.
“In
my old hideaway we had ghosts, we had a 300-pound table that we’d come in and
find in different parts of the room that we hadn’t left it in — it had moved
around by itself about every two or three months.” Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.)
The United States Capitol is
considered one of the most haunted buildings in Washington. The first
apparition to be seen there was in the 1860s as the Capitol was being
completed. Several spirits are said to haunt the Capitol due to tragedies
associated with its construction. One such ghost is said to be that of a worker
who died via a fall during the construction of the rotunda, and who now is
occasionally seen floating beneath the dome carrying a tray of woodworking
tools.
The Ghost of Henry Wilson
Henry Wilson of Massachusetts was
elected Vice President of the United States on the Republican ticket with
President Ulysses S. Grant. He was brought onto the ticket to replace the
ethically challenged Vice President Schuyler Colfax.
In 1873, Vice President Wilson suffered
a serious stroke but remained in office. Then, on November 10, 1875, he
suffered another attack that eventually killed him on November 22 a t7:00 AM
while he was working in the US Senate in the Capitol Building.
For years, some Capitol Police
have said that they have Wilson’s ghost walking from the old Senators tubs,
coughing and sneezing. Other say they have heard sneezes in the Senate hallways
when they are alone and still others say they have smelled the faint odor of
fresh soap near them accompanies by a cold chill.
The Voices in Statuary Hall
National Statuary Hall is said to
be haunted by a number of former members of Congress. Many politicians with
strong personalities and a powerful attachment to the institution of Congress
may continue to roam the halls of Congress long after their deaths.
Members of the United States
Capitol Police have claimed to have seen Senator (and from 1852 to 1854,
Representative) Thomas Hart Benton (above) sitting at a desk in National Statuary
Hall, although it has not been used as a legislative chamber since 1857.
Some claim that on the statues in
Statuary Hall dismount for their own inaugural ball from their places and dance
and that US Grant and Robert E. Lee have been seen meeting for a reconciliatory
handshake in the Hall.
The Curse of John Lenthall
In 1808 the buildings construction
superintendent John Lenthall disagreed with architect B. Henry Latrobe over the
Old Supreme Court Chamber. When Lenthall tried to remove braces from the
vaults, the ceiling collapsed and crushed him. In his last breath, legend goes,
Lenthall put a curse on the building.
The blue ghost of John Logan
Civil War general and Senator
John Logan is said to return to the old Military Affairs Committee room, with
the door to the room quietly opening and the general appearing, surrounded by a
blue haze. In the 1930s workmen discovered a sealed-up room containing what
many believed was Logan's stuffed horse.
A half hour after midnight on the first Tuesday after a full moon on the
stroke of the clock the door opens and the general appears in a “Sort of blue
haze” and stand there motionless
The Ghosts Joseph Cannon and Champ Clark
The spirits of Representative
Joseph Cannon (above) (R-Ill. and Speaker from 1903 to 1911) and Rep. Champ
Clark (Below) (D-Mo. and Speaker from 1911 to 1919) are claimed to occasionally
return to the dark chamber of the House of Representatives after midnight and,
after a loud rap from a gavel, resume the strong, angry debates they once had
in life.
The ghost of Wilbur Mills
Steve Livengood, chief tour guide
for the United States Capitol Historical Society, says he has seen the ghost of
former Representative Wilbur Mills (D-Ark.) near Mills' former office late at
night. Mills, once one of the most powerful men in the world, was pushed from
office due to a sex scandal.
Pierre L'Enfant
Pierre Charles L'Enfant, although
not a politician, was a brevet Major during the American Revolutionary War who
served with George Washington at Valley Forge. In 1791, L'Enfant was appointed
architect and planner of the new city of Washington in the District of
Columbia. Although L'Enfant submitted
grandiose plans for the new capital city, his plans were never fully adopted
and President Washington dismissed him. L'Enfant spent much of the rest of his
life attempting to wrest a monetary payment from Congress, and he died in
poverty in 1825. Eyewitnesses, however, claim to
have seen the spirit of L'Enfant walking through the Capitol, head down,
murmuring to himself, with the plans for the capital city tucked under his arm.
William P. Taulbee
The Capitol has also been witness
to murder and death. Rep. William P. Taulbee had been a congressman from
Kentucky from 1884 to 1888.
Charles E. Kincaid, a journalist
for The Louisville Times, had accused Taulbee of adultery and involvement in a
Patent Office scandal, which had ruined Taulbee's political career.
On February 28, 1890, the
ex-congressman and the reporter ran into one another in the Capitol, and
Taulbee assaulted and embarrassed Kincaid by tweaking the much smaller man's
nose. Kincaid ran home, grabbed a
pistol, and when he encountered Taulbee on a marble staircase leading from the
House chamber down to the dining room, he shot him in the face just below
Taulbee's left eye. Taulbee died two weeks later, and
Kincaid was acquitted after claiming self-defense. The steps where Taulbee was
shot still contain the bloodstains. Journalists and others claim, however, that
whenever a reporter slips on these steps, Taulbee's ghost briefly appears.
John Quincy Adams
Former President and then-Rep.
John Quincy Adams suffered a stroke at his desk in the House chamber on
February 21, 1848, and was taken into the Speaker's Room. His physical
condition was too precarious to move him, and he died at the Capitol two days
later.
Many people have claimed to have
heard Adams' ghost denouncing slavery late at night in National Statuary Hall,
and one Congressional staff member claims that by standing in the spot where
Adams' desk once stood a person can still hear the former president's ghostly
whisper.
James Garfield
James A. Garfield was a member of the House
from 1863 to 1881 before assuming the Presidency in March 1881. But Garfield
was shot by Charles J. Guiteau, a disgruntled office seeker, on July 2, 1881,
at 9:30 a.m. as he walked through the Sixth Street Station of the Baltimore and
Potomac Railroad in Washington, D.C.
Charles
J. Guiteau
Garfield died of heart failure brought about
by blood poisoning (itself caused by poor medical care) on September 19, 1881,
while recuperating at a beach home near Long Branch, New Jersey. Witnesses have
seen Garfield's ghost walking solemnly through the halls of Congress.
The Two Soldiers
The ghosts of at least two
soldiers are also said to haunt the Capitol. A few eyewitnesses have claimed
that whenever an individual lies in state in the Capitol Rotunda, a World War I
doughboy momentarily appears, salutes, then disappears.
A second apparition, which
eyewitnesses say is the ghost of an American Revolutionary War soldier, has
also appeared at the Washington Tomb.
According to several stories, the
soldier appears, moves around the Lincoln catafalque, and then passes out the
door into the hallway before disappearing.
The English Soldier
The Capitol building was burned
in 1814 by the British and some have seen a British soldier who runs the halls,
torch in hand.
The Stone Mason Ghast
Construction of the Capitol
building began after President George Washington and Secretary of State Thomas
Jefferson chose a winning design in 1792. The Capitol’s history of shootings
and fire apparently invited in some unseen visitors along the way. Legend tells
that during the construction of the Capitol building, an irritable carpenter
smashed the head of a stonemason and buried the body in a wall. The stonemason has
allegedly been spotted walking the halls.
The Black Cat
The legend of the Black Cat (AKA
the Demon Cat) is shared by the White House and Capitol Building, a few blocks
away.
At the White House, the Black Cat
is seen in the basement before various tragic events. But up in the Capitol, it apparently roams
the halls at will. It should be noted that back in the 19th century,
both buildings employed cats to check the rat population, which is numerous in
Washington.
Supposedly (No actual report
exists) A Capital Building Policeman (The Capital has its own police force, as
does the US Supreme Court and the local DC federally managed park system) said
he saw the cat in the very early 19th century and another was said
to have shot at it in 1862. “It seemed to grow” he said “as I looked at it.
When I shot at the critter, it jumped right over my head”
The cat sightings in both the
White House and Capitol Building tend to follow a national tragedy. A White House guard claimed to have seen just
before the Lincoln assassination, a week before the stock market crash of 1929
and also reportedly seen days before the assassination of JFK. The last semi-official
sighting of the Demon Cat was in 1940.
Interestingly enough, a few block
away from the White House sits the Octagon House, which is said to be curse and
haunted.
Legend says that Betty Taylor,
the married niece of the first owner of the house, tripped and fell to her
death by a black cat as she raced down the houses circular stairs. She was
running in the dark to greet her lover who entered the property by a secret
passage that opened on the bank of the Potomac (The river has since been pushed
by, but at one time it did run close to the house)