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John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC

The United States Capitol Building Ghosts




“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)