Certain ghosts and ghouls rumored to haunt iconic locations in District might give locals as much of a fright as the upcoming election.
Be they political luminaries who now inhabit lantern-lit halls or youthful socialites who met tragic ends, D.C. is full of ghost stories. As a ghoul skeptic who grew up in a suspiciously old and creaky house I suspected to be haunted, I took a self-guided tour from the blog of Kirsten Weiss, a mystery and paranormal writer, around the District last week to investigate claims of spooky sights.
I began close to campus at the Octagon House on New York Avenue. The aptly named imposing brick building was sprawling yet daunting, and its odd shape made it stand out from the street. The spooky historical home featured photos in the windows, visible from the street, of a mother and her child in 19th century attire and another blankly staring child, eyeing viewers coldly as they scope out the area.
Those pictures aren’t the only creepy part of the Octagon House — in the early 1800s, Colonel John Tayloe III’s two daughters supposedly died in the house in the exact same way but at different times. Both sisters argued with their father about their then-scandalous relationships, only to fall down the large spiral staircase of the house and die. Visitors claim the family still haunts the house.
The cold October breeze and the silent streets, where only I and some potential ghosts coexisted, created a sense of unease for me. I felt a set of eyes on the back of my head while sitting on the steps of the house, reading about the creepy coincidences that happened inside. Perhaps the Tayloe clan was eyeing me from just out of sight.
My next stops were the White House and President’s Park, only steps away from one another and about four blocks from the Octagon House. The White House gave me a chill down my spine that the perpetually warm fall weather couldn’t shake — and not just because of the question of who will be occupying it in a couple months.
There were simply so many presidential ghost stories in the self-guided pamphlet I was following. Anna Surratt, the daughter of an Abraham Lincoln assassination conspirator, supposedly lingers at the front door, while William Henry Harrison floats around the attic after dying a month into his presidency. Visitors claim to have seen other American ghosts, like Andrew Jackson and Abigail Adams.
The star of this particular haunted experience was someone whose time in D.C. ended in a haunted way itself: Abraham Lincoln. One story in the guide said former U.K. Prime Minister Winston Churchill left the bath with a cigar in his mouth, naked, only to walk into his accommodations and find the deceased former president leaning against the fireplace. The story truly made me laugh out loud, even more so since Churchill corroborated the story in 1941.
Though in theory ridiculous, I did wonder: If so many people had really seen Lincoln, including dignitaries like Churchill, does that mean that the stories about his ghost are true? Granted, the tourists who were gawking at the White House while I was there were so transfixed that maybe they would’ve thought I was a ghost, too, had I not done my contour well enough that day and accidentally disrupted their concentration on the president’s home.
On the other hand, President’s Park, the small section of benches and greenery behind the White House, was more freaky than funny. The park is where the late adulterous son of Francis Scott Key, the scribe of the national anthem, was killed by his lover’s husband, with ghoul lovers saying this left his spirit to roam the land where his life ended.
Maybe it was because there were a lot of streetlights illuminating every blade of grass and people talking loud enough to wake the undead, but I did not sense the presence of Key’s son. He must’ve been doing room checks at the GW residence hall named for his father rather than hanging around his typical digs that day.
Following President’s Park, I headed over to Mary Surratt’s Boarding House, about a 10-minute bus ride. The former boarding house, now the home of Chinese karaoke bar Wok and Roll, might be historically interesting since it was where John Wilkes Booth and others planned the Lincoln assassination. But despite a Yelp reviewer casually mentioning that Surratt’s ghost just hangs about, it is not particularly creepy, nor pertinent to a successful ghost tour.
Rather than rotted old wood with conspiracies carved into it, the bar is now just a COVID-era glass divider at the front, perpendicular to an old wooden bar on top of wood veneer flooring and in front of many unclothed tables. There’s no spooky candlelight or hints of the moon, just ordinary fluorescents. Assuming Surratt’s ghost doesn’t like belting out the words to “Wonderwall,” it’s hard to see this area really still being haunted.
My last stop on my little tour was the Hay-Adams Hotel, another few steps from the last stop at the corner of H Street. The hotel is tall and majestic, boasting beautiful stonework, neat shrubbery, long columns and a hefty price tag to stay there.
The spot is also very spooky in context, knowing that the elite of D.C. regularly pay high sums to stay in a place with a tale of tragedy. The hotel was built on the grounds that once held the separate homes of friends John Hay and Henry Brooks Adams, grandson of John Quincy Adams. Adams’ wife, Clover, committed suicide just months before moving in though, leaving her husband to move in alone.
Clover’s ghost is now rumored to be a sobbing woman who whispers and screams at guests, certainly a discomforting idea. This stop personally made me feel fine and didn’t evoke much, although that may be attributed to the cheery bustle of the building.
But the question remains: Do I think the city is actually haunted? Possibly.
I definitely got an uneasy feeling at some of the stops, primarily at the Octagon House. The house is embroiled in hard memories in the context of the family that lived there and is also both more run-down and more architecturally daunting than the rest of the stops on the tour. If nothing else, I’ll be modifying my route to the National Mall to avoid the Octagon House’s Tayloe ghosts.
