THE HAUNTED WHITE HOUSE
According to the Gallup Poll News Service, about 32 percent of Americans believe in ghosts, haunted houses, ghosts, communication with the dead and evil witches. So it comes almost as no surprise that the national house of the people, the White House, and our capitol, would be seeped in ghost tales. Indeed, Washington DC and the surrounding area the site of a vast number of reportedly haunted locations ranging from battle fields to dueling ground and assassinations.
Of all these places, the White House is said to be the most haunted location of them all. In fact, the White House is on the list of Time Magazine’s Top Ten Haunted Places, and on the New York Daily News List of the Most Haunted Places on Earth. Yet the White House (Originally, the White house was known as The Presidential Palace. President Theodore Roosevelt would officially call it the White House in 1901, although the name had been informally used before.) has never been investigated by a paranormal group and it’s highly unlikely that it ever will be.
But still the lists of important and reliable people who have reported unexplainable footsteps, knocks, slamming doors, barking dogs, and cold chills in the White House is impressive. President Harry Truman once wrote to his wife: ‘I sit here in this old house, all the while listening to the ghosts walk up and down the hallway. At 4 o’clock I was awakened by three distinct knocks on my bedroom door. No one there. Damned place is haunted, sure as shootin’’
President Eisenhower’s no-nonsense press secretary James Hagerty said that he always sensed presence of Lincoln’s Ghost walking the White House halls and Bill Clinton’s press secretary, Mike McCurry believed the house is haunted overall.
Former first lady Hilary Clinton said ‘There is something about the house at night that you just feel like you are summoning up the spirits of all the people who have lived there and worked there and walked through the halls there…..It’s neat, it can be a little creepy. You know, they think there’s a ghost there. It is a big old house and when the lights are out it is dark and quiet and any movement at all catches your attention.’
Most recently, First Lady Michelle Obama said that her husband was awakened from a sound sleep in the middle of the night after hearing what she called strange sounds in the hall. She also said that family members and friends had reported the unusual sensation of someone or something gnawing or chewing on their feet.
