The 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, is a pivot of American history. Once in office, simmering disputes between the northern and southern states soon escalated into what would become known as the American Civil War. It was Lincoln, who through his assertive will, personal charisma, and keen intelligence, led the Northern Union states to a hard-fought victory. 620,000 men died in the Civil War, exceeding the nation’s losses in any other American war. Turbulent moments often leave their mark on time and some would say they leave an imprint on the fabric of invisible space, the ether of the world between the living and the dead.
Visions of Lincoln
Lincoln himself was no stranger to the world of the Paranormal. While running for president, Lincoln was listening to his friends discuss the possibilities of the Civil War, Lincoln told them; “Gentlemen, you may be surprised and strange, but when the doctor here was describing a war, I clearly saw myself, at second glance, as having an important part in that fight.”
The day he won his election for president, exhausted, he sat in his bedroom. Looking in the mirror at the man who was the newly elected president, Lincoln saw in the reflection a vision of two separate and clearly defined faces. The vision faded and then came back. The first face of him was normal, but the second looked pale, as if dead. The vision faded again. Lincoln told his wife, Mary Todd. In the following days he tried to make it happen again, to prove it to his wife. Mary Todd didn’t see it, but she told him what she thought it meant. The first healthy face was his current face, indicating that he would live out his first term in office, but the other faces, with a deathly pale complexion, indicated that he would not live to see the end of his second term.
During the war, Lincoln used the telegraph lines much like we would use the Internet or a fax machine today. He was constantly up to date, reading the latest news from his commanders. After a visit to the telegraph office, he read the reports and left, only to return some time later in a panic and ordered the operator to send out a line saying that the Confederates were about to cross Union lines. The operator asked where he had received this sudden twist of information from and Lincoln replied; “OMG man, I saw it!”
After the death of Lincoln’s 11-year-old son, William, the Lincolns were devastated by the loss. It was after the death of his son that the Lincolns began to invite mediums, psychics or spiritualists to the White House. Sessions were held and it is believed that they were trying to contact her dead son. It is also said that the information was obtained from the ‘other side’. The president would ask for ideas and advice on the war. There is also an account of a séance conducted by the medium Nettie Colburn Maynard, where a piano levitated and Mr. Lincoln and railway lobbyist Colonel Simon Kase climbed on the piano to keep it down. It moved so much that they had to jump off the piano.
On March 4, 1865, Lincoln began his second term as president, the South was losing the war. On April 9, Confederate Commanding General Robert E Lee surrendered. Soon after, the president recounted a prophetic dream;
About ten days ago, I retired late. I soon began to dream. There seemed to be a dead stillness around me. Then I heard muffled sobs, as if several people were crying. I thought I left my bed and went downstairs. There the silence was broken by the same pitiful sobs, but the mourners were invisible. I went from room to room; there was not a living person in sight, but the same dismal sounds of anguish met me as I passed. There was light in all the rooms; all the objects were familiar to me, but where were all the people who were grieving as if their hearts were going to break? I was puzzled and alarmed. What could be the meaning of all this? Determined to find the cause of so mysterious and shocking a state of affairs, I pressed on until I came to the East Room, which I entered. Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funerary clothing. Around him were posted soldiers who acted as guards; and there were many people, some looking sadly at the corpse, whose face was covered, others crying piteously.
“Who is dead in the White House?” I asked one of the soldiers.
“The President”, was his answer, “a hitman killed him.”
Then came a loud outburst of complaints from the crowd, which woke me from my sleep. I didn’t sleep any more that night; and though it was only a dream, it has bothered me strangely ever since.
-Abraham Lincoln, 1856
A few days later, on April 14, while attending a play with his wife, Southern sympathizer John Wilkes Booth shot President Lincoln in the back of the head at point-blank range. Lincoln died the next morning. The war ended but, true to the prediction of the two faces in the mirror, Lincoln did not live to see the end of his second term.
lincoln ghost
Distraught over the loss of her husband, Mary Todd Lincoln held séances to contact him and felt that she had succeeded in reaching his spirit. Years after Lincoln’s death train procession and funeral, people still report seeing his funeral train ride the rails again in April. Lincoln is also said to frequent the White House. During Grant’s presidency, the Lincoln boy, William, was seen dying in the White House. Grace, the wife of Calvin Coolidge, is said to have been the first to encounter the ghost of President Lincoln. She saw him standing by the Oval Office window with his hands clasped behind his back, looking out over the Potomac. She saw him several times after that. Franklin Roosevelt’s valet, Cesar Carrera, ran out of the White House screaming after seeing Abe’s ghost. Elanor Roosevelt’s assistant, Mary Eben, saw her ghost sitting on her bed in Lincoln’s bedroom, removing her boots. Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands was a guest at the White House and, in the middle of the night, she heard a knock on her bedroom door. She went to the door and opened it, and saw Lincoln fully dressed in a top hat and beard. The Queen fainted, and when she came to her senses from him, he was gone. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was staying in the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House and had undressed to bathe when he walked into the bedroom and saw Lincoln leaning on the mantelpiece. They looked at each other for a moment. Possibly embarrassed, Lincoln disappeared from sight. Supposedly, Churchill refused to sleep in the White House after that. Gerald Ford’s daughter saw the ghost of him in the 1980s, and Reagan’s daughter Maureen and her husband saw the ghost near the fireplace.
Ghosts of the Civil War
Lives interrupted in their prime are sometimes thought to be left behind and relive their past. Some call it residual energy, more like a recording playback than the actual living spirit of a human form, but whatever they are, war ghosts are as old as wars themselves.
After reviewing most of the great Civil War battles and their ghosts, most of them have a common spooky theme. When soldiers were wounded in those days, anesthesia was virtually non-existent, and when a limb had to be amputated, the only thing the patient was offered was something to chew on. After each battle, makeshift hospitals were set up in the largest possible place, churches, hotels or other large meeting rooms where the wounded were treated and their arms and legs cut off and thrown out of the window, piled in the second story window. while the patient watched. From battlefields like Antietam and Gettysburg come ghostly sounds of the screams and cries of these poor children, now ghosts, who likely died of blood loss, shock, or gangrene even after limbs were severed from their bodies. The sound of rifle and cannon shots and the smell of gunpowder can still be detected on some nights. The mysterious lights of soldiers’ campfires are also seen on almost every battlefield. The houses that are still standing from the days of the war near these former fields of hell tell many stories of soldiers and civilians killed by stray bullets that haunt their homes.
I camped near the Antietam battlefields and it was quite an unsettling experience. I was glad I brought sleeping pills. I have a link below about our adventure and some orb photos taken that night. Ghosts or camera anomalies, there was something watching us from the forest, and it also felt like it was on top of us.
-Brand
Source: Seances in the White House, Abraham Lincoln and the Supernatural by Tom Taylor
Our visit to Antietam…
Ghosts of Harper’s and Antietam
