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Healy Hall Haunts of Georgetown University

Ghosts of Scary DC Blog 13 Healy Hall Haunts of Georgetown University © 2018 by Dr. Philip Ernest Schoenberg, Ghost with a Blog #ghosts

Healy Hall of Georgetown University at 37th St NW & O St NW has experienced its share of haunting. Healy Hall is the…

The Flying Ghost of the Potomac River

Ghosts of Scary DC Blog 12 The Flying Ghost of the Potomac River © 2018 by Dr. Philip Ernest Schoenberg, Ghost with a Blog #ghosts Samuel Pierpont Langley, the Secretary of the Smithsonian, backed by the US government with $50,000 and his own Smithsonian Institution granting him $20,000, attempted to make the first working piloted…

Lincoln’s Ghost

On an isolates stretch of road on foggy, summer nights of the full moon, people on a nightly stroll see an unusual sight.  They see a tall man with a top hat and a pedestrian with a beard bowing toward one another and perhaps even engaging in conversation.  As they get closer, they disappear into…

The Tomb and the Catafalque of the Capitol

The Tomb (two levels below the Capitol Rotunda) was an original feature of the Capitol, planned as a resting place for George Washington and members of his family. The Washington family politely declined the offer because they felt it would be too much of a tourist attraction. Ironically their chosen resting place of Mt. Vernon has…

John McCullough of the National Theatre

The National Theatre is the oldest continuing, operating theatear in the country.  The National Theatre (1321 Pennsylvania Avenue NW) opened at its current location on December 7, 1835, although the old building was torn down and replaced with the current structure in 1923. It  has experienced three fires and several re-buildings. Nonetheless, some claim the…

Theodore Roosevelt of Rock Creek Park

President Theodore Roosevelt. In his Autobiography he remarked, “When our children were little, we were for several winters in Washington, and each Sunday afternoon the whole family spent in Rock Creek Park, which was then very real country indeed.”  As an advocate of the “Strenuous Life,” he was always a man in motion who involved…

The Unknown Patriotic Specters at the Capitol

Soldiers from wars long past may haunt the capitol, marching time from time in dead of night. Witnesses have seen the ghost of an American Revolutionary War solder, in full uniform, passes by the empty Washington crypt, meant to entomb George Washington but he preferred to be buried in Mount Vernon. Also, the specter of…

The Spectral Scholarly Ghost of the Library of Congress

In 1897, the Library of Congress was blessed with its own building, now known as the Jefferson Building, because his sale of books to the Library of Congress after the War of 1812 had been nucleus of Library’s collection.  Not only was the building designed to be as fireproof as possible, but it was the…

Mary Surratt’s Ghost

The intersection of 7th Street NW and H Street NW is the heart of D.C.’s Chinatown neighborhood today, but prior to the 1930s it was populated primarily by German immigrants. Before the American Civil War, 7th Street NW was the city’s primary commercial district, the street lined with three-story Federal-style townhouses with shops on the…

Fala Still Barks at the White House

Fala, was an early Christmas gift to Franklin D. Roosevelt from his favorite cousin, Margaret Suckley, proved to be the perfect political animal. He shook people’s hands instead of taking a bite out of them or doing his business in inappropriate places unlike so many other doges that the Roosevelts had. One had even taken…