Abraham Lincoln
Quite the opposite of Henry VIII, Abraham Lincoln (1809-65) is fondly-remembered as one of America’s greatest presidents. Defeating the slave-owning South and ordering the Emancipation Proclamation make him especially palatable to our enlightened age, regardless of his real motives and actual views on race. His legend was only added to by his untimely death at the hands of John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre: the Confederate spy killing the relaxing abolitionist is a powerful image, and one that casts Lincoln forever as the ‘good guy’. Lincoln is commemorated on US currency, Mount Rushmore, and his elaborate tomb in Springfield, Illinois.
Lincoln’s ghost is still frequently reported, especially at the White House. According to apocryphal legend, Sir Winston Churchill had an encounter with the phantom in the 1940s. Displeased to have been assigned the Lincoln Bedroom, so the story goes, Churchill strode from a lengthy soak in the bath completely naked except for his usual cigar perched on his lips, and was startled to see Abraham Lincoln himself leaning on the mantelpiece. With his legendary wit, Churchill is said to have quipped, ‘Good evening, Mr. President, you seem to have me at a disadvantage’, at which Lincoln chuckled, and disappeared.
Most of Lincoln’s appearances at the White House occur around the Lincoln Bedroom. He has been seen reclining on the bed, heard rapping at the door, and caused Eleanor Roosevelt’s dog, Fala, to bark at nothing (presumed to be Lincoln, though Eleanor did not specify why). Another guest of the bedroom, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, said that in 1942 she answered a knock at the door to find Lincoln in his customary frock coat and top hat, causing her to faint. Lincoln has also been seen at his own tomb and a portrait of his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln.
Lincoln’s ghostly returns to his grave and wife’s portrait are fairly common ghostly phenomena, but his alleged presence at the White House is more intriguing. The activity taking place during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency, witnessed by Queen Wilhelmina and Churchill, coincides with World War II. After the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour in 1941, America ended its policy of non-interventionism, and entered the fray. The attack on American soil was the worst since the Civil War ended in 1865, and despite a number of smaller conflicts in the intervening 74 years, must have brought back memories of the latter conflict.
It is unsurprising, therefore, that some started to imagine that Abraham Lincoln, the great American hero and war time president, had returned to keep a watchful eye over proceedings. Tales of his appearance to two prominent Allies can also be interpreted as a mark of acceptance (and forgiveness, in Churchill’s case, given the British assistance surreptitiously given to the Confederacy during the Civil War). Lincoln’s presence was thus something of a comfort, comparable to the example of Sir Francis Drake’s ghost in England featured below. Readers can decide for themselves whether Lincoln’s ghost is currently needed at the White House.