9. It has long been claimed the ghost of Abraham Lincoln haunts the White House
The most famous of alleged apparitions at the White House, since his assassination in 1865 Abraham Lincoln has been the subject of numerous supposed ghost sightings. Appearing most famously in a photograph of the widowed Mary Todd Lincoln, taken in 1869, the print has since been dismissed as a hoax and the result of double exposure. Encouraged, however, by supporting statements from Eleanor Roosevelt, as well as the press secretaries of Dwight Eisenhower and Lady Bird Johnson, rumors of the ghostly presence, if not actual sighting of the slain president continue to affect the halls of the White House.
Breathing life into decades of rumors concerning supernatural occurrences at the White House, commonly revolving around the Lincoln Bedroom and often involving footsteps or knocking, Grace Coolidge became the first to claim she had actually seen the ghost of Lincoln, alleging he had been staring out across the Potomac via a window in the Yellow Oval Room. Reinforced by an incident involving Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, in 1942 the monarch opened her bedroom door in answer to a knock to find Lincoln standing in the doorway. Promptly fainting, Churchill similarly claimed to have encountered the specter, alleging he conversed with Lincoln whilst naked and smoking a cigar following having a Scotch in the bath.