The Chilling Mystery Of The Creepy Teenage Ghost That Once Haunted The White House

Even though different people reported an encounter with this ominous presence, the story always tended to be the same. A startling weight would impress itself down upon your shoulder, as if a person was bending over you from behind. But turn around, and you’d find that there was nobody to be seen.

Without any tangible evidence of this presence, details about its true nature and form are pretty vague. It’s not even clear when exactly reports of the spirit first started to emerge from inside the White House. But by 1911 even members of President Taft’s inner circle knew about it. And they even referred to it by its nickname of “The Thing.”

But the president himself really didn’t want people to talk about this ghostly presence walking through the White House. Taft would apparently fall into a rage if the subject came up, as he wanted to keep the tale from the general public. And if any of his staff were caught chatting about it, then they faced losing their jobs.

Yet behind his reluctance to speak about The Thing, it’s said that Taft privately gave a great deal of thought to spirits. In fact, there’s even a rumor that he personally encountered a ghost once inside the White House. Perhaps he merely wanted to keep a lid on the building’s paranormal activities to prevent a panic?

The spirit that Taft supposedly came across was female and dressed in a shawl and cap. Her arms were extended out in front of her, just as she was gliding through solid surfaces before Taft’s eyes. It was almost as if she was on her way to do the laundry.

Various reports over the years have mentioned a female spirit on her way to the White House’s East Room, which is precisely where former first lady Abigail Adams once dried her clothes. She and her husband John Adams were the first presidential couple to reside within the White House, so they definitely had a special connection to it.

Throughout Taft’s presidency, there were multiple sightings of Abigail Adams. But things didn’t end when he left office. Even after many decades had passed, people were still occasionally claiming to see her. And the most recent sighting seems to have taken place in 2002 after visitors to the White House supposedly came across her.

The alleged sightings of Adams doing her laundry, however, are merely the beginning. A huge number of supposed ghost sightings have taken place inside the walls of the White House, you see. It’s happened so frequently, in fact, that some have argued that the White House is America’s single most haunted residence.

Jared Broach has been taking people on ghost tours via his business Nightly Spirits since 2012, including one for the White House. Speaking to The Washington Post in 2017, he remarked, “The White House has the best ghost stories, and I’d call them the most verified... Honestly, we could do a ten-hour tour if we really wanted to.”

One story that Broach has surely mentioned during his White House ghost tours is the creepy tale involving President Harry Truman. One night during his tenure, it’s said, he retired to his bedroom and settled in for some rest. But at around 3:00 a.m. his slumber was disturbed by a knock at his door.

In a letter to his spouse Bess, Truman recalled what happened next. He wrote, “I jumped up and put on my bathrobe, opened the door, and no one [was] there. Went out and looked up and down the hall, looked in your room and Margie’s. Still no one.” Margie, presumably, was a reference to his daughter Margaret.

Truman went on in his letter, “Went back to bed after locking the doors and there were footsteps in your room whose door I’d left open. Jumped and looked and no one there! The damned place is haunted sure as shootin’. Secret Service said not even a watchman was up here at that hour... You and Margie had better come back and protect me before some of these ghosts carry me off.”

And Truman wasn’t by any means the only president to be convinced of paranormal activity in the White House. Abraham Lincoln, too, was supposedly under the belief that he was being visited by a spirit. For him, though, the story is more tragic, as he was believed to be encountering his son, who passed away aged 11.

Lincoln’s wife Mary Todd is also said to have seen her child’s spirit after his passing. She was so devastated following the loss that she hid inside her bedroom for weeks, where once she was visited by the boy. She apparently claimed to hear the voice of former president Andrew Jackson at one stage, too.

Truman also once noted the presence of Jackson in the White House in a letter to his spouse. He claimed, “I sit here in this old house and work... read reports, and work on speeches... while listening to the ghosts walk up and down the hallway and even right in here in the study... The floors pop and the drapes move back and forth – I can just imagine old Andy [Jackson] and Teddy [Roosevelt] having an argument over Franklin [Roosevelt].”

As for the Lincolns, though, it wasn’t just their child that showed up. After President Lincoln himself was killed in 1865, many have claimed to see him wandering through the White House. Such people have included first lady Grace Coolidge, the U.K. Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands.

Another apparition said to have appeared is Annie Surratt, who has a grim connection to the Lincolns. Surratt is remembered for trying to save her mother from execution after she was found guilty of involvement in President Lincoln’s murder. Her efforts failed and Mary Surratt was hanged. Since then, there have been reports of Annie’s spirit barrelling through the White House, trying to secure her mother’s freedom.

In a less terrifying tale, the ghost of former first lady Dolley Madison was once apparently spotted in the White House rose garden. This happened during Woodrow Wilson’s tenure as president when there were plans to move the rose garden to another spot. Coincidence? Well, Madison’s appearance convinced people to leave the plot firmly where it was.

In 1883 a newspaper called The Washington Critic published a piece that described a spirit said to roam the second level of the White House. This phantom could be seen floating through the bedrooms located on this floor of the building. And the details mentioned in the paper were disturbingly vivid. So brace yourselves...

The article described the ghost as, “an aged and bent man with long, phosphorescent, white beard and hair, ghastly and wavy, bright and glaring eyes, and long scrawny fingers. His walk is noiseless but stately, and his presence is always indicated by a peculiar electric sensation which pervades the surrounding air.” Yikes!

In 1897 another newspaper called The Saginaw News published a vivid description of a White House ghost. And this time the story was about a police officer who was walking around a greenhouse complex that used to be located to the side of the building. Here, the officer reportedly saw, “a tall, beautiful lady dressed in the fashion of the early 19th century.”

The police officer tried to engage this apparition in conversation, but then she disappeared before his eyes. Just rude really! And with that, a “musical laugh” sounded and a weird glow lit up the greenhouse. But the woman was gone. This same officer encountered the ghost again, but he fainted as a result and was removed from his post by his bosses.

Yet another section of the White House notable for its apparent high level of paranormal activity is the North Portico entrance. Because here people have claimed to have seen an apparition of a soldier with a torch in his hand. Others have said that they’ve seen the ghosts of former doormen still seeing to their duty here.

So overall the White House has a long history of people claiming to have encountered spirits. But of all the ghost stories set within the walls of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, arguably the most fascinating takes us back to 1911. This was when, we’re told, the spirit known as The Thing haunted the place.

Now it isn’t known for sure when reports first started to emerge about The Thing’s presence at the White House. But it does appear that the phantom picked up its nickname in 1911 when William Taft occupied the building as president. The moniker of “The Thing” reportedly was the work of Major Archibald Butt, a military aide to the president.

Butt’s own life would tragically be cut short aboard the doomed Titanic voyage, but before that he described The Thing to his sibling Clara. In a letter to her, he explained that the spirit actually appeared to belong to a kid. He then went on to describe the creepy way the ghost revealed itself to people.

Butt wrote, “It seems that the White House is haunted... The ghost, it seems, is a young boy – from its description, I should think about 14 or 15 years old... They say that the first knowledge one has of the presence of The Thing is a slight pressure on the shoulder, as if someone were leaning over your shoulder to see what you might be doing.”

Fascinated with the spirit, Butt reportedly interrogated others who worked in the White House to try and learn more. But he was forced to stop his investigation when President Taft learned of the ghostly rumors. Taft was apparently furious about such talk and threatened to fire anyone who engaged in it.

Butt detailed Taft’s reaction to the ghost story in another letter to his sister. The president, he wrote, succumbed to, “a towering rage... he thinks it will be a very serious thing to have the story get out among the people of the country.” So it appears that Taft wanted to avoid a panic at all costs.

Yet privately it’s said that Taft was eager to learn about The Thing. And Butt himself was fascinated by the subject, though he tried to pretend otherwise. When White House staff reported sightings of the spirit, he would try to brush it off as if it didn’t interest him.

Plus very few people claimed to have actually seen The Thing with their own eyes – but they did feel it. The creepy, ghostly hand of the phantom would apparently give a squeeze of a person’s shoulder, which surely was a terrifying experience. There were reportedly numerous people who said that this had happened to them.

But even though The Thing tended not to show itself to people, there has been at least one reported visible sighting. This came from a maid who worked in the White House, seeing to the First Lady Helen Taft. In accounts of this maid, she’s referred to by the name of Marsh.

Following her claimed sighting of The Thing, Marsh described the phantom as that of a teenage boy. His hair was disheveled, she claimed, and he had blue eyes that appeared to be “sad.” This was the most detailed account of The Thing that anyone in the White House had ever offered. And perhaps a pretty harsh name on reflection given it was just a boy?

So Butt didn’t appear interested in this tale – in public anyway – but he secretly went about trying to learn more. He interviewed people about the phantom, plus he conducted research to try and discover whether a boy may have passed away in The White House. But eventually the letters he sent to his sister stopped mentioning The Thing. It seems his investigations never bore fruit.

And others have attempted to figure out who this kid might have been, too. But the only young boy that’s known to have died in the White House is President Lincoln’s son. Yet Willie Lincoln passed at the age of 11, which doesn’t quite match reports of The Thing’s physical appearance.

Whatever was truly believed by the men in private, it’s understood that Taft and Butt managed to keep the tale from reaching the general public. That’s the view of Evan Phifer, a historian associated with the White House Historical Society. Speaking to Mental Floss, he explained that Butt’s letters appear to be the only solid records of The Thing.

Phifer told the website back in 2017, “I didn’t really see the story in any papers of the time, so you could say that Archie Butt did a good job of keeping the story under wraps... This seems to be the only mention in the historical record of this ghost.”

Perhaps one of the other reasons why The Thing largely faded from history is because it wasn’t as high-profile as some of the other White House ghost sightings. As Phifer put it, “It’s not a president or a first lady. It’s this unknown boy about 14 or 15 years old.”

So if Butt ever did manage to find out anything substantial about The Thing, it seems that he didn’t document it. By April 1912 he’d lost his life on the Titanic, so if he had any secrets they died with him. But who knows? Perhaps The Thing will reveal itself again to those in the White House today.