[00:00:31] Speaker A: If you dig the twisted, admire the outlandish, and are enamored by the unusual, you're in the right place. True crime, the supernatural, the unexplained. Now you're speaking our language. If you agree, join us as we dive into the darker side. You know, because it's more fun over here. Welcome to Total Conundrum.
Warning. Some listeners may find the following content disturbing. Listener discretion is advised.
Hello, Conundrum crew, and welcome back to another exciting episode of Total Conundrum. Today we are interviewing our special guest, April from Door key podcast.
[00:01:20] Speaker B: That's right, and today we're going to be talking about the ghosts, the White House.
[00:01:26] Speaker A: Brace yourselves, conundrum crew. This is one episode you won't want to miss.
[00:01:31] Speaker B: As always, we value your feedback. Please rate and review our podcast on Apple and Spotify. Subscribe and like on YouTube. And don't forget to hit that notification bell so you never miss an episode.
[00:01:43] Speaker A: Your support means the world to us. If you have any story ideas or recommendations, contact
[email protected]. Or you can find us on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter.
[00:01:54] Speaker B: And today we'll be sharing trailers from our podcast pals at a call to madness and the suspended sentence. If you need more creepy things in your life, these podcasts will be right up your alley.
[00:02:06] Speaker A: Without further ado, let's jump into our episode with April.
[00:02:10] Speaker B: We'll be back after these messages.
[00:02:19] Speaker A: To madness.
Hey, guys, I'm Tyler. I'm Thomas. And I'm Jake. And this is a call to madness. This is a comedy show where we have no idea where these topics will take us, whether it be history, relevance between us, or all around straight madness. Learn with us, throw with us, and laugh with us every other Saturday at noon central time on Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Just remember, guys, you cold, but you only found madness.
[00:02:56] Speaker B: Hey, April, how are you?
[00:02:59] Speaker C: Hello. I'm well. How are you guys?
[00:03:02] Speaker A: We're great.
[00:03:03] Speaker B: Great. Thank you so much for coming on and joining us.
[00:03:07] Speaker C: Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
[00:03:10] Speaker B: We're excited, too. Do you want to let all of the listeners know where they can find you?
[00:03:16] Speaker C: Well, sure. My podcast is called Dorkey. That's two words, door and key. And it's my play on the word dorky.
[00:03:30] Speaker B: I love it.
[00:03:34] Speaker C: Because it's a history podcast. It's very, very dorky, but it's fun. And you can find that wherever you get your podcasts.
And you can find it on any of the social medias.
All over.
[00:03:50] Speaker B: Wonderful. Well, it is a great podcast, everybody go check it out. And we will be on April's podcast as well. She's going to be telling us the story of the. Or she did tell us the story of. Of the Velasquez ax. Murderers are murderers, not murderers.
Same difference.
So today, sticking kind of with your theme of history, I thought I would cover some of the ghosts of the White House. Because what's more historic than the White House? Ooh, it sounds good. Yeah, I just gotta pull it up here.
[00:04:36] Speaker A: My interest is peaked.
[00:04:37] Speaker B: Your interest is peaked.
I was actually very shocked to find out how many different ghosts there are.
[00:04:48] Speaker A: Do you think they'll let us go investigate that?
[00:04:51] Speaker B: Sure, if we ask nicely, why not just another?
[00:04:56] Speaker A: I'm sure they'd let us in the White House, no problem.
[00:04:59] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm sure one of the presidents would like to be interviewed too, you know.
So I'm going to start off with a little quote from Harry Truman.
He once joked that my choice early in life was either to be a piano player in a whorehouse or a politician.
[00:05:23] Speaker C: Oh, my.
[00:05:24] Speaker B: And to tell the truth, there's hardly a difference.
That is him saying that.
[00:05:35] Speaker C: That sounds like something he would say.
[00:05:37] Speaker B: Oh, totally. So was it Truman's piano that the Bush twins, Barbara and Jenna, heard in their room after father George Bush took office?
Is the White House home to more than just presidents and their families?
I will let you decide as we go on with the story. Okay, so in June 1945, Truman, what? Wrote to his wife Bess about the life in the White House during the first two months of his term.
I sit here in this old house and work on foreign affairs, read reports and work on speeches, all while listening to the ghost walk up and down the hallway. And even right in here in the study, he wrote. The floors pop, the drapes move back and forth. I can just imagine old Andy Jackson and Teddy Roosevelt having an argument over Franklin Roosevelt on a lonely night in 1946. President Harry S. Truman went to bed at 09:00 p.m. Did you say Harry s. Truman? No.
If I did, it was unintentional. Freudian slip, maybe.
[00:07:00] Speaker A: Are we gonna need to bleep that one?
[00:07:04] Speaker B: We don't bleep ours.
So about 6 hours later, he heard it. Knock, knock, knock.
[00:07:14] Speaker A: Who's there?
[00:07:16] Speaker B: The sound against his bedroom door awakened him, and he wrote to his wife in a letter that is archived in the presidential library and museum.
I jumped up and put on my bathrobe, open the door, and no one was there, he wrote. I went out and looked up and down the hall, looked in your room and Margie's. Still no one. Went back to bed after locking the doors. And there was footsteps in your room, whose door I had left open, jumped and looked and no one was there. The damned place is haunted. Sure as shooting secret Service said, not even a watchman was up there at that hour. You and Margie better come back and protect me before some of these ghosts carry me off.
[00:08:06] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:08:09] Speaker B: Well, he was a believer, definitely.
[00:08:13] Speaker C: So Harry Truman was pretty no nonsense. So for him to say something like.
[00:08:17] Speaker A: This, like something to it, huh?
[00:08:21] Speaker C: Yeah, I think so. Oh, my goodness.
[00:08:23] Speaker A: Well, I do know multiple presidents have said that in the past.
[00:08:28] Speaker C: Yeah.
Yeah, but I don't, like, I just think that Harry Truman would be. He wouldn't say something unless he. Yeah, like, I would take what he says as at least he believes it.
[00:08:43] Speaker B: Right.
And for them to even have this letter archived in the museum and stuff, I think is pretty cool.
[00:08:50] Speaker C: Yeah, definitely. I think so, too.
[00:08:54] Speaker B: So he. That was some of the experiences that have happened there. And then we have multiple grieving first ladies. We've got Mary Todd Lincoln and Jane Pierce.
Jane Pierce, the wife of Franklin Pierce, she was obsessed with death and illness from a very young age. She often wrote metaphysical letters to her family members discussing mortality in the afterlife. When she suffered the tragic loss of their son Bernie, prior to her husband's inauguration in March 1853, however, she made it her mission in life to reconnect with him.
The family had been traveling by train in Massachusetts when the train derailed and their car was overturned. The eleven year old boy's skull was crushed, a sight Jane would never recover from fully.
[00:09:50] Speaker A: Who could?
[00:09:51] Speaker B: Right?
[00:09:52] Speaker C: Right.
[00:09:53] Speaker B: Couldn't imagine.
[00:09:55] Speaker C: It's terrible.
[00:09:56] Speaker B: Very terrible.
Consumed with grief and guilt, Jane sought out help of the Fox sisters, three sisters from New York who played an important role in the development of spiritualism. Do you know about the Fox sisters?
[00:10:11] Speaker C: I do.
[00:10:12] Speaker B: Okay. So they were, uh, they were a big target of Harry Houdini because he wants to out them, out them in a bad way.
So, in fact, they were the pioneered ones that like spirit communication.
Leah, Margaret and Kate Fox had made their career out of speaking with the dead from a very young age. Through the spirits knocking or rapping on furniture and walls in response to questions, the Fox sisters had become fairly famous by the time the first lady called on them to perform a seance at the White House. It was unusual for single women to earn their own money. And earn money the Fox sister Shirley did. In five years, they presided over 400 seances many of them were very well documented. Not much is known about the actual White House seance, but Jane Pierce wrote to her sister that her son appeared to her in her dreams twice after that, and her soul was now calm. Oh, yeah. So she, you know, had some closure from them anyway, whether they were frauds or not. So while it's easy to believe that we're living through exceptional times and doing so with bizarre leadership, we would not be the first to wonder what actually takes place in the White House. Take Jane Pierce, wife of Franklin Pierce. Their story was just kind of crazy. For anybody who hasn't heard of them, definitely look into them. They were outed years later as being able to crack the joints in their feet is how they were making these knocking noises.
Yeah, very, very strange. But they finally stopped doing it. But they were huge in the spiritualism world.
All right, so now we're going to touch a little bit on Mary Todd Lincoln.
[00:12:26] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:12:27] Speaker B: So Jane Pierce had shared the story of her successful seance with the Fox sisters with Mary Todd Lincoln.
Mary was a controversial figure in Washington from day one of her husband's presidency.
Prone to wild fits of overspending, she once purchased 400 pairs of gloves in a single month for. What would you need 400 pairs of gloves for?
[00:12:55] Speaker A: Maybe she was planning on moving to Minnesota.
[00:13:00] Speaker B: Still, that's more than one pair a day.
[00:13:04] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:13:05] Speaker B: So she also undertook on the complete redecoration of the White House using federal funds, a decision that was kind of unpopular during the civil war, when many citizens were suffering personal losses and struggling to provide for their families. Miss Mary's buying enough gloves to fit a small town.
[00:13:28] Speaker A: I mean, maybe she was planning on donating them or something.
[00:13:34] Speaker C: That would be nice, right?
[00:13:37] Speaker B: In February 1862, Mary Todd's. Todd Lincoln's son Willie died from typhoid at eleven years old.
I just couldn't imagine growing up in those. In that timeframe. It was. People were just having kids and by the dozens, because they weren't guaranteed to have any of them survive.
[00:13:59] Speaker C: It's so sad.
[00:14:00] Speaker B: It is very sad.
It just. I couldn't imagine. And you just look back in all these histories and stuff, and even my great grandparents, they had ten children, and I believe they had two that died at infancy. One was stillborn, and one died as an infant. And that was still in, you know, that was in the 19 hundreds still.
[00:14:23] Speaker C: Well, feel free to cut this if this cuts into your story. But like Calvin Coolidge, he had a son who got a splinter or got a blister on his foot, and the blister got infected and died from. From that.
[00:14:40] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:14:41] Speaker C: That was, like, in the early 19 hundreds. Like, it's so sad.
[00:14:44] Speaker B: It's just like. No, I. Yeah, I didn't have that in here. That's very interesting. And you would think of something simple, as. Simple as a splinter.
[00:14:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:54] Speaker B: But, yeah, a blister.
You would think that, you know, antibiotics probably weren't very prevalent back then either, so.
[00:15:04] Speaker C: No, they. They didn't have antibiotics until the world. The second world War. So if you got sick like that, you're pretty much.
It's really sad.
[00:15:16] Speaker B: That is sad.
[00:15:18] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:15:19] Speaker B: So Mary was met with very little sympathy for the death of her son, as so many young people were dying in the Civil War at the time, and the public blamed her husband. Even Mary's family were cold, and many were confederate sympathizers like Jane Pierce. Mary called on the services of the well known spiritualists like Cranston Laurie, also a high ranking employee of the US Postal Service. Young Nettie Colburn Maynard and other identified on the record or only as I'm going to butcher this. The Colchester. Colchester of Georgetown. To conduct these so called calls to the dead. In the White House red room, Mary is said to have been taken by the young spiritualist, Nettie Colburn Maynard, that she secured a furlough for her brother as well as a job for Nettie as a clerk at the Department of Agriculture. So, basically, she wanted to have this seance done so much that she's started, like, patting pockets a little bit there.
[00:16:35] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:16:36] Speaker B: Yeah. So she was desperate for Nettie to remain. Remain in Washington, and she asked Nettie to perform a seance in the presence of the president. Mary believed that she was speaking to her son and that after the seance, he comes to me every night and he stands at the foot of my bed with the same sweet, adorable smile he's always had. She wrote that to her sister.
[00:17:03] Speaker C: Aw.
[00:17:04] Speaker B: So very, very obsessed. Which, I mean, I would. I've never lost a child and could not imagine ever losing one either. But, I mean, she was, like, using presidential things to keep this spiritualist around.
[00:17:26] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:17:27] Speaker B: Makes me curious.
Go ahead.
[00:17:30] Speaker C: I have so much sympathy for Mary Todd Lincoln. Like, she lost children, and then later on, she would lose her husband. Like, so much loss.
[00:17:38] Speaker B: Oh, definitely a lot of loss in that. For her tragic loss, too.
[00:17:45] Speaker C: Yes. Yeah.
[00:17:46] Speaker B: So the next ghost we are going to cover is Abigail Adams. Ghost is well known to the White House staff and residents.
Her ghost appears in times when the White House is going through crisis.
However, the first reported sighting of her ghosts was during the Taft administration, under relatively normal circumstances, President Taft said. President Taft is said to have forbidden his staff from speaking about the incident. The more recent sightings of Abigail's ghosts have been related to helicopter incidents at the White House. One in 1974 and the other in 1994. The first incident, a stolen helicopter, was brought to the White House in a breach of security that resulted in no injuries. On that same day, several staff and residents of the White House claimed that they had seen the ghost of Abigail Adams. Security had been stepped up at the White House after this incident. However, this didn't stop another such incident occurring 20 years later, this time killing the pilot of the helicopter when he attempted to land on the White House grounds without authorization.
On this day, emergency personnel claimed to have seen a woman that matched Abigail Adams description, leading the emergency effort to bring the situation under control.
No one sense has been able to identify this woman or where she came from. So the popular belief now is that it was the ghost of Abigail Adams that had materialized that day. Due to the abnormal circumstances the White House had encountered, she felt that the woman needed to get the man's job done.
[00:19:44] Speaker C: Can I just say that I. I really love Abigail Adams, and if I was going to be haunted, I would want to be haunted by. By her. Like, I don't know if you guys have seen the HBO series John Adams.
[00:19:59] Speaker B: No, it's really good.
[00:20:01] Speaker C: And Laura Linney plays Abigail Adams, and so that's what I'm picturing in my head. And, yeah, I would be okay with being haunted by.
By Abigail Adams as well as Laura Linney as Abigail Adams.
[00:20:15] Speaker B: Yeah, she's making sure that everything is the way it's supposed to be, and they're protected. And aside from her acting as the guardian angel of the White House, she also has been seen keeping up with the laundry duties.
[00:20:30] Speaker A: Well, nice.
That's handy.
[00:20:36] Speaker B: So, yeah, she is often spotted carrying around wash, hanging it up to dry in the east room. So not outside, but in the east.
[00:20:47] Speaker A: Is the laundry, like, transparent too, or.
[00:20:50] Speaker C: I'm not sure.
[00:20:51] Speaker B: That's a good question.
[00:20:53] Speaker C: That is a good question. I wonder.
[00:20:56] Speaker B: You disappeared for a minute.
[00:20:58] Speaker A: You were gone.
[00:21:00] Speaker C: Sorry about that. I don't know what happened.
[00:21:02] Speaker B: It was the ghost glitch.
[00:21:05] Speaker A: Yeah. Where's Abigail?
[00:21:07] Speaker B: Their laundry? Or is she doing her own?
[00:21:09] Speaker A: Yeah, laundry floating down the hallway.
[00:21:14] Speaker C: That would be kind of handy to have a ghost just do your laundry.
[00:21:17] Speaker B: For you, wouldn't it?
It does say in here, in my notes, too, that people have seen an apparition moving around with its arms outstretched in front as if carrying a load of laundry. And they've also smelt the sense of wet laundry or lavender. So I guess the laundry is invisible.
[00:21:39] Speaker A: But why would be doing the laundry.
[00:21:43] Speaker B: Back in the day? That's.
I'm assuming they did that.
[00:21:48] Speaker A: I mean, don't they, didn't they have service back then?
[00:21:55] Speaker B: Oh, that's awesome. I love it. And just those, those random scents popping up, too. You know, their laundry does have a certain scent.
Yeah, that is kind of, kind of cool.
So now we're going to move on to honest Abe. Abraham Lincoln.
Yeah. So Abraham Lincoln is a frequent presence in the White House with president's first ladies and even foreign visitors that claim to have come across his specter in the White House.
He is known to haunt the Lincoln bedroom, even though he never slept in that bedroom during his time in the White House.
The one famous encounter occurred when Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands was staying at the White House. She reportedly heard a knock on her door and upon opening, saw the ghost of Abraham Lincoln wearing his top hat. The sight of him caused the queen to faint out of shock.
She gone.
Other residents have reported hearing footsteps of the president inside the White House, while Eleanor Roosevelt reported feeling his presence when she worked late at night in the Lincoln bedroom and that had been converted into her study. I'm curious then, why it's called the Lincoln bedroom if he never even slept in that bedroom.
[00:23:29] Speaker C: That's a good question. I know.
[00:23:31] Speaker B: Very strange, isn't it? I don't either.
[00:23:34] Speaker A: He never slept in it.
[00:23:36] Speaker B: No. It said that she reportedly. Or where was it? Up here. He is known to haunt the Lincoln bedroom even though he never slept in there during his time in the White House. So why is it called his bedroom?
[00:23:51] Speaker A: Good question.
[00:23:54] Speaker B: Let's see. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, his valet, once ran screaming from the White House after seeing Lincoln's ghost.
[00:24:06] Speaker A: Well, anybody probably would because, I mean, I think the dude was like six.
[00:24:11] Speaker B: Five and then you add another 2ft, I'd run, too.
Lady Bird Johnson also claimed to have felt his presence one evening as she sat in the White House watching a documentary on his death.
First lady Grace Coolidge actually saw his apparition looking out from the window of the Oval Office towards the Potomac and beyond.
So. So go ahead.
[00:24:42] Speaker C: Oh, I just, I did some research. I googled and it looks like they call it the Lincoln bedroom because Harry Truman directed that Lincoln era furnishings be assembled there. So they took stuff from Lincoln's time and put it in that room and called it the Lincoln room.
[00:25:01] Speaker B: Okay, that's yeah, I didn't know that. I didn't either.
Google rocks.
[00:25:09] Speaker C: It does.
[00:25:11] Speaker B: The ghost of President Lincoln also made frequent appearances during the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt when the country was going through the Great Depression.
In one embarrassing incident, a nude Winston Churchill, the british prime minister, once emerged from the bathroom to see Lincoln sitting in his room during his visit in the 1940s, Churchill, always quick on the uptake, simply took his cigar out of his mouth, tapped the ash off the end of his cigar, and said, good evening, mister president. You seem to have me at a disadvantage.
Lincoln softly smiled as if laughing, and then disappeared.
We could only hope to be as.
[00:26:04] Speaker C: Quick witted as Winston Churchill.
[00:26:06] Speaker B: Right. I just loved that. Just simply took the cigar out. Tapped.
You seem to have caught me at a disadvantageous. Oh, that was great.
Ronald Reagan's dog, Rex, is believed to have also seen Lincoln's ghost. Apparently, the dog would regularly stand at the door to Lincoln's bedroom and bark, and the president believed that Rex could see Lincoln. At a 1986 state dinner, Reagan told guests that Rex had barked at the entrance. He would always sit and bark at the entrance of his. The Lincoln bedroom, but he refused to go inside.
Reagan's daughter and son in law also reported seeing ghostly figures in that bedroom.
So then Jeremiah Jerry Smith started working at the White House during the Ulysses S. Grant administration in the late 1860s as a footman, and served as a footman, butler, cook, doorman, an official. There's an official duster. Not 100% sure what that is.
[00:27:19] Speaker A: Feather duster.
[00:27:22] Speaker B: Dusted the White House.
[00:27:23] Speaker A: He stuck his head up.
[00:27:28] Speaker B: So he worked there until his retirement.
So he was there for approximately 35 years. He was a popular character, and storytellers and reporters could always count on Smith. On a slow news day, he claimed to have seen the ghosts of Lincoln, Grant, McKinley, and other. Several other first ladies.
[00:27:52] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:27:53] Speaker B: And there's also.
In current times, there's a lot of spottings of him sitting in a chair at the top of the stairs in the White House, kind of just looking over everything.
[00:28:06] Speaker C: Awesome.
[00:28:07] Speaker B: Yeah. So I. My favorite one out of that was the Winston Churchill one.
[00:28:15] Speaker A: I guess that's one way to get more than two terms, huh?
[00:28:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:28:20] Speaker A: Just become a goat.
[00:28:21] Speaker B: Yeah. Right. You can reside there forever because, I.
[00:28:26] Speaker A: Mean, otherwise, why would it be haunted? I mean, none of them have died there, right?
[00:28:30] Speaker B: No, I don't believe so.
[00:28:33] Speaker A: They. They just. They don't want to give up their jobs. They come back, but.
[00:28:37] Speaker B: Well, I take that back. Willie Lincoln may have passed there. Oh, his son.
[00:28:44] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:28:45] Speaker B: But as of the other actual presidents? I don't know if anybody has.
[00:28:50] Speaker C: Do you if the president's passed in the white. I. I don't think so. Maybe FDR.
[00:28:58] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:28:59] Speaker C: He. I don't know if he was there or if he was away when he. When he died. I. I think most of the presidents that have died in office were away from. I don't think any of them were in the White House when they died.
[00:29:14] Speaker A: Well, I mean, Abe Lincoln for sure.
[00:29:16] Speaker B: Yeah. He was at the Ford theater, wasn't he?
[00:29:19] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:29:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:29:21] Speaker C: Do you guys have Apple TV? Are you watching that manhunt show?
[00:29:27] Speaker B: No. Apple TV is one that we don't have. We have pretty much everything else.
[00:29:33] Speaker C: It's about that. The hunt for John Wilkes Booth after he assassinates Lincoln. So they chase him through the. Through the area, and it's pretty good.
[00:29:43] Speaker B: Very. Sounds interesting. Might have to add another subscription to our ever growing list.
[00:29:50] Speaker C: Yeah, sure.
[00:29:51] Speaker B: Our kids won't complain. They seem to really enjoy all of our subscriptions.
[00:29:55] Speaker A: Yes, they do.
None of them live here, but.
[00:30:02] Speaker B: Well, the next ghost we're going to cover on is Willie Lincoln.
[00:30:06] Speaker A: We'll be back after these messages.
[00:30:11] Speaker B: This is Tracy. This is Samantha. This is the suspended sentence. Grab your latte and join us as we enter season two, starting January 1 of 2024, a year packed full of serial killers that you may or may.
[00:30:25] Speaker C: Not have ever heard of.
[00:30:26] Speaker B: Thanks for being there. Stay safe.
President Abraham Lincoln is not the only Lincoln that's said to be haunting the White House grounds. His son, Willie Lincoln spirit often makes appearances to the fright of many, very often. Lincoln. President Lincoln had four sons, Robert, Edward, William, and Tad. Out of his four sons, only Robert lived on. After his father's assassination.
Edward died in infancy from what is believed to be tuberculosis, and Willie was born that same year. On December 21, 1850, during President Lincoln's first term in office, two of his sons, Willie and Tad, both fell ill from typhoid fever. While Tad recovered from the illness, Willie passed away at the tender age of eleven at the White House.
[00:31:25] Speaker A: Jeez.
[00:31:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
President Lincoln and his wife Mary, were grief stricken at his death. And it's reported that President Lincoln cried all the time for his young son.
Oh, I'm sure I would be, too. I would be a wreck. And especially losing multiple.
Willie was temporarily buried on the White House grounds as his body. Then his body was later exhumed to join his father in Oaks Ridge Cemetery in Springfield, Illinois. Should have remembered that. We could have made a pit stop there, Jeremy. We were just in Illinois last weekend.
[00:32:03] Speaker A: I'm not a history.
[00:32:06] Speaker B: Well, I wrote the story a couple months ago, so a lot of it's. It's like reliving it again.
[00:32:13] Speaker A: See, from now on, we'll just call April, and she can tell us where to go.
[00:32:16] Speaker B: Right.
Our history guru.
[00:32:21] Speaker C: Well, it's. I actually have an episode about Oakfield Cemetery.
Lincoln's. They tried to steal Lincoln's remains from it.
[00:32:32] Speaker B: Really?
[00:32:32] Speaker C: Like, these. Yes. These people. And there was like, a whole. It was a whole thing. Yeah. And they never stole the body, but they reburied Lincoln, like, in a different spot in the same tomb, but just in a hidden spot in the tomb.
And then years later, Robert asked that his father's body be put back where it belongs. So it was. But they kept the people that hid the body first. They kept it a secret and never told where it was until after they moved. So it's a sad story, but it's kind of a good story at the same time. Like, they prevented his body from being stolen.
[00:33:19] Speaker B: Well, when we were in Illinois this past weekend, we made a pit stop at Resurrection cemetery, and.
What is it? Juliet. Juliet.
[00:33:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:32] Speaker B: Um, and we also went over across the street to Chet's melody lounge, because I don't know if you're familiar with the story of resurrection. Mary. Um, she's supposedly a hitchhiking ghost in. In that area. But I was in awe in that cemetery. It was beautiful. And it's. Yeah, we only covered a small little section of it, and. But those. The tombstones and stuff are so elaborate and gorgeous and detailed, and all of the mausoleums, and I've never been in a cemetery like that. It was beautiful.
[00:34:15] Speaker A: Yeah. And unfortunately, for anybody that wants to know, Mary is no longer in that cemetery.
[00:34:22] Speaker B: Well, and that's. I kind of question that, though, because which Mary are they talking about?
[00:34:28] Speaker A: Right.
[00:34:29] Speaker B: Are they talking about the young girl? And, yes, she was reburied in that other cemetery, but if Mary Bagrovie actually is in an unmarked grave, so nobody would have been able to, you know, to damage her tombstone. So there's, like, three or four different marys that it could be. So. Yeah, the. The bartender told us that they moved her. They moved Mary. So, because they were damaging her tombstone. But which Mary is it?
[00:35:00] Speaker A: Well, and then the name of the graveyard actually changed, too, except for on the main gate.
[00:35:07] Speaker B: I was wondering, is it two? Do you think it's two separate?
[00:35:11] Speaker A: No, it's one place, but they changed.
[00:35:13] Speaker B: I noticed on the side, it was said one thing, but on the wood, the.
[00:35:18] Speaker A: The main gate that you go into actually says resurrection.
[00:35:22] Speaker B: Cemetery. And they removed the gates that were supposedly bent by the spirit of resurrection. Mary.
[00:35:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:30] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:35:31] Speaker B: They try to keep it on the DL. I guess the deal.
It was really fun to just go there and, you know, like Chet's was it. That place was literally just a little dive bar. It was cool, you know, at least.
[00:35:47] Speaker A: It was still there.
[00:35:48] Speaker B: It was still there.
[00:35:50] Speaker A: Yeah. That's cool. O. Henry ballroom. That.
[00:35:54] Speaker B: Yeah, that changed to Willowbrook, and that's gone.
[00:35:57] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:57] Speaker B: But then we also pit stopped and went to where the murder castle used to be. Hh, yes. That is a scary part of.
[00:36:09] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, that's a rough neighborhood.
[00:36:11] Speaker B: Yes, very rough neighborhood. But, yeah, we went to where the building used to stand and saw, like, took pictures of the post office. That's on part of the building.
[00:36:22] Speaker A: Fortunately, the post office was closed. It was a Sunday, so.
[00:36:25] Speaker B: So we couldn't go in there. But that was kind of fun. So we'll have to make pit stops in Illinois.
[00:36:32] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure.
[00:36:33] Speaker B: My sister lives there, so it's a good place for us to venture.
So getting back to this, Willie's spirit was seen again in 1870 during the grant administration, and even as recent as the 1960s, when Lyndon B. Johnson's daughter Linda saw the ghosts and talked with him.
And then there is speculation of a ghost that they call the thing. Thing.
[00:37:05] Speaker A: The thing.
[00:37:07] Speaker B: Uh oh, yeah.
Numerous reports from staff and residents at the White House claim to have encountered the.
[00:37:14] Speaker A: Was it green? And lives in a swamp.
[00:37:19] Speaker B: That's pretty good.
The swamp thing.
So they claim to have encountered the ghost of a young boy about 14 or 15 years of age. The earliest reported sighting of this mysterious ghost was during President Taft's administration.
Taft's military aide, Major Archibald. I'm just waiting for Jeremy to go here, major ultra ball. I can't even say it.
[00:37:53] Speaker A: Archie.
[00:37:54] Speaker B: Major Archie Butt.
Yes, I said. But he wrote to his sister Clara. The ghost, it seems, is a young boy about 14 or 15 years old. They say that the first knowledge one has of the president's 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. President Taft ordered but to tell the White House staff that the first member to repeat the stories about the thing would be fired.
So Taft wasn't very receptive to this.
[00:38:44] Speaker A: He didn't want to know.
[00:38:45] Speaker B: But I think.
I mean, Willie was, what, 1112 years old?
[00:38:52] Speaker A: Mm hmm.
[00:38:53] Speaker B: So is it Willie?
[00:38:55] Speaker A: I don't know.
[00:38:56] Speaker B: Or possibly. Yeah.
[00:38:58] Speaker A: Say we just go with the thing, because that's cooler.
[00:39:05] Speaker B: And green. Blob walking around slimer.
[00:39:11] Speaker A: Yeah, that'd be cool.
[00:39:16] Speaker B: Ghostbusters.
One member of the White House domestic staff claims to have actually seen the thing, not just felt his presence. She described it as a boy of 14 or 15 with unkept hair and blue eyes. The thing in Willie Lincoln Booth. Both had blue eyes, but whether they are one in the same, it remains a mystery today.
[00:39:45] Speaker A: So I think Tracy nailed it.
[00:39:47] Speaker B: Yeah. As mentioned earlier, the reports of encounters with the thing at the White House occurred during Taft's administration, and he just did not want anybody to know anything about it.
[00:40:01] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:40:01] Speaker B: Mm hmm.
[00:40:03] Speaker A: He was a strict one.
[00:40:05] Speaker B: He was.
Or he didn't want people to think he was crazy.
So we're just going to briefly go over a few others. I couldn't find much information on these, so just little tidbits here and there. Andrew Jackson supposedly wasn't there, like, a.
[00:40:25] Speaker A: Story about Clinton seeing ghosts.
[00:40:28] Speaker B: Well, the Bush twins have been interviewed many times about hearing and seeing things. And actually, I watched a couple of their interviews. They were on Kelly Clarkson show, and I think Ellen, too. They talked about the different things that happened while they were there. I think Chelsea Clinton also experienced stuff there. I couldn't find. It was crazy. I thought I'd be able to find a lot more information than I did, but it was all. Pretty much every site was repeated. Everything was just repeated of what I've already told. Okay, so Mary Lincoln has claimed to hear Andrew Jackson stomping and swearing, and supposedly there was. Somebody spotted him lying in his bed in the Queen's bedroom, the rose room. And he lets out a guttural laugh, and that laugh has been heard since the 1860s.
[00:41:27] Speaker A: I dig these ghosts, man.
[00:41:30] Speaker B: Dolly Madison is suspected that she protects the rose garden. At one point, I didn't put my notes, but at 1.1 of the presidents was trying to move the rose garden, and her spirit started being seen everywhere.
[00:41:48] Speaker A: Hell, no. You're not moving that, buddy.
[00:41:51] Speaker B: They didn't.
[00:41:52] Speaker C: Dolly's not having it.
[00:41:54] Speaker B: Nope. Dolly was not having it.
John Tyler haunts the blue room. And. Let's see. It's no thought that William Henry Harrison haunts the addict.
Uh, he. Oh, he was the first president to die in the White House.
[00:42:13] Speaker A: Okay. There we go.
[00:42:15] Speaker B: Okay, so, again, like I said, I apologize. I wrote the story a couple months ago, so this is, like, all, like, learning it all over again for me.
Um, there is also supposedly a ghost of an unknown or an unnamed british soldier.
He perished during the war in 1812, and he roams the White House grounds holding a torch soldier? Yeah.
[00:42:40] Speaker A: In the White House?
[00:42:41] Speaker B: Yeah. I'm not sure.
[00:42:42] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:42:44] Speaker B: I buy it.
David Burns owns the land on which the White House now stands, or he owned the land.
He has been seen, seen and heard in the yellow oval room.
And Anna Surratt. Anna Surratt bangs on the doors of the White House, pleading to see the. To see President Andrew Johnson. She was there to beg for a pardon for her mother, Lincoln's assassination conspirator Mary Surratt.
[00:43:20] Speaker A: Ooh. Okay.
[00:43:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
So then, just to wrap up with a few more current occurrences, the daughter of President George W. Bush, Jenna and Barbara, they. Like I said, they have heard, like, piano playing, like, coming through their fireplace in their bedroom. They had seen apparitions and heard voices and stuff. She said that they knew that if any place was haunted, it would be that house, but they did try to rationalize it. Jenna wrote that in her 2017 memoir with Barbara. Sisters first.
When White House Butler Buddy Carter asked the girls how they slept, they told them about the mysterious singing and music that they heard, and he said, oh, Miss Jenna, I believe you. You wouldn't believe what I have seen and heard over the years. But he hasn't told me any ghost stories yet. But I keep hoping. She wrote.
And first lady Michelle Obama said that she and President Barack once heard noises coming from the hallway outside of their room.
She said that family members have also felt odd sensations, as if someone was gnawing at their feet, perhaps a ghost of a White House pet. I was, like, gnawing at your feet? What are you.
What are you talking about? But that is what I have for the ghosts of the White House.
[00:45:05] Speaker A: That was awesome.
[00:45:08] Speaker C: That was so fun.
[00:45:10] Speaker A: Thank you. Kind of disappointed that there was no Clinton stuff in there, though, because I swear they were on tv talking about it back in, like, the nineties.
[00:45:20] Speaker B: It could be. I mean, I. Like I said, I was struggling to find anything different. Everything was pretty much the same.
[00:45:29] Speaker A: Might have even been the view.
[00:45:32] Speaker B: It could have been.
[00:45:35] Speaker C: I feel like I have a memory of something about the Clinton seeing a ghost. I can't remember, but that's definitely ringing a bell.
But I think it's really interesting. Like, they say that hauntings happen because there's been a lot of. Lot of emotion, or the person doesn't feel like they're done with what they wanted to do. And all the people that you mentioned had super strong personalities, were very pivotal in history. And it's like, I could see them being ghosts. Like, I could see Abigail Adams. I could see Abraham Lincoln.
[00:46:14] Speaker B: I could see everywhere.
[00:46:16] Speaker A: He ain't going anywhere.
[00:46:19] Speaker B: I mean, he definitely was not ready to go anywhere. I mean, he was right in the cusp of it and just had everything taken away from him. So I can definitely see his spirit, you know, standing his ground. This is.
[00:46:35] Speaker A: What term would he be on right now?
[00:46:37] Speaker B: Oh, my.
[00:46:40] Speaker A: 800Th term.
[00:46:43] Speaker B: So, yeah, it was a lot of fun going through and reading all these different things and, you know, and having some of those presidents actually say that that's what they encountered, and then you got tapped. Anybody who talks about this is gonna be fire.
[00:47:04] Speaker A: You're gonna get those.
[00:47:05] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. The non believers or the ones that are worried about what people think is more like it, I guess, but.
So did you have anything else to add to it, or.
[00:47:20] Speaker C: No, I just. I. I could definitely see any of those people you mentioned being ghosts. I really can.
It makes sense.
[00:47:29] Speaker B: It's so fun. So I love the. The, um. The rose garden part, too, where they tried to move it, and then all of a sudden, boom. You're not moving that.
[00:47:41] Speaker A: That's mine.
[00:47:43] Speaker B: That's staying right where it's at.
[00:47:45] Speaker C: And that even makes sense because she was the one that saved, like, George Washington's portrait. She, like, got rid of a lot of this. Like, she removed a lot of the stuff from the white house when the British came during the war of 1812 and burned it. And so I could see her sticking around to, like, protect it, you know, your british soldier.
[00:48:07] Speaker B: Soldier. Jeremy, I was trying to figure out. Yeah, yeah. There you go.
[00:48:11] Speaker A: I suppose he made. Maybe died on the ground.
[00:48:14] Speaker B: Could have. Or maybe he had unfinished business there. He decided that's.
[00:48:19] Speaker A: Maybe he just wanted to hang out with Lincoln.
I'd hang out with him.
[00:48:27] Speaker B: Oh, totally. I think. Could you imagine. Could you imagine just sitting down and having conversation with some of these people from a lot of. A lot of our history is like my great grandfather.
He lived such a life, and he used to tell stories, and he lived until he was 100 years old. And my grandpa and my grandpa's sister died, and he was still alive, and he died two months later. He was like, I did not live my life. I didn't want to live this long if I'm going to start burying my children. And then literally two months later, he passed. But he would tell stories and stories and. And to think of all of the things that in his time frame, all of the changes.
[00:49:26] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah.
[00:49:28] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:49:28] Speaker B: I mean, no, the phone, electricity, the indoor plumbing, you know?
[00:49:34] Speaker A: But you know what? At our age, we can start saying that now, too.
[00:49:38] Speaker B: Yes. We can.
[00:49:39] Speaker C: Oh, I know.
[00:49:41] Speaker A: The home pc. I mean, yeah, we're old. We're not old.
[00:49:47] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:49:49] Speaker B: No, we're not old yet. Come on.
[00:49:52] Speaker A: Internet.
[00:49:53] Speaker B: Hello?
Oh, it's. Yeah. Life before Internet. Life before cell phones.
[00:50:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:50:01] Speaker B: Yeah. There's that song I remember. Yes. Well, even the song I laugh about every time I hear it. Here's a quarter called someone who cares. There's gonna be a day when nobody knows what that song was talking about.
[00:50:18] Speaker C: Yeah, it's like I was watching the movie reality bites, and there's like this whole scene, this whole montage of Winona Ryder talking to a phone psychic. And she ring, you know, she brings up the phone bell, raises it really high because she's on the phone, but it's like she's laying on the couch, you know, with her head back, like, talking. And that wouldn't happen now.
[00:50:45] Speaker A: No.
[00:50:45] Speaker B: You know, I got in trouble for a few phone bills in my younger days.
And now you can.
[00:50:54] Speaker A: Yeah, just about.
[00:50:56] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, yeah, yeah. But I mean, it used to be you couldn't even call the town next to you.
[00:51:02] Speaker A: No.
[00:51:03] Speaker B: Without having a long distance.
[00:51:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:51:06] Speaker B: Or remember when exactly. Party lines where you could have multiple people on.
[00:51:12] Speaker A: Yeah, we were cool, man.
[00:51:13] Speaker B: Yeah. Stretching that phone cord as long as it could go to get into an area.
[00:51:19] Speaker A: See through phones.
[00:51:20] Speaker B: I loved my see through phone.
Yes.
The see through pagers.
[00:51:30] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:51:31] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:51:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:51:34] Speaker C: There was like a whole period there where everything was transparent.
[00:51:38] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:51:39] Speaker B: I just saw somebody posted toys of the eighties, and there was a manchichi. I forgot about the manchichi, the little monkey.
Do you remember the monkey?
[00:51:52] Speaker A: No.
[00:51:53] Speaker B: They were like little monkeys toys. I mean, they were like a stuffed.
[00:51:57] Speaker A: Toy, but I remember the monkey that went like that.
He was cool, but I think he might have been like a seventies toy.
[00:52:13] Speaker B: Well, I love that impression.
How'd it go again?
[00:52:22] Speaker A: Do the monkey. Do the monkey.
[00:52:25] Speaker B: Love it. Well, April, we can't thank you enough for joining us today, and we've had a fun afternoon with you doing these collabs, and we'll definitely have to do something again in the future. It was a lot of fun, kind of mixing the two, the history, the true crime, the. The ghosty stuff all kind of together. It was a fun little fun collab.
[00:52:52] Speaker A: It was a blast.
[00:52:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:52:55] Speaker C: This has been so much fun. I really appreciate you guys having me. Thank you.
[00:52:59] Speaker B: Oh, so much. Do you want to let us know again once more where. Where we can. Where everybody can find you?
[00:53:08] Speaker C: The podcast is called Door Key. It's two words, door and key. And it's on all the platforms.
Anywhere you can stream a podcast, it's there. You can find me anywhere on any of the social media sites.
[00:53:28] Speaker B: Awesome. Well, Jeremy, you want to help us? Should we wrap up the episode?
[00:53:35] Speaker A: Let's wrap her up.
[00:53:36] Speaker B: All right.
[00:53:37] Speaker A: All right.
[00:53:38] Speaker B: Are you going to do the ending?
[00:53:40] Speaker A: Oh, you want me to start?
[00:53:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:53:42] Speaker A: Oh, I start, don't I?
All right. Well, that's a wrap on another thrilling episode of Total Conundrum. Thank you, April, for collaborating with us.
[00:53:52] Speaker C: Thank you for having me.
[00:53:53] Speaker B: Well, thanks. Thanks for joining us. Conundrum crew. Don't forget to follow rate, review our podcast on Apple and Spotify. Subscribe and like on YouTube and hit that notification bell so you never miss an episode.
[00:54:07] Speaker A: Your support means the world to us. If you have any story ideas or recommendations, contact us at total conundrum.com or you can find us on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter.
[00:54:17] Speaker B: Until next time, Conundrum crew, keep on creeping on. We love you.
[00:54:22] Speaker A: Bye bye.
Thanks for hanging out with us here at total Conundrum. Please make sure to check out our website and
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