A Screaming Queen’s Ghost and More Spooky Encounters that Haunt Us

The Spooky Spectre of George Washington

George Washington’s home, Mount Vernon, has been the site of numerous spooky ghost stories. The best ones revolve around encounters with the ghost of the great man himself. One such is attributed to members of the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, America’s first national historic preservation organization, and the country’s first women’s patriotic society. The MVLAA raised money to purchase a dilapidated Mount Vernon in the nineteenth century, in order to restore and preserve it for posterity. In the early years, when members were in the area, they slept in the mansion, sometimes in the four poster bed in which Washington died.

Many who did were adamant that they felt the presence of George Washington’s ghost, which some described as “a strange and brooding spectre“. On one occasion, as two of them shared Washington’s bed one night, they saw a spook as their bedside candle went out with a noise. Alarmed, one of them told her friend: “You are on the side of the bed where Washington died!” Her friend replied: “No, I’m not. He died on your side!” That did it for their sleep that night. Both got up, dressed, and sat around wide awake until the sun came up, terrified by every squeak. As an 1890 newspaper article put it: “They all agree that Washington visits his chamber in the still watches of the night“.

The Harvard President Who Had a Spooky Encounter With George Washington’s Ghost

Josiah Quincy III (1772 – 1864) was one of Massachusetts’ more prominent figures in the first half of the nineteenth century. He served in the US House of Representatives from 1805 to 1813, as mayor of Boston from 1823 to 1828, and as President of Harvard University from 1829 to 1845. In 1806, he visited Mount Vernon, inherited by George Washington’s nephew Bushrod Washington. Quincy stayed overnight, and Bushrod hosted him in George Washington’s bedroom – the one which the great man had died. By then, rumors already abounded of spooky encounters with Washington’s ghost in that bedroom. Quincy, who like most Americans of his generations revered George Washington, was not afraid.

Indeed, he actually hoped “that he might be found worthy to behold the glorified spirit of him who was so revered by his countrymen“. As his son Josiah Quincy Jr. recounted decades later, his father was not disappointed. At some point that night, he reported that he did, indeed, meet the ghost of George Washington. Frustratingly, however, Quincy Jr. gave no details, other than inform readers that his father’s “assurance in this matter was perfect“. We are thus left to wonder what might have passed between the Massachusetts bigwig and the spooky ghost of America’s first president.

A King’s Encounter With the Spooky Jersey Devil (Part 1)

Joseph Bonaparte, brother of Napoleon, would randomly rule Spain until his brother lost power. When Joseph heard that Napoleon had surrendered, he sailed off to America sans family. He made it to the safety of New York in late August, 1815. Joseph Bonaparte, left New York for Washington, DC, where he hoped to meet President Madison. He was intercepted en route by a messenger who informed him that the American president would not meet him. So Joseph turned around, and set about to get comfortable and make the best of his new life in America. He managed to transfer a big chunk of his fortune, much of it in the form of Spanish royal jewels he had grabbed on his way out of Spain, and invested it in his new country.

In his first few years in the US, Joseph lived in New York City and Philadelphia, where his house became a hub for French expatriates. He also bought a large land tract in Upstate New York that contained a 1,200 acre lake that he named Lake Diana, and that is now known as Lake Bonaparte. He eventually bought an estate, Point Breeze, in Bordentown, New Jersey. Joseph spent significant time and effort to expand and landscape it with extensive gardens in a picturesque style. Little did he know, but he was soon to meet a spooky beast in the Garden State.

A King’s Encounter With the Spooky Jersey Devil (Part 2)

Unfortunately for the former monarch, Point Breeze was destroyed by a fire in 1820. So Joseph Bonaparte converted its sizable stables, which had survived the blaze, into a new mansion. There, he hosted and entertained many of the day’s leading intellectuals and politicians, including the Marquis de Lafayette, John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, and Henry Clay. Another visitor to Point Breeze, albeit a less welcome one, was the Jersey Devil – a spooky mythical cross between a kangaroo, bat, and goat, that reportedly inhabits New Jersey’s Pine Barrens.

Joseph claimed to have been out hunting in the woods near his estate, when he came across some weird tracks. When he followed them, he came face to face with the Jersey Devil. As the former king put it, the duo looked at each other for about a minute. Neither moved for what seemed like an eternity, then the spooky creature finally gave a hiss and flew away. Joseph Bonaparte’s stay in the US was eventually cut short by ill health, and he returned to Europe. He died in Florence, Italy, and was buried in the Les Invalides in Paris.

The Real Man Behind the Spooky Count Dracula

Vlad III, the real life inspiration of Bram Stoker’s spooky Dracula, was a medieval ruler of Wallachia, a region of what is now southern Romania. Better known to history as Vlad Dracula or Vlad the Impaler, his methods of governance and warfare terrified his contemporaries. They send shivers down spines to the present day. His nickname Dracula, which means “son of Dracul”, is from the Latin draco, or dragon, after his father was inducted into the Order of the Dragon, created by Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund to rally Christians against the Ottoman Turks. His other sobriquet, The Impaler, he got from his preferred method of punishment. The real life Dracula did not suck people’s blood. Instead, he shoved sharpened stakes up their butts.

Vlad III was born circa 1430 in Transylvania, the son of Vlad II, an exiled aristocrat. The father took over the throne of Wallachia in 1436, but was kicked out a few years later by rivals. So he switched sides, and allied with the Ottoman Sultan, who restored him to power. As proof of loyalty, he sent two sons, Vlad III and his brother Radu, to the Sultan’s court as hostages. Radu eventually converted to Islam, but Vlad disliked the Ottomans. He resented his father for his betrayal of the Order of the Dragon, into which Vlad himself had been inducted when he was five-years-old.

A Weird Real Life Ruler Who Inspired a Spooky Legend

Vlad the Impaler’s father was overthrown once again in 1447, and this time his enemies killed him while they were at it. The Ottomans marched in and installed Vlad on Wallachia’s throne, but his rule lasted only a few months before he, too, was overthrown. He regained the throne in 1456, this time with help from the Ottomans’ enemies, the Hungarians. To celebrate, he invited two hundred aristocrats and their families to an Easter Sunday feast in 1457. At some point, he asked his guests how old they were. He wanted to know who had been old enough to have participated in his father’s overthrow back in 1447.

He then dragged those who fit the bill outside, and had them promptly impaled – a horrific way to die. Victims had large, sharpened, wooden stakes driven through their bodies, often through their rear end. The stake was then planted vertically into the ground, so that the victim was left to dangle in the air. Vlad impaled people in a manner that avoided damage to vital organs, and thus averted immediate death. Instead, the victims suffered hours or even days of agony before they doed. To add an artistic touch to the horror, Vlad impaled aristocrats arranged in rows that came to be known as “The Forrest of the Impaled”.

A Spooky and Horrific Sight That Scared a Sultan

The mass impalements did not halt Vlad the Impaler’s spooky Easter Sunday feast, and the party went on. Afterwards, the wives and children of the impaled aristocrats were taken to the mountains to rebuild a fortress, still dressed in their Easter finery. He worked them hard, until most of them died of exhaustion. Months later, when the job was finally done, Vlad’s reward for the few survivors, now skeletal figures clad in tattered rags, was to impale them. That was just the start of his passion for impalement. To solidify his rule, Vlad systematically exterminated the aristocratic class that had given his family so much trouble. Impalement was his preferred method to deal with them and all who angered him.

Vlad also went to war against the Ottomans. Sultan Mehmed II the Conqueror, who had seized Constantinople and extinguished the Byzantine Empire a few years earlier, sent a force of 10,000 cavalrymen to deal with him. Vlad ambushed and defeated them, then impaled the survivors, with their leader mounted on the highest stake. In 1462, the Sultan led an army of 90,000 against The Impaler. As they approached Vlad’s capital, the Ottomans met no resistance. Instead, the road was lined with 20,000 impaled Turks and Muslim Bulgarians. The spooky and horrific sight was enough to scare the Sultan, who promptly turned his army around and went back home.

The Massacre Behind the Spooky Tales of Cairo’s Haunted Citadel

The Mamluks, whose name means “those who are owned”, were a warrior class of slave soldiers and freed slaves. They were assigned various military and administrative duties on behalf of Arab dynasties in the Muslim world. The system of slave soldiery began in the ninth century with Turkic slaves from the Eurasian Steppe, then spread to include those from the Caucasus, the Balkans, Russia, and elsewhere. It lasted for a thousand years, into the nineteenth century. Although they began as slaves, the Mamluks eventually came to dominate the societies in which they operated. They were present in the Levant, Mesopotamia, and India, but their strongest hold was in Egypt.

They ruled Egypt, along with Syria, as the Mamluk Sultanate from 1250 to 1517, until defeated by the Ottoman Turks who conquered those countries. Although defeated, the Mamluks continued as a privileged class whose social status was higher than the general population. They were deemed to be the “true lords” and “true warriors”, and were often the de facto rulers who paid only lip service to the Ottoman Sultan, and ran Egypt as a nearly independent realm. Their run in Egypt finally came to an end in 1811, when they accepted an invitation to a feast from that country’s ruthless ruler, Muhammad Ali Pasha. It was to be their final feast, and it gave rise to spooky tales of ghost sightings that have endured for generations.

The Albanian Adventurer Who Came to Dominate Egypt

Muhammad Ali Pasha (1769 – 1849) was born in Ottoman-ruled Greece to an Albanian family, and began his career as a tax collector for the local authorities. He first arrived in Egypt in 1801, as an officer in an Albanian mercenary unit, part of a force sent by the Ottomans to reoccupy the country after Napoleon Bonaparte withdrew French forces from there. The French had defeated the Mamluks and conquered Egypt in 1798, but although weakened, the Mamluks had not been destroyed. They jockeyed with and clashed with the Ottoman forces for power.

Amidst the turmoil, Muhammad Ali proved himself a wily political operator. He used his Albanian mercenaries to work with both factions, and his power and prestige rose steadily. He also allied with native Egyptian leaders, who distrusted and disliked both Mamluks and Ottomans, and worked hard to gain the general public’s support. The final result of his machination was that, in 1805, Egyptian notables demanded that the Ottoman Sultan replace his governor in Egypt with Muhammad Ali, and he was forced to yield. The new viceroy next turned his attention to the Mamluks.

A Massacre of the Slave Soldiers

The Mamluks, who had dominated Egypt for more than six centuries, posed a serious threat to Muhammad Ali Pasha, and he knew that he had to deal with them. As a class, they were Egypt’s feudal lords, and their vast landed estates were the country’s greatest source of wealth and power. Although Muhammad Ali received the title of Governor of Egypt in 1805, his undisputed authority was limited to Cairo. Beyond its walls, he was everywhere challenged by the Mamluks. So he decided upon a two-stage strategy, to first eliminate the Mamluks’ leaders, and then eliminate the entire Mamluk class.

On August 17^th, 1805, he fed false intelligence to Mamluk forces near Cairo, that he would leave the city that day with most of his forces to a attend a ceremony some miles away. The Mamluks believed that Cairo was undefended, and rushed in to seize the city. Instead, they fell into an ambush, carefully prepared by Muhammad Ali. Surrounded in the city’s streets, many Mamluks were massacred. Dozens of their key leaders were captured, tortured, executed, and their heads were sent to the Ottoman Sultan in Constantinople, with a boast that Mamluk power in Egypt had been broken.

The Mamluks Continued to Threaten Muhammad Ali Pasha’s Power

The 1805 defeat and massacre of the Mamluks greatly weakened but did not eradicate them. Survivors retreated to Upper Egypt, and began to unsuccessfully negotiate for a compromise. Muhammad Ali led an expedition that defeated them in 1807. However, they were saved at the last minute when news arrived of a British invasion of Alexandria and the Nile Delta region. Alarmed, the Pasha offered the Mamluks concessions if they helped him expel the invaders, and they accepted. Together, the two forces marched north to deal with the invaders. Divisions soon arose among the Mamluks, however. One faction advocated cooperation with the British, and another wanted to honor the agreement with Muhammad Ali.

It soon became moot. The British, who had invaded on the assumption that the Mamluks would join them, finally grew disgusted with their dissensions, despaired of their assistance, and evacuated Alexandria in September, 1807. An uneasy peace then descended between Muhammad Ali and the Mamluks. Some of their leaders were appointed administrators of certain Egyptian districts on condition that they pay taxes, and many of them returned to Cairo and resumed their residence there. However, Mamluk forces continued to clash with those of Egypt’s governor, until he took a final step to deal with them once and for all.

Luring In the Victims of a Second Massacre

In 1811, an Egyptian army was prepared for a campaign against the Wahhabis in the Arabian Peninsula. Amidst a lull in tensions between Muhammad Ali Pasha and the Mamluks, the latter were invited to a ceremony in the Cairo Citadel to invest the governor’s son with the army’s command. They accepted, and on the morning of March 1^st, 470 Mamluks, dressed in all their ceremonial finery and armed with shining gilded swords, rode their best horses, richly caparisoned, to the Citadel. There, they were warmly greeted in the courtyard by Egypt’s governor. As they were presented with coffee and hookah pipes per hospitality customs, the Pasha struck up casual and friendly conversations with them.

Eventually, Muhammad Ali rose, a signal to end the ceremony. The guests then mounted their horses, and formed in a procession preceded and followed by their host’s troops. It was planned that they would ride through Cairo to be seen by the crowds that lined the streets, until they reached the army’s camp, where a celebratory feast was to be held. The procession slowly made its way down a steep and narrow road that led to the Citadel’s great gate, Bab al Azab. The Pasha’s troops in front exited the Citadel, but soon as the Mamluks reached the gate, it was slammed shut before them. Simultaneously, the troops behind them raced back to close the exit to the rear.

From Celebration to Slaughter

As the procession of Mamluks confined along a narrow path milled about in confusion before the closed Cairo Citadel gate, a signal was given to begin their final eradication. Albanian troops loyal to Muhammad Ali Pasha, placed on the rooftops of nearby buildings that overlooked the trapped Mamluks, opened fire. An eyewitness described what happened next: “It was only moments before the narrow path was crowded with the corpses of men and horses, lying on top of each other, making any movement even more difficult than before. As for the Mamelukes who happened to reach the portal Bab al-Azab, they found it closed and turned back their horses.

But this caused even more chaos amongst the men and horses that were at the top of the incline, and they in turn tried to turn their horses back to the Citadel away from the bullets. However, the infantry spread across the walls opened fire, killing them in droves and the mayhem and horror increased. The Mamelukes soon realized that their horses were useless and so they descended to walk on foot and took off their clothes and finery which only hindered their movements at that terrible time. They started to run, swords and firearms in hand, wanting to meet an enemy to take their revenge for the catastrophe which had befallen them. But they found no-one and the bullets continued to rain down upon them hitting their mark.” That did in the slave soldier dynasty for good. Tales of spooky sightings of anguished and terrified Mamluk ghosts at the Citadel have circulated ever since.

The Spooky Aftermath of the Cairo Citadel Massacre

Of the 470 Mamluks who entered Cairo’s Citadel on March 1^st, 1811, only one, Amin Bek, is reported to have survived the massacre. He was at the back of the procession when the gate was slammed shut. As death closed in from all sides, he spurred his horse into a jump from one of the Citadel’s walls, from a height of about 65 feet – equivalent to a modern building’s seventh floor. The horse died, but Amin Bek miraculously survived, and managed to escape to Syria. In the years after the massacre, many spooky tales circulated of encounters at the Cairo Citadel with the tormented ghosts of the slain Mamluks.

The events at the Citadel kicked off an indiscriminate slaughter throughout Egypt. Muhammad Ali Pasha had instructed subordinates throughout the country to be ready. When word arrived, they fanned out to slay any Mamluks they could lay their hands on. In Cairo, the Pasha’s soldiers began to loot Mamluk houses, and by the time order and discipline were restored among the troops, over 500 houses had been pillaged and trashed. A few Mamluk survivors fled south to Nubia, but even that refuge was lost to them in 1820, when the Pasha’s troops invaded and conquered the region. Muhammad Ali had secured the final destruction of Egypt’s Mamluks, and he went on found a dynasty that ruled Egypt until 1952.

Paranoid Fears of a Spooky “Witch” in 1970s America

In the fall of 1969, a high school social studies teacher invited a University of Arizona expert on witchcraft and folklore to give a speech to upperclassmen. The speaker, Dr. Byrd Granger, addressed students of Flowing Wells High School in Tucson, AZ, and gave a presentation about the common traits of witches. According to Dr. Granger, witches like to wear devil’s green, have green or blue eyes, blond hair, a pointed left ear with a node, and a widow’s peak – a V-shaped point in the hairline in the center of a forehead.

As it so happened, there was somebody at the presentation who fit the description. It did not take long before heads swiveled towards Ann Stewart, a Flowing Wells English teacher who had all of those attributes. Few could have predicted the brouhaha that would ensue from that speech. After the witchcraft presentation, Flowing Wells High School students began to tease English teacher Ann Stewart about whether or not she was a witch. In the kids’ interest in the spooky stuff, Mrs. Stewart saw an opportunity to enhance their interest in literature and folklore. As seen below, that did not go well.

This Teacher Thought Spooky Rumors That She Was a Witch Were Lighthearted Fun

As Ann Stewart described it later: “I like to get kids involved. I teach American literature, among other things. Although I’ve never had a unit in the occult, we do delve into early American folklore and witchcraft. It was good fun and it stimulated them“. So she played along with the banter. She never said she was a witch. However, whenever students asked if she was one, she did not deny it. Instead, she replied with a variant of “Well, I have all the signs. What do you think?” What they – and the school administration – thought got her fired.

In 1970, to heighten her students’ interest in literature, Ann Stewart had suggested that they find out what astrology is all about. That further enhanced the rumors about her involvement with the occult. Later that year, a junior high school teacher invited her to speak before her eighth graders about folklore and witchcraft. As part of the presentation, Mrs. Stewart dressed up and played the part of a witch. When those eighth graders arrived in Flowing Wells High School that fall, many of them fueled the rumors that Mrs. Stewart really was a spooky witch.

This Conservative Community Did Not See Witchcraft as Fun and Games

Ann Stewart didn’t think much of the kids’ whispers that their English teacher was a spooky witch, and dismissed it as all in good fun. Unfortunately, Flowing Wells was a particularly conservative community. Many students, their parents, and faculty members at the high school did not get the joke. On November 27^th, 1970, Stewart was suspended for: “teaching about witchcraft, having stated that you are a witch in a way that affects students psychologically“. She was also alleged to have been insubordinate, discussed subjects beyond the curriculum, been a bad influence on students, and aggravated other teachers.

The suspension of an American teacher in 1970 for witchcraft became international news. In conservative Flowing Wells, Stewart became a pariah, shunned by neighbors and former friends. She appealed to the school board, but it confirmed the decision to fire her. So she sued in court, and there won on grounds that the board had violated the legal procedures for dismissing a tenured teacher like Stewart. The court ordered her reinstatement, but as of February, 1972, she had not returned to her job, and it is unclear if she ever taught at Flowing Wells again.

_________________

Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

American Folklore – Joseph Bonaparte and the Jersey Devil

Dodwell, Henry – The Founder of Modern Egypt: A Study of Muhammad Ali (1931)

Encyclopedia Britannica – Joseph Bonaparte

Historic Royal Palaces – Historic Hauntings at Hampton Court Palace

History Collection – 30 Ghosts of Historical Figures That May Still Walk Among the Living

International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 27, No. 1, (Feb., 1995) – The Military Household in Ottoman Egypt

McCartney, Clarence Edward, and Dorrance, Gordon – The Bonapartes in America (2008)

Mental Floss – The Last King of New Jersey: The Suburban Life of Napoleon’s Brother

Military Heritage – Count Dracula’s War on Islam: A True Story of Power, Cruelty, and Betrayal

Mount Vernon – Ghost Stories: Washington’s Ghost Haunts Mount Vernon

Mount Vernon – Great George’s Ghost: Josiah Quincy III and His Fright Night at Mount Vernon

Museum of Unnatural Mystery – The Real Dracula: Vlad the Impaler

Muslu, Cihan Yuksel – The Ottomans and the Mamluks: Imperial Diplomacy and Warfare in the Islamic World (2014)

New York Times, December 5^th, 1971 – Teacher is Upheld in Witchcraft Trial

New York Times, October 24^th, 2008 – Digging Up the Home of That Other Bonaparte, in New Jersey

Only in Your State – Most People Don’t Know a Witch Trial Took Place Right Here in Arizona

Rawi, Egypt’s Heritage Review – Coffee With the Pasha: The Story of Egypt’s Most Famous Massacre

Stroud, Patricia Tyson – The Man Who Had Been King: The American Exile of Napoleon’s Brother Joseph (2014)

Treptow, Kurt W. – Vlad III Dracula: The Life and Times of the Historical Dracula (2000)

Tuscaloosa News, March 31^st, 1971 – ‘Teacher-Witch’ Loses Her Job