2. The First President’s Specter
Mount Vernon, George Washington’s home, has its store of spooky ghost stories. The best ones revolve around encounters with the ghost of America’s first president. 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 insisted that they felt the presence of George Washington’s ghost, which some described as “a strange and brooding spectre“. One night, as two MVLAA members shared Washington’s bed, they saw a spook as their bedside candle went out with a noise. Alarmed, one 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. 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“.
