There
have been many tales of ghosts in the executive mansion in Washington,
but the one that set the staff on edge during the Taft administration
became the subject of a White House cover up. President Taft's personal
assistant, Major Archie Butt, told the story to his sister-in-law in a
letter, which is the only surviving written account of the ghost that
terrified the household staff in 1911. This ghost made his presence
known by touching people on the shoulder.
Several of
the White House staff reported feeling this mysterious pressure on their
shoulder, only to turn around to an empty room. Just one member of the
household, though, said she actually saw the ghost. Marsh, First Lady
Helen Taft’s personal maid, reported not just feeling the ghost leaning
over her shoulder, but seeing the ethereal figure, whom she described as
a young boy with light, unkempt hair and sad blue eyes. “Now who on
Earth this can be,” Butt mused, “I cannot imagine.”
Taft
responded to news of the spooky rumor with “towering rage,” Butt said,
banning anyone in the house from speaking of the ghost under threat of
firing. The president worried that the story would get out and the press
would have a field day with the news. But his aide seemed to have a
sense of humor about the whole situation. “I reminded him that the help
was in such a state of mind that, if it was positively believed that the
upper floor of the White House was haunted, the servants there could
not be kept in their places by executive order,” Butt wrote.
Although Butt wasn't afraid of any ghost, he did investigate the reports.
Read about "The Thing" that haunted the White House at Mental Floss.
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