Is the White House Haunted? Some Former Residents (and Their Pets) Think So

White House Historical Association Kennedy Children Visit President Kennedy in the Oval Office on H

As the current and former home of dozens of first families — and the site of countless historic happenings — it stands to reason that visitors to the White House might want to... linger. According to the White House Historical Association, some have possibly lingered for years, haunting the hallways of the iconic people's house for hundreds of years.

As the WHHA details in an explorative video, spooky stories and sightings at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. have proliferated for more than a century.

Over the course of its 200-year history, the White House has seen a number of deaths, including those of Presidents William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor and former first lady Ellen Wilson.

But even those who didn't die within the building's walls are still said to walk there.

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According to the WHHA, the ghost of President Andrew Jackson is said to have been seen throughout the 19th and 20th centuries and supposedly "lets out a deep, guttural laugh from his former bed," which is located in what is now known as the Queens' Bedroom.

But it's another former president who the association says is "perhaps the best known of all the White House ghosts": Abraham Lincoln.

The Lincoln Bedroom has been the site of several reported apparitions — and first lady Grace Coolidge, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands all claim to have seen the ghost of Lincoln at the White House.

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White House Historical Association

The Lincoln family reportedly embraced the notion of afterlife, and was known to hold seances in the White House after their young son Willie passed away in 1862.

Lincoln's wife, former first lady Mary Todd Lincoln herself once reportedly told others that she had seen the ghost of President Thomas Jefferson playing violin in the Yellow Oval Room on the White House's second floor.

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In another scary tidbit of history, an unidentified 15-year old boy called "the Thing" is said to have frightened staffers under the Taft presidency in 1911. The WHHA details that Major Archibald Butt, a military aide for President William Howard Taft, even wrote about the ghost in a letter sent to his sister Clara.

"The ghost, it seems, is a young boy about fourteen or fifteen years old," Butt wrote, adding: "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."

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The ghost stories have seemingly spooked more than just the humans who live in the building, with the association noting that some White House pets have "refused to enter" certain rooms or "barked frantically at unseen disturbances."

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Not all of the alleged ghost sightings at the White House took place long ago. In fact, Jenna Bush Hager has said that she believes the White House is haunted.

In a 2021 interview with Kelly Clarkson, Bush Hager said that she and her twin sister Barbara Bush Pierce were going to sleep during their college days when they received a mysterious phone call.

"It was in the college days when people would call late. And our phone rang, and I woke up, and all of a sudden we heard like, 1920s piano music coming out of our fireplace," Bush Hager told Clarkson.

Her mother, former first lady Laura Bush, later chalked up the story to Jenna and Barbara hearing the voices of Secret Service agents from down the hall.