This Famous Author Has Lived In Several Haunted Houses, and Her Ghost Stories Are Wild
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The full interview with Sally Quinn is featured in season of House Beautiful’s haunted house podcast, Dark House. Listen to the episode here.
It's not every day that a prominent Washington journalist identifies as a witch who sees ghosts—but maybe we shouldn't be so surprised at the overlap, because said writer also confessed that we'd be shocked by how many well-known politicians in the capitol regularly consult astrologers. In a recent interview on House Beautiful's podcast Dark House, Sally Quinn divulged that all the houses she's lived in have been haunted. Growing up surrounded by active ghosts—as well as practitioners of voodoo, occultism, astrology, and other psychic phenomena—it's only natural that Quinn now leads "a life of spirits," as she puts it. "I'm psychic. My mother was a little bit, and my aunt was very psychic, too, all MacDougals," Quinn says. Ahead, hear all the haunted properties she's lived in throughout the years.
1800s Estate in Statesboro, Georgia
Quinn's haunted house memories date back to her early childhood, when she grew up spending her summers with her mother's family in Savannah and the small town of Statesborough, Georgia. "It was haunted," she claims.
Among the family lore is this haunting tale: Whenever a family member died, their ghost would drag chains along the length of the hallway all night long. The other sound filling the house at midnight and witching hour were the sobs and wails of mourners. "The next morning, you would always see scratch marks," Quinn says.
1740s Manor House in St. Mary's
Quinn also lived in a 1740s manor house in on the river in St. Mary's, a countryside locale outside of Washington D.C., which wasn't without its own fair share of ghostly visitors. "I was sitting on the beach and all of a sudden heard a [disembodied] woman screaming and it sounded like lots of women fussing around her," Quinn recalls. "She was yelling and panting, and I then realized that she was in childbirth with all these women helping her and they kept saying, 'it's okay, Priscilla, it's okay.'" She later learned about the history of the area, which helped make sense of the ghostly childbirth scene. "That Christmas, my father gave me a book about the history of St. Mary's county and the house," she explains. "It was built and owned by shippers who would go off to England, and the wives were left alone for a long time, at least months. The wife of one of the shippers was named Priscilla." Coincidence or a hint of the beyond?
Townhouse in Washington, D.C.
The third haunted house Quinn lived in was a Georgetown home built in 1793. She recalls: "I was standing in the front hall right after I'd bought it, so it was completely empty. The workmen had left for the day and I was exhausted, it was in the summer so I was really hot. And I sort of collapsed up against the wall when all of a sudden I heard the clatter of horses and this guy came up the house on a horse and he got off the horse and came up the stairs and he was dressed in 1790s garb."
He proceeded to dismount the horse and climb the stairs right before her eyes. "He was frantic. He was clearly in distress over not being able to locate his wife, saying something along the lines of, 'I don't know what's happened to her. I love her. And I'm so upset,'" Quinn tells us. She suspects that he couldn't see her, because she was standing there in disbelief watching the scene unfold. "He then left with a letter to get help finding her," but right when this supposed spirit left, things got even weirder.
"I looked up and at the back porch door and there was this woman in 1790s garb. She took one look at me, turned around, and disappeared, and I was just stunned. I mean, I was shaking," she continues. The explanations for each of the encounters were quite different—if you're thinking the woman was his wife, think again.
"Later, I learned that the former homeowner was a Scottish ship owner named Dunlap and one of his men's wives had disappeared," she said of the first apparition. But, a couple of days after seeing the woman, Quinn went down and the oldest house in Washington is on M street in Georgetown. It's called the Old Stone House, and it runs a small museum," she explains. And guess who she saw? "There was the woman who had been in the doorway, dressed in costume," she laughs.
"And I said, oh my God... I had thought she was a ghost and it turned out she wasn't. She said, you know, I've always wanted to see that house. And I knew that it was that no one was living there. So I climbed over the wall and went up to the back steps" before running away terrified someone was there. But that still doesn't explain the apparition of the man...
Grey Gardens in East Hampton
Probably the most famous of Quinn's haunted houses is Grey Gardens, where Quinn encountered two ghosts over the years. One was the spirit of the former occupant and gardener Anna Gillman Hill. "Occasionally, you could just feel her kind of wafting around the upstairs, just floating down the hall. She was wearing a long skirt and a gardener's blouse with a scarf around her neck... One night, she walked into our bedroom and Ben sat up in bed and said, 'What's that?' And I looked up and saw her standing there and she just kind of stood in the doorway for a few minutes and then disappeared. My son saw her a number of times and one housekeeper who came out to stay with us left the next morning because she was so freaked out by the ghost."
Another ghost was less easy to name, but Quinn's money is on a secret lover of Little Edie's who she calls "The Sea Captain." Quinn suspects this mystery man would visit her Rapunzel style vis-a-vis a ladder so that Big Edie wouldn't find out about their rendezvous. Her theory? "I think that he fell off the ladder and was killed. I'm not sure, but you could hear [someone] clumping around at night in the yellow room that was Little Edie's old bedroom," she divulges, adding, "I never told people the house was haunted and never told them specifically that the yellow room was haunted because some people just would get too scared." One such guest was none other than Arizona senator Barry Goldwater.
"He was staying with us and my parents were there, too, so I put him in the yellow guest room. The next morning I came downstairs and Barry was lying on the sofa in the kitchen, and I said, 'what are you doing here?' He said, 'there's some goddamn ghost up there in that room and I'm not spending another night there.' So, I know I'm not the only one who saw ghosts." If you're a nonbeliever, she gets it. "What can I tell you? All I can tell you is that I saw this, it was weird, and it's inexplicable."
Curious to hear more about Grey Gardens? Listen to this episode of our haunted house podcast series, Dark House, for exclusive ghost stories and insights into the home's compelling history.
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