Lincoln's-Ghost-Winston-Churchill-White-House-Washington

Richard M. Langworth

Senior Fellow, Hillsdale College Churchill Project, Writer and Historian

The Lincoln Bedroom, view to the southwest corner. (National Archives, public domain)

Was Churchill, on one of his vis­its to the White House, spooked by the ghost of Abra­ham Lin­coln? Ever a fan of Things That Go Bump in the Night, I was intrigued to receive this question.

Fred­er­ick N. Ras­mussen of the Bal­ti­more Sun, an admir­er of Sir Win­ston, told a sto­ry years ago, which has just float­ed back. Ras­mussen wrote:

Experts in the field of spec­tral phe­nom­e­na claim that Mary­land and Wash­ing­ton are rich in sight­ings…. A ghost sto­ry dat­ing to the Civ­il War that has per­sist­ed through the years is that of repeat­ed appear­ances of Abra­ham Lin­coln, who has been seen stand­ing in a win­dow of the Exec­u­tive Man­sion star­ing toward Vir­ginia, as he had done often dur­ing the war. Even Churchill, who thought noth­ing of tak­ing on Hitler and Mus­soli­ni, was not hap­py when assigned to the Lin­coln Bed­room. Quite often, he was found in a vacant bed­room across the hall the next morning.

There are end­less Lin­coln ghost sto­ries. Churchill’s encounter would have occurred dur­ing one of his stays in the White House dur­ing the Sec­ond World War.

But his daugh­ter, Lady Soames, told me he was not eas­i­ly spooked. “He didn’t real­ly believe in appari­tions.” What about his con­fronta­tion with the ghost of his father in his 1947 short sto­ry, The Dream? Lady Soames replied: “In that case, his fan­cy was released by the image of his father.”

Naked encounter?

Wikipedia offers a vari­a­tion of Churchill meet­ing Lin­coln in its entry on Lincoln’s ghost. The accom­pa­ny­ing foot­note ref­er­ences Mar­jorie B. Gar­ber, Pro­fil­ing Shake­speare, Rout­ledge, 2008:

British Prime Min­is­ter Win­ston Churchill loved to retire late, take a long, hot bath while drink­ing a Scotch, smoke a cig­ar and relax. On this occa­sion, he climbed out of the bath and, naked but for his cig­ar, walked into the adjoin­ing bed­room. He was star­tled to see Lin­coln stand­ing by the fire­place in the room, lean­ing on the mantle.

Churchill, always quick on the uptake, sim­ply took his cig­ar out of his mouth, tapped the ash off the end, and said “Good evening, Mr. Pres­i­dent. You seem to have me at a dis­ad­van­tage.” Lin­coln smiled soft­ly, as if laugh­ing, and dis­ap­peared. Churchill smiled in embarrassment.

This may be a con­fla­tion of Churchill’s famous ​naked encounter with Pres­i­dent Franklin Roo­sevelt (which appar­ent­ly did hap­pen). “The Prime Min­is­ter of Great Britain has noth­ing to hide from the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States,” Churchill report­ed­ly said.

Sur­mis­ing that a Lin­coln schol­ar would tell us appari­tions of Lin­coln have been sight­ed in the White House years before Churchill, I referred the ques­tion to Lewis Lehrman, author of Lin­coln ‘by lit­tles’ and his mas­ter­ful Lin­coln and Churchill: States­men at War. Mr. Lehrman offered three references:

Lincoln Bedroom

Eleanor Roo­sevelt arranged for Churchill to stay in the Lin­coln Bed­room. It was “the favorite of most male guests,” recalled J.B. West, the chief ush­er. But upon his arrival on 22 Decem­ber [1941], the Prime Min­is­ter reject­ed the bed, so he wan­dered the sec­ond floor, “tried out all the beds and final­ly select­ed the Rose Suite,” where SDR [Sara Delano Roo­sevelt] and the Queen [Eliz­a­beth the Queen Moth­er] had resided. —Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eleanor Roo­sevelt, Vol­ume III, 409.

Mrs. Roo­sevelt had arranged for [Churchill] to stay in the Lin­coln Bed­room, then locat­ed off the West Hall, the favorite of most male guests. How­ev­er, he didn’t like the bed, so he tried out all the beds and final­ly select­ed the Rose Suite at the end of the sec­ond floor. —J. B. West & Mary Lynn Kotz, Upstairs at the White House: My Life with the First Ladies.

When Eleanor showed Churchill to the Lin­coln Bed­room (not then as famous as it was to become dur­ing the Clin­tons’ occu­pan­cy of the White House), he turned it down, claim­ing the bed did not suit him. Mak­ing him­self at home from the start, Churchill then looked over the oth­er avail­able rooms. Alert as ever to oppor­tu­ni­ties, he chose a bed­room across the hall from Har­ry Hop­kins’ almost per­ma­nent rooms, the Rose Room on the sec­ond floor, where Queen Eliz­a­beth had slept on her on her 1939 vis­it with King George VI. —Cita Stelz­er, Din­ner with Churchill: Pol­i­cy-Mak­ing at the Din­ner Table.

Reality

“It is true,” writes Mr. Lehrman,

that Har­ry Hop­kins had been occu­py­ing the so-called Lin­coln Suite. Mr. Churchill was hap­py with the Rose Suite, as it was direct­ly across the hall from Hop­kins. It would seem that the pow­ers that be thought Mr. Churchill very impor­tant they showed him the Lin­coln Bed­room out of def­er­ence, Hop­kins notwith­stand­ing. For­tu­nate­ly, it seems...