The Sodder Children - Unsolved Mystery

It is the most gut-wrenching fear of every parent - to lose your child.  On Christmas Eve 1945, George and Jennie Sodder had this fear come true not just once, but for five of their ten children.  A fire erupted in their Fayetteville, West Virginia home and their five children who slept upstairs, Maurice, Martha, Louis, Jennie, and Betty were not able to escape the fire.

But here's where the creepy part comes in - no body parts or bones linked to these five children were uncovered in the rubble.  And another thing, when George tried to drive his truck near the house to climb on top of it and reach the second floor, his engine wouldn't start.  And another thing - the phones lines to the house had been cut.  The head police chief, Chief Morris, claimed the fire must've been hot enough to cremate the bodies of the children.  The fire was officially chalked up to 'faulty wiring.'

Sadly, this story gets stranger and creepier.  Sometime before the fire broke out, the Sodder family was visited by two odd men posing as insurance salesmen on their doorstep.  Allegedly, one of the men told George (an Italian immigrant) that he would pay for the negative remarks about Mussolini that he had been making around town.  These strange men made very specific threats about their house burning down and their chidlren dying, and I quote, "Your goddamn house is going up in smoke and your children are going to be destroyed.  You are going to be paid for the dirty remarks you are making about Mussolini."  EVEN STRANGER - this exact same 'insurance salesman' served on the coronor's jury that demeed the fire an accident.

 

The more I read about this case, the more my mind is blown to tiny pieces.  There were several eyewitnesses that came forward saying they saw the insurance salesman around the Sodder house carrying a block and tackle, which could've been used to disable George's car.  They also found a strange plastic object in the Sodder yard, which George claimed could've been a Napalm bomb.  So is this truly a case of a mysterious disappearance, an intricately planned attack, an accident gone wrong?  In any case, what happened to the bodies of the five Sodder children?

After some time had passed since the fire, a waitress at a roadside diner and a woman in a hotel in Charleston claimed to have seen four of the five missing children sitting at a table surrounded by Italian-looking men and women who would not let them speak.  Jennie Sodder also received a mysterious photograph in the mail 20 years after the fire of a man alleged to be her son.  The letter was postmarked from Kentucky but had no return address.  On the back of the photograph was written, "Louis Sodder.  I love brother Frankie.  Ilil Boys.  A90132 or 35."  George and Jennie hired a private detective and sent him to Kentucky to investigate.  They never heard from him again.

George and Jennie erected a large billboard, seen below, that was amended over the years and remained standing for over 40 years.  George died in 1968, sending Jennie into a further spiral of depression.  She erected a fence around their property and began adding more and more rooms to their house, building layer and layer between her and the outside world.  Jennie wore black clothing exclusively since the fire and continued to do so until her own death in 1989.  Upon Jennie's death, the billboard came down.

Sylvia is the youngest and last surviving Sodder child.  At the age of 71, she still pores crime sleuthing websites and engages with those still interested in her family's mystery.  Sylvia doesn't believe her siblings perished in the fire of 1945.  Her first memories are of the fire at two years old and she has spent her life asking so many questions and getting very few answers.

-Amanda

Oculus - Movie Review

Oculus
2013
Directed by Mike Flanagan
Spoiler Free!

Whoa, wait, what?  A deeply-moving examination of childhood abuse and trauma masquerading as a half-wit Death Bed remake?  Not what I expected.

Oculus is a feature-length adaptation of a award-winning short released in 2005.  Sadly, I haven't seen the short, so cannot compare it in this review, but suffice to say it was compelling enough that studios tried for years to pick it up as a "found-footage" picture.  Flanagan refused these attempts, and finally agreed to make Oculus on the express condition that it NOT be found-footage.  During the scripting process, they expanded the original premise of the short by intertwining storylines of the past with the present.

But this isn't just a mish-mash of flashbacks.  Oculus tells the tale of a supernatural, EVIL mirror that has the power to warp reality around it.  It kills houseplants, absorbs dogs, and causes intensely realistic hallucinations, driving its human victims to their deaths!  As the movie unwinds, the boundaries between memory and illusion become increasingly blurred until they rip apart altogether.

The story goes that a brother and sister have finally returned to their childhood home: a house of horrors where both their parents died.  Tim has recently been released from a mental institution.  Kaylie has made her way past the trauma on her own, landing a job as an antiques dealer.  Kaylie convinces Tim back to the house because she's located the EVIL mirror that she blames for her parents' descent into insanity and their deaths.  Kaylie intends to document the mirror's powers, and then destroy it.

Tim is skeptical, until strange things begin to happen.  And as we are led down the twisting path of the last innocent days of Kaylie and Tim's childhood, we begin to see why Tim needed to be in an institution, and why Kaylie is so very... intense.

Of course there are ghosts.  Booooooo.  But I'll explain why this is a boo in a bit.

Full disclosure.

Firstly, I'd like to talk about my personal bias.  For example, how much did Joanna relate to Kaylie on a scale of 1-5?  Oh...about AN 8.  I sometimes tell my friends that my husband has done a lot to mellow me out, but they always giggle.  If only they knew how close I might have come to setting up an elaborate system of timers and a death contraption to kill the objects of my obsessions....

Further, as an individual who suffers frequently from severe nightmares, hallucinations, and hideous intrusive thoughts, it was really awesome to have a movie I could point at and exclaim "Look!  See when she bites that lightbulb!  It's not real, but it might as well be.  That's what it's like!  That's why X bothers me so much..."

Anyways, I really liked and identified with Kaylie.  She's a great character because her intelligence, resourcefulness, and determination are not undercut by her mental frailty.  Rather, her unbalanced mind renders her complex and flawed in a way that is empathy-inducing.  A way that would only make her look foolish to the most callous and under-developed adolescent.

Tim is the same way.  His skepticism is level-headed yet born out of a deep sense of self-preservation.  As such, Oculus accomplishes something to be pleased about: characters that are flawed and fearful for a good reason, not some loaded-in stupidity that's requisite for the genre tropes and cliches to go off.  Their childhood was deeply traumatic, and that's bound to make people messed up.  Thus, by actually giving us characters instead of cardboard dolls, the audience is able to empathize and relate to them.  Then, the trouble they get into is believable.  And then, Boom:  Horror that works.  Crazy, huh?

Watch out: we're about to dive deep.

This gets us to the heart of Oculus: how to cope with trauma.  Frequently in the beginning of the movie, Tim admonishes Kaylie for believing that the mirror is EVIL.  He claims that this is just an elaborate delusion she's constructed to cope with the inconceivable horrors of their past.  Memories are unreliable and fluid, and mysteries muddied by time can be easily explained.  The dog had Parvo, dad was just having an affair, etc. etc.

We see how stubborn Kaylie is in response.  How doggedly she chases an explanation that will make her mom and dad and brother Good People, people who were Not Responsible.  She's nestled deep into her obsessive insanity because believing in an EVIL MIRROR is easier and better than believing in the mental illness and abusiveness of her parents.  It's easier than facing the fact that her brother became a killer at 10 years old.

These threads: the unreliability of memory and the rationalizations we weave to cope with the unspeakable, are then mixed into an even nastier snarl with PTSD-type flashbacks and triggerings.  Time may have allowed Kaylie the ability to function in the world, but as the movie goes on, a very true thing becomes patently clear: somewhere on the inside there is still a terrified, frustrated, overwhelmed young girl.  There's a part of Kaylie that will always be that girl, fighting not to be afraid of the people she ought to trust most.  The mirror merely brings that piece to the surface.  And then when we consider how identity over time is not so linear and solid as we like to believe, and how our conceptions about our memories shape who we are, and you get quite the tangled web.

Speaking of tangled webs, Oculus accomplishes a somewhat impressive feat by keeping its shit straight.  I'm sure there are plenty of loopholes and details that people might point out as being flaws (while missing the point that flaws in recollection are exactly what the movie is ABOUT), but all things considered, this movie does an amazing job of minding its p's and q's.  Transitioning cleanly between the present, the actual past, hallucinations in the present, memories, and hallucinations designed to look like memories, Flanagan and his team pulled off a plot-line circuitous enough to make Christopher Nolan proud.

My gum disease is sooooooo spooooooopy!  Be Spooped!

On to the Bad Parts: those useless spoopy ghosts.

No doubt about it, Oculus was made for a general audience.  It pays its dues very diligently to the teenage cash crowd who love nothing more than to decry a horror movie for "Not being a real horror movie, just a psychological drama!  Not spoopy enough. 1 of 10, would not spoop. Super laaaame."  By bending over backwards to establish bullshit "rules" of how the mirror behaves and shoving ghosts down our throats, Oculus makes damn sure that 19-year-olds can't complain on Amazon that it's "totz not real horror".

Sadly, though, because it works so hard to make the EVIL MIRROR real, and the SPOOPY GHOSTS real, it completely undermines what is truly horrifying and resonant about the film.  What is more disturbing than not being able to trust your own mind?  Ladies with cataracts and bad teeth?  I mean, if we have a movie with two deeply scarred young people, returning to the location where all their horrors happen, it's bound to trigger all sorts of things inside them, resulting in a mind-breaking descent into madness.  To insist on the device of a haunted mirror is tiresome and juvenile.

And... I'm not even going to go into how predictable and useless the ending is.  Ugh.

However, I don't particularly blame the film-makers for this as much as I blame the market.  A lot of horror is unbelievably terrible these days because it's what sells.  Honestly, I'm impressed that Oculus even got made, and was popular enough to get, what, two sequels picked up?  So, I understand why they shoe-horned stupid ghosts in, I just whole-heartedly believe it would have been a magnificent movie without them.  The kind of movie that could be like a little baby sister to The Shining.

Speaking of The Shining, though, I'd also like to point out that the way Oculus is made leaves a little to be desired.  While the film-making was clean and the editing very polished (as stated above), I would have liked a bit more in the way of directorial and aesthetic flair.  The movie is very competently shot, and a portion of me wants to argue that any more visual stylization would distract from the plot, but... there's a but.  Atmosphere is frequently built via literal darkness more than shot-framing, and the palette of color and texture could have been more vivid for my tastes (this is a movie about insanity, afterall- we can use shades other than white, bright red, dusty ochre, and black).  As a result, I often felt like Oculus was an extremely well-planned film shot by someone fresh out of school, who hasn't yet had a chance to develop their personal visual style.  I would love to see this redone, sans the conceit of the mirror being actually EVIL, and with a bit more verve.  I think what I want is The Shining.

In short, Oculus definitely has its problems.  It's not a movie that knocks it out of the park.  But, it's got a lot of good stuff hidden away inside its shell.  In other words, Oculus understands the jungle it's in, and has spent a lot of time camouflaging itself as a SuperSpoopyGhostMovie, so that it can continue to feed and lay its eggs in peace.  This makes me happy in a strange way.  Instead of disappointment, I see something hopeful.  That there are people out there capable of making good, compelling, useful horror, even if they have to frost it with dumbness for now.

-Joanna

Deep Dark Fears

Alright, there's no extensive story here.  There's no creeply-edited short film or haunting song and dance.  There's no real life death or mystery.  This post is a brief respite from stomach-churning dread and disgust and is instead cutesy comics illustrating society's deepest darkest fears. :)

Illustrated by this little cutey here:

Illustrator Fran Krause asked people to write in and tell him their deepest darkest fears, no matter how irrational, no matter how strange, no matter how twisted.  Some fears can be traced to early childhood memories, some as a result of trauma or a triggering experience, some seeming to appear out of thin air.  What's interesting about human society is certain fears, even those that seem the most insane or unlikely, can be and probably are shared by a handful or even hundreds or thousands of others out there in the world.

We are not alone in our fears, but does that make them any less scary?  Does taking the terrifying image in your mind, translating it to words, and then translating them back into cutesy innocuous cartoons make them any less terrifying?

Krause is a member of the faculty in the Character Animation Program of CalArts.  His tumblr is here: http://frankrause.tumblr.com/, each post receiving multiple thousands of notes. 

I have linked below five of my favorite cartoons, the ones I find most creepy and unsettling, perhaps even hitting a little too close to home.

1) My two irrational fears involving being out and about are walking over the grates on sidewalks, fearing they will buckle under my weight and I'll go plummeting into the sewers below and/or being on the second or third floor of the mall and having someone bump into me, push me, or just have something generally go wrong and I go flying over the railing, smacking into the hard floor below.

2) I don't know how many times I've bugged my husband just randomly throwing into conversation, "What if we're really dead right now?"  I mean, how would one know if they are dead or not?  Truly, this is something we don't really have an answer to.  If I don't hear from one of my work clients for a few days or I say something to someone and get ignored, sometimes a little tiny part of me wonders, "Could I be dead?"  I, of course, then laugh it off.  I mean, I have to be alive, right?  I couldn't be writing this blog post if I were dead, right? [uncomfortable laughter]

3) Growing old is something we all hope for, but something I'm sure most of us also fear and dread a little bit.  There's an old cliche, would you rather die old and gray or young and beautiful?  Can you imagine the pain that must be felt to know you have lived 70 or 80 years of life, you have seen more than most, have wisdom to share for days, stories that would uplift a room, and yet no one will pay you the time of day because you're just 'old', 'wrinkly', or 'senile'?  Perhaps this is a reiteration to respect your elders.  They know far more than you ever will and they are valuable.

4)  An active imagination is a true gift that many will embrace as a child and slowly start to lose over time.  However, what if your imagination as a child was more of a detriment than an advantage?  What if childhood games and stories spilled over into adult anxieties and compulsions?  What if alternate universes are possible and perhaps, just perhaps, the mind of a child was able to unlock them and the mind of an adult made it impossible to 'go back'?

5) Depressing and maybe unlikely, but what if you outlive all of your closest family members and friends?  What if at your funeral, your grandchildren and great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren all attend but didn't really know you well, have no fun memories or stories to share?  What if they can only say things like, "Well, he/she gave us money at Christmas" or "Well, he/she always kept their house nice and tidy."  This could serve as a lesson to let people in more, treat others with more kindness, share a laugh with friends and family.  Make your life one to remember.

-Amanda

Isla de la Munecas

La Isla de Las Munecas or "Island of the Dolls" is an island situated at the Xochimilco Canals in Mexico.  Judging by the pictures alone, one can start to have an uneasy feeling, an uncomfortable wondering, why are thousands of decrepit, decaying, bug-infested, broken, cracked dolls looming in the trees, on the fences, in the bushes of this island?  Who put all of these dolls here and, for god's sake, WHY?!

A man named Don Julian Santana Barrera was the only inhabitant and caretaker of the island.  Legend has it, Julian was haunted by the spirit of a young girl who had drowned on the island and began collecting dolls and stringing them up in order to appease the young girl's spirit and bring her comfort.  Some accounts say Julian had tried to save the girl's life and was grief-stricken he could not, thus resulting in her presence haunting him.  Other accounts, including even Julian's family, say the girl had died before Julian even came to the island.  It is difficult to get a clear story of what actually took place, especially since, you know, spirits are involved and such.

Regardless, Julian became absolutely obsessed with the spirit of this young girl and began collecting dolls out of the canals and trash to hang up for the girl.  Julian even sold his produce to locals in exchange for more dolls.  Rather than cleaning up the dolls or attempting to fix them, Julian simply hung them as-is, cracked, decaying, dirty, glassy-eyed, soulless.  Even the dolls that arrived flawless were deteriorated over time due to the weather and wind.  Julian kept his small cabin filled with dolls as well, adorning them with sunglasses, umbrellas, and other accessories.  Julian had almost a strange sense of pride in his doll collection and would even give tours of the island, charging a small fee for visitors to take photos.

An extra level of creep steps in where, after 50 years of inhabiting the island and collecting dolls, Julian's body was found in 2001 in the exact place where he believed the girl had drowned.  Julian's legacy lives on though - the island has become a somewhat popular tourist attraction, being featured in TV shows and highlighted in articles.  Tourists travel from far and wide to contribute their own dolls to the island, the collection ever-growing.  Perhaps the spirits of both the girl and Julian now wander the island, surveying the dolls, strolling through the gardens, feeling a sense of peace for once.

 

-Amanda

Come Back to Me - Movie Review

Come Back to Me

Released 2014

Directed by Paul Leyden

Slight plot spoilers but NO ENDING SPOILERS

Hold the phone, alert the presses, a pig has grown wings and just flew past my head, I found a recent horror movie that I LIKE, I really like!! In fact - I watched Come Back to Me on a Friday night while my husband was out and when he got back I told him about it and we watched it together Saturday morning and HE liked it as well! (Normally we rip movies to shreds when we watch them together, haha.)  This means, I watched this movie twice within a 24 hour time period and perhaps I have a fever but I'd actually watch it a third time.

Now granted, before I get too carried away, this isn't an Academy Award worthy picture, folks.  In fact, there's nothing too special or over the top about it.  It isn't exorbitantly freaky or disturbing or groundbreaking.  It's a good 'ol fashioned tale of a lead female with anxiety stalked by the creeper next door with requisite long hair and smelly house.  But it gets deeper and there's a twist at the end that is epic and I'm not gonna tell you what it is for once!  However, all I will say is this, if you're a fan of happy endings, well, you're SOL on this one.

Our story opens with a teenage boy, Dale, sitting on the couch holding his pet rabbit and hearing his mom get murdered by his stepfather.  Or so we are led to believe...

 

Flash forward about ten years and we meet our main character, Sarah, a late 20-something blonde generic cute girl, married to Josh, wanting to have a baby, writing her thesis on the effects of porn on relationships.  Josh and Sarah notice Dale moving in across the street and bring him a plate of Rainbridge Farm cookies, which Dale creepily asks if they're homemade and then seems pissed off that they're not but accepts them anyway.  We later see Dale working in the grocery store and helping Sarah load her groceries in her car, being as friendly as he possibly can while still looking and acting like a major creepo.  

[Oh yeah and there are about five different scenarios in this movie where Dale eats cookies like a creep, all fast and maniacal, and that alone is worth the price of admission for the sheer WTF level of it all.]

We learn that Sarah had recently been in a bad car accident and had head trauma, resulting in insane night terrors where she sees Josh get killed, finds blood on her sweatshirt, wakes up in different rooms in the house, wakes up naked and smelling cleaning products, and all other varieties of strange scenarios.  Her very pregnant friend and therapist, Leslie, tries to help Sarah through all of her issues while Dale lurks around every corner saying hi to Sarah every chance he can get.

 

Eventually, Sarah starts to get suspicious of Dale and sneaks into his house one day after he leaves for work.  She finds an entire cabinet full of cookies and a box upstairs of keys.  Turns out, Dale made an impression of Sarah's key the same day he loaded the groceries into her car and has been sneaking into her house every night.  But what has he been doing?  Suddenly maybe the night terrors aren't nightmares at all, but reality.  We also learn that Sarah becomes pregnant but Josh shoots blanks, thus causing a giant rift in their marraige as he thinks she has been cheating on him and moves out to his buddy's house.

After months of frustration and fear she is losing her mind, Sarah sets up a smoke detector camera in her bedroom to get to the bottom of what exactly is happening during these night terrors/blackouts.  What she finds is alarming.  Dale has been sneaking into her house every night, tying her up, dancing with her in his arms, eating cookies, raping her, then slitting her throat.  Yes, you read that right.  Dale has been killing Sarah every night, BUT after cleaning up all the blood, before he leaves the room he breathes life back into her and all her wounds are healed yet she remembers nothing.

Turns out all those years ago, Dale's mom didn't actually die because that night Dale discovered his power and brought his mom back to life.  He then went out of control with it and began killing girls and animals all around his neighborhood and bringing them back to life, slowly driving his mother to insanity.  She hung herself, slit her wrists, and tried all other methods to die, but Dale would keep bringing her back to life.  Finally, Dale's mother set herself on fire in front of the police and was sent off to the insane asylum in order to get away from Dale.  Sarah goes to visit her and we learn Dale's back story and why he is the way he is today, including the fact that he is forever stuck in a preteen's mentality and when he first discovered his power, before he would bring people back to life, he would demand his mother make him homemade cookies with milk.

 

Our story comes to a grand conclusion when Sarah returns home prepared to shoot Dale, but finds he has tied up Josh and now their lives are in danger.  Sarah must come up with a plan to get Dale out of their lives for good and let's just say it begins with a cookie date over a wine glass full of milk and ends with, well...I want so badly to spoil the last ten minutes of the movie because it gets EPIC but I will not because I feel this one is much more fun when you don't know what's coming.  I'm also leaving out a couple of key scenes for brevity's sake, but let's just say they involve bunnies and babies.

 

Now, I learned after watching this that Come Back to Me is based on a novel, "The Ressurectionist" by Wrath James White, this BAMF right here:

White is a former World Class Heavyweight Kickboxer, distance runner, performance arist, and former street brawler.  Proof that you can't judge a book by its cover or an author by his snazzy suit and tie.

Once again, I would definitely give Come Back to Me a high approval rating.  Of course it has its cheesy moments and the lead actress is sometimes slightly insufferable with her over the top gasps and facial expressions and shrieking, but I can overlook this because of how well the other actors fit their roles and embody their characters and how this is one of those films where you know something is not quite right but you can't exactly figure out what's happening until it all just smacks you in the face.  Dale is a complex character who does heinous things but you realize deep down inside he's an emotionally-stunted momma's boy with a power he didn't ask for and really has no idea what to do with and, man, he just really likes cookies and milk.

Come Back to Me will make you think twice about whether some of your nightmares are a little more real than you'd like to believe and also make you side-eye that one neighbor who always seems a little too interested in where you're going or what you're doing.  And, hey, who doesn't love a horror movie that leaves you with a lingering sense of paranoia, am I right?  Anyone...? 

- Amanda

John Kenn Mortensen - Artist Review

The bio on his website reads:

Born in Denmark 1978, I write and directed television shows for kids.  I have a set of twins and not much time for anything.  But when I have time, I draw monster drawings on Post-it Notes... It is a little window into a different world, made on office supplies.

That's right, Post-It Notes.  I first saw the artist's work a couple years ago, promoted along the lines of "You Won't Believe What This Amazing Artist Draws on Post-Its!!!!!"  Luckily, the link had an image with it, so I got a glimpse of an eye of a Kenn-brand monster.  It was big and fuzzy, and its gaping, toothy mouth and pale, sightless eyes struck the perfect chord of endearing, mysterious, and deeply creepy.

The artist's use of ink on paper allows him to be extremely detailed.  Thus many of his monsters sport shaggy pelts, tattered robes, or oozing, melted skin.  This along with hyper-detailed backdrops of trees, fences. or bedroom walls makes the spaces left vacant pop.  For example, the white eyes of his creatures, ringed heavily with black.

A thing I love about these drawings is their atmosphere.  If there's an heir to the Edward Gorey throne, I can think of no better fit than John Kenn Mortensen.  His pictures do encapsulate little worlds.  Worlds that ring with the strangeness of childhood daydreams and imaginary friends.  Worlds where the Wild Things Are.  Worlds that house the creepy-crawlies kids innocently doodle, only to have their parent discretely crumple up the drawing as chills run down their spine.  Monsters are lit against the night with glowing eyes, or slither from shaded closets.  Sometimes the atmosphere is wrought with irised-in shading, other times it is in how lonely the monsters look.

However, it's not always about the monsters.  There's a balance in each piece between the featured humans, usually children, and the beasts.  It takes these hallucinatory creatures and tethers them to a sort of feverish reality.  What does your child see behind them when they look in the mirror?  Oh, just the usual...

Further, there's a deeply Victorian part of me that loves miniatures.  The fact that this work is done on Post-Its isn't kitschy; it feels like a 21st Century update to locket-bound portraits.

The only thing that makes me sad about John Kenn Mortensen is that sometimes it feels as though his fame is leveraged more on the Post-It Note gimmick than on the sheer mind-blowing quality of his work.  I wonder whether he would have achieved viral-level exposure of his work if it were pencil on vellum.  I wonder how many other Mortensens are out there making mind-blowing monsters I'm not looking at, just because they haven't figured out or bought into the right gimmick.

But, at least this artist is doing well.  Check out his website, or buy his books "Sticky Monsters" and "More Sticky Monsters".  I know what I'm putting on my Amazon wishlist for next Christmas.

http://johnkenn.blogspot.com/

-Joanna

Lincoln's Ghost

It's snowing here in the mountains of Virginia, and tonight feels like the perfect time for a ghost story.  So bundle up, scoot closer to the fire, and let's celebrate President's Day the spooky way.

It is sometimes said that the most haunted home in America is the White House.  Countless stories of spirits and presences have been documented.  Presidents, first ladies, heads of state, and the staff have heard footsteps, disembodied voices, and mysterious creaks.  Occasionally, full-body apparitions have appeared only to fade when the witness ran screaming or fainted dead away.

Of course, there is one spirit that tops the list, being seen so frequently that it's earned the title of "The White House Ghost": the ghost of Abraham Lincoln.

The first person to see Lincoln's ghost was Grace Coolidge, who lived in the White house as first lady between 1923 and 1929.  One day, she reported seeing an apparition of in the Yellow Oval Room.  He stood with his back to her by the window, looking out over the Potomac.

In 1942, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands heard footsteps in the hall outside her bedroom door.  As it was midnight, she was surprised when a knock came.  She answered it.  On the other side of the door stood Lincoln, in frock coat and top hat.  Wilhelmina fainted dead away.

However, that was not the only bedroom to be visited.  Many anonymous eyewitnesses reported hearing footsteps inside and outside the Lincoln bedroom at night.  Sometimes a knock would come at the door to the bedroom, and when answered by the occupant, there would be only empty air.  Undoubtedly, that room where Lincoln himself spent countless sleepless nights is the most haunted.

Plenty have seen him lying in repose on the bed.  Others have seen him going about his everyday business.  Famously, Mary Eben, secretary to Eleanor Roosevelt, looked into the room one day.  At the end of the bed, she saw the long-limbed figure of Lincoln sitting. pulling on his boots.  Immediately, she ran from the room "terribly wrought up".  Other accounts say she was screaming.

Others reacted to the ghost of Lincoln more stoically.  Winston Churchill disliked staying in the Lincoln bedroom.  But, despite his unease, there he slept during a visit in the '40s.  He was unwinding in the bathtub after a long day, smoking his cigar, and drinking scotch.  Even though I can't imagine why you would leave such bliss, he eventually rose from the bath and, wearing nothing but his cigar, walked into the bedchamber.  He was shocked to see Lincoln standing by the fireplace, leaning on the mantle.  According to the story Churchill told, the British leader then said "Good evening, Mr. President.  You seem to have me at a disadvantage!"  Lincoln smiled softly and disappeared.

However frightening these stories of Lincoln, they don't compare to the other ghost that haunts the White House.  At age 11, Willie Lincoln died of illness- most likely typhoid fever.  The death nearly drove his mother Mary Todd to insanity, and his father into a deep depression.

Willie's ghost was seen as early as the 1870s during the Grant administration, but has haunted the House for many years since.  In the 1960s, LBJ's daughter, Lynda Bird Johnson Robb saw Willie's ghost.  She was staying in the room he'd died in.  She said she talked to him.

Whether these ghosts are merely hallucinations and the settling of a centuries-old house, we may never know.  But one thing is for certain, something haunts the greatest house in the land, even if it's just memories.

-Joanna