Joel Martin - The Haunting of the Presidents: A Paranormal History of the U.S. Presidency

No doubt you learned in school about George Washingtons bitter winter at Valley Forge during the American Revolution. But its unlikely you were ever taught General Washington was guided by an angelic vision during his terrible ordeal.

Of course you learned that President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Did you also know that Lincoln may have been advised to do so from the spirit world? If you were told Lincoln was our greatest president, were you also informed that he was our most psychic and that sightings of his ghost have been reported in the White House countless times?

In all, the spirits of more than two dozen presidents, their wives, and other family members have been seen in the White House and elsewhere.

Although ignored in schools and rarely if ever touched upon in so-called traditional history books or biographies, the paranormal has played a part in nearly every administrationthirty-nine of forty-threesince George Washington was our first president to the present. It is a remarkable, if virtually untold, story. And it is a true story. Hundreds of psychic incidents involving the presidency have been uncovered. How many others were lost or never recorded? Which brings us to The Haunting of the Presidents.

In the course of researching the paranormal, my curiosity was often piqued by an occasional mention or brief anecdote about a president or first lady who had some type of supernatural experience. But never was I able to locate a central source to the psychic encounters of first families. Frustrated that the stories were scattered or largely omitted from serious histories, first families being largely precluded in the public consciousness and mainstream media from any involvement with the paranormal, I decided to gather them together in one book.

Locating credible accounts and documentation became a vast search through hundreds of books, magazines, newspapers, Web sites, personal interviews, and visits. Both Bill Birnes and I approach the paranormal seriously, and that is the way weve treated the subject here. We wanted this book to be more than merely a collection of anecdotes about a haunted houseeven if it is the White House. Thus, weve made every effort to explain the meaning of presidential psychic experiences, as well as biographical data about the first families.

Allow me to be personal for a moment. I began my involvement with unexplained phenomena in the early 1970s when I hosted a late-night radio talk show in the New York area, which continued for more than twenty years. At first I was so blas about the entire subject that I was less than skeptical. I was proud to help expose as a hoax the infamous haunted house story detailed in The Amityville Horror. Then something changed. I began to see displays of psychic ability that were so stunning they could be nothing less than genuine. Was I being tricked? No. Im a hard person to trick. I lived and worked as a teacher in some pretty tough neighborhoods of New York City. Thatll give you eyes in the back of your head, as they say.

After more than twenty-five years of studying and observing paranormal activity, my thinking has evolved. I know the subject is genuine. We all have psychic experiencespresidents and their wives includedwhile professional naysayers and debunkers have their own agenda. Too many of us have been intimidated from talking openly about our psychic experiences, fearing ridicule or criticism, although happily that attitude is slowly changing.

Do you believe in ghosts? Actually its not a belief system or some article of faith. Either there are spirits walking the earth or there arent. Until 1997, I would have not been able to give you a definitive answer. In October of that year, I was in Bonn, Germany, visiting a friend who was hospitalized. One day, my companion and I went to the Bonn Basilica, a beautiful Catholic church, to offer prayers for our ailing friend. The magnifcent building dates back nearly a thousand years and contains bones and relics of martyred saints. As we sat in a pew, I noticed the silhouette of someone walking toward me. As it moved closer, I realized it was not a person but rather an apparition. The shadowy form approaching on my right side was that of a small woman in a nuns habit. As she walked behind me, she placed a shawl over my shoulders. Of course, not an actual shawl, but one that, like her, was apparitional. Then she vanished past my left side. I felt strangely comforted and, at the same time, slightly stunned by the encounter. No, I was not dreaming, and this was not my imagination at work. I was fully awake. Nor would I dare invent the incident.