Lincoln Abraham - Ghosts of Lincoln: discovering his paranormal legacy

Llewellyn Publications

Woodbury, Minnesota

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Ghosts of Lincoln: Discovering His Paranormal Legacy 2015 by Adam Selzer.

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First e-book edition 2015

E-book ISBN: 9780738745145

Book design by Bob Gaul
Cover image courtesy Library of Congress/LC-DIG-ppmsca-19301/
original photo Alexander Gardner
Cover design by Lisa Novak
Editing by Ed Day
Interior photos courtesy Library of Congress except Lincoln Piano on
Adam Selzer, Mumler on College of Psychic Studies in
London and Lincoln Bedroom on John F. Kennedy Presidential
Library and Museum in Boston

Llewellyn Publications is an imprint of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Selzer, Adam.

Ghosts of Lincoln : discovering his paranormal legacy / Adam Selzer. -- FIRST EDITION.

1 online resource.

Includes bibliographical references.

Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

ISBN 978-0-7387-4514-5 -- ISBN 978-0-7387-4153-6 1. Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865--Psychology. 2. Spiritualism--United States--History--19th century. 3. Parapsychology--United States--History--19th century. 4. Ghosts--United States. I. Title.

E457.2

973.7092--dc23

2015015968

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Contents

: A World of Superstition

: Early Premonitions

: A World of Death: Growing Violence and the Rise of Spiritualism

: Lincolns Piano Ride

: Whos Dead in the White House: Lincolns Dreams

: Booth and the Conspirators (And Their Ghosts)

: Legends and the Ghosts of the Funeral and Tomb

: Contacting Lincoln

: An Odd Assortment of Ghosts and Mysteries

: Ghosts of DC

Introduction

O n January 30th, 1862, a strange ship was launched in Green Point Wharf. An ironclad battleship powered by steam and armed with guns mounted in a rotating turret, the Monitor was the Unions answer to the Merrimack , th e fearsome Confederate ironclad that was under construction in the South. The Confederate ship hadnt been completed, but the Union knew it was coming. President Lincoln had overruled the Navy officials who believed it would never float, and wanted the ability to fight an ironclad with an ironclad. Even today, the Monitor looks like a bizarre craft, with only about eighteen inches of it visible above the water, not counting the gun turret. It would eventually be compared to a cheese box floating on a raft.

It was a strange time that called for strange solutions.

Few of the most famous battles of the Civil War had yet been fought. The battles of Fort Sumter and Bull Run (aka Manassas) had shown people that this war between Northern and Southern states was not going to be a mere thirty-day dust-up, but the bloodiest battlesthose that would end with tens of thousands of casualtieswere still to come. In many ways, the launching of the Monitor marked the wars passage from an old-fashioned war to a modern one. As soon is it took to the water, every wooden navy in the world was obsolete. The arms race that followed as nations began to update their military would boil over into the First World War half a century later.

Meanwhile, that same month, January of 1862, actor John Wilkes Booth was lodging at the Tremont House hotel in Chicago. Abraham Lincoln stayed there when he was in town, too; he had given a version of his House Divided speech from the balcony in 1858 and held a public reception in the lobby after his election in 1860. Now Booth was making his home there while playing a highly successful run of shows at the nearby McVickers Theatre. During that cold winter, he starred in a different play nightly, appearing as characters such as Richard III (who kills his way to the throne), and Hamlet (who spends the whole play plotting to kill the king).

On the day the Monitor was launched, Booth took a break from Shakespeare and played Duke Pescara in The Apostate , an 1817 melodrama by Richard Sheil that was already nearly forgotten in 1862. The Duke was one of Booths fathers old roles, and is a consummate melodrama villain who seems as though he ought to be curling his mustache every time he talks. Consider the scene in which he bids Florinda to agree to marry him so hell stop torturing her lover:

Ill hunt for life in every trembling limb,
and chase it down. The driving steel shall plungeNay, do not stop your ears, for his shrill screams
shall pierce the solid deafness of the tomb.
Look there, look there! He dies! See where he dies!
The wheel goes roundsee, the red froth of blood!
His hair stands up, and drips with agony!

The play isnt as bad as its sometimes made out to be today (its pretty entertaining once it gets going, especially if you read Pescaras lines in a Darth Vader voice), but its seldom read anymore, probably hasnt been performed in years, and is really only remembered because of Booths connection to it. He played the same role in Albany, New York, the night Lincoln came through en route to Washington a year before, and he would play it again in 1865 in his last performance at Fords Theatre in Washington.

The night after he appeared in The Apostate , Booth played a regicidal role that has aged better, and which the Chicago Tribune said was his personal favorite: Macbeth .

Besides just the choice in Chicago hotels, Lincoln and Booth had another thing in common: Macbeth was Lincolns favorite, too.