Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 April 1896 — WASHINGTON GHOSTS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

WASHINGTON GHOSTS

SHADES OF GREAT MEN HAUNT THE CAPITOL. • I" A Correspondent Says Among Them Are the Spirit®, of President John ! Quincy Adame, Vice President Henry ‘ Wilson and Black Jack Logan. , Spooks in »High-Life. Washington correspondence:

DO you believe in ghosts? Do you ■wish to • collect a rich and' rare stock o f flesh - creeping spook stories? If so, come to WashinggEg\ ton, hie yourself to sSSI that great white I glia' building on the hill known as the Capitol, give one of the blue-coated guides an extra tip and he - will take you amid 1,1 the mazes of that pTpflrea wonderful —building '|| |[ [Band regale you with H l> ’ enough dark tales to last you a lifetime.

Or, if they do not satisfy you, pick acquaintance with one of the seedy, hungry looking individuals you will find at the foot of the grand’ staircase, who ten to one is a professional guide also, and ask him to point out to you all the haunted houses in the city and tell you th'eir weird histories. And either of these gentlemen will tell you what they believe to be the plain, unvarnished truth. The Capitol police have strange things to tell about the uncanny doings in the vaulted corridors after nightfall. -The ghoste they tell about are not simple, everyday visitors from the land of the unseen, but the shades of distinguished men in the fiatiem’s history. The majestic spiritual ego of John Quincy Adams, once President of the United States; of Vice-President Henry Wilson, a Massachusetts statesman, and of Gen. John A. Logan, famous in field and forum, are said to haunt by night the echoing halls where legislators tread by day. When the redoubtable Andrew Jackson was inaugurated, March 4, 1829, Adams retired for a short while to private life. It was not until Feb. 21, 1848, that he died. He was at that time q representative, and his passing away was tragic. During a session of the House he suddenly slipped from his seat to the floor. Apoplexy, the doctors said. He was borne to a room near by, where not many hours later he died, with but a few murmured words. It was not long after the unhappy event that there was whispering among the officials who took care of the Capitol Building after dark that someone" like unto the dead Adams was seen nightly to pass out of the speaker’s room, in which the ex-President had died, into the House chamber, which is now statuary hall, aud wander about. among the seats. It wquld pause beside the chair occupied by Adams, then gradually fade away into nothingness. After the seats were removed and statues pld cos in the hall the change apparently disconcerted the distinguished' ghost, for, according to the best authorities, those who claimed to have seen the whole proceeding, the shade of the statesman wandered around and around the chamber, and finally passed out without apparently having found his former place of daily occupation. But later a small, bronze tablet was inserted in the floor, through the good offices of somebody who felt sorry for thq ghost," upon the spot where John Quincy Adams’ chair used to stand, and then it is said the ghost walked as before, with every evidence of being once again at pence. This particular shade was seen on Feb. 21 last, aud is not expected again until that date. beloved Vice-President is said to move and have its ethereal being in the VicePresident’s room, the marble room, where the Senators receive their callers, and in the corridors thereabouts. It was while in the first named apartment that Mr. Wilson was also suddenly visited by the angel of death, Nov. 10, 1875, who remained with him until Nov. 22, when he died, after three severe shocks of apoplexy. The apparition supposed to represent this poor man is occasionally declared to manifest itself suddenly, as if evoluted out of the thin air, aiid ns quickly vanish upon the approach of a mortal. The spirit of Black Jack Logan is s.aid to make its appearance at exactly twenty minutes after 12 o'clock midnight. The general was at one time chairman of the Committee on Military; Affairs, gnd out of this committee room he emerges, taking care to close tile door after him, and glides swiftly down the corridor, to disappear without trace or sound. This is perhaps the most substantial of all the Capitol ghosts, for there are numbers of persons rendy to attest~having witnessed lu.s mysterious- passage through the gloomy halls. But it does not take the actual appearance of these shades to make the Capitol, a place of grewsomeness and awe at night. In the stillness, that pervades a dooi; shutting at zone end of the long building may be faintly hearu at the other, and a step in the rotunda will come back from all sides with startling echoing. It is one of the stories that every night thtfre is a sound in the portico of the Senate wing as of some one scrubbing the marble floor aud the noise of water being thrown down oh it is plainly audible. Capitol officials tell of an aged negro who used so be one of the sweeps, and who died a number of years ago, aud who, they say, performs his early morning duties of washing up just a few hours before daybreak each day. This ghostly individual is the unseen terror of all the negro laborers who clean up around the Capitol, and they will not work without plenty of light on the subject. 1 It would give a timid person the fright of his life to walk across statuary hall at midnight and in the dark. In no place in the vast building are thq echoes so strange or so ghostly. There 1 are a number of what called echo 6tones, by stepping upon which and speaking qne is astounded to hear his voice coming up apparently beneath his feet. It is a trick the guides have ofstartling their customers by stepping up liehind some pillar and, just jit the moment when the unwary tourist stands on a certain stone, giving voice to a harsh and sepulchral whisper Thai .Kill xererberateuin ghostly accent close in his ear. Upper Mississippi log owners at Minneapolis, JJjun., canvassed the pine timber cut of the winter, finding it 585,000,000 They voted that only 75 per cent of logs to come down the river shall be sawed, reducing the cut of lumber to about 400,000,000 and directly ftffecfrng 10,000 laboring men. Gen. Simon Sam, the new president of Hayti, has ordered a Government vessel to carry home the Haytian exiles who have been living at Jamaica. V I don Punch, is coming over to,lecture in the United States this fall.