A whiff of lilacs means Dolley Madison is again roaming the Octagon House. Mary Surratt appears in her Chinatown rooming house and at Fort McNair, where she was hanged. At the White House, Abraham Lincoln still treads the hallways.
Washington has been home to a lot of troubled souls, and sometimes they seem reluctant to leave the capital. Although the ghosts generally go unnoticed, some will be the stars of a unique Saturday night tour of three historic -- and allegedly haunted -- houses.
Embracing Halloween is a good way for historic sites to draw people in who might not otherwise think of spending a few hours in a formal, even intimidating, old mansion. A ghost story or two adds excitement. This year, for the first time, the Historical Society of Washington is offering tours featuring family intrigue, illicit romance and sudden deaths at the Octagon House, Decatur House and Heurich Mansion.
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"Anybody who lives in an old house has the sense of someone being there before them and knows of stories told over the years," said Barbara Franco, the society's executive director. "Sometimes it develops that not everyone left the house."
Franco said many believe ghosts wander the Victorian Heurich Mansion, built by brewer Christian Heurich at New Hampshire Avenue and Sunderland Place NW. The building is now the headquarters of the historical society.
Natalie Zanin, an actress who has written a play for each house, said she didn't believe in ghosts until one day when she was working alone at the Heurich Mansion. Someone, or something, repeatedly moved a velvet rope hanging in a doorway to keep visitors out. She replaced it three times. Finally, she spoke aloud, asking the deceased owner of the house to stop.
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It worked.
"I am a believer," she said emphatically.
Both believers and skeptics can also check out some Virginia ghosts on Saturday evening with "Historic Alexandria Hauntings," a three-building, $5 tour that runs from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m., said Cricket Bauer, curator of Gadsby's Tavern Museum.
In Annapolis, the Charles Carroll House is offering a $5 candlelight "Clandestine Tales" tour conducted by two servants -- an enslaved African woman and an indentured Irishman -- from 7 to 9:30 tonight, Friday and Saturday.
The Washington tour, beginning at 5 on Saturday, will cost $45 and include transportation between the houses and a reception.
Zanin, a staff member of the historical society, based her plays on "Ghosts, Washington Revisited," a recently reissued book by John Alexander.
After the White House was burned by the British in 1814, President James Madison and his wife, Dolley, moved to the Octagon House, where Dolley Madison used lilacs to perfume the air. According to Alexander, some visitors to the house at New York Avenue and 18th Street NW, now owned by the American Institute of Architects, have walked into pockets of air mysteriously scented with lilacs.
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But the house is better known for the mysterious deaths of two sisters. John Tayloe built the house in 1797, and he and his wife raised 15 children there. Both of the daughters who died had taken up with men their father did not like, and both fell to their deaths from a spiral staircase after arguing with their father.
Over the years, visitors have heard girlish screams and a thud as though a body had landed at the foot of the stairs. Or so Alexander said. Angie Dodson, curator of education at the Octagon House, said legends and ghost stories -- although they may be folklore rather than documented fact -- have a place in understanding the social history of a building. Halloween, she said, is an opportunity to "explain or comment on our haunted history."
For the Decatur House, a National Trust for Historic Preservation property on Lafayette Square, Alexander tells the story of naval hero Stephen Decatur, who was mortally wounded in a duel on March 14, 1820. He was brought home to die.
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Within a year, there were sightings of Decatur gazing out a window or slipping out the back door with his dueling pistols.
Molly Neal, director of collections and programs for the Decatur House, doesn't discount the stories. "People do believe in ghosts," she said. "Every museum where I have worked, there have been stories of ghosts." CAPTION: Hauntings: Natalie Zanin, a staff member of the Historical Society of Washington, works at the Heurich Mansion in Northwest Washington, where spirits of some original occupants are said to roam. ec CAPTION: Natalie Zanin, who works for the Historical Society of Washington, also is a medium who tries to channel spirits believed to be living at the Heurich Mansion in Northwest Washington. ec
