HARRY TRUMAN woke up alone in his bedroom in the White House, startled awake by three strong knocks on his door. In response, the president hurried into his bathrobe and across the wide carpet, calling, “Who’s there?” But upon flinging open the door to find out what emergency of national security was critical enough to roust him at 4 o’clock in the morning, he found: no one.
Harry wrote about that incident in a letter to Bess who was back home in Independence. He told her this verified what he had long suspected, that there were ghosts in the White House. Mary Todd Lincoln had called it the Whited Sepulcher for good reason. This 33rd president and his first and only lady usually called it the white jail, but on that night it felt like a living grave to him.
Shivering yet?
Harry Truman, common sensical, plain talking, bomb-dropping HST, believed in ghosts. Do you? Or, more to the point, have you seen one? Thought you saw one? Wondered if you saw one? Have a third cousin twice removed who knew a man who knew a man who claimed he saw the ghost of Richard Nixon? (Now that’s scary.)
I looove ghost stories, and it’s hot in the Midwest and my fellow Kansans, katiebird and ghostdancer (a coincidence??), and I could use some chills. So do us a favor. Tell the spooky stories that you’ve never told another living soul before! Send those chills down our spines.
Unless you want to wait until the sun goes down. . .heh heh heh.
