Lincoln Home

Employee Shirlie Laughlin described being repeatedly tapped on the shoulder while alone in Mary Todd Lincoln's bedroom, and a Virginia attorney watched a woman vanish from the parlor whom he later identified as Mary from photographs. A rocking chair in the parlor moves on its own, and a tall figure with a small boy has been seen, possibly Lincoln and his son Edward who died in the house at age four.

"I kept looking around, but no one was there," said Shirlie Laughlin, a Lincoln Home employee, in a 1998 interview with the Arlington Heights Daily Herald. She had been rearranging furniture in Mary Todd Lincoln's bedroom when something kept tapping her on the shoulder. "I left that chair right where it was."

The Lincoln Home at Eighth and Jackson Streets in Springfield was Abraham Lincoln's family residence from 1844 to 1861. He paid $1,500 for the Greek Revival cottage and enlarged it over the years as the family grew. Three of his four sons were born here, including Edward, who died in the house at age four. On February 11, 1861, the Lincolns left Springfield by train for Washington. They never came back together.

The National Park Service maintains the home in its 1860s appearance, and their official position is that the house is not haunted. But NPS employees have stories. Laughlin's account is the most quoted. Others describe a rocking chair in the parlor that moves on its own, creaking back and forth when nobody is sitting in it. Staff members cleaning rooms report being touched on the shoulder or nudged when they're alone.

A Virginia attorney wrote to the site staff after visiting the home. He described seeing a woman standing in the parlor who vanished while he watched. He recognized her afterward from period photographs of Mary Todd Lincoln.

Most people who experience something at the Lincoln Home say it feels like Mary, not Abraham. That tracks. Mary lived her happiest adult years in this house. She had her boys here, hosted social gatherings, built a life with her husband before politics consumed everything. The White House years broke her. Her son Willie died there. Her husband was assassinated. She spent her later years in debt, humiliation, and a brief involuntary commitment to an asylum. The Springfield house was the last time things were good.

There's a competing theory about the ghost's identity. Mrs. Lucian A. Tilton lived in the house during Lincoln's funeral in 1865. The Tiltons had rented it while Lincoln was in Washington, and during the funeral proceedings, souvenir hunters descended. They stripped the lawn and gardens, scraped paint off the exterior walls, and carried away bricks from the retaining wall. Mrs. Tilton watched helplessly as her home was dismantled piece by piece. The Tiltons moved out in 1869, but her spirit, the theory goes, stayed behind, still cleaning and straightening the rooms she tried so hard to protect.

A tall, thin figure accompanied by a small boy has also been spotted inside the house. If it is Lincoln and little Edward, it means a father and son who were separated by death in this same house found each other again here.

The rocking chair is the detail that sticks with most visitors. It sits in the parlor, and on quiet afternoons when the tour groups thin out, it moves. Not dramatically. Just a gentle, rhythmic creak, like someone settling in for an evening at home.