In Brief
The Lincoln Home in Springfield, Illinois is the only house Abraham Lincoln ever owned. The National Park Service says flatly that it's not haunted. The people who work there have spent decades quietly telling a different story about Mary's bedroom and the parlor rocking chair.
The Full Story
At the Lincoln Home in Springfield, Illinois, a custodian named Shirlie Laughlin was alone in Mary Todd Lincoln's bedroom when she felt a hand settle on her shoulder. She turned. No one was there. "Something—someone—kept touching me on the shoulder," she said in a 1998 interview. "I kept looking around, but no one was there." She walked out.
The National Park Service runs this house, keeps it restored to its 1860 look, and states flatly that it is not haunted. The stories come from the people who work the rooms.
Laughlin had more than the shoulder. She described the parlor rocking chair moving on its own, and a wind that ran the length of the hall with every window shut. "At times, that rocking chair rocks," she said, "and you can feel the wind rushing down the hall, even though the windows are shut tight." Visitors have written in too — a Virginia attorney described a woman in the parlor who vanished while he watched, a woman he thought looked like Mary Todd Lincoln.
Most people who feel something here say it feels like Mary. And that tracks with what the house was to her. Lincoln bought it at Eighth and Jackson in 1844, and the family lived there seventeen years — the only home he ever owned. Three of their boys were born inside it. In 1856 they grew the cottage into a full two-story, twelve-room house as the family grew.
Then Eddie, their second son, died in the home in February 1850, a month short of his fourth birthday. His funeral was held there the next day. The White House years brought another dead son, an assassination, debt, and an asylum.
This was the last place things were good. The Park Service says no one stayed. Mary's bedroom keeps tapping people on the shoulder anyway.
