New York State Capitol

The New York State Capitol in Albany is haunted by Samuel Abbott, a 78-year-old Civil War veteran and night watchman who died in the massive 1911 fire that destroyed 725,000 books. His body was found feet from a door he had the key to, and employees still report seeing a mustachioed man in a watchman's uniform making rounds on the upper floors.

Samuel Abbott had a key in his pocket. The door it opened was a few paces away. He never made it through.

On March 29, 1911, at about 2:15 in the morning, an Assembly proofreader named Dwight Goewey noticed smoke coming from the library on the third floor of the New York State Capitol in Albany. Within minutes, the fire had spread from the Assembly Library into the adjacent State Library and was climbing toward the fourth and fifth floors. About 125 firefighters responded with ten horse-drawn steamers and three aerial ladders. They saved the building. They could not save the 725,000 books and documents inside, some dating to the colonial New Netherland era, written in Dutch. Ashes and fragments of burned paper scattered across neighboring towns for weeks.

They also could not save Samuel Abbott. The 78-year-old night watchman and Civil War veteran was the fire's only human casualty. His body was found two days later, on March 31, in a narrow passageway on the fourth floor near the Senate area. His silver-handled cane lay a short distance away. In his pocket was a key to a locked door just a few steps further, a door that opened onto a staircase that would have led him out. Nobody knows why he didn't reach it. Smoke, disorientation, the darkness of a burning building at three in the morning. Something stopped him a few feet from safety.

Abbott was buried at Oakwood Cemetery in Syracuse. His presence at the Capitol, by most accounts, didn't end there.

Employees and visitors have reported seeing an older man in a watchman's uniform making his rounds through the upper hallways. The description is always the same: bushy mustache, deliberate walk, a ring of keys at his side. People standing in the exact spot where Abbott's body was found have reported a heavy smell of smoke and wet ash, suddenly and without explanation, even though the fire damage was repaired over a century ago. Others describe a translucent figure moving through the fourth-floor corridor, and the sound of keys jingling when nobody is nearby. Doors that should be unlocked are found locked. Lights turn off in rooms that were just occupied.

The Capitol itself is a remarkable building, even apart from the ghost. Construction started in 1867 and wasn't finished until 1899, making it one of the most expensive government buildings ever built at the time. The architecture is an unusual mix of Italian Renaissance and Romanesque Revival, the result of three different architects working across three decades. The Great Western Staircase alone took fourteen years to carve from stone.

The State of New York doesn't hide the haunting. Every year around Halloween, the Capitol offers free Haunting Tours to the public. Guides take visitors to the spots where Abbott has been seen and the hallway where he died, and they tell the story of a man who spent his last night doing exactly what he always did: walking the building, checking the doors, carrying his keys.

Some of the documents damaged in the 1911 fire are still being preserved with modern technology. Archivists report that the surviving papers still smell like smoke, even after more than a hundred years. Samuel Abbott, if the stories are true, hasn't lost that smell either.