Surratt House Museum

The Surratt House in Clinton, Maryland, was the first stop on John Wilkes Booth's escape route after shooting Lincoln, and home to Mary Surratt, the first woman executed by the U.S. federal government. Museum director Laurie Verge, who has worked there 25+ years, believes the ghost may be John M. Lloyd, the tenant whose testimony got Mary hanged, "doing penance" with heavy boot-step footsteps that multiple staff have heard walking through the empty building.

Museum director Laurie Verge has worked at the Surratt House for over 25 years. She has one thing she cannot explain. "I can't explain the footsteps," she said. "I absolutely can't."

The footsteps sound like heavy men's boots. Verge and five or six employees were sitting in her office one afternoon when they heard someone come through the front door, walk down the hall, and exit through the back door. They searched the building. Nobody was there.

The Surratt House in Clinton, Maryland, was ground zero for the Lincoln assassination conspiracy. John and Mary Surratt built it in 1852 as a farmhouse, but it became much more than that: a tavern, a post office, a polling place, and eventually a safe house. When John Wilkes Booth shot President Lincoln on April 14, 1865, this was the first stop on his escape route out of Washington. Booth and co-conspirator David Herold rode here to pick up weapons and supplies that Mary Surratt had arranged to have ready.

Mary Surratt was arrested, tried by a military tribunal, and hanged on July 7, 1865. She became the first woman executed by the United States federal government. The question of whether she was truly guilty or just a convenient scapegoat has been debated for over 160 years.

Verge has a theory about who haunts the house. She thinks it might be John M. Lloyd, the man who rented the property from the Surratts during the assassination. Lloyd testified against Mary at trial, and his testimony helped send her to the gallows. Verge believes he's "doing penance down here for getting his landlady hanged."

Tour guide Julia Cowdery heard an unexplained whistle while working alone in the house, a sharp "come here" call with no identifiable source. On another occasion, she was leading a tour upstairs when she heard a teacup rattling in the dining room exhibit below. No one else was in the building.

Visitors have reported stranger things. A girl on a tour saw a bearded man sitting in a rocking chair, but only in the mirror's reflection. When she turned around, the chair was empty. A tour guide once spotted what looked like a child in period clothing hiding under a bed in one of the rooms. No children were on the tour that day.

The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission acquired the property in 1965, restored it, and opened it as a museum in 1976. The museum focuses on the assassination conspiracy and the trial, not on ghost hunting. But the staff who work there every day have stories they can't quite square with the history on the walls.

Verge has felt it herself: the sensation of a man walking from the bedrooms, close enough to make the hair on the back of her neck stand up. She doesn't dramatize it. She just says she can't explain the footsteps.