October 26 2017
Volume 47 - No. 42 By Friedrich Gomez
U. S. President Harry S. Truman, who never pulled his punches – earning him the lifelong slogan “Give ‘em Hell, Harry!” -- confessed openly that the U. S. White House was strangely haunted. The no-nonsense 33rd President of the United States who ordered the world’s first atomic bombs to be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, sagged at the knees when he experienced ghostly happenings at the U. S. White House.
In a handwritten letter to his wife, Bess W. Truman, dated September 9, 1946 (and which can be viewed today at the Harry S. Truman Library & Museum at Independence, Missouri), Harry Truman admitted being frightened by unexplained supernatural phenomena at the White House.
In his own handwriting, Truman, in part, expresses to his wife: “At four o’clock I was awakened by three distinct knocks on my bedroom door. I jumped up and put on my bathrobe, opened the door, and no one was there. Went out and looked up and down the hall, looked into your room and Margie’s. Still no one.” (Note: Bess Truman and daughter “Margie” were away at the time.)
That same eerie night was far from being over for the president -- Truman would become more spooked than ever. In the same letter he continues writing: “Went back to bed after locking the doors and there were footsteps in your room whose door I’d left open. Jumped and looked and no one there!”
Harry Truman was sufficiently bothered, baffled, and frightened enough to reach his own rock-bottom conclusion as he wrote in the same letter: “The damned place is haunted sure as shootin.’ Secret service said not even a watchman was up here at that hour.”
In another account, Truman wrote to wife Bess expressing in his own words: “I sit here in this old house and work on foreign affairs, read reports, and work on speeches – all the while listening to the ghosts walk up and down the hallway and even right in here in the study.” The The Paper Paper -- 760.747.7119 760.747.7119
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It’s not an easy task to frighten the normally intrepid Harry S. Truman who is quoted as saying, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,” and of whom a close friend sized-up as, “One tough son-of-a-bitch!” and meant it.
There have been some American presidents who have claimed to have actually seen ghosts floating about the interior of the
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White House and grew greatly disturbed over it. Such occurrences were officially noted and recorded. In his book, “Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush” (published on September 4, 2007) the author, Robert Draper, interviewed the sitting president six times, and received an unexpected ghostly earful. President George W.
Bush admitted during the book interviews that he found the White House to be a “creepy place,” and went on to describe a most disturbing paranormal episode which greatly frightened him.
After a hearty workout in the White House gymnasium one evening, Bush suddenly froze in mid-step when he was approaching the Lincoln Bedroom (which is considered
Haunted White House Continued on Page 2