3 ghost stories about George Washington’s ancestral home

The first president of the United States, George Washington, died in bed in 1799 at his ancestral home of Mount Vernon, according to the Library of Congress. Accounts of seeing George Washington or “feeling his presence” there have occurred since his death.

Ghost stories involving Washington or Mount Vernon started being told as early as 1806. Here are three examples:

Josiah Quincy III sees Washington’s ghost

Josiah Quincy III served as a member of the House of Representatives, mayor of Boston, and president of Harvard University over the course of his career, per U.S. History.

During his time in Congress, he claimed to have encountered Washington’s ghost.

The former president’s nephew, Bushrod Washington, invited Quincy to stay at Mount Vernon in the spring of 1806, according to History Collection. He was actually invited to sleep in the room in which Washington had died.

Quincy’s son later recalled that his father had hoped to see Washington’s ghost and then did. Quincy Jr. didn’t offer many more details than that, but he did explain that his father was confident in what he had seen, according to the website for Mount Vernon.

A sighting of Mount Vernon’s superintendent after his death

Harrison Howell Dodge served as Mount Vernon’s superintendent for 52 years until his sudden death in 1937 from a cerebral hemorrhage, per Backyard Mt. Vernon.

On a busy summer day in the 1980s, a woman on the Mount Vernon staff entered the former plantation’s small parlor room thinking a visitor had trespassed under the rope barriers, per the home’s website. To her astonishment, “she found an older gentleman, sporting a large mustache and dressed in late 19th or early 20th-century clothing, with his sleeves rolled up and secured with garters.”

Then, she claimed, the man yelled, “What the (expletive) is going on here?” referring to the noise coming from visitors, according to MountVernon.org.

The woman told the man she “was trying to quiet them down” and then he vanished. She later identified the man as Colonel Harrison Howell Dodge after seeing his portrait in the home.

An invisible tap on the shoulder by Washington’s bedroom

Mary Thompson, a research historian for Mount Vernon, heard many ghost stories during her time researching Washington’s home, according to the website DVIDS.

“While I have never had personal experiences with ghosts, I began hearing stories of ghosts, apparitions, and strange events within weeks of starting to work here, even though there was an unwritten rule that we were not to talk about such things. Over the years, I have asked other staff members to share any experiences with me,” Thompson said.

She explained that a supervisor from the historical interpretation department told her of an experience she had in 2006 involving “what she believed to be a ghost.”

Making rounds to ensure all Mount Vernon visitors had left for the day, the supervisor walked past Washington’s bedrooms. She “felt someone’s hands on the back of her shoulders, pushing her.”

Several other times that night, she felt the same pushing feeling.

Thompson said, “A number of my co-workers have had these experiences, as have visitors to the estate, who came here before we put some of the stories on the website. They wouldn’t have known before they came here that there was a history of ghost stories.”