The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1891-04-14
GHOSTS IN WASHINGTON.
Many Houses Go Ienantless Because
of Uncanny Sights and
Sounds in Them.

Washington is the greatest town for
ghosts in this country. The city is
dotted all over with haunted houses,
which remain unrented year after
year on account of the spooks that are
supposed to inhabit them. all the way
from the great empty Tayloe mansion
at the corner of Seventeenth street
and New York avenue to the humble
and deserted negro hut in Swampoo-
die, regarded by neighborhood sup
erstition as the abode of bogies most
horrible and frightening.
But perhaps the most thoroughly
original of Washington ghosts is
located in a house on Nineteenth
street, northwest between q and IL
streets. The dwelling has been to
rent and unoccupied nearly all OF the
time for several years past, notwith-
standing its situation in the fashion
able quarter. The last tenants were
induced to take it by the extremely
low rent, although the real estate
agent. for security's sake, would only
let them have it on a years lease.
How they got out of the bargain |
don't know, but they moved away at
the end of the fifth week. That was
six months ago.
1t seems that, eight years ago, a
man committed suicide in this house
with a razor. The deed was done in
cold blood apparently. He stood in
front of the mirror which overhung
the marble mantelpiece and deliber-
ately cut his throat from a to ear.
Then, as appeared from the condition
in which things were subsequently
found, he chung with hand to the
mantelpiece while his blood poured
out upon the hearth, until he fell and
died.
This was the story, as the tenants
here referred to understood it after
ward. Their notion of the ghost
when they took the house was alto
gether indefinite, and they only
laughed at it, considering 1t rather in
the light of q joke than otherwise. 1t
so CHANGED that what, as they found
out later, was reputed to be the par
ticularly haunted chamber was occu-
pied by the two daughters OF the
family. fifteen and eighteen years OF
age respectively.
From first to last there was no such
thing observed as an apparition. The
1 OlTlA 6ltDI MGlls saw " "a law AAet
thew were annoyed on occasions by a
sound of dripping, which they at first
supposed was caused by leak of some
sort. But their surprise was awak-
ened by the continuance of this drip
ping during a long spell of dry
weather. and more particularly did
they find reason at length for wonder
ment in the circumstance that the
dripping began invariably at about
1f15 ID. m, and lasted for, perhaps,
twenty minutes but not longer.
The dripping sound seemed to come
from the mantelpiece, and they care
fully investigated that fixture and its
surroundings, but without result, save
for the discovery of slightly followed
spot in the stone underneath, which
had apparently been made by scrap
ing away its substance.
INQUIRY developed the fact that the
stone had been scraped away for the
purpose of eliminating the spot where
a pool of the suicides blood had
formed. Also, it was learned that the
hour at which he killed himself was
about Ills p. II. The tenants moved
out.
Among the ghosts which haunt
Washington houses is one at 1919 *
street, which exhibits itself in the
shape of a cat or dog-no n knows
which-that trips people up on the
staircase. The residence on the north
west corner of Thirteenth and K
streets is supposed to be inhabited by
the spook of a certain Colonel Lind
say, who died before the wal and has
since then been seen at various times
in the act of wandering about the
mansion. On the south side of II
street. three or four door east of
Eighteenth street is a house concern
ing which stories are told of a very
extraordinary nature. One of
the most surprising of them re-
lates to an old colored woman,
who, the present occupant states,
appeared to him and his family
several times for the purpose which
was finally accomplished, of revealing
the whereabouts of some mouey. The
mystery of the old .Tayloe house
already referred to, at Seventeenth
street and New York avenue, has
never been unraveled yet. The spec
trail goings on there are so eXtraor-
binary that no one will live in the
house, although the United States
Government once occupied it for a
while in the daytime as the War Re-
cord Office, and previously to that,
during the war, Sisters of Charity
lived there, after purifying it from top
to bottom with holy water.
The tale is that the former proprie-
tor of the establishment either
whipped n of his negroes to death
in the garnet or tortured his human
chattel to death in the cellar. 1t is
said that faces are often seen at the
windows of the empty dwelling by