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(THUNDER RUMBLES)

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Are you ready to begin?

Are there spirits present in this home?

We wish to converse with you tonight.

Do you wish to converse with us?

Please knock once for yes and twice for no.

(BANG)

We are grateful for your presence and we ask for your patience.

We desire contact with someone we've lost.

Jane, this is the f... Silence!

One for yes, two for no, are you in Heaven?

(LOW HOWL)

One for yes, two for no, are you in Heaven?

(WHISPERED VOICES)

One for yes, two for no.

(BONES CRACKING)

There have been a lot of interesting occult things

that have happened in the White House,

spiritualism and seances.

The property was a perfect breeding ground

for these demons to feed off of this chaos.

The White House is truly a house of secrets.

The White House has to be haunted.

Standing over his shoulder is this creature

who is obviously Satan.

She is covered in his blood.

Presidents have had ghostly experiences,

first ladies, military aides.

When those folks say they've seen a ghost,

that's the most credible witness you will ever find.

What frightens me is that we may have things in the White House

that are practically demonic,

and this can lead to mass, mass tragedy.

When you see the White House, you look at it with the same

kind of regality that the British do, looking at Buckingham Palace.

It's our royalty.

Knowing its place in history and the fact that it had been

razed before, destroyed and burned to the ground,

instead of backing off and going somewhere else,

we rebuilt on those spots, claiming and showing our enemies

we will not be deterred. It's a stronghold of power,

it's a stronghold of strength that shows

who we are and what our country stands for.

Decisions have been made inside this building

that have affected everyone in the United States.

Billions of lives around the world that started wars,

that dropped nuclear bombs on countries,

that have just changed the very fabric of society.

But it's also a home.

When you look at the outside of the White House,

it's this grand mansion. In fact, it's called the President's mansion.

And we know about the West Wing,

and we know what the Oval Office looks like.

We've seen press conferences. But there are so many rooms

in this building that we've never had access to.

There's secret tunnels that can get people in and out

of this building without ever being seen.

Who knows what else is in there? Depending on the administration,

and the first family.

If you are a demonic entity and you want to bring about mischief

on a vast scale, what better place to do it than the White House?

When you think about that location,

it's an epicentre of American political power.

Through history, the White House has been the focal point,

the place that the world turns to for answers.

With that focus from the entire world,

I would think that would be just feeding the battery

that would make the ultimate haunted house.

Of course, it was a swamp at one point.

And then they brought in these magnificent architects,

and they built around architectural designs

that were somewhat occult influenced,

so it definitely has this odd side

that a lot of Americans may not be aware of.

Ghost stories at the White House have been happening over 150 years.

And, that haunting appears to continue today.

Barbara and I, we haven't... I don't know if we see a ghost,

but we felt something. You did? Where?

We were at the White House.

(GASPS) Scary! It's scary.

If we have the President of the United States

sitting on the nuclear codes,

the idea that some kind of a dark, devilish entity

could be coming in there and making them behave erratically,

that is scary to me.

As a paranormal investigator, I question is it a spirit?

Is it a ghost? Is it a demon?

And what is their purpose for still remaining there?

How does this energy, these spirits of the past,

affect the people that run this home?

If I got in there to investigate, the first thing I'd wanna ask is,

when did you first notice something was off in the building?

What was your first experience that didn't seem quite right?

The White House hauntings really start around 1853.

They seem to have started during, ah, Franklin Pierce's presidency.

He was the president from 1853 to 1857.

Tragedy followed him wherever he went.

Franklin Pierce was born in New Hampshire

and was a pretty quick-rising star in the political scene.

He was in the State House of Representatives

in New Hampshire for three terms.

He was a general in the Mexican-American War.

So this guy is clearly on a meteoric path.

He meets Jane Appleton.

And when they say opposites attract,

this really was the ultimate, ultimate example.

She hated politics with a passion, hated drinking,

which her husband happened to be very fond of.

Jane Pierce was born to the Reverend Doctor Jessie Appleton

and her father is, ah, this Calvinist preacher.

It's a very strict religion. It's about learning about your sins.

She has a tendency to be, as they called it in the day,

melancholy.

She was always just kind of sick. It's very sad.

Though Pierce's success is fast-moving,

in his personal life, there's trouble.

Their first-born child dies after just a few days.

That threw her into this terrible depression, to lose a child.

And then the guilt that he, as a husband has,

he doesn't want that to happen again, so he leaves Congress.

And then their second child dies at age four.

And so finally they're down to one kid, Bennie.

She turns all of her affection on Bennie, her youngest,

almost, to the point of obsession.

So, Jane is constantly begging her husband to get out of politics

and stop drinking, but once again,

the political draw brings him back.

So in 1852, the Democratic National Convention,

Pierce allowed his name to kinda quietly circulate.

Somehow he managed to keep secret from Jane

for a while that he had become the nominee,

and when she finally found out, she apparently fainted immediately.

Her son wrote her, "I hope father doesn't become president.

"I know you would hate it and I would hate it too."

But he's elected in 1852.

He's elected President, and it's very exciting.

And the Democrats are thrilled,

but the country's in this strange time.

The big elephant in the room is slavery.

The Northern states, they don't believe in slavery

and the Southern states that do.

Franklin Pierce is considered a "doughface,"

which basically means a Northerner with Southern sympathies.

Wanted to make slavery work in the south,

keep it out of the north, and keep everybody happy.

The reality is, on some issues, there's just no compromise.

Slavery is absolute pure evil.

January 6th, just right before the inauguration,

the Pierces take a train up to Massachusetts.

The passenger car that they're riding in comes unhooked.

The train rolls down an embankment.

Franklin reaches out, he grabs a hold of Jane,

and he tries to grab a hold of Bennie.

But Bennie slips out of his reach. And he's thrown.

Their son Bennie is lying unconscious

with his cap over his face, and as they go to shake him

to see if he's OK, they, they pull the cap from his face

and they see that his face had been crushed.

Um, uh... What do you say?

I mean, there's their son.

Before their eyes. Killed tragically.

I can't even begin to imagine what kind of impact

that would have on your psyche, on your soul and in your heart.

She felt that it was against God's will

Franklin get involved in politics.

She absolutely did blame him in part for Bennie's death.

I think she felt like he had gone back on a promise to her.

Franklin Pierce's inauguration

is one of the saddest, sobering inaugurations.

Everyone in the country knows that he's lost his son very tragically.

My countrymen, it is a relief to feel

that no heart but my own can know the personal regret

and bitter sorrow over which I have been born to a position.

You have summoned me in my weakness.

You must sustain me by your strength.

It was not this joyous occasion

that you would imagine when a new President moves in.

Franklin Pierce should be celebrating,

revelling in this moment in history

when he is elected to the prime element of our country...

..and there's just this black cloud that hangs over their family.

Here, you've gotta have a leader

who's looking forward to the future,

to a brighter new way to lead the country,

but yet being pulled into this darkness.

The unfortunate nickname that the press

started calling Mrs. Pierce was the Phantom of the White House.

She isolated herself,

literally doesn't come out of the bedroom for weeks...

..and she really did almost seem like a ghost in her own home.

No, thank you, I think I am retiring today. Has my wife..?

Upstairs, Sir. Of course.

That will be all, thank you.

(FLOORBOARDS CREAKING)

My precious child, I must write to you,

although you are never to see it or know it.

How I long to see you and say something to you,

as if you were near me.

Oh, had you but been within reach of your dear father.

A moment changed my dear boy's bright form

into a lifeless one, insensible to your parents' agony.

As a parent, I don't know that I wouldn't have gone

to any lengths to have one more moment with my child,

to have one more conversation, one more moment to hear their voice.

When she was sequestered away, she wrote letters to Bennie,

endlessly long letters that are really sad,

and she seemed to have a somewhat conflicted faith.

On the one hand, she came to believe that God

may have taken Bennie to try and send a message

to Franklin about being president.

But on the other hand, she was also willing to put aside her religion

in attempts to contact Bennie, and that was probably due

to the influence of what was going on

at the time in both the US and the UK.

(WHISPERED VOICES)

And now this Sabbath evening, you will come in fancy before me

and I sit close by you, with your hand in mine perhaps?

Spiritualism was a belief that the spirits of the departed

could be contacted.

Spiritualism began in a little farmhouse

in Hydesville, New York back in 1848.

The Fox family would hear strange knocks on the wall.

And the Fox Sisters begin to realise that they can communicate

with whatever is making these rappings...

..in a circle around a table, that's where we get the form

of the seance, which did not exist before that.

What began back in 1848, the Ouija board is a by-product,

ghost hunting, paranormal investigation.

Astrology, spirit photography.

Spirit photography was the idea that you would take a photo

of someone, and there would be a spirit

that would appear behind them.

OK, if the dead can stick around,

we should be able to investigate that.

And you can tie it all back to the Fox family.

By 1853, when Jane Pierce came to live

in the White House, the Fox Sisters were world-renowned.

Everybody knew who they were.

It does seem that Jane called on the Fox Sisters,

brought them to the White House for a seance,

trying to contact Bennie.

When you decide you're going to mentally open a window,

you can't necessarily control who is going to come through.

The old occult grimoires and the texts

are full of terrible things that can happen.

If the White House were using these practices,

could demons or bad spirits actually decide to come through

during one of these seances?

(THUNDER RUMBLES)

Mother?

May we speak with the spirit of young Benjamin Pierce,

son of Jane and Franklin?

One for yes, and two...

(BOOM)

Is it my boy?

Is Benjamin with us?

(BOOM!)

Spirit, wrap the number of years you lived on this earth.

(BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!)

(BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!)

(BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!)

Jane Pierce was desperate to reconnect

with their 11-year-old son.

But when they start pursuing these methods,

and they don't know exactly what they're doing,

I believe they can let terrible things

into the White House.

Mother?

This seance, it's one of those things

that's a little bit shrouded in the mist of history

that we would love to know more about.

There is evidence that Mrs. Pierce met with Maggie Fox.

There is a letter from her husband, Arctic Explorer Elisha Kane.

He said, "You have to stop meeting with Mrs. Pierce.

"I know you've done it and more than once."

He just didn't want her to be involved in this stuff anymore.

(OMINOUS MUSIC)

I missed you.

After these seances happened at the White House,

Jane Pierce seems to believe that it actually worked.

She reports that she's actually seen her son.

For Jane, to finally make that connection,

it had to be such a relief to get that sense that her son was OK.

My precious child, you spirit yourself, my dear one.

Was not your redeeming Saviour ready to receive you?

So, essentially, Jane Pierce seeing her own son

was the first reported ghost sighting at the White House.

There were sightings and reports

in almost every administration from 1852 on.

Truman. Carter. And Reagan.

The Bushs. Even the Obamas.

These stories just keep coming up, again and again.

When you consider this veil of secrecy

that's over the whole building, it's no surprise at all

that the White House is so haunted.

So you have to question, why would the spirit be here?

Why would it continue to stay in this location?

Jane claimed that Bennie visited her in her dreams

for several nights, and that was a tremendous beacon of hope,

but obviously may have led to some darker things as well.

We don't know who we're reaching out to.

We don't have the ability to see that spirit

communicating back-and-forth, right?

Are we getting advice from the real spirit world,

or are we getting advice from something far darker?

We don't know.

In 1853, a Seventh-day Adventist preacher

wrote a book and brought up the fact

that the Pierces had buried their son under a granite tombstone

that quoted scripture and this scripture said,

"Go thy way, thy son liveth."

He writes in his book,

"Does President Pierce believe what is stated in the last clause

"of the above...?"

"That his son liveth?

"If he does, then why may he not expect a visit

"now and then from his only son?

"But suppose some accomplished demon

"should visit the abode of the chief magistrate of this nation.

"Would those parents be likely to resist that visitor?"

Demons have a long history in terms of what are they exactly.

Sometimes it was believed that the demon was an actual creature

that had been created apparently to serve Lucifer

and Satan down in hell.

The demon is basically a spiritual parasite.

They will start working on that person's psyche.

Now, if we have the president of the United States,

then the idea that something could be coming in there

and making them behave erratically or irrationally

is a big, big problem for all of us.

I'm sorry. I need a moment.

Leave this with me. The Secretary will have my signature.

You can assure him.

About a year into his administration,

this bill comes to his desk that will help expand

American territories, but it's going to also expand slavery.

Northern states hate it. They think it's, it's wrong.

It's evil.

It should be completely abolished.

Southern states need it in order for their economy to survive.

(OMINOUS MUSIC)

(BANG!)

Hello?!

(GROWL)

The parasite can begin to physically manifest,

and that's why you start having the raps on the walls...

..the dark forms looming in the corner,

they're creeping up behind you,

and it becomes more and more physical.

The person starts to become self-destructive and depressed,

until finally it sucks everything out of that person.

This can lead, for a politician, to mass, mass tragedy.

When the Kansas Nebraska Act was first proposed, he opposed it.

He was not in favour of it.

And then all of a sudden, his opinion was turned around.

The Kansas Nebraska Act suddenly takes our country,

which is already kind of on this friction tipping point,

and breaks it.

(BANG, SCREECH)

If you are a demonic entity, and you want to bring about mischief

on a vast scale, what better place to do it than the White House?

When dealing with darker forces, their energy can override yours

if you're in a weak or vulnerable position.

(GASPS)

I've read newspaper articles

that some of the staff in the White House,

they'd pass her door and they could hear her saying her son's name,

giggling and laughing, almost as if she was playing

on the floor with a child.

He was distraught.

He clearly worried about his wife's physical and mental health.

It was just definitely a gloomy period,

and the politics of the time, also, were difficult.

The, the big thing for the Pierce administration

really was the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act...

..and this was gonna end around of the Compromise of 1850,

which had settled the question of slave states

and free states and the balance of power,

by saying, "That doesn't matter anymore,

"we're gonna let the people decide."

It's a broken promise, and this is the earliest action

that will lead to the bloodiest conflict on our soil.

Pierce's effort to settle the slavery issue

did exactly the opposite.

It incited rebellion, fake voters, riots, murders.

And it turns into what they now refer to as Bleeding Kansas.

Riots all across the country.

Many historians believe that was the greatest failure

of his presidency.

And one of the greatest failures of any president, quite frankly.

There have been countless events

in almost every single presidency

that changed the world forever.

President Truman and his decision

to drop the atom bomb.

JFK and the Cuban missile crisis.

Vietnam.

President Reagan and the Cold War.

9/11.

There's so much that took place inside of that building,

we can only scratch the surface.

Within paranormal research, there's a theory

called "Stone Tape Theory,"

which is that certain powerful places or things

may record traumatic or dramatic events that happen around them.

Stone Tape Theory comes, amazingly, from a British TV movie.

The idea can explain both the existence of a haunted house

and a haunted, for example, doll, like Annabelle.

Certainly, a house can be that.

This is similar to the idea of a residual haunting.

This is a haunting that keeps replaying the same things

over and over, and that certainly ties in

to if these things were recorded by a building.

Or by an object. It makes sense that they would just

play the same scenes over and over.

Is the White House a Stone Tape Theory recorder? It's possible.

If you think about the fact that the White House

is the focal point of the world.

And that anytime there's conflict,

a lot of negativity is channelled there.

That alone helps you to understand why there may be dark forces

that have been unleashed there.

(CHILD LAUGHING)

Bennie. Is that you, Bennie?

My boy!

Bennie!

(GASPS)

(WHISPERED VOICES)

Franklin, I have something wonderful to show you.

What ungodly..!

It's our son, Franklin.

It's Bennie.

Jane, who's so desperate, she didn't know if her son Bennie

actually came back or if it was just something

that appeared to be Bennie.

It's pretty obvious to you when you have something

like a demonic spirit because it's always, always negative.

It's biologically, it's physiologically,

mentally, it's wearing that person down.

The demon is very powerful and probably very dangerous.

It's here to create mischief.

It's here to lure people into acts

that they probably would not commit otherwise.

Mother?

It could be as subtle as giving you dreams

of that dead loved one that you lost.

That you are desperate to connect with.

Mother!

So, Jane started having seances in the White House.

There was a fear that if the White House

were using these practices, could demons or bad spirits

actually imitate the President's dead child?

As a parent, would be able to resist that influence?

That is when it's time to bring in an expert.

(THUNDER RUMBLES)

There are people out there trying to rid people

of these dark spirits and energies.

Getting to the root cause, and then helping them

to purge that cause out of them.

It's, it's basically a battle between good and evil.

(THUNDER RUMBLES)

You, you have to wonder if Jane decided it was time to live again,

maybe she had done all the mourning she could do for Bennie.

You exorcise a demon that's attached itself to a human being.

With a building, you could say a blessing.

I can't imagine that blessings have not been done

on the White House, repeatedly.

It's just not something that has been publicly talked about.

It's certainly possible they could have had an exorcism at the House.

But then again, that is the sort of event

that they would probably have done their best to keep hidden.

I'm wondering what they would have done for an exorcism at the time.

Nowadays, it seems like we have such a plethora of exorcism rituals.

Everything from calling a priest or a shaman,

or a Wiccan, to burning white sage throughout the house

and reciting prayers.

I'm not sure what they would have had access to.

They wouldn't have had the immense culture of pagans that we have now.

They would probably have had to resort to calling a priest.

I know many religious families that, when they move into a new home,

they ask their minister or priest to come to the house

and bless it, for no other reason other than give it some good energy.

I'm certain that different first families

have brought in clergy to say blessings in the White House.

And maybe some of those families are a little more devout in their faith

and keep those darker forces at bay, and maybe other first families

give into a little more of those darker impulses.

You have made the right decision for your family.

Let us hope.

No, let us pray.

We call forth to the one that demonises this family!

We call forth to the one

that terrorises this home, this home under God!

Join us now.

You don't have the courage to address those that you torment!

Perhaps, you fear a servant of God?

Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name.

Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done.

Mother!

On earth as it is in Heaven.

Give us this day, our daily bread.

And forgive us our trespasses,

as we forgive those who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

(GROWLS)

Save this house, O God!

Full on demonic possession, it's like a bad relationship,

it's to get you alone, to break you down, psychologically.

But then you're getting this attention from this force

that may promise you things and offer you things

and make things seem better,

but then it's like with every wish, there comes a curse.

Take your almighty hand

and sweep this devil into the flames of hell.

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit!

Lord, hear my prayer!

Amen.

He's gone, he's gone.

Exorcism is always somewhat questionable.

If these demons get into people, it's gonna be very difficult

to get it out of them, especially if they don't want it out of them.

Franklin Pierce, his career is basically over

and now he's a lame duck.

Ultimately, he will become a one-term president

because they're not going to nominate him for a second term,

which at that time had never happened before.

The Kansas—Nebraska Act, it was the final nail in the coffin.

(BANG!)

He and Jane finish out his presidency, the nation is a mess.

He was, by many accounts, considered to be the worst president

in US history, and he just sort of fades into obscurity after that.

When you think of our presidents, it's no secret

that the First Lady probably has a lot of influence on their husband.

That was not the case during Pierce's presidency.

We have a very absent First Lady.

She loved piano. Had she pursued piano,

when she was an older woman,

it would have brought some of her sorrow out.

I imagine she was just so relieved,

she was finally going to be able to go home now.

Even though it was under very sad circumstances.

Within 10 years after Bennie died in 1853, Jane dies.

After she dies, now he's lost his entire family.

He's been a terrible president.

He had all this promise, and he doesn't really have too much glory.

And so he drinks himself to death.

It was a perfect storm of terrible events,

both personal and national, for the Pierces.

That is why I believe that their darkness, whatever they brought in,

is still also inside the White House, very much so.

The White House has to be haunted, right?

Now maybe again, that's us thinking it has to be haunted.

But so many...yes.

But wait, but wait, my phone rang, it woke us up

in the middle of the night, we had a fireplace in our room,

and all of a sudden, we started hearing

1920's piano music, as clear as day.

Coming out of the fire place.

I said, "Buddy, you wouldn't believe what we heard last night."

and he goes, "Oh, Jenna,

"you wouldn't believe what I've heard."

There are employees that have been there

and have seen these things since the White House was built.

That tells you that there's something there,

that there's some kind of energy

that brings something supernatural to that place.

The next President to move into the White House was James Buchanan.

He had an opportunity to try to change course,

but instead he illegally influenced The Supreme Court

to get them to rule on a decision regarding slavery

to make it the law of the land.

It just brought things to a head and lit the fuse on the Civil War,

which would become the next president's problem.

President Lincoln is the single, most revered president

in US history.

There's not even a close second.

This is a guy with humble beginnings.

We all know the story of being raised in a log cabin.

He was self-taught. He had less than a year of formal schooling.

He taught himself the law.

A lot of people don't know that Lincoln was a corporate lawyer,

he worked for railroads.

And being a brilliant speaker, who can just move audiences.

And using that gift, to make his way up through the ranks,

in this new party called the Republican Party.

He's inaugurated right before the Civil War.

The stress on him must have been tremendous.

The fate of the country is riding on his back.

(OMINOUS MUSIC)

Shortly after Abe enters the White House,

he tells his friend that he's had a vision, he's seen a ghost.

He noticed that one of the reflections looked pale and gaunt.

His wife interpreted this experience to mean

that he would serve out his first term

but would not survive his second.

I think he was very open in talking about his dreams, his visions.

And it's only later that we're able to more clearly interpret them,

given the benefit of history.

The interesting thing about Lincoln,

I don't think you could pin his religious belief system down.

In fact he once said; "When I do good, I feel good.

"I do bad, I feel bad. That is my religion."

While Abe Lincoln has very humble beginnings, Mary Todd does not.

Mary Todd comes from money.

She grew up in a very nice, beautiful home.

Her father was very well to-do.

And so she got a lot of education, especially for those times.

They get married and they start their family.

Abe and Mary would go on to have four children.

As parents we don't have favourites, but you know, we do,

and Willy was the Lincolns' favourite.

A lovable, loving, caring boy,

incredibly smart, very much like his father.

Well, when the Lincolns moved into the White House,

Mary thought the White House should impress people.

And so, she believed it was her duty, as First Lady,

to make it the magnificent home and office that it should be.

And so, she takes the Congress' funds

and she spends it to make the mansion look elegant again.

As paranormal investigators, we see this a lot of times

when people are restoring homes or renovating,

that paranormal activity tends to really pick up.

Perhaps the spirits don't want things changed?

Perhaps there are parts of the building

that are important to them in some way?

But it is a very common occurrence.

(CHILD LAUGHING)

So, in 1911, during the Taft administration,

he really did a lot of renovation.

This presence began to appear in the White House

that they called "The Thing."

People would suddenly feel this cold, frigid air.

And they got the sense that something

was looking over their shoulder.

And then the staff would feel a pressure.

And sometimes even a tap.

And when they would turn, they would either see nothing there

or a big, black, amorphous mass.

We do have one reported sighting of "the thing" by a personal maid.

She, reported a young boy with light dishevelled hair,

with very sad-looking blue eyes.

President Taft had a military aide, Archibald Butt,

that he put in charge of investigating what this thing was.

And Butt wrote at some length about the reality of this.

This is a military man.

And he writes to his sister-in-law,

telling her about the spooky happenings

that are scaring the staff at the White House.

The letter only mentions that it's a boy,

haunting the White House.

For more than 200 years now,

there's only one boy who ever died in the White House.

Ironically enough, anything that Archibald Butt

may have found out about who this spectre could have been,

died with him when he went down with the Titanic.

(BELLS CHIME)

(CHILD LAUGHING)

(GASPS)

It's Fort Sumtner, Sir.

Thank you.

When Lincoln moved into the White House,

the country was really in chaos.

The people of the north were outraged by the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

States are seceding,

they're breaking away from the union,

and in just a few weeks,

the first shots are fired in the Civil War.

The nation is now at war with itself and it's being torn apart.

Can you imagine the psychological toll

that it took on Lincoln, right?

It wasn't like 9/11 where he took office,

and then all hell broke loose.

He knew that there was something brewing.

You had families pitted against one another...

..losing sons on both sides of this war.

There was no honour in a lot of these deaths.

They were just left, they were buried

in, in shallow graves with countless others.

That was a huge chasm and a scar,

psychic and physical, that affected our entire country.

Through history, the White House has been the focal point.

The place the country, and often times, the world,

turns to.

You're going to have people that are angry and hateful

towards the new directions that our country goes.

With that anxiety, that energy,

that focus, and if there are transient spirits,

I would think the White House would be a beacon,

like, a flame to a moth.

If there were a demon in the White House

during Lincoln's time, perhaps the demon is looking

at this chaos in our country as the ultimate success.

By the time 1862 came around,

in his first annual message, Lincoln was trying

to convince the south he would not disturb slavery

where it already existed.

Lincoln's goal was always to preserve the Union;

it was not to free the slaves.

Lincoln was trying to salvage the country.

(PANTS AND SCREAMS)

In the winter of 1862, young Willie Lincoln

comes down with an illness.

At first, the hope is it's just a cold or something like that,

but as days turn into weeks, it just gets worse and worse,

and then it's clear that he's got typhoid.

Which everyone understands can be deadly.

As Willy gets sicker and sicker,

they are nursing him, they are praying,

they are doing everything possible.

They do not want to lose their very precious son.

With typhoid, it can start as just a fever,

but it can get worse and worse with hallucinations.

Oh. No... Shh.

There's nothing worse than when your kid is sick,

and you feel helpless trying to tend to him,

trying to do anything they can, but there's only so much you can do.

This just devastates Mary.

She's lost her child, she is just plunged into severe,

severe, um, depression.

So the entire presidency was one of trial and trouble for him.

Not just politically, militarily, but domestically.

The similarities between many of these presidents is eerie.

Franklin Pierce and his wife Jane

had to witness their 11-year-old son horribly killed.

Fast forward to Abraham Lincoln,

Willie was also 11 years old, and he died.

And guess what?

In both cases, the wives decided they wanted

to summon the spirits of these boys.

As you can imagine, the Lincolns were just absolutely devastated.

Willie's death was really a major turning point

for both of the Lincolns personally, on many levels.

All presidencies were difficult in their own way,

but Lincoln's, I think it has to have been the most difficult, ever.

He was trying to save the country from splitting apart.

(CLATTERING)

(WHISPERED VOICES)

(DOOR OPENS) Mr. President.

Thank you.

My Dear Sir, the impulse to write you

the moment I heard of your great domestic affliction

was very strong, but it brought back the crushing sorrow

that befell me just before I went to Washington in 1853.

Even in this hour, your thoughts will be

of your cherished boy until you meet him in that new life,

when tears and toils and conflict will be unknown.

With Mrs. Pierce's and my own best wishes,

and truest sympathy for Mrs. Lincoln and yourself,

I am very truly, your friend, Franklin Pierce.

President Pierce writes a very heartfelt note

offering his deepest condolences and his understanding

what the President must be going through right now.

It becomes a real moment of bright humanity

for the former President. Mary Todd Lincoln is a wreck.

She just can't accept this,

and she very quickly reaches out to spiritualist mediums.

I think the death of Willie really converted her fully,

and she began developing

a very intense relationship with spiritualism at that time.

Charles Colchester was one of five mediums

that were visitors to the White House.

It's said that Abraham was suspicious of his motives.

He asked Noah Brooks, who was a friend of the Lincolns,

to investigate Colchester

and see if he could figure out, you know,

if this guy was real or not.

We use memories to create the connection,

to open the door so to speak.

Relax, Ms. Lincoln.

Often, the dispossessed match our disposition.

Shall we begin?

Mary, I want you to close your eyes.

There is a place beyond your fears,

doubts, regrets, pain, all that pain,

there is a place beyond all of it,

and that is where your son resides.

We will travel there together, OK?

I want you to go to the last place you saw your son happy.

I want you to pull him into your mind.

Can you see him?

I can.

Can he see you?

Yes.

He loves you, doesn't he?

He does.

He's happy, isn't he? He's...

There's something wrong.

There's...something else!

(LOW CREAKING)

(NOTE PLAYS)

Mary believed deeply in spiritualism.

Her half-sister, Emily Helm,

wrote in her diary that one night,

Mary knocked on her door and came into her room

and she said, "He lives, Emily. Willie lives.

"I see him at night standing at the foot of my bed".

And Emily Helm said Mary had a very strange look

in her eye as she talked about these supernatural things,

and she wrote, "It is unnatural and it frightens me."

Spiritualism exploded in popularity around the time of the Civil War.

People were going to mediums because they were desperate

to get any sign or message

from all of these loved ones who they either knew were dead

or just didn't know what their whereabout was.

The scope of the carnage is just kind of,

really kind of unfathomable.

Just the battle of Gettysburg. Three-day battle.

There were over 50,000 casualties.

50,000 in just three days in one battle.

To have suffered the losses he suffered,

there's good understanding that Lincoln himself

fought anxiety and depression

I think you can see, throughout his presidency,

that he was struggling with why this calamity had happened.

But he sensed that it was reparation

for this sin born at the beginning of the country.

It was something that had to be paid for with blood.

Lincoln is getting the pressure from all sides during the Civil War.

People are dying every single day.

There was a lot of pressure being given to him,

by people who were avowed spiritualists.

Telling him, "You have to do this.

"This is the time to issue the emancipation."

There's evidence that, in the Lincoln papers,

messages from John Conklin,

one of the mediums who had private seances with the President.

Conklin claimed that he channelled

the first draft of The Emancipation Proclamation.

That the spirits were giving it to him

and that channelled it and that he he gave it to Lincoln.

If you were a medium who had had interaction

with the president who goes on to create

one of the most famous documents in history,

you're probably gonna think it would be a good idea

to lay claim to having a part in that.

Lincoln finally recognised that the only way to end the war

would have to be an executive act.

This is the point where President Lincoln

drafts the Emancipation Proclamation.

And this is one of the most important documents

to ever come across a Presidential desk.

The point is to announce that all men should be free.

And Lincoln's got a target on his back now.

It garners him great enemies. He's already a marked man.

It's gonna create tremendous stresses

on any human being to go through what he was going through.

He may have sought solace and comfort from spiritualism,

but was Lincoln actually a Spiritualist?

To this day, it's still a huge arguing point amongst scholars.

I think a lot of presidents were somewhat embarrassed

by the possibility of being connected

to the realm of the supernatural.

Good evening. This is the President of the United States.

Looking at all the people that have resided in the White House,

there's been a lot of tragedy and a lot of loss.

A lot of heartbreak and stresses.

And they want to understand why these things are happening.

They began branching out into different religious understanding.

Everybody from Mary Todd Lincoln to Nancy Reagan,

she, you know, worked in, in the field of Astrology.

It's very well known that Nancy Reagan

would regularly bring astrologers to the White House.

This became known back in the 1980s,

and it was controversial even then.

I agree with everything he said.

Nancy Reagan, reached out to astrologers

when Ronald Reagan was president,

particularly after the assassination attempt on him.

Shots fired...

There were actually times when he would not leave

the White House because it was not a good day,

according to the astrologer, for him to leave the White House.

The situation between Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan,

may be very similar to the relationship

between Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln,

where the wife is more interested in metaphysics

and the spiritual side of life,

but the husband is not sure who they can trust.

Mr President, will you continue to allow astrology

to play a part in your daily... (REPORTERS GROAN)

You asked for it. I can't because I never did.

Supposedly, Abraham Lincoln

had heard things about Lord Colchester

that made him suspicious.

He had a general reputation of being a shyster

and just wanting to work his way into the halls of power.

Mr. President.

Mr. Colchester.

As I'm sure your wife has told you from our previous sessions,

the way to the spiritual plane is through memories of the past.

It's simply a doorway.

(OMINOUS MUSIC)

In time, we end up knowing much darker details

about Colchester, who will end up having

a very interesting relationship to the Lincolns.

(CRYING VOICES)

In 1865, not long before President Lincoln is assassinated,

he said he had been up late,

and he fell into kind of a fitful sleep.

When he woke up, he hears sobbing, crying, all around.

He went from room to room,

from hallway to hallway, looking everywhere.

(OMINOUS MUSIC)

And it was empty.

He asks a nearby soldier, "Who's dead in the White House?"

And the soldier answers,

"The President, he was killed by an assassin."

(MUSIC BUILDS)

(WHISPERED VOICES)

By mid-April of 1865...

..President Lincoln is coming around,

right, the war is over.

And so, he is going to Ford Theatre to see a play.

They're watching the play and he falls over on to Mary.

So she is covered in his blood.

And he is, of course, been shot.

The parallels between what she went through

and what Jackie Kennedy went through.

If the TV cameras would have been running at those times,

her ball gown would have been the pink suit

that is so vividly pictured uh, with Jackie Kennedy.

From the time President Lincoln dies, in 1865,

his spirit becomes the most prominent ghost

in the White House to this day.

President Coolidge's wife, Grace Coolidge,

claims to have seen Lincoln's ghost in the White House.

Reagan's dog refused to go into what's known as Lincoln's bedroom.

Queen Wilameena, Winston Churchill,

Abraham Lincoln has been sighted by over a dozen individuals,

and people of major note throughout history.

Why do ghosts stick around?

It's entirely possible that, since Lincoln was assassinated,

that he feels that he has unfinished business,

that he is still hanging out there, thinking perhaps

that there is something that he still needs to complete.

There's an engraving in the Library at Congress

that shows John Wilkes Booth.

He's got a pistol in his hand.

Standing over his shoulder is this creature

who is obviously Satan,

and Satan is of course tempting him to the deed.

It was widely believed that John Wilkes Booth

was under the influence of either demonic or satanic power.

Colchester warned Lincoln of his impending assassination.

Now was this truly a psychic premonition,

or do we need to take a step back and look at the bigger picture?

Colchester was also a drinking buddy of John Wilkes Booth.

It turns out that John Wilkes Booth,

who has come to Washington initially to kidnap Lincoln...

..he's staying at a hotel that's about six blocks

from the Capitol, and Colchester is staying

at the same hotel,

and becomes friends with John Wilkes Booth.

When federal agents try to track down Colchester,

they go to this hotel.

And by that point he's vanished. He's skipped town.

(OMINOUS MUSIC)

There is a moment in spiritual seance

where, in order to get results,

you had to let yourself be open.

That's why a lot of mediums are very cautious

allowing a spirit fully through them.

And without knowing who it is you're coming into contact with,

you very well could be dealing with something quite dangerous.

Colchester was also very good friends with John Wilkes Booth.

It's kind of the mystery among historians

exactly why that those two connected.

There's been evidence, recently, that Booth

was not only a spiritualist, but also that Colchester

was an actor at times,

and was on the program at Ford's Theater more than once.

Colchester was also visiting the White House

to assist Mary Todd with contacting the Lincoln's dead child.

On occasions, Colchester would say to President Lincoln,

"I have a warning for you,

"I'm afraid you are going to be assassinated."

And Abraham Lincoln was suspicious. Then enters Noah Brooks.

He decided that he would prove Colchester

was a phoney, and this was personally embarrassing.

It leaked out to the public.

Colchester responded by writing Mary a letter,

demanding a military pass so that he could go wherever he wanted.

He tried to blackmail Mrs. Lincoln,

and Noah Brooks threatened to basically beat him

to within an inch of his life if he didn't leave DC immediately.

The irony is that Colchester may have been the one psychic

that Lincoln should have been listening to.

Is it just drunk buddies shooting their mouth off,

or is it truly a conspiratorial plot to assassinate our president?

I think there's all sorts of possible explanations.

Even if Colchester gained some sort of inkling

that an attempt would be made on Lincoln's life...

..I don't know.

There's a lot of people actually working on this right now,

tracking both Booth and Colchester before and after the Civil War.

There's dark stuff in there. We don't know the answer yet.

We know that there was a lot of controversy

surrounding Colchester and the Fox Sisters.

Just as there's been with every medium and psychic since.

The problem is that when you become that famous and that popular,

do you start to feel the need to perform...

..that you don't let people down?

I can honestly tell you I've seen really amazing mediums

and I've seen some really bad mediums,

but I've seen the same results from both.

If it's somebody doing a cold reading,

but at the end of that 15 minutes, you feel better,

I have a hard time being pressed against that

when you could spend years on a counsellor's couch

and not get that same healing.

As controversial as the Fox sisters were,

their results were pretty amazing.

And it left a lot of people feeling good.

Feeling as though they had connected.

Do I think there were times, especially under scrutiny,

when everybody's watching, that they may have

done something to help? Sure.

Many of the major mediums were repeatedly debunked.

But some were not repeatedly debunked.

And some were engaged in some very famous occurrences

that, to this day, are argued about.

It's tough because how do we draw that line

of what's real and what's not?

What frightens me, is that we may have things in the White House

that are practically demonic.

I've been inside the White House,

but they won't let me go to the Lincoln bedroom

and do any research there.

You can only get so close to the truth,

and then, (CLICKS), they lock down all the information.

All these years, we've had a plethora

of stories of a dark, devilish entity.

And now we have our first piece of hard evidence.

It wasn't until 2008, amazingly,

that someone looked at that photo and said,

"Who's the guy standing in the corner to the right

"who looks like transparent?"

Over 150 years, there's been so many reports

of activity at the White House.

One of the most vocal presidents

about the paranormal activity was Truman.

Second sticks, 301. Take One.

He writes several letters to family members explaining the disturbances.

I believe it was nine separate occasions

that he wrote about the ghost of the White House.

That's just in writing, I can't imagine

how many times he talked about them.

And to quote the President,

"Sure as shooting, the place is haunted."

Harry Truman played a pivotal role in the history

of our country. Harry Truman decided to drop the first atomic bomb.

In the history of the world, this was a new chapter for humanity.

We had the ability to create, but worse,

destroy on a level never before even imagined.

And so everything surrounding his position in history

has a spiritual context.

Truman's White House was literally falling apart around him,

and it was not a safe place to live.

They were telling him, these, these walls

and these floors are rotting, they're not doing well,

and he kind of thought, "Oh, well it's an old house, it creaks."

It wasn't until the piano went through the, the second floor,

that he went, "Uh-oh, maybe something is wrong here."

When a building is renovated,

that seems to stir up ghostly activity.

It's a story that seems to hold true for a lot of different locations,

and there was no bigger renovation than the White House.

When the White House was being gutted,

Harry Truman hired a National Park Service photographer

named Abbie Rowe to document this historic process.

He took this one particular photograph.

Just an ordinary photo, shows a bulldozer,

shows three guys standing over in a corner.

And way in the distance you can see this figure

that's sort of see-through, and you can say,

"Well, it's an old camera and that was so long ago

"and the distance was so great," but if you look

just to the left of that figure, you see three men standing

at the same distance who are obviously solid,

and so, this enigmatic photo's maybe

the first documented ghost photo inside the White House.

That I believe is the most amazing ghost photograph ever taken.

Nobody can explain who that was.

I'm talking professional filmmakers,

expert photographers in Washington DC.

We have a highly credible photograph

in the White House of a full bodied apparition.

And it just so happens that that ghost

is seen directly below the Lincoln bedroom.

I saw that, right there, we have not only proof

of paranormal activity in the White House,

but also maybe even a very interesting connection

between President Truman and President Lincoln.

And you often find that the lives of these presidents

sort of resonate with each other.

In eerie ways.

Every four years, every eight years,

they're coming in and they're shifting it, they're changing it.

They're making it their own.

It seems to awaken the soul or the spirit of the location itself.

The White House, like any building, has a very rich history.

Many people have lived and died there.

Huge decisions have happened there.

Tragedy has happened there.

We hear about the, the friendly ghosts

at the White House pretty often.

They came with all good intentions.

They were friendly ghosts.

Make clear what the benefit... (LOUD CREAK)

Have no fear. The ceiling is not falling.

That I'm aware of. OK.

Maybe it's Former President Lincoln's ghost. I'll go with that.

But imagine if the White House

were to admit that there are evil entities in the White House.

That's a matter of national security.

Imagine. You're the most powerful leader of the free world.

And you call out to those that came before you,

seeking guidance and counsel.

But darkness likes to find our weaknesses.

Likes to find us at our most vulnerable.

And what may originally come through as something to help us,

may in fact be aiding us in our own destruction.

But the question is, who is the demon here?

Who is the demon in White House,

extending it's darkness over the county?

Mother?

There is something wrong.

There are a lot of theories the demon was a malignant spirit

called "the elemental," something that had never been a human being.

Is Benjamin with us?

It's hard to define specifically

what draws these demons into the White House.

It's easy to speculate abuse of power, abuse of ego.

These demons feed off of this darkness within those walls.

During the Pierce and Lincoln administrations,

this dark past was slavery.

That institution came into existence

as the country itself came into existence.

Mother?

And of course the Civil War,

600,000 Americans died in a period of four years.

I mean, it's just unimaginable how the people in the 1800s

were dealing with so much death.

Every presidency has its demons,

you can just turn on the news to see that.

People performing unspeakable acts of evil.

Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil.

Good and evil are always in our world,

and always will be in our world.

When you go to a powerful place,

you connect with the emotional, the fear, the rage.

And it becomes a powerful location, a spirit of place.

A haunting, in its simplest definition,

is the past coming to the present,

and that leaves a stain,

and some stains never wash away.

(VOICE ECHOES, DISTORTS)

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