It is generally accepted that politicians are people, inherently pragmatic, constantly thinking about the welfare of the state and believing only bare facts. And, it would seem, paranormal phenomena and politics are absolutely incompatible concepts. However, as practice shows, ghosts, sometimes, "get out" and people invested with the highest power.
Former US First Lady Hillary Clinton once admitted that she often heard strange sounds and footsteps of invisible people in the White House, which made her shiver.
"This is a big old house, and as soon as you turn off the lights, in the silence, any movement will grab your attention," says White House administrator Gary Walters.
“According to him, the most mysterious part of the White House is the presidential apartment. Any sound from there echoes down the hallways, Walters says.
The building's most famous ghost is believed to be the spirit of President Abraham Lincoln, who was shot by a lone terrorist in 1865 in a theater box. And soon after that, the ghost of the murdered man began to be seen in the White House - the characteristic silhouette of Lincoln peering through the window of the Oval Office.
“The first person to see this ghost was Grace Coolidge, wife of President Calvin Coolidge. Lincoln's ghost appeared to her in the Oval Office. Standing by the window, he gazed down Pennsylvania Avenue with the air of a deeply thoughtful man. The then employees of the apparatus unanimously asserted the same
The famous ghost was especially often observed during the reign of Roosevelt.
Once one of Roosevelt's secretaries, a young girl, entering the very room that once belonged to Lincoln, saw the ghost of the late President sitting on the bed - he was tying his shoes. The maid once caught the ghost of Lincoln at the moment when he tried to light the fireplace.
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Dutch Queen Wilhelmina, who was staying at the White House under Roosevelt, was awakened one night by a knock on her bedroom door. Opening the door, she saw on the threshold … Abraham Lincoln. The President was a real gentleman, not only during his lifetime, but also after death: even after becoming a ghost, Lincoln usually knocked before entering.
According to Walters, ghosts of other people also live in the White House. Once, when Woodrow Wilson's wife decided to plant roses in the garden in front of the White House, the image of the former first lady of the state, Dolly Madison, appeared in front of her, who asked her not to disturb the peace of her garden.
It is generally accepted that politicians are people, inherently pragmatic, constantly thinking about the welfare of the state and believing only bare facts. And, it would seem, paranormal phenomena and politics are absolutely incompatible concepts. However, as practice shows, ghosts, sometimes, "get out" and people invested with the highest power.
Mysterious silhouette in the Presidential Secretariat
The current Prime Minister of Japan, Junichiro Koizumi, fearlessly calls for change in his country, but he is frightened even by the thought of being alone in his residence. This building in downtown Tokyo has been the site of a string of bloody murders in the past and has a reputation for being haunted.
"It looks like it's a really inconvenient place to sleep in," Koizumi once said at a press conference. "I like the place where I lived before."
In his dislike of the official residence of Japanese prime ministers, Koizumi echoes his predecessor, Yoshiro Mori, who repeatedly stated that it was haunted and complained of unexplained knocks and noises at night.
Therefore, according to the Japanese media, in order not to leave the divorced Koizumi alone at night in this unpleasant building, his sisters take turns to keep him company.
“I hope I don’t become a ghost myself,” Koizumi says. "Because when you become prime minister, there is a chance that you will be killed."
This is such a bitter joke. The fact is that three years after the building of the residence was completed in 1929, young officers broke into it and shot the then Prime Minister Tsuyoshi Inukai. Another military group seized the residence and several other government buildings in an attempted coup in 1936, killing two ministers and one high-ranking official.
They do not like ghosts in the African Republic of Malawi. Last year, in 2005, rodent ghosts even forced the president of this country to leave his luxurious residence in the capital Lilongwe.
“At first, as the aide to the head of state reported, Bingu Wa Mutarika left the presidential palace only at night and returned only during daylight hours. Sometimes the president felt that rodents were crawling over his body, but when he turned on the light, there was no one in the room, - said those close to the president."
But then the head of state refused to stay at his residence altogether, and his assistants were forced to turn to the priests of several Christian churches to expel the "evil spirits" from the premises.
The head of Ukraine, fortunately, did not encounter ghosts, but the surveillance cameras of the Presidential Secretariat security service not so long ago recorded the movement of a transparent silhouette, similar to a man in a checkered shirt.
Immediately after that, a specialist from the Ukrainian Center for the Paranormal, Professor Stepan Khmelovsky, was invited to the Secretariat for consultations, who was presented with footage captured by surveillance cameras for study.
After interviewing officials, Khmelovsky found out that the Secretariat staff had seen the mysterious silhouette with their own eyes several times. Other officials working in the building claim that the phrase “give up your head” appears from time to time on the monitors of their office computers. Initially, this phenomenon was attributed to the tricks of computer viruses and hackers, but now the authorship is given to a ghost.
Khmelovsky claims that clots of paranormal energy are indeed recorded in the building on Bankova Street. He does not have more detailed information, since his ability to study the phenomenon was limited for security reasons. He only noted that opposite the Secretariat is the famous House with Chimeras, which is more than 100 years old.
“Usually ghosts prefer old buildings, but during the reconstruction the builders could frighten off the ghost, and he wandered into the building opposite,” the professor suggested.
Secrets of the White House
Probably most of the ghosts live today in the American White House. Eyewitnesses more than once saw here the shadows of people who had long gone into another world. For example, from time to time a semi-ghostly silhouette of President John Adams' wife appears in the corridors with a basin of washed linen in her hands.
Former US First Lady Hillary Clinton once admitted that she often heard strange sounds and footsteps of invisible people in the White House, which made her shiver.
"This is a big old house, and as soon as you turn off the lights, in the silence, any movement will grab your attention," says White House administrator Gary Walters.
“According to him, the most mysterious part of the White House is the presidential apartment. Any sound from there echoes down the hallways, Walters says.
The building's most famous ghost is believed to be the spirit of President Abraham Lincoln, who was shot by a lone terrorist in 1865 in a theater box. And soon after that, the ghost of the murdered man began to be seen in the White House - the characteristic silhouette of Lincoln peering through the window of the Oval Office.
“The first person to see this ghost was Grace Coolidge, wife of President Calvin Coolidge. Lincoln's ghost appeared to her in the Oval Office. Standing by the window, he gazed down Pennsylvania Avenue with the air of a deeply thoughtful man. The then employees of the apparatus unanimously asserted the same
The famous ghost was especially often observed during the reign of Roosevelt.
Once one of Roosevelt's secretaries, a young girl, entering the very room that once belonged to Lincoln, saw the ghost of the late President sitting on the bed - he was tying his shoes. The maid once caught the ghost of Lincoln at the moment when he tried to light the fireplace.
Dutch Queen Wilhelmina, who was staying at the White House under Roosevelt, was awakened one night by a knock on her bedroom door. Opening the door, she saw on the threshold … Abraham Lincoln. The President was a real gentleman, not only during his lifetime, but also after death: even after becoming a ghost, Lincoln usually knocked before entering.
According to Walters, ghosts of other people also live in the White House. Once, when Woodrow Wilson's wife decided to plant roses in the garden in front of the White House, the image of the former first lady of the state, Dolly Madison, appeared in front of her, who asked her not to disturb the peace of her garden.
“Walters himself, once talking with three police officers in one of the rooms of the residence, suddenly felt a stream of icy air pass between us, and after that two doors, which were open, slammed shut by themselves. I have never seen, either before or after that, that these doors move by themselves when no one closes them with a hand. Oh, that's very impressive."
T tim Capitol
There are many visitors from the underworld and in the vast and intricate basements of the Capitol. It is there that the ghost of Henry Wilson, who served as vice president during the administration of Ulysses Grant, appears. A big fan of soaking in a hot tub in one of the basements of the convention, Wilson spent much of the day there.
“It was there that he caught a cold, which was his last and most serious mistake,” says the famous American paranormal researcher Dennis William Hauck. "However, this does not prevent his spirit from returning to where he loved to be before." A figure wrapped in a white sheet, no, no, and it scares with a grave sneeze and coughs those who pass by the US Vice President's Capitol office at an inopportune hour.
In the meeting rooms of the House of Representatives, according to eyewitnesses, there is from time to time the shadow of John Quincy Adams - the only president in American history who later became a congressman. His ghost hovers in the very hall where he made an angry speech about the unjust war with Mexico in 1848 and fell at that moment, struck by an apoplectic stroke. Two days later, he left this sinful world, however, according to Hauck, he regularly returns from the other world in order to finish his speech interrupted by a blow.
The souls of two former Speakers of the House of Representatives, Joseph Cannon and Champ Clark, also did not find rest. According to those who have seen them more than once, in the darkest hour of the night, these two famous speakers return to an empty and dark conference room in order to continue a series of highly emotional debates that began in 1910 and lasted for an eternity.
Not for the faint of heart is the wide staircase leading to the gallery adjoining the meeting room: at midnight there, they say, large bloody spots appear on the white marble steps. “The marks on the marble are the blood of Kentucky Congressman William Talby, who was mortally wounded by journalist Charles Kinkard on a distant winter day in 1890,” says Hauck.
In addition to the noble shadows of legislators, in the building of the American Congress you can meet the ghosts of people who were the so-called "service personnel" during their lifetime. So, through the centuries-old walls of the basements, the nameless shadow of a bricklayer, who died when the building was just beginning to be built, occasionally seeps through. According to legend, he was walled up in a wall after he was hit on the head with a brick during a protracted argument with a professional colleague.
In the silvery moonlight under the dome of the Capitol, the shadow of another ghost of proletarian origin, an unnamed finisher, who fell from the platform when the painting of the building's ceilings began, looks very impressive. Under him, on the marble slabs of the floor, according to Hauck, the shadow of a janitor who once left for a better world at the very moment when he was polishing the mosaic slabs glides silently. As they say, he appears late at night, after all the washers and polishers have left the building, and carefully checks their work …
Panic in the Israeli Knesset
The American legislatures are practically used to their ghosts, which cannot be said about the deputies of Israel. As reported on June 6, 2006, all world media outlets, in the building of the Israeli Knesset on that day, a surveillance camera captured a blurred smoky spot that moved around the territory for several minutes, after which it disappeared without a trace.
The first alarm went off at the emergency exit gate of the Knesset building. The guards who arrived at the scene did not find anything suspicious, but when viewing the recording of automatic surveillance cameras, the guards saw a white glowing ball flying through the gate.
“The frightened Knesset workers turned for help to the deputy Yitzhak Vaknin, who understands such phenomena, and he, referring to the authoritative rabbis of Israel, explained that he did not rule out the appearance of the ghost of the deceased, angry with the people who disturbed his grave, because his burial was almost in the very center new parliamentary corps. Our traditional sources describe similar phenomena, - said Vaknin."
But in the building of the city hall of Barnaul, where a ghost named Blue Lady lives, officials are calm about the "spiritual" neighborhood. According to an old legend, in the 19th century, a jealous head of a mountain district, who lived in a mansion where the city hall is now located, immured his wife alive, who fell in love with a young exile. Since then, as the legend has it, at midnight the ghost of his wife goes out onto the balcony of the mansion and silently looks at the city.
The employees of the mayor's office working in this building today can accurately indicate the place in the wall where the wife of the head of the mining district was walled up. And the residents of Barnaul say that they have repeatedly seen the ghost of a lady dressed in a blue dress on the balcony of her former house.
By the way, local journalists have been congratulating the famous ghost on the women's holiday for several years in a row on March 8 in all seriousness. At midnight, they take a bouquet of roses to the city hall and put it on the railing of the balcony, on which, according to legend, the Blue Lady comes out.
The prime minister got rid of the ghosts
Sometimes politicians meet with ghosts outside of work. For example, having acquired a house for living, which had previously been chosen by representatives of the other world.
For example, in October 1994, Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating bought a two-story mansion in Wullara County, Sydney, not suspecting that this building has long enjoyed a bad reputation among its neighbors.
The house was built in 1892, and the time of the appearance of the first ghosts - a young woman on the second floor and a man in a long cloak and a bowler hat on the first - is not exactly determined, it is only known that the former owner, an antiques dealer, invited specialists from the Australian Association of Telepaths and Telekinesis for a detailed examination of the house.
In principle, the head of state should not have evil spirits in his “cohabitants”, but at first the prime minister and his family put up with this state of affairs. Moreover, the ghosts did not particularly "get" the Keating. It was only when the press found out about the haunted house that the prime minister was forced to put the mansion up for auction.
The same will soon have to be done by John Kerry, who, as you know, lost to George W. Bush in the presidential elections. Kerry also lives in a haunted mansion today.
This house in the Rocky Mountains was acquired by the ex-husband of the current wife of Kerry. During the divorce, it went to Teresa, who, as a "dowry" after the wedding, presented it to John.
As the journalists managed to find out, ghosts started up in an old mansion after the second suicide that happened there. Then the building was still on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean - in East Anglia, where it safely stood for 400 years in the town of Rookery Farm.
“In the century before last, tenant William Bull lived in this mansion with his family, who had to pay 40 pounds a year for the house and somehow feed 11 children. In August 1816, at the age of 60, Bull hanged himself in a barn. Thirty years later, one of his sons did the same. In both cases of suicide, a verdict was passed - temporary insanity. Then another family member took his own life under mysterious circumstances."
Julie Hahn, who lived in this house when he was still in England, claims that she constantly felt that there was someone in it. Repeatedly she observed mysterious shadows in the corridors. Local historian Janet Cooper also confirmed that ghosts at Rookery Farm have long been a tradition.
In 1982, the building was in a dilapidated state, and the then owner decided to demolish it. However, the house was eventually sold to a company that sells old estates. The house was dismantled, and in this form it was purchased and reassembled in the American state of Idaho by John Heinz, who was the first husband of Theresa Kerry.
New elections are coming in the United States, and if John Kerry becomes president, he will not need idle talk about connections with evil spirits at all. So, it is quite possible that a new owner will move into the house in the Rocky Mountains …
Gennady FEDOTOV, staff correspondent of "AN"