LINCOLN AND THE OCCULTISM

   

   We had been invited to the White House by the Clintons for a dinner in honour of my cousins, the kings of Spain. Before supper we entered a vast hall. A lady who was accompanying us said: “It is in this very room that I saw the coffin of President Kennedy” “And before that,” added a scholar, “it is in this room that the coffin of President Abraham Lincoln was displayed.” Suffice it to say that this room is not the most welcoming. One might even go so far as to say that it is haunted. 

    When he was already in the White House, Abraham Lincoln saw one of his  sons, Willy, die of typhus. The shock and the pain of his passing were  terrible for his parents. From that time on, the President always felt  the presence of the child. As for his wife, the strange Mary Lincoln, she thought she was going mad.
Perhaps it was in order to ease her suffering that her husband began to hold séances in the Blue Room of the White House.
    A medium came there frequently – it was even said at the time that he  remained there as a guest. The President and the First Lady joined hands over a table as the spirits began to move, and, through the medium,  spoke to them of little Willy, as well as of his brother who had died  prematurely years earlier. They also made pronouncements on the  political situation, pointing the way forward, and revealing the secrets of the future. 

    

 The presidential couple became all the more fond of these séances as  Lincoln himself had the extraordinary gift of clairvoyance. Shortly  after his election as President of the United States, when he was  looking at himself in a mirror one morning as he washed, he saw his  double. Two Lincolns stood side by side, one very clear and alive; the  other pale and rather obscured. According to certain beliefs, it is held  that to meet one’s double is the worst of omens… Lincoln remained  convinced that it had been revealed to him that he would die during his  presidency. On many an occasion, he repeated that he was certain to go  straight to a terrible end. 

    A mystic, possessor of a singularly deep spirit; an enigma, Lincoln was  an unusual character. This pioneering son who emerged out of a difficult  childhood witnessed the heroism of America by fighting the Indians.  This self-taught man was experienced in all the trades before finally  reaching the bar. From there he moved in a single leap to politics. He  climbed up through the ranks until he was elected President at a time  when the situation was already particularly tense. The South, which was  predominantly agricultural and wanted to retain cheap labor – that is  to say – slaves, was angry with the industrialized North, who had less  need of their labor and instead advocated emancipation.
The arrival  in power of an anti-slavery president in 1860 was sufficient to light  the powder keg that had been developing. The southern states seceded;  they declared their desire to sever all ties with the North and to form  their own state. 

   Lincoln, who had tried everything to prevent this eventuality, declared  war on the South, not so much to secure the liberation of the slaves as  to keep the union of the United States. There ensued a long conflict,  which proved ferocious and ruinous. At the beginning, the South  accumulated victories, and the North came close to defeat. Then the  situation, thanks in large part to Lincoln, turned. This is often  considered to be the first total war in history; where civilians were as  much involved as the military. Like all civil wars, it was also a war  of hatred, conducted without mercy. The President, but also his wife,  having connections with the South, had been accused of betraying the  cause. Lincoln received so many death threats that he no longer bothered  to read them, they simply piled up in a huge file entitled  “assassination”. 

   At the beginning of April 1865, he could finally allow himself to  breathe more easily. The capital of the forces of the south, the city of  Richmond in Virginia, after a long siege, fell into the hands of the  forces of the North who triumphantly entered the city. The  commander-in-chief of the Southerners, General Lee, conducted a retreat  to the west. A week later, on April 9, 1865, he was forced to surrender  to General Grant, Chief of Staff of the Northern Armies. The Civil War,  which had been ongoing for four years, ended with the victory of those  who fought to maintain unity. 

  In the midst of the general relief, of the general exultation that was  going on around Lincoln, he alone remained preoccupied, his mind  constantly clouded. So much so that at a dinner, a few days later, his  wife urged him to say what it was that was preventing him from  rejoicing. The President, after a long silence, spoke: 

 "You are correct; I have indeed been disturbed these last few days by a  dream, which remains in my memory up to the smallest detail. About ten  days ago, I retired very late. I had been up waiting for important  dispatches from the front. I could not have been long in bed when I fell  into a slumber, for I was weary. I soon began to dream. There seemed to  be a death-like stillness about me. Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a  number of people were weeping. I thought I left my bed and wandered  downstairs. There the silence was broken by the same pitiful sobbing,  but the mourners were invisible. I went from room to room; no living  person was in sight, but the same mournful sounds of distress met me as I  passed along. I saw light in all the rooms; every object was familiar  to me; but where were all the people who were grieving as if their  hearts would break? I was puzzled and alarmed. What could be the meaning  of all this?"

   Determined to find the cause of a state of things so mysterious and so  shocking, I kept on until I arrived at the East Room, which I entered.  There I met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a catafalque, on  which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were  stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng of  people, gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered,  others weeping pitifully. ‘Who is dead in the White House?’ I demanded  of one of the soldiers, ‘The President,’ was his answer; ‘he was killed  by an assassin.’ Then came a loud burst of grief from the crowd, which  woke me from my dream. I slept no more that night; and although it was  only a dream, I have been strangely disturbed by it ever since. 

   

   The following day Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. 

   He never did find the peace that continues to haunt the White House.  What did he mean by appearing to the Queen of Holland? No doubt he  wished justice to be rendered to him, as he had tried to suggest to all  those to whom he had appeared.
“For your majesty is not the first to  have seen it,” the Roosevelts explained to Queen Wilhelmina. In our  time and long before, countless are the inhabitants of the White House,  from presidents to simple servants who have sworn to have seen it or  sensed its presence. 

  “As for myself,” Eleanor added, “I have seen it several times. Just a  few days ago, my maid Mary rushed into my room, bursting with  excitement: “He is sitting on the edge of the bed.” “He is taking off  his boots”.
“But who is removing his boots?” I asked him.
“Mr. Lincoln,” Mary replied. 

  “Do you believe in ghosts, Mr. President?”, asked Wilhelmina. 

    There are so many things in this world that we do not understand … I  must confess that on several occasions, when I was alone, not in the  Rose Room where your Majesty lives, but in the Blue Room, I felt his  presence very strongly. 

   However, it is not the inhabitants of the White House but the people of  the small town of Rivertown who were most convinced of the existence of  the ghost of Abraham Lincoln. Rivertown is a tiny city in Illinois, the  last before Springfield where Lincoln had been the deputy and where he  had long resided with his family. The year is of no importance, it’s the  date that counts.
Between April 14th and 15th, everyone remains  awake until late. In the evening, the people of Rivertown, whatever the  weather, come out of their homes and walk silently along the rail line  from Washington to Springfield. It was not the noise that alerts them,  for in truth there is no great noise to report, it was the abundant  smoke that pours out of the locomotive; a very old machine, completely  out of date, a museum piece … Slowly the convoy runs past them. Men doff  their hats, women curtsy. The last wagon is a simple flat shelf on  which stands a coffin covered with the American flag. Neither the  locomotive nor the wheels of the wagons give off the slightest sound.  The convoy passes, it only has a few kilometres to roll before reaching  Springfield, and yet it never arrives because the ghost train that  brings back the President’s coffin to Springfield every year has no  final destination. 

Source:  Prince Michael's Chronicles