Moment in Oddity - Tasmanian Devil Births
Many of our listeners are familiar with Taz, the Tasmanian devil from the Looney Toons cartoons. The real life carnivorous marsupials live exclusively on the island of Tasmania. There are over 330 species of marsupials in the world but there is one not-so-fun, fun-fact about Tasmanian Devils that makes them quite unique. Tasmanian Devils have a rear facing pouch. This orientation keeps them from filling their pouches with dirt as they dig their burrows. That detail of their bodily orientation is not entirely strange however. Other burrowing species of marsupials such as wombats and quolls also have rear facing pouches for the same reason. What is so unusual about the devils, is the fact that on average, they give birth to between 20 and 40 babies all at once while only having 4 teats in their pouch. The underdeveloped babies latch on to their mother's teats for approximately 3 months while they mature. This means that regardless of how many babies are born, it is highly unlikely that any given litter would number higher than four. Once the mad dash to their mother's teats has ended and four babies have successfully latched on, the remaining baby devils, known as joeys, perish by either starving or by being eaten by their mother. The joeys will begin leaving their mother's pouch at around 3 1/2 months and often will ride on her back while young. Tasmanian devil joeys stay with their mother until about 9 months old. Survival of the fittest is common in wild animals, but having to defy such high odds in the animal kingdom, certainly is odd.
This Month in History - Birth of P.T. Barnum
In the month of July, on the 5th in 1810, Phineas Taylor Barnum was born in Bethel, Connecticut. At the age of 15, P.T. Barnum's father died which led to him holding a variety of jobs to help support his mother and five siblings. He eventually became a publisher at a local weekly newspaper and by the age of 19, he married 21 year old Charity Hallett with whom he had four daughters. After moving to New York City in 1834 he began his adventures as a showman, inviting the world to come and witness Joice Heth, a black woman who Barnum stated, "was the 161 year old nurse to General George Washington". Upon the death of the woman it was of course revealed to be a hoax. Barnum later acquired John Scudder's American Museum in New York City. He quickly transformed the traditional location to display instead human curiosities, dramatic theatricals, beauty contests and other spectacular attractions. P.T. Barnum once wrote, "This is a trading world, and men, women, and children, who cannot live on gravity alone, need something to satisfy their gayer, lighter moods and hours, and he who ministers to this want is in a business established by the Author of our nature". Barnum traveled the world looking for oddities, living or dead, real or fake and garnered international attention for the showman's showcase of wonders. Many famous people in history attended his unique and sensational creation. Despite his name being popularly linked with the circus, P.T. did not actually become a circus showman until after the age of 60. Where he continued to work until his death in 1891 at his Connecticut mansion. The Times of London paid the late Showman tribute stating, "He created the métier of showman on a grandiose scale.…He early realized that essential feature of a modern democracy, its readiness to be led to what will amuse and instruct it.…His name is a proverb already, and a proverb it will continue."
Haunted Foggy Bottom
Washington, D.C. is the home of the American government and every square inch of it oozes history. Shockingly, we haven't covered many haunted locations in the Capitol City, despite its extensive history. So it was definitely time to investigate what else is haunted in this city and we found a neighborhood with multiple ghost stories. Foggy Bottom dates back to the mid-1700s, but it would take nearly 100 years before people would settle here and these were mostly laborers. There were two grand homes here, one of which still stands and both reputedly were haunted. And there are a couple of legends connected to the area as well. Join us for the history and hauntings of Foggy Bottom.
Foggy Bottom started out as Funkstown, nicknamed for German settler Jacob Funck who originally owned the plot and subdivided it. The official name of the settlement was Hamburgh and it stretched over an area near the confluence of Rock Creek and the Potomac River. Jacob joined Robert Peter and James Linigan in officially founding the town in 1765. They would control it until 1791 when the territories were given to the city of Washington and the United States government. The town hadn't been very prosperous for them anyway, as few settlers would come. When the second phase of the industrial revolution brought factories to Washington, D.C., immigrants started coming and the neighborhoods filled with laborers. They worked in the gas works, breweries and glass plants and the industrial smoke that came off these facilities made the city seem foggy, thus the name Foggy Bottom was associated with the neighborhood. One of the beers that came out of Olde Heurich Brewing Company was called Foggy Bottom. The brewery ceased operations in 1956 and the building was razed to make room for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Foggy Bottom would become home for a variety of government institutions. The U.S. Department of State was established as the Department of Foreign Affairs in July of 1789 and the name change to State came a few months later. They are responsible for our foreign policy. This was joined by later buildings housing the Federal Reserve, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. George Washington University is located in Foggy Bottom and is a federally chartered university that was named Columbian College originally. It opened in 1821. This was the first university founded under Washington, D.C.'s jurisdiction. The idea of the college came from President George Washington and he willed some of his shares in the Potomac Company to establish the school, although those shares lost value before they could be used for that. Later presidents and leaders would take up the mantle and get the school opened. It was renamed for President Washington in 1904. There are rumors that Mitchell Hall, which had once been a hotel, is haunted. We didn't really find any stories connected to that though.
The Old Naval Observatory was here from 1844 to 1893. While everything about the observatory has moved, the building itself is still there and is a National Historic Landmark. In 1877, the moons of Mars (Phobos and Deimos) were discovered from the observatory. There were a couple of bridges in Foggy Bottom that have legends connected to them. There was a bridge that linked the neighborhoods of Georgetown and Foggy Bottom to each other over Rock Creek. This bridge, known as M Street Bridge, was built in 1788 and on a stormy night, it collapsed. Unfortunately, there was a stagecoach on it at the time and so the coach, driver and horses all went into the water and drowned. That bridge was rebuilt. Now it is said that on dark and stormy nights, people see a ghostly stagecoach with a ghostly driver and horses driving frantically across it as "he had been wont to do in the days of the flesh." A drummer boy is said to have drowned near this bridge as well and his apparition is sometimes seen and sometimes a faint drum beat is heard. The Whitehurst Freeway was once the K Street Bridge over Rock Creek. A story started in 1908 that a headless male ghost would hang out on the K Street Bridge. Nobody knows how he lost his head and were not sure if people driving on the freeway ever see him.
There had been graveyards here in Foggy Bottom at one time, but none of them exist here anymore. A place that was once called Camp Hill because soldiers were stationed there during the War of 1812 had what the paper described as a 'tolerably large graveyard." That seems to have disappeared by 1866, but nobody knows if the bodies were removed. Another graveyard was where GWU's Medical School is now on 24th Street between H and I Streets. Christian Hines wrote of the site in 1866 that it was originally "on a considerable hill and on opening 24th Street, each side of the street was dug down to a foot below the graves, leaving on both sides open graves and coffins projecting into the street. I have myself seen pieces of skulls lying in the streets, some of which were the skulls of colored people." There were a couple of other smaller graveyards where bodies found floating in the river were buried. These graveyards may have attracted Sam McKeever who lived in Foggy Bottom. A legend told about him claims that he was a grave robber. During the day, he was a rag merchant, but he found more lucrative work at night body snatching and selling the bodies to medical schools. One story even claims that he jumped a woman in a Foggy Bottom park in 1918 and knocked her on the head, killing her. He carried the body to the medical school and collected his money. It had been dark and he didn't bother to look at his victim. He probably should have because when he arrived home, he found his wife missing and she never came home. He eventually realized what he had done. Some people claim his spirit roams Foggy Bottom. Perhaps looking for his wife?
Foggy Bottom has a four block Historic District of row houses that date back to the 1870s. These housed the working class Irish, German and African Americans from 1870 to 1915. These laborers came after the Civil War because the industry was growing so quickly here. The need for skilled and unskilled workers was great. And the plus about the row houses is that they were very affordable because Foggy Bottom wasn't a really desirable place to live because of the soot, smog and odors. The district is bounded by 24th and 26th Streets, New Hampshire Avenue and K and H Streets and covers three acres. 135 of the buildings are historic and many of the row houses measure only 12 feet wide. Their style is late Victorian and they stand two or three stories tall and are made from brick. Street level of many of the houses hosted businesses like bakeries, saloons and grocery stores. Gentrification eventually changed the cultural and racial make-up of the row houses. Snow's Court was affected heavily by this. C.A. Snow had been the publisher of the National Intelligencer and he built four frame dwellings that was nicknamed an "alley dwelling." As many as five black people would share a space that measured less than 700 square feet. The alley was considered overcrowded and unsafe. Hughs Court is known as Hughs Mews, but had the same reputation as Snows Court and is where Sam McKeever was said to live. Today, those same houses have obviously been renovated, but they now sell for half a million dollars. We couldn't find any stories of haunted row houses, but we did find a couple of haunted mansion in Foggy Bottom.
House on 25th Street
All we know about the location of this house was that it was on 25th Street near Wisconsin Avenue on the border of Georgetown and Foggy Bottom. Paranormal Investigator Hans Holzer wrote the book "The Ghosts That Walk in Washington" in 1971 after he investigated several locations in the capitol city and one of the locations was this house. Holzer usually took psychic medium Ethel Meyers with him, but in DC it seems he worked with a variety of what he called "reputable" mediums. One of them joined him in the house for a seance and reported that it was haunted by "a very old black man who kept telling the assembled witnesses that he hated them for some reason" and that there was a woman named "Elizabeth Hanford, who claimed that her father had been in Lincoln’s Cabinet, and that she had died by hanging when she was only twenty-four."
The Octagon House
We've talked about a haunted Octagon House on HGB before. That house had that name because it was built as an octagon with eight sides. That is not the case with this octagon house. It has eight angles, rather than eight sides. There is a distinctive circular center room at its front as well, that takes away from the octagonal shape. The house is located at 1799 New York Avenue NW and was built in 1799 for John Tayloe III, who was the wealthiest planter in the country at the time. He inherited his father's plantation, Mount Airy, which was part of a group of interdependent plantations that covered 60,000 acres around 100 miles from DC. Tayloe not only was a plantar, but he bred horses and raced them and also built ships. Later, he owned several iron foundries.
Tayloe built the Octagon House in DC after a very important person suggested that he do so. His sister, Sarah Tayloe, married President George Washington's half-nephew and the President suggested Tayloe build in DC. The plan was for the house to be a winter home, but after 1818, they lived in it full-time until 1855. While the house is the only thing still around on the property, there originally was an ice house, smokehouse, laundry, stables and carriage house and, of course, slave quarters. As hard as it is to believe now, where the Octagon House was built was out in the wilds. The architect of the house was the man who designed the United States Capitol, William Thornton. He got some help from James Hoban, who designed the White House. The reason that the house ended up with its unique angles was due to the plot's location along New York Avenue, which was diagonal. The house wouldn't have looked right if it was placed facing either of the streets that it was along, so Thornton related the house equally to both streets, which put the two walls at a 70 degree angle from each other. When completed, the house had six sides and was built from red brick and trimmed with Aquia Creek sandstone. The interior featured mahogany doors, gold leaf embellishments, brass fixtures and closets, which were nearly unheard of at the time. An interesting feature were these two secret doors leading into the back hall and dining-room, both of which had no key holes, hinges or openings showing on the blind side. And the staircase is really interesting two. They have been described as "serpentine" with the way they curve up three stories.
John Tayloe had married Ann Ogle in 1792 and the couple had 15 children with three of them being born at the house. When the War of 1812 started, Tayloe joined the Virginia militia and because of his experience with horses, he was put in charge of the DC cavalry. Tayloe's wife had offered their house to host the French consul and so a French flag was flying outside of the house when British forces marched into the city in August 1814. This saved the house from being burned since it was technically a "diplomatic residence."
During the War of 1812, James Madison was President and he and first lady, Dolley, had to flee the city and when they did, the First Lady had her pet parrot taken to Octagon House for safe keeping. The White House was burned, so the Madisons needed somewhere to stay. The Tayloes invited the Madisons to live at the Octagon House and so the President rented the house for $500 for a six month stay. Dolley threw parties every Wednesday night and these were apparently called "Squeezes." That nickname came from the fact that the parties were so crowded, people were squeezed together. Dolley liked to invite people from all political persuasions to talk and build relationships and she made sure to greet everybody personally. And then she went to the kitchen and whipped up some Dolley Madison snacks like Zingers - ok, we made that part up. On February 17, 1815, President Madison ratified the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812, in the upstairs study at the Octagon.
In 1828, John Tayloe III died at the Octagon House at the age of 57. His wife stayed on there until she died in 1855. The Tayloe children rented out the house after that. A girls' school rented it first and then in the 1870s, the Federal government used it as office space for the Hydrographic Office of the U.S. Navy. By the 1880s, it had become a multi-family apartment building housing factory workers. In 1898, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) started renting the house for their new national headquarters and they eventually bought it in 1902, holding onto it until the 1960s. The American Architectural Foundation took over the building and restored it to its 1818 appearance and opened the house as a museum in 1970, which it remains today. It is said that this is the most haunted house in Washington, D.C. Curators, staff and visitors have all reported paranormal activity. People hear rustling silk on the stairs and pounding on the walls. Floating spectral lights have been seen. The hanging lamp in the main hallway swings by itself. Footprints have been seen in dust on the top floor landing.
The house had call bells for the servants and slaves and these bells began ringing on there own as far back as the mid-1800s. It is believed that the spirits of dead slaves ring the bells to announce their presence. The bells are no longer in the house and so not heard in our modern era, but there are many stories from the past. In 1874, Mary Clemmer Ames wrote about it: "It is an authenticated fact, that every night at the same hour, all the bells would ring at once. One gentleman, dining with Colonel Tayloe, when this mysterious ringing began, being an unbeliever in mysteries, and a very powerful man, jumped up and caught the bell wires in his hand, but only to be lifted bodily from the floor, while he was unsuccessful in stopping the ringing. Some declare that it was discovered, after a time, that rats were the ghosts who rung the bells; others, that the cause was never discovered, and that finally the family, to secure peace, were compelled to take the bells down and hang them in different fashion. Among other remedies, had been previously tried that of exorcism, but the prayers of the priest who had been summoned availed nought."
Virginia Tayloe Lewis was a granddaughter of John Tayloe III and she wrote a memoir on the family that was never published. She had grown up in the house and experienced the weirdness with the bells. She wrote, "The bells rang for a long time after my Grandfather Tayloe's death, and every one said that the house was haunted; the wires were cut and still they rang… Our dining room servant would come upstairs to ask if anyone rang the bell, and no one had." The wife of American consul to China, Samuel Laurence Gouverneur, Jr., was named Marian and she shared the following about the bells, "I have been told by the daughters of General George D. Ramsay, Chief of Ordnance for the United States Army and commander of the Washington Arsenal in Washington, D.C., that upon one occasion their father was requested by Colonel John Tayloe...to remain at the Octagon overnight, when we was obliged to be absent, as a protection to his daughters… While the members of the family were at the evening meal, the bells in the house began to ring violently. General Ramsay immediately arose from the table to investigate, but failed to unravel the mystery. The butler, in a state of great alarm, rushed into the dining-room and declared that it was the work of an unseen hand. As they continued to ring, General Ramsay held the rope which controlled the bells, but, it is said, they were not silenced."
Dolley Madison hadn't lived in the house for long and certainly didn't die in it, but her spirit is thought to return to the house on occasion. She apparently likes to host ghostly receptions and her full-bodied apparition has been seen in the drawing room and in the front hall. Her spirit leaves behind the scent of lilacs. People know the spirit is the First Lady because the apparition is seen with a turban. Dolley liked to wear them because they made her look taller. In the 1960s, the museum superintendent was Alric H. Clay and he claimed that something unseen was opening the house's doors late at night and would turn the lights on.
Two tragedies occurred in the house with two of the Tayloes' daughters according to legend, but we found nothing to support the stories. They both died in accidents by falling down the stairs while in the process of arguing with their father about the men they wanted to marry. One daughter had fallen in love with a British soldier before the War of 1812 and died before that war as well. The other daughter died in 1817 after she eloped with a young man her father didn't approve of and when she came home to reconcile, they fought. The stories got started in 1908 in an article that ran in the Minneapolis Tribune. No names were included in the story and three of the daughters did die before they reached their 30s, but none were recorded to have died in the house. And one of them had been an infant and another died after her father had died. Nonetheless, the ghost lore says that one is often seen crumpled at the bottom of the staircase. Sometimes the light of a candle is seen going up and down the stairs by itself. The other daughter haunts the third floor landing and the stairs between the second and third floors.
A doctor did experience a haunting on the stairs at the house in the late 1940s. At the time, a caretaker named James Cyprus was living in the house with his wife and she had become ill. He asked the doctor to make a house call. After the doctor had spent some time with Mrs. Cyprus, he discussed her care with James and then asked him a strange questioned. He asked if there was someone else staying at the house that was a re-enactor or something. James looked confused and said that only he and his wife were in the house. The doctor then told him that he ran into a man
on the stairs who had been wearing a
military uniform dated to the early 1800s. And there could be a female spirit connected to the stairs that belongs to slave that worked in the mansion. The story behind her claims that a British soldier threw her down the stairs during the War of 1812. People claim that screams that are heard in the house, belong to her. The soldier that is seen might be the one who killed her as some say he either flung himself down the stairs or that one of the Tayloe sons killed the soldier.
Another bit of ghost lore claims that a gambler was living in the house in the 1880s, possibly with women, so some think the house had been turned into a gambling den and brothel. One day, he won a bunch of money off a local farmer and that farmer thought that the gambler had cheated. That evening, the gambler was alone sleeping a third story bedroom when the farmer broke into the house, crept up the stairs and shot him to death. A 1912 newspaper article reported that a man was staying on the third floor and claimed that was visited every night by the spirit of a man who was killed over a card game held in that same room.
The Van Ness Mansion
This mansion no longer stands, unfortunately. It had been at the corner of 17th and Constitution Ave and was built in 1816 in the Greek Revival style. The stable that went with the house is still on the property that now hosts the Pan American Union Building. The mansion was built for John Peter Van Ness who was a Congressman from New York from 1801 to1803. Van Ness had married the daughter of David Burnes who had gotten very wealthy selling 450 acres of his land to the Federal government. That would be the land under the White House and the area all around it. We believe we mentioned in our White House episode that Burnes sometimes appears at the White House. Anyway, his daughter Marcia married Van Ness and she founded the city's first orphanage. He became a major general in the DC militia and the Mayor of the City of Washington, while also dipping his foot into banking and real estate. He also built a horse track on his property. The couple had a daughter whom they named Ann and she would be their only child. Heartbreak came when she was giving birth to their first grandchild. Ann died in childbirth and the baby was born still born. That was in 1823. Marcia would die in 1832 when a cholera epidemic swept through DC. In his grief, Peter commissioned a grand neoclassical family mausoleum at Georgetown’s Oak Hill Cemetery and had all deceased family interred. He was completely devastated and all the life seemed to leave him. Peter wandered the mansion alone and withdrew completely from society. The mansion fell into disrepair. He eventually passed in 1846 and the house was demolished in 1908. The government gave the property to the Pan American Union and they built their headquarters there in 1910. It was fashioned in Beaux Arts style.
When the mansion still stood, people claimed that it was haunted and many think this began when Van Ness withdrew into the house. People claimed to hear the dreadful screams of a woman, whom some think mught have been Ann in childbirth. People who visited the house before it was demolished claimed to hear disembodied footsteps and they would see the apparition of a woman in a period bonnet. Benjamin Henry Latrobe had designed the house and he also designed the stable that sits at the northwest corner of the property. It was refurbished and houses the OAS Art Museum of the America’s offices. The building also houses a terrifying haunting. Apparently when Peter died, a grand memorial was thrown for him and a carriage drawn by his finest six white horses took his body to the cemetery to join his family in their mausoleum. For some reason, the ghosts of those six horses are seen galloping around the property and they are headless. We have no idea why they have no heads. These spirits are often seen on March 7, the date of Peter’s death. After they run around for a while - maybe looking for their heads - they return to the stable just passing through the wall.
Foggy Bottom has an interesting history and has played a significant role in the beginnings of the American adventure. Is it possible that these various locations in the neighborhood of Foggy Bottom are haunted? That is for you to decide!
