Fright Night at the Museum

[Laurie Verge]

Mary Surratt's ghost will not be appearing at Surratt House this Halloween. She has booked a previous engagement at the National Building Museum in Washington (formerly the Pension Building dating to the 1880s and absolutely beautiful architecture, inside and out).

"I am Mary Surratt! I bear the distinction of being the first woman executed by the U.S. government!" That is how Mary introduces herself to the tour group. The actress jumps out of the darkness to begin her tour. "It didn't matter that I was innocent!" the "spirit" screeches, according to the reporter who did this article for the Washington Post.

They have also tied in another personage from the Lincoln assassination. James Tanner, the stenographer during the investigation at Petersen's, later had an office in the Pension Building when he served as commissioner of the Pension Bureau. It is from Tanner's office that Surratt jumps out to begin her tour.

The actress explains the tie-in: "Somewhere the truth of my innocence is buried here! On the night Lincoln was assassinated, Tanner took notes. He knew. He hid things here. There has to be proof....Help me find things that would prove my innocence." (Good luck with that!)

There are other ghost stories told about a woman who was thrown over the third-floor balcony by her lover and a security guard who ended in St. Elizabeth's (D.C.'s famous mental asylum) after confronting the ghost of Tanner.

Tourists also learn the history of the building, which was designed by Gen. Montgomery Meigs who kept lots of notes - including the tidbit that 15,500,000 bricks were used in the construction. The builders used more than bricks, however; they left behind shoes in the floorboards in order to ward off spirits (an old builders' tradition). So far, the National Building Museum that is housed there now has found more than a dozen single shoes - no pairs.

We are pleased to announce that the reporter says that even though the tour verges on fiction, it piqued interest in the history of the building and of Mary Surratt.