A heavy hush falls over the house as we enter the ancient dining room, empty aside from a fireplace, a mirror, and a painting on the wall.

“This is the room where people report seeing shadow figures,” explains my guide. I light up instantly, turning in circles and snapping photos from every direction, while she searches through her phone. I am too transfixed by the mirror hanging slightly above my head to notice the distinctive painting hanging above the fireplace.

“Ugh, of course now I can’t find it,” she exclaims, disappointed. “Somebody took a picture with this mirror in it, and when you look at it, it looks like there’s a sort of dark figure in the mirror. It was a bit creepy when I saw it.”

Hello and welcome to your weekend haunt

with Spook Lit, an audiobook club by dreary dendrophile

I’m your host Lyns, and I’ll be reading aloud our spooky stories. Thank you so much for being here. I really hope you enjoy.

Previously on Spook Lit…

We finished up Ghosts and Family Legends by Catherine Crowe and voted on our next book - The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories by Gertrude Atherton.

This week, we are starting out strong with Part I of The Bell in the Fog, a story about a haunted painting. While I have heard a few stories about haunted paintings, I’ve never encountered one myself until I visited the Octagon Museum in Washington DC two months ago.

The Octagon Museum

was a house built for Colonel John Tayloe III in 1801, where he and his wife Ann Ogle Tayloe lived until their passing. They had 15 children, 13 of which survived to adulthood. The house is one of the oldest private residences in DC, and the architect Dr. William Thornton was an amateur who won a contest to be the first architect of the US Capitol. He was chosen to build the Tayloe home because of his ability to work with the oddly shaped triangular plot of land.

The architecture design was a neoclassical federal style, and the home was decorated by the same professionals who decorated Monticello and the White House. Many of the original features still exist today.

One of the most notorious details about the Octagon House is that it was home to James and Dolley Madison for 6 months after the British burned down the White House. Dolley Madison would throw huge parties and balls known as “Dolley’s squeezes” because she tried to squeeze so many people into the party room. An upstairs office now called the Treaty Room was used as a temporary Oval Office. It still contains the treaty table where James Madison signed the Treaty of Ghent, ending the War of 1812.

After Mrs. Tayloe’s passing in 1858, the building was turned into a Catholic girl school, then later office buildings, before it was finally taken over by the American Institute of Architects, after which it became a museum.

The ghosts…

Perhaps most famously, Jackie Kennedy was visiting the Octagon House during her husband’s presidency in the 60s. She was standing on the spiral staircase looking out the window when she was overcome by the scent of lilacs. She believed she was experiencing the ghost of Dolley Madison.

After Colonel and Mrs. Tayloe passed away, there were reports of servant bells continuing to ring periodically on their own.

A staff member once saw a man in 18th century clothes sitting on the stairs. He smiled at her and raised his hat as she passed. She asked her fellow staff member if they were hosting a themed party in the museum that day. Not only was there no party, but nobody else was there at the time.

There have been paranormal stories from the basement, however the majority of activity seems to escalate in the dining room, with several reports of shadow people, including the shadow in the mirror I mentioned earlier.

My guide walks me over to the fireplace, acknowledging intricate details on the mantel stonework. She points to the hidden doorways, which she calls jib doors, that blend seamlessly into the walls and lead to servant areas behind the scenes.

She narrates the painting that hangs above the fireplace. It features a man named Archy Nash, John Tayloe’s valet and alleged half brother, an enslaved person who was freed after his death.

The painting was created by a contemporary artist named Peter Waddell. He is praised for his ability to depict realistic scenes based on his extensive research of American history and architecture. There are several of his paintings throughout the house, portraying scenes that would have taken place in each room during the Tayloes’ and Madisons’ residencies.

The lovely guide confides that the painting reminds her of a scene in Bridgerton, with women wearing empire dresses and Archy Nash sporting a beautiful collar in full livery, serving everyone at the party. The painting is striking, but for me it is more due to the format and less about the scene.

In reality, as we face the fireplace, the mirror is on the wall to my right towards the back of the room. It is interesting that dark figures are seen in the mirror, as it is too high up on the wall for most people to see their own reflections. It doesn’t reflect much except for the windows on the wall to my left.

In the painting, the artist has built an optical illusion in which the viewer themselves are looking at the room through a reflection in a mirror. We are looking at the mirror presumably through a mirror, and we can see the other mirror directly opposite us in the reflection of the room.

The view in the painting cannot exist in many ways. The mantel doesn’t have a mirror. The one true mirror in the room is on a different wall than is depicted. However, there is no question that the artist has portrayed this particular dining room because of the unique sculpting on the fireplace stonework. It’s unmistakable that he is painting the dining room. But his imagination is slightly off from reality.

It is a common paranormal belief that mirrors reflecting each other can cause an “infinity mirror” effect, which can act as a gateway or portal for spirits. I have seen this effect in several of the most active haunted locations I’ve visited, such as the Conjuring House, a haunted shop in Vancouver, and a haunted bar in Pike Place Market. It feels as though the artist has created this painting almost intentionally to build upon the mirrors, thereby creating his own infinite reflection tunnel.

Fireplaces are also considered to be portals in paranormal lore. The painting placed above the fireplace almost feels like a spiritual welcome mat. To top it all off, deep below our feet in the basement is a prominent room with a large bricked off well. Wells are also known to be portals or “energy vortexes.” I am certain that all of this somehow contributes to the energy of this space.

Later, as I listen to a recording taken in this room, I hear myself say “That is so cool!” And she responds “That’s great because now I can look at it in another way” and on my recording, I capture an EVP ghost voice say “yeah.” I did not get permission to share a recording from the museum, so I won’t share it at this time, but I was blown away when I heard that little whisper “yeah.” So incredibly cool.

We conclude our tour

by visiting the basement cellar, which contains one of the largest kitchens I’ve ever seen and servant quarters with handmade nails spiking through the lumber ceiling.

We make our way up to the Treaty Room, James Madison’s temporary Oval Office in 1814. I marvel at the curved walls and windows, the custom wooden blinds torn and hanging in slats in a few places. Everything bending together in a way I had never seen before.

“We have the original shutters,” my guide explains. “One of the things that we do when we come in the morning is we open up the shutters and then we close them again at night, which I love. It’s sort of like a ceremony. They just fold back into the wall.”

She looks out the curved windows that bend in sync with the stone walls, and she beams with pride. This house is brimming with history, much of it heavy. It was bought, paid for, and maintained by the free labor of enslaved people from Colonel Tayloe’s tobacco plantation. It was a refuge for the president, an Executive Mansion when the White House burned. It was a home for sixty years. A Catholic School. And now a deeply treasured artifact that is shared with all of us. Above all, it has been loved.

Shout-outs:

* A massive thank you to The Octagon and the Architects Foundation for the amazing private tour! Thank you for catering to my interests and including all the ghost stories for me.

* Also this week, I’d like to shout out my dear friend Robin Blackburn McBride, who is launching her new book River of Dreams in October. See her post on Substack for more information about the book as well as her gorgeous cover reveal:

I just read this description and am encouraging us to all go pre-order it now!

“River of Dreams is a captivating work of metaphysical fiction. If you like feminist themes, historical settings, and elements of the supernatural, then you’ll treasure Robin Blackburn McBride’s enchanting story.”

- robinblackburnmcbride.com

What’s Lurking on Spook Lit:

Next week, we get the rest of the story from The Bell in the Fog in Part II. It’s a little long, so I might split it up into two episodes. Meaning, The Bell in the Fog story has two parts but might have three Spook Lit episodes, if that makes sense.

Until then, thank you for listening to Spook Lit. I hope you enjoy this chapter, and I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Credits:

* Special thanks to the The Octagon and the Architects Foundation for a very educational tour of the haunted Octagon Museum.

* Audiobook: The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories by Gertrude Atherton

* Chapter: “The Bell in the Fog Part I”

* Music: Horror Spooky Piano by Nikita Kondrashev on Pixabay

* Artwork: Jeff Bent

* Photography: Lyns McCracken

* Linktree: https://linktr.ee/drearydendrophile

All Spook Lit Audiobooks are public domain.

Thank you and hauntingly yours, dreary dendrophile

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