Scary DC

11/23/2023

Happy Thanksgiving ? Uh, really? Dr. Silverman, if you would do the honors…

In advance of Thanksgiving and the holiday season, the United States Capitol Historical Society talked with George Washington University Professor David J. S...

09/28/2023

Yeah…

From the album Voobaha. See http://www.voobaha.com for more info!Starring: Art & Artie Barnes, Kate Vernon, Nan Vernon, Kajsa CederDirected by Barnes & Barnes

06/12/2020

The Great Psychic Fail!

We have all seen those clever memes on social media of pictures from a psychic fair with an additional sign that says, “Cancelled due to Unforeseen Circumstances.” We pass them around and have a little chuckle; well we are at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic (or at the end if you believe p...

05/16/2020

A Conversation with Edgar Allan Poe © 2020 by Dr. Phil, Ghost Explorer, Adventurer Extraordinaire, Savant, and Supernaturalist (Philip Ernest Schoenberg)

I had the opportunity to visit a well-known writer living under assumed name near his old haunts of 85 West Third Street in Greenwich Village.
Reporter: I was surprised to see you have a mezuzah attached to the door although you are not Jewish.
Poe: When I was a young person, I studied Hebrew. A rabbi friend of mine gave it to me as a housewarming gift. We became friends when he advised me on how to best study Hebrew once more:
Reporter: How come you are among the living once more?
Poe: As I understand it, a team of scientists and supernaturalists created some sort of mumbo-jumbo of science and the supernatural that transformed me from a spirit back into the flesh. It is still experimental and expensive. They are unable at the moment to bring back my beloved wife and my mother-in-law who was also my aunt. I don’t how long I shall remain in this state.
Reporter: When you were a ghost, what was your favorite place to haunt?
Poe: I liked to haunt 85 West Third Street in Greenwich Village. When I needed a change of pace, I would go to Washington Square Park to chat with some of my fellow ghosts.
Actually, I had to give up haunting at 8 Third Street.
Reporter: Why?
Poe: NYU tore down the original structure to set up a dormitory for law students and they shipped all the original bricks to Baltimore.
I had to make do by schlepping my way from the Bronx.
Reporter: What’s in the Bronx?
The Bronx Historical Society preserved my old home that was originally near Fordham University.
Reporter: What made the commute so difficult?
Poe: The laws of physics still apply to ghosts. I had to walk to the bus stop and then to the subway and then from West 4th Street subway station. Then I had hurry back before daylight or I would be homeless in the Village.
Reporter: How come you haunted in so many different places?
Poe: I got bored being in the same spot. However, 85 West Third Street was my favorite. I also like to haunt Lafayette Park in Washington DC. There I would be a guest of Abe Lincoln at the White House where we would discuss poetry. Abe was an amateur poet when he was young and not bad for an amateur.
Reporter: How come I don’t recognize you?
Poe: I only wore a mustache the last four years of my life. Like your Charlie Chaplin and Groucho Marx I am virtually unrecognizable without the theatrical mustache affixed to my upper lip. Sometimes, I wear eyeglasses.
Reporter: How do you know these stars of the cinematic firmament?
Poe: Back in the day, I was most well-known for my humor and satire in prose and poetry such as “Hop Frog.”. I have studied these people to get back into the groove of writing.
Reporter: Why cinema/
Poe: Back in Shakespeare’s time it was theater; in my time it was newspapers and books; today is cinema/TV/video/the Internet. I received some excellent advice from Woody Allen and Jerry Seinfeld in these areas.
Reporter: How well are you doing?
Poe: I’ve been nominated for Emmy Awards, Oscars, and Tony Awards.
Reporter: You are known also for being the father of the detective story as well as writing supernatural tales, scientific adventures, and mysteries. Have you done any work in those areas?
Poe: To my astonishment, last year I won the Edgar for writing the best short mystery story last year. Since I am so busy writing comedy, I don’t know I will have time to do a novel.
Reporter: What about your poetry?
Poe: I have not neglected that. It is still my first love. I go to various open mike and poetry slam events. I am very much into rap. Back in the day, we had literary salons. This is far more fun, and the food is better. You also meet so many people from different cultural backgrounds.
Reporter: Why for heaven’s sake?
Poe: Back in the day, I complained of how stale and imitative American poetry was which scandalized my fellow poets. Rap is the new frontier. Under my rap name, I’ve had time on the radio. I’ve made the top ten for rap twice.
Reporter: You had some controversies with your fellow poets at the time.
Poe: I accused them of being hacks and I have been proven right through the passage of time. Every one of my poems is still in print and read every day. Theirs is not. Therefore, I can claim to be one of the best American poets of the nineteenth century.
Reporter: I note that you did not claim to be the best poet of the nineteenth century.
Poe: I do have a big ego but not a big ego to recognize talent. I must defer to two others as other Americans as great poets.
Reporter: That is interesting. Who are they?
Poe: “A Visit from St. Nicholas” by Clement Clarke Moore whose authorship was not known in my lifetime. "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus, lived after my time, and was the only American writer who made a living by writing poetry. Both poems are among the most widely published in English language and have been translated into every language possible.
Reporter: What is the most important skill you have learned?
Poe: I have been able to turn out an astonishing amount of stuff thanks to learning how to keyboard and to use the computer.
Reporter: What leisure activities do you engage in?
Poe: I like to explore Greenwich Village to see how it has changed and what has remained. I like to sit in Washington Square Park to commune with nature although I have not succeeded in communing with any spirits.
Reporter: Speaking of spirits, is alcohol still a problem for you?
Poe: So far, it has not been because I have been proactive. I joined an Alcoholics Anonymous group where I share my struggles once a week. I prefer to drink seltzer and bottled water.
Reporter: What has been the biggest change you have experienced since you have left the nineteenth century to enter into the twenty-first?
Poe: The food, the cuisine. Back in my time, the food was quite limited. There was no such thing as ethnic food, fast food, or gourmet food. You had to go food shopping every other day because refrigeration really did not exist, and canning was still a recent innovation. I try to eat a different restaurant once a day. I am tied between cream cheese on a bagel, a pepperoni pizza, and an egg roll as my favorite comfort foods.
Reporter: Any other big changes you have observed?
Another big change is that the authors are better protected. In my day, copyright laws were hard to enforce and did not work in England. Now I collect my royalties through ASCAP.
The technology is so impressive. There are so many new media forms to engage you. I had to give my presentations in person. Now your best performance can be recorded and preserved for eternity. Sometimes, I do a piece for YouTube to promote my brand.
Reporter: Which is your favorite food?
Reporter: What are you working on now?
Poe: I am working on a children’s book. Like Boris Karloff, in real life, I loved children and children loved me. During my haunting days, I made a point of never scaring a child. They often thought I was a real person.
Reporter: Do you have any other surprises for us?
Poe: I am in contention to become the poet laureate of America.
Reporter: Thank you for your time.
Poe: It has been a pleasure.

10/06/2019

Greetings spirit followers:

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Visit one of America’s most haunted locations, Washington, DC. Let us see if we can scare you with stories of ghosts, antique sites, scandalous tales, haunted places, mysterious sightings of apparitions, strange and unusual accounts of centuries past, legendary stories, folklore and ghostly experiences stranger than reality, and ultimately the supernatural intrigues of Washington, DC as politicians continue to intrigue in the afterlife as they did in their earthly existence. Listen to the ghostly encounters of our guides. And you may be surprised by ghost stories told by participants on our tours. Our tales and legends are blended with bits of human interest and historical fact to make us entertaining and educational for tourists and locals alike.

Horror on the Hill

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Tour Description: Politicians suck so take a ghost tour and talk about the ones that are dead. We go by the Supreme Court, Library of Congress, and get a great view of the Capitol at Night. Its a spooky tour so you get scared by our stories, learn some history, and we have a great time. We encourage people to dress in costume (for those inclined), bring ghost radar (if your into that), and wear a smile (required).

Meeting Location: Capitol Hill Starbucks - 237 Pennsylvania Ave. SE.

The tour is 1 hour and 30 minutes in duration and the distance traveled is less than one mile

And so much more!

Book Now! (link to the tours }

Popular Questions:

Who is the most popular ghost in America?
That would have to be Edgar Allan Poe, pioneer supernatural story-teller, explorer of science fiction, and father of the detective story. He has been reported in the following cities: Richmond, Virginia; Washington, DC; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Baltimore, Maryland; Boston, Massachusetts; and above all, numerous locations in Manhattan, and even in the Bronx! Boy, Edgar Allan Poe gets around. Not only that, he haunts simultaneously at all locations!
Edgar Allan Poe’s favorite place to haunt in Washington, DC is Lafayette Park in front of the White House. He was proud to be part of a honor guard of teenagers inspected by Marquis de Lafayette’s visit to Richmond, Virginia in 1825. The general also visited the grave of David Poe, an old comrade in arms who was Poe’s grandfather, in Baltimore Virginia. http://poecalendar.blogspot.com/2009/10/young-poe-and-lafayette.html Apparently, Poe likes to haunt in a location named after someone he greatly admired.
In the end, I wish you good luck in encountering Edgar Allan Poe!
Happy Haunting!

Dr. Phil Schoenberg and Gabe Schoenberg

Contact Information
Dr. Phil and Gabe Schoenberg Co-Editors
President of Ghost Walks USA
[email protected]
(202) 780-7169

Here's another story of Poe's teen years. At the age of 15, a young Edgar Poe served as a lieutenant (in fact, second-in-command) for the R...

07/21/2019

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-great-new-england-vampire-panic-36482878/

Two hundred years after the Salem witch trials, farmers became convinced that their relatives were returning from the grave to feed on the living

03/11/2019

01/30/2019

Ghosts of Scary DC Blog 23 Senator Harry Truman on the Job on Capitol Hill © 2019 by Dr. Philip Ernest Schoenberg, Ghost with a Blog
Senator Harry S Truman was such a hard worker that he set a demanding pace that few subordinates could match. Senator Truman arrived at the Capitol so early that the cleaning staff gave him own set of keys so he could get into the building. Secret Servicemen found it hard to keep up with his “constitutionals” as he called his walks when he became president.
Harry Truman had been first elected Senator in 1934. Politicians and people alike were surprised to find that he was not “the man from Pendergast” because he made his own decisions instead of being the puppet of the Kansas City political boss. When Tom Pendergast died in disgrace, convicted of income tax evasion, President Truman showed up at his funeral as a sign of respect and gratitude despite the abundant criticism at the time. When he ran for re-election in 1940, he was so short of funds, he had to sleep in a car overnight at times. Despite President Franklin Roosevelt endorsing his opponent in the Democratic primary, he won the election. He was even more surprised when President Roosevelt asked him to be his vice presidential running mate in 1944.
To Truman’s great surprise, he succeeded Roosevelt as president upon his death. To the surprise of the pollsters, Truman won the election in his own right in 1948. He retired as a very unpopular president but since his popularity has come back.

01/30/2019

Ghosts of Scary DC Blog 22 The Vice President’s Official Residence is Haunted © 2019 By Dr. Philip Ernest Schoenberg, Ghost with a Blog

If the home of the president is haunted, why should not the home of his number two be haunted also? Since 1974, and separated from auspices of the Naval Observatory, Number One Observatory Circle, a house situated in the grounds of the observatory (formerly the residence of its superintendent, and later the home of the Chief of Naval Operations), has been the official residence of the Vice President of the United States at Number One Observatory Circle Naval Observatory.

Joel Martin and William J. Birnes, The Haunting of the Presidents (Old Saybrook, CT: Konecky and Konecky, 2003), page 365 report that “During President Jimmy Carter’s term of office, Vice President Walter Mondale's daughter, Eleanor, complained about a phantom that appeared in her bedroom one night when she was sleeping over in the mansion. Eleanor Monde wrote about her paranormal experience in Swing magazine, describing the apparition that she saw in the moonlight shadow near the window. “I was so scared,” she wrote, “I fainted. Upon coming to, I reached for the phone and picked up the ‘hotline’ to the Secret Service command post. I whispered that there was a man in my room and hang up. Minutes later, two agents busted into the room, guns drawn.” However, they found mo intruder in the room. Eleanor told them she’d seen a ghost. But the Secret Service men were not sympathetic to that answer and asked her very forcefully that she ‘never do that again!’”

01/16/2019

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/edgar-allan-poe-became-era-premier-storyteller-180971001/

Fans of the mystery writer have no shortage of ways to pay homage to the scribe behind

11/11/2018

http://mentalfloss.com/article/70951/12-doomed-facts-about-ss-edmund-fitzgerald

More than 40 years after the most famous ship in Great Lakes history vanished during a storm, the cause is still a mystery.