Clown Room

This door takes you to the clown room. The walls are covered with circus paraphernalia, including stuffed bear and elephant heads. Looking around the room, you find a museum of artifacts and accompanying information about each: A stack of small paper books, an artist rendering of a black cat with demonic red glowing eyes, a small computer from the 1970s, and more. As you walk away from the door, it falls into shadow... until you can't see it anymore.

Lore, History, and Traditions

Demon Cat of DC

The Demon Cat is a phantom black cat said to haunt the US Capitol building in Washington, DC. Occasionally, it can be seen on the ground floor (basement) at the White House, usually just before a huge tragedy occurs. This glowy red-eyed shadow appears to grow into the size of a tiger before disappearing.

Sightings go back to the 19th century when Capitol guards, then later Secret Service officers, claimed to see it. Historical claims place the demon cat in key government buildings before the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, prior to the stock market crash in 1929, and on the eve of JFK's assassination.

Today, you can hear about the Demon Cat on some ghost tours, where you will learn that cats were brought into the basement tunnels of the Capitol to catch rats and mice in the 1800s. Legend claims one of these long-dead cats as Demon Cat. In the 1890s, guards claimed to have fired at it, but it vanished. Another guard is said to have died of a heart attack after seeing it.

In some articles you'll see the "explanation" placed on drunk guards: A guard sees a cat that appears larger than life because his back is on the ground, and it starts a rumor that if you claim you saw the demon cat you could get the night off work.

Let's make it slightly spookier: There are paw prints in the concrete in the Small Senate Rotunda near the entrance to the Old Supreme Court Chamber in the Capitol building. Maybe it's because a cat walked across the concrete after the 1898 gas explosion required some of the stone to be replaced... or maybe Demon Cat wanted to leave its mark to let us know who is in charge - and who could, if they wanted to, cause chaos in the US Capitol.

One day, for instance, a Capitol policeman, whose integrity is better than his markmanship, reported taking pot-shot "at a big black cat that seemed to grow as I looked at it." From his description, the Stygian feline appeared to have the eyes of Eddie Cantor and the generous proportions of Mae West plus the disposition of Belga Lugosi.

"When I shot at the critter, it jumped right over my head," explained the guardian of the Capitol traditions and decorum.

From The 'feline' spook of the Capitol from The Washington Post. This article includes scans of a 1935 article describing Demon Cat.

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 Haunted Winter

Winter and cold weather ghost tales

Winter 2024

Yearning for the Mines

West Virginia mining ghost tales

Halloween 2025

Lore, History, and Traditions

Halloween Traditions (Mid-Atlantic USA)

  • DC's historic row house neighborhoods go all out with their Halloween decor and encourage evening walks to enjoy the delights of each home's interpretation of Halloween that year.
  • There are several major spooky locations like Georgetown, Alexandria, and Capitol Hill offering ghost tours that take you through a city you never thought possible... Growing up in the DC area, I heard a lot of "bad reviews" about the city because it's so "grey and boring," but to me that's the perfect place for a good haunt...
  • Beyond the suburbs you'll find festive farms offering haunted hayrides or corn mazes. You can get a pumpkin from a grocery store but why do that when there are pumpkin patches to visit?
  • When I was a kid trick-or-treating went from early evening to way after dark, but I think nowadays they schedule it, often not even on Halloween, to keep kids visible in the daylight and safe around town. The last decades have also seen the rise of a new Halloween tradition: Trunk-or-treat.
  • Sorry I called you out for buying a pumpkin at the grocery store. I just want you to know you can also get some of the traditional Halloween treats like candy apples, cider, and homemade popcorn from there too.
  • All across the affected states, you'll find Civil War ghost lore haunting around cemeteries, battlefields, and national parks/forests. Civil War ghosts haunt forts, plantations, inns, and hospitals, too. They are good at what they do.

Lore, History, and Traditions

Bunnyman Bridge

Bunnyman (aka Bunny Man) Bridge is a small, one-lane underpass in Clifton, VA. Also called the Colchester Overpass, this graffiti-covered bridge is associated with the legend of Bunnyman (a man in a white bunny costume with a hatchet).

The legend is rooted in two incidents reported to Fairfax County police (both in 1970):

  • A couple reported that a man in a bunny suit yelled at them for trespassing and threw a hatchet into the passenger window of their car.
  • A man spotted someone in a bunny outfit chopping at a porch railing outside an unfinished home with a hatchet who threatened his life for trespassing.

    • The Bunny Man was never caught.

    When I was growing up (in the 90s), I heard the story that he was a convict escaped from "the old Lorton Prison" who escaped and murdered young couples who snuck out to the overpass to make out. The ghost of Bunnyman can be seen on Halloween night when a full moon lights the overpass bright enough to show his shadow. In 1999, the Castle of Spirits website posted a new angle on the story, claiming that the Clifton Bunny Man was an escaped convict who committed a series of murder in/around the area.

    I've since heard him described as a violent mental patient whose bus crashed near the area. He took refuge in the woods, killing and eating rabbits for sustenance. People would find the remains hanging from the trees. However, the Lorton Reformatory was known for horrific treatment of prisoners and there are many haunted tales from its cells, and the Castle of Spirits story didn't have any truth in it, so the escaped convict story seemed more believable. Still, it's cool to follow an urban legend from newspapers to oral tradition to a website and back into stories for kids at school.