Halcyon House

I don't believe in ghosts, but I do believe in ghost stories, which is why I had so much fun writing last week's two-part Halloween chiller about Halcyon House. The Georgetown mansion — which dates to 1787, when the first portions were built by Benjamin Stoddert, America's first secretary of the Navy — has a reputation for things that go bump in the night.

But surely those manifestations are easily explainable as the home's foundation settling or floorboards creaking?

Maybe not, said Bill Stearman, a U.S. Navy veteran who took an apartment in Halcyon House in October 1967 after returning from a tour of duty in Vietnam. "I never believed in ghosts before that, but I certainly do now," he wrote.

Bill lived at 3400 Prospect St. NW until he got married in 1984. The house had a number of bizarre features and secret passages, the result of onetime owner Albert Adsit Clemons engaging in near-constant renovation. Wrote Bill: "I had a closet with stairs in it clearly created by walling off a staircase."

The tenant before Bill was a Georgetown University professor who had left in a hurry "after having been bounced out of bed by a poltergeist of sorts," Bill wrote. "Soon after I moved into my two-story apartment I was entertaining a friend at dinner when we heard a heavy tramping in my bedroom upstairs. Having got used to having a weapon at hand, I took my trusty service Colt .45 and crept upstairs. Nobody was there. My guest said, 'Take me home, now!' "

That night, just before he fell asleep, Bill heard the tramping again — in the room with him. "It soon ceased and I finally managed to fall asleep," he wrote.

That was the last time Bill encountered the ghost in proximity. "From then on it confined its activities to moving things around," he said. "For example, one morning I awoke to find a loaf of bread near the telephone on the second floor at the head of the staircase. From then on things kept appearing and disappearing. I finally got used to this."

Local Perspective

Readers scare up their memories of Georgetown’s ‘haunted’ Halcyon House

In 1965, ivy covered much of the exterior of Georgetown’s famed Halcyon House. (Harry Naltchayan/The Washington Post)

By John Kelly

Columnist

November 7, 2017

I don't believe in ghosts, but I do believe in ghost stories, which is why I had so much fun writing last week's two-part Halloween chiller about Halcyon House. The Georgetown mansion — which dates to 1787, when the first portions were built by Benjamin Stoddert, America's first secretary of the Navy — has a reputation for things that go bump in the night.

But surely those manifestations are easily explainable as the home's foundation settling or floorboards creaking?

[A Washington ghost story: The Haunting of Halcyon House, Part 1]

Maybe not, said Bill Stearman, a U.S. Navy veteran who took an apartment in Halcyon House in October 1967 after returning from a tour of duty in Vietnam. "I never believed in ghosts before that, but I certainly do now," he wrote.

Bill lived at 3400 Prospect St. NW until he got married in 1984. The house had a number of bizarre features and secret passages, the result of onetime owner Albert Adsit Clemons engaging in near-constant renovation. Wrote Bill: "I had a closet with stairs in it clearly created by walling off a staircase."

The tenant before Bill was a Georgetown University professor who had left in a hurry "after having been bounced out of bed by a poltergeist of sorts," Bill wrote. "Soon after I moved into my two-story apartment I was entertaining a friend at dinner when we heard a heavy tramping in my bedroom upstairs. Having got used to having a weapon at hand, I took my trusty service Colt .45 and crept upstairs. Nobody was there. My guest said, 'Take me home, now!' "

[The Haunting of Halcyon House, Part 2: The Grim Task]

That night, just before he fell asleep, Bill heard the tramping again — in the room with him. "It soon ceased and I finally managed to fall asleep," he wrote.

That was the last time Bill encountered the ghost in proximity. "From then on it confined its activities to moving things around," he said. "For example, one morning I awoke to find a loaf of bread near the telephone on the second floor at the head of the staircase. From then on things kept appearing and disappearing. I finally got used to this."

I asked Bill if he found any of this scary.

"Not too much," he said. "I had just come back from Vietnam, so nothing much would shake me up after that."

Joy Kraus grew up at 3306 Prospect St. NW, just down the street from Halcyon House, a.k.a. the Stoddert Mansion. Her aunt lived at 3416 Prospect St. "When I was child in the '30s, my mother and I visited my aunt frequently," she wrote, "and each time we walked past the Prospect Street entrance to the Stoddert Mansion, I would look eagerly into an open passageway in the hope of seeing something that might lighten the mystery of the place.

"I remember a large metal and glass framed notice which was suspended outside that passageway and made clear the rules of life therein. And I heard many tales of Mr. Clemons's ongoing wood butchery in the house, and of doors that opened onto blank walls. We learned, too, as you wrote, of Mr. Clemons's direction that his heart was to be pierced, to assure that he was dead."

Local Perspective

Readers scare up their memories of Georgetown’s ‘haunted’ Halcyon House

In 1965, ivy covered much of the exterior of Georgetown’s famed Halcyon House. (Harry Naltchayan/The Washington Post)

By John Kelly

Columnist

November 7, 2017

I don't believe in ghosts, but I do believe in ghost stories, which is why I had so much fun writing last week's two-part Halloween chiller about Halcyon House. The Georgetown mansion — which dates to 1787, when the first portions were built by Benjamin Stoddert, America's first secretary of the Navy — has a reputation for things that go bump in the night.

But surely those manifestations are easily explainable as the home's foundation settling or floorboards creaking?

[A Washington ghost story: The Haunting of Halcyon House, Part 1]

Maybe not, said Bill Stearman, a U.S. Navy veteran who took an apartment in Halcyon House in October 1967 after returning from a tour of duty in Vietnam. "I never believed in ghosts before that, but I certainly do now," he wrote.

Bill lived at 3400 Prospect St. NW until he got married in 1984. The house had a number of bizarre features and secret passages, the result of onetime owner Albert Adsit Clemons engaging in near-constant renovation. Wrote Bill: "I had a closet with stairs in it clearly created by walling off a staircase."

The tenant before Bill was a Georgetown University professor who had left in a hurry "after having been bounced out of bed by a poltergeist of sorts," Bill wrote. "Soon after I moved into my two-story apartment I was entertaining a friend at dinner when we heard a heavy tramping in my bedroom upstairs. Having got used to having a weapon at hand, I took my trusty service Colt .45 and crept upstairs. Nobody was there. My guest said, 'Take me home, now!' "

[The Haunting of Halcyon House, Part 2: The Grim Task]

That night, just before he fell asleep, Bill heard the tramping again — in the room with him. "It soon ceased and I finally managed to fall asleep," he wrote.

That was the last time Bill encountered the ghost in proximity. "From then on it confined its activities to moving things around," he said. "For example, one morning I awoke to find a loaf of bread near the telephone on the second floor at the head of the staircase. From then on things kept appearing and disappearing. I finally got used to this."

I asked Bill if he found any of this scary.

"Not too much," he said. "I had just come back from Vietnam, so nothing much would shake me up after that."

Joy Kraus grew up at 3306 Prospect St. NW, just down the street from Halcyon House, a.k.a. the Stoddert Mansion. Her aunt lived at 3416 Prospect St. "When I was child in the '30s, my mother and I visited my aunt frequently," she wrote, "and each time we walked past the Prospect Street entrance to the Stoddert Mansion, I would look eagerly into an open passageway in the hope of seeing something that might lighten the mystery of the place.

"I remember a large metal and glass framed notice which was suspended outside that passageway and made clear the rules of life therein. And I heard many tales of Mr. Clemons's ongoing wood butchery in the house, and of doors that opened onto blank walls. We learned, too, as you wrote, of Mr. Clemons's direction that his heart was to be pierced, to assure that he was dead."

I've seen references that Clemons worked at the Treasury Department, but Joy said her family understood that he was an importer. "My older sister told me of her doll which suffered a broken head," she wrote. "Our father took the doll to Mr. Clemons, who knew someone who was able to repair the damage."

There's nothing creepier than a broken doll.

Wrote Joy: "I am a great fan of ghost stories, but I never thought of the Stoddert Mansion as haunted — just always exceedingly interesting."

Kirk Evans was born in Washington in 1970, grew up in Georgetown, and as a boy played on the property of Halcyon House every chance he got. "My brother, sister and friends and I had heard it was haunted, and we were absolutely fascinated by the place," Kirk wrote. "In those days it was about half empty and a little disheveled. . . . From Prospect Street, there was a second-story room with its windows absolutely blanketed with dead ivy. On the inside."

Kirk's most vivid memory of playing around Halcyon House was being pursued by a pair of snarling, barking guard dogs. "They chased me into a thicket of boxwood, where I practically wet my pants in terror," he wrote. "Then they were gone. No sign or sound of them. They were inches behind me and then complete silence and I was alone."

Halcyon House is all tidied up now — returned to normalcy when it was owned by local sculptor John Dreyfuss — but Kirk said he was a bit sad to see its ghostly demeanor vanish. "I always found that comforting, in a strange way," he wrote.