By Don Radebaugh – TOLEDO, Ohio – Some people say it’s a stretch to see it, but others say it’s crystal clear. I’m on the ‘crystal clear’ side who sees tiny little faces from one particular window. Some are staring out, while others faintly appear. I say ‘faintly’ to be careful not to oversell it, especially if you’re not with me.
At any rate, the window is from the home of Abraham Lincoln located on Eighth Street at the corner of Jackson Street in Springfield, Illinois. It’s the only home Lincoln ever owned, purchasing it in 1844 for $1200 plus a small downtown lot he owned, bringing his expenditure to $1500 total. It was originally a story-and-a-half cottage before the Lincoln’s added the second story in 1856.
The window in the image is on the south side of an upstairs bedroom. It was mostly used as a guest bedroom and sometimes by Lincoln and Mary Todd’s oldest son Robert Todd when he was home from college. A brief history of the home reveals that Robert Todd, Lincoln’s only son who survived to adulthood, deeded the home to the State of Illinois for $1 in 1887. To make the contract good, the home had to be kept in good repair and always free to visit. In 1972, the house was transferred to the National Park Service where it remains in excellent care while people from all over the world walk its floors during 15-minute guided tours, one after the other…free admission still.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in the home, but a lot over the decades. On my way out one late afternoon, I took a photo of the side of the home that holds this particular window. Why I took the photo, I don’t know; but as I enlarged the window, faces started looking back out at me.
I won’t go into detail of all the things I see in this window – it’s a long list – but I can most assuredly make out images of two young boys…their faces right next to each other in the bottom half, toward the top. Lincoln of course had two young boys – Willie and Tad – who lived in the home before they all left for the White House (Executive Mansion back then) in February of 1861. For what it’s worth, Lincoln’s second-born son, Edward Baker, died in the downstairs parlor of the home just shy of his fourth birthday.
I can also make out an image of an African-American face, half-smiling…long gray beard, just below the faces of the two boys.
I also see images of Abraham and Mary in the upper half, just above the boys. Lincoln (before he grew a beard) appears to have his chin resting on his hand with Mary watching just to the right, his left.
You may even be more hard-pressed to see Union Commander Ulysses S. Grant staring out the upper panes, top-left corner. Some can’t see it but it’s plenty clear to me. There are more faces I see, but I’ll let you draw your own conclusions from here. I know if you stare at the photo long enough, you’ll start to see things, and I’d be curious to know what.
If the images I see are just reflections in light glancing off the world outside, so be it, but the light seems to be conveniently reflected in such a way as to create the people I see.
Since discovering the faces, I find myself taking photos of more windows, whether it be Lincoln’s house, Mark Twain’s or some other historical icon’s residence just to see what or who I may find. But, I’ve not seen any images since that show up as well as these do.
Lincoln often had premonitions about his own death through dreams
One such example came from his friend and fellow lawyer Ward Hill Lamon, who, according to the tale, said that Lincoln shared a recent dream with a small group that included his wife, Mary Todd, and Lamon, just days before his assassination at Ford’s Theater. According to Lamon, Lincoln walked into the East Room of the White House to find a covered corpse guarded by soldiers and surrounded by a crowd of mourners. When Lincoln asked one of the soldiers who had died, the soldier replied, “The President. He was killed by an assassin.”
It’s also understood that members of Lincoln’s cabinet recalled that, on the morning of his assassination, the president told them he had a dream sailing across an unknown body of water at great speed. He also apparently revealed that he’d had the same dream repeatedly on previous occasions, before “nearly every great and important event of the War.”
Lamon also recalled that just after Lincoln’s election in 1860, he saw a double image of himself in a “looking glass, which he saw while lying on a lounge in his own chamber at Springfield. There was Abraham Lincoln’s face reflecting the full glow of health and hopeful life; and in the same mirror, at the same moment of time, was the face of Abraham Lincoln showing a ghostly paleness.”
Sources:
Dreams and Presentiments
From the book “Recollections of Abraham Lincoln”
Compiled from notes and papers of Ward Hill Lamon
Published by his daughter in 1895 and expanded in 1911