Jeff Belanger’s Latest Release Stays On A Familiar Track,

But Looks To A Younger Audience

By Shannon Hicks

Nine books in, and Jeff Belanger hasn’t given up the ghost yet.

Mr Belanger, a Newtown native now living with his wife and daughter in Bellingham, Mass., is celebrating the release this month of his ninth book, Who’s Haunting The White House? It is his first children’s book, and it comes just in time not only for Halloween, but also the culmination of election season. A few months from now, John McCain or Barack Obama will move with his family into one of the most famous — and haunted — homes in the world.

Stories of strange apparitions, disturbing sensations, and strange sounds at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue have been part of American mythology for more than a century. For his latest book, Mr Belanger offers a younger target audience both the history of The White House as well as some of the ghostly lore that is attached to it.

“I haven’t been this excited about a book since my first one came out in 2004,” Mr Belanger said this week. “I love the look, the design, and the concept of using ghosts as a new way to teach history to younger readers. I hope this is only the first in a haunted series.”

Who’s Haunting The White House? (published by Sterling, 64 pages hardcover, $14.95) is in fact the first nonfiction book for middle school readers that uses ghostly lore to teach American history through the eyes and ghosts of former Presidents.

“This was the most research-intensive book I’ve ever written,” Mr Belanger said recently. “It’s also my first book about a single location, which means I had to submerge myself in the history and lore of the building and the back-story surrounding its placement, construction, and use.

“The next challenge was distilling the history and story down to a reasonable length, and ensuring that those old factoid bones didn’t slow down the pace of the reading,” he continued.

The first few pages of the book, in fact, are devoted to the history of the building and even of the country’s founding. To avoid becoming too fact heavy within the text, space is also devoted to boxed-in spaces of information or even reproductions of newspaper clippings. One of the best for the entire collection is called “Why Ghosts?” and it offers theories concerning why and how places become haunted.

“When I started writing the book, I realized there were many fun facts and topics that deserved some attention, but could potentially get in the way of the narrative,” said the author. “The sidebars were my idea, but the publisher really made them something special with the layout and design they used with the book.”

Archival images are combined with original art by illustrator Rick Powell to illustrate the journey through White House history and mythology. Brief chapters cover some of the folks whose ghosts have been reported over the years, from that of David Burns, who donated the land on which the building sits in 1790, and Abigail Adams, whose ghost reportedly can still be seen hanging laundry in the East Room, to a British Redcoat soldier running with a torch who may have been trapped inside the building when his fellow troops set it ablaze in 1814, to William Henry Harrison, who served as President for only one month but whose ghost was reportedly seen rummaging through boxes in the building’s attic.

There is also, of course, plenty of coverage given to the Lincoln family. Middle son Willie died in the White House in February 1862 after being seriously ill for a number of months. Mary Todd Lincoln wrote about seeing her dead son, and held séances. President Lincoln wrote of seeing a double reflection of himself in a mirror and dreamt of his own catafalque.

“No President in US history has had a more difficult presidency than Abraham Lincoln,” said Mr Belanger. “[His] son died in the White House from a typhoid-like disease. That loss took a heavy toll on the president. Plus, Lincoln was dealing with a nation at war with itself.

“The Civil War was killing thousands of Americans on both sides of the conflict, threatening to split the country in two. The bloodshed, the personal struggles, were more than most people could ever bear. I think most presidents know that whatever they’re going through, Lincoln had it worse. Perhaps modern Presidents need Lincoln’s spirit around for strength, or maybe Lincoln cared so deeply about the job and his country that he refuses to leave his post.”

Mr Belanger may have been immersed in the otherworld for the better part of his career to date, but he nevertheless learned quite a bit while researching for this new book.

“With Lincoln, I learned a lot more about his paranormal past,” said the author, who learned about the in-house séance and the premonitions of death through a dream. Mr Belanger also learned that Lincoln believed the mirror incident, in which he saw that his face, “had two separate and distinct images … [with] one of the faces a little paler, say five shades, than the other,” it was later recounted in the July 1865 issue of Harpers’ New Monthly Magazines.

“When he saw a double vision of himself that led him to believe he would not survive his second term,” Mr Belanger said.

The final chapter of the book is “Life in the White House Today.” Mr Belanger had the opportunity to speak with Gary J. Walters, the building’s former chief usher, who reported that even today’s White House staff occasionally see ghosts. While Mr Walters said “the staff doesn’t say a lot … because we have a culture that’s been established through the years of privacy of the First Family … one of the operations gentlemen here said he walked into a room and saw a rocking chair move in the Lincoln Bedroom. He swears that he saw President Lincoln.”

Mr Belanger has been interested in ghosts and related phenomena since he was at least 10, when he went to a sleepover at a friend’s house on Main Street.

“His house was supposed to be haunted. It was a few houses down from the inn, and I used to bring a Ouija board and try to make contact with the spirits,” he told The Bee in October 2007. Mr Belanger was not successful with that house, but the experience sparked a lifelong interest for the 1992 Newtown High School graduate. “I have never seen a ghost myself, but I definitely believe they exist,” he added during last year’s interview. “I have interviewed thousands of people who have experienced a ghost, and it is life changing, very profound for them.”

Those interviews have formed the basis for seven of Mr Belanger’s nine books. His first was The World’s Most Haunted Places, published in August 2004, and he has continued with Communicating with The Dead (April 2005), The Encyclopedia of Haunted Places (August 2005), Our Haunted Lives: True Life Ghost Encounters (July 2006) and Ghosts of War: Restless Spirits of Soldiers, Spies and Saboteurs (September 2006) among his releases.

Earlier this year Mr Belanger released his eighth book. Weird Massachusetts is the latest entry in the popular Weird U.S. series, offering readers stories of ghosts, local legends, characters, UFOs, and other oddities in regions (Weird New England has already been published), states (Weird California, New Jersey, etc), and even countries (Weird Canada and Weird England have both been covered).

Released in May, Weird Massachusetts explains everything from how the world’s biggest elephant now fits into a peanut butter jar and why it brings good luck to students to unexplained booms in Nashoba, the hidden secrets at Wizard’s Glen and Altar Rock, and even why you should never pick up a red-headed hitchhiker on Route 44.

Mr Belanger has a number of book events and talks planned in upcoming weeks, and while it will be tough for more Newtowners to get up to Massachusetts and the upper New England area for the appearances, there are a few events that residents can tune in to on TV.

This Saturday morning (October 25), Mr Belanger is scheduled to be a guest on The CBS News Early Show. He will be discussing the ghosts of the White House. The show airs from 7 to 9 am on WCBS (Charter channel 2).

Then on October 30, he will be discussing ghosts of the White House on the FOX News Channel, when he is a guest on FOX & Friends at 8:45 am.

Meanwhile, the Newtown native is already working on two more children’s books. The first is a collection of interviews with people who have done “amazing things like fly into space, survive a shark attack, or climb Mount Everest,” he explained. The second is about — naturally — a spookier subject: The Bermuda Triangle.