Petersen House
A historic house in Washington, Washington, D.C., built in 1849, Petersen House is filed here for what the record attaches to it. The house where Abraham Lincoln died. It sits in the archive under dark history, historic houses and mortuary history. The dossier holds 1 reported claim and 2 documented facts, with the verified spine filed separately from the lore. The site is open to visitors.
· in your passport — stamped · open it
Is Petersen House haunted?
The record holds 1 claim — filed as reported, not verified. The heaviest filing is classed anecdotal. The archive documents the claim; it takes no position on the ghost.
The record — long form
The Petersen House is where Abraham Lincoln died — the boarding house across from Ford's Theatre where the wounded president was carried on the night of April 14, 1865, and where he died at 7:22 the next morning. The file's documented spine is the nation's most documented death: a president dying in a stranger's bed, the house becoming the death's permanent address.
The house's ordinariness is the file's weight — a boarding house bedroom that became the most famous death chamber in America, the back parlor where a president's dying took nine hours.
7:22 a.m.
The file's legend layer is empty — and the absence is the register. The Petersen House needs no ghosts: the documented death is complete. Lincoln died here at 7:22 a.m. on April 15, 1865 — the record being the file's entire content, the house's haunting being the history's own.
The bed is the file's artifact — the room kept as it was, the president's death site preserved in a boarding house that the nation made a shrine.
Why this file matters
The Petersen House is the archive's presidential-death file — the house where Lincoln's dying happened, kept without needing a single legend. The empty legend layer is the point: the documented death is heavier than any lore could make it.
A boarding house that held a president's last nine hours keeps that morning — the file's suggestion being that April 15, 1865 is still happening at 7:22 a.m. in the back bedroom.
The Petersen House is a 19th-century federal style row house in the United States in Washington, D.C., located at 516 10th Street NW, several blocks east of the White House. It is known for being the house where President Abraham Lincoln died on April 15, 1865 after being shot the previous evening at Ford's Theatre located across the street.
Petersen HouseThe record of claims
Visitors and staff report a presence in the back bedroom where Lincoln died. The house's rooms are where the accounts concentrate — old houses keep their stories in the walls they were built around. The reports are anecdotal — consistent enough to record, thin enough to stay unproven. Nothing here would make headlines alone; together the reports make a pattern.
Two accounts on file
HISTORIC_HOUSE
HISTORIC_HOUSE_MUSEUM
Preserve both source-backed variants; no automatic overwrite.
The house where Abraham Lincoln died.
The house where Lincoln died, April 15, 1865.
Preserve both source-backed variants; no automatic overwrite.
Discovery record. Coordinates, earliest legend source, independent history and current visitor rules require further verification.
New record from encyclopedia/official-source pass; VERIFY task auto-queued for primary-source corroboration.
Preserve both source-backed variants; no automatic overwrite.
Documented history
The house where Abraham Lincoln died. The house's past is on record — this entry belongs to the verified layer of the site's file. The fact is historically verified — the part of the file that doesn't need hedging. Sources including 'Ford's Theatre National Historic Site' carry the record. The record keeps it — history, not lore.
Verified historyNational Park ServiceLincoln died in the Petersen boarding house at 7:22 a.m. on April 15, 1865. The record dates it to 1865-04-15. Petersen House's history is documented rather than told — this entry is part of that spine. The record holds it as fact — documented, not retold. The record appears in 'Petersen House'. It is the kind of fact the rest of the dossier leans on.
Sources on file
- 01Ford's Theatre National Historic SiteNational Park Service · government · A1
- 02Petersen HouseWikipedia · encyclopedia · A4
Field notes & open questions
Discovery record. Coordinates, earliest legend source, independent history and current visitor rules require further verification.