Washington DC
Demon Cat
By Cole Herrold
There are always cases that stick with
you; for me, there are some cases that I would rank as one of my top 10
favorites. Most of these cases are the very first ones I've ever read, such as
Mothman, Flatwoods Monster, and Oscar, the Colossal turtle of Churubusco. One
of these early cases Id stumbled upon is perhaps my favorite spectral
apparition case, but its importance in Fortean lore is primarily founded on the
location in which the entity was said to reside. This location is none other
than one of the most important historical buildings in the United States, the
Capitol Building. Yet while this hallowed hall is well known as a haunted
hotspot, the apparition in question is not John Quincy Adams or Abraham
Lincoln, but a shapeshifting black cat known as the Washington D.C. Demon Cat,
the Demon Cat, the Grimalkin, or more affectionately D.C.
Rumors of the Demon Cat can be traced back
to before the mid-1800s, yet the first documented report allegedly occurred in
1862. As with all hauntings and ghostly apparitions, there is a beginning point
to such occurrences. The Demon Cat came about allegedly when, in the early
1800s, the Capitol Building began to be overrun with both rats and mice. The
pest problem in the building became so rampant that cats were brought in to be
"mousers ."These cats were primarily loosed in the lower halls and
the basements and, as time went on, proceeded to die out as the need for them
began to lessen. The feline death count, however, would see a slight rise when
on August 14, 1814, during the War of 1812, when several British soldiers
proceeded to light the Capitol Building on fire. Many of the cats in the
building were burned alive, especially those that were on the second floor, due
to the material being used. After the conflict during the prospect of
rebuilding the Capitol, the masons upgraded the original wood floors with
concrete ones, which they then covered in marble and tiles. This is where the
first inkling that some supernatural entity now resides in the structure. After
the Masons put the floor together, they noted a strange pattern had emerged
that was not there when they initially put it together. The pattern which
spread from one stairwell on the floor to the next was a series of pawprints.
The men had no rational idea as to how these prints got there, and they served
as the beginning of a calling card from a being who would make itself known in
the years to follow. Now by the mid-1800s, cats utilized for mousing were down
to only a handful, and instead, guards and police officers were put in their
place to protect the ground from assault or break-in. Once this replacement
occurred, tales started to spring up about a spectral black cat with bright
yellow eyes that seemed to of been pulled from the writings of Edgar Allan Poe
or from such cinematic delights as Tales from the Darkside the Movie or
Lucio Fulci’s The Black Cat. Yet, unlike other cases of freaky felines,
this black cat had one important and horrifying aspect as those who encounter
the apparition will state it will as soon as it sees the guard begin to run
towards them, and as it does this, the animal's eyes begin to change color from
yellow to red, and it begins to swell this swelling goes to every part of the body
causing the animal to grow. The size of the spectral feline has been reported
to grow from the size of a tiger about 10ft to the size of a small elephant and
as it gets within a few feet of the witness proceeds to pounce claws out toward
the guard or officer. The animal usually would unleash a hideous hiss, and as
it sprung in mid-air, it would seemingly disappear before making contact with
the witness.
Sightings of this colossal apparition seem
to serve a supernatural purpose. Many of those who encounter this apparition
feel that it is a warning or an omen of doom and not some sort of residual
haunting. This apparition allegedly has been sighted before major problems and
conflicts in the country. While many of these precursor to tragic events
sightings appear in literature and newspaper articles, there is not really any
more information on them. Some of these events the cat was said to of
prognosticated were the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln, JFK, the crash of
the Stock market, the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the night before we first
sent men over to Vietnam during the war, 9/11, and even Hurricane Katrina. Also,
there are some conflicting reports that the cat was seen before the
assassination of James Garfield and William McKinley, but most sources try to
say that it was not.
The first documented report of the Demon
Cat occurred in 1862. Not much is known about this early sighting, and it
usually appears as a precursor to later sightings, which made their way into
the papers in 1898, 1899, and the early 1900s. Yet what can be gleaned from the
newspapers of the time is that a watchman, while prowling the lower corridors
and catacombs of Capitol Hill, encountered a small black cat which the witness
at first thought was one of the last surviving mousers yet as he called out to
the animal. The animal began to run towards him and proceeded to grow in size
with each bounding step that it took. The papers and assumedly the witness
would claim the creature stopped growing once it reached the size of a small
elephant. The watchman, in this case, was well-armed and, taking his weapon,
proceeded to shoot at the apparition to no noticeable effect; the animal
continued its stampede towards the man and proceeded to spring up into the air
jumping at him with its long claws out. The man, completely terrified,
attempted to cover his major extremities and waited for the final blow from the
creature. The creature, however, never made contact with the man, and it
seemingly vanished in mid-air.
In 1898 another guard who was working in
the lower corridors of the building also encountered the demon cat. This
officer, however, proceeded to stop the creature from assaulting him by way of
brute force. The officer proceeded to take his gun and shoot at the creature,
which upon doing so, dissipated from view as if made of mist. Now during this
time frame as well, the Capitol Building was damaged by a gas explosion, and in
some of the sections of the area where the masons were working on, there are
now small cat footprints that appear near the Rotunda. The clearest of these
prints, which there are 6-8 of them, appear along the Old Supreme Court
Chamber. Some feel that these footprints could have been caused by a
traditional cat, but in many ways, it would be very difficult for a cat to do
so. In another section, a less compelling piece of evidence for the cat is
claimed where a patch of concrete had the letters D.C. imprinted in this. Some
argue that this is merely some human at work and not the supernatural, and
while in this case, Id have to agree it is something that needs to be included.
Photo of alleged Demon Cat prints- photo from Atlas Obscura
On December 7, 1941, a police officer was
found dead of a heart attack. Now, this would have been left as an unfortunate
accident except for the fact that the officer was found in one of the main
areas where the Demon Cat was said to run and vanish. This secondary lair of
the Demon Cat was not the basement near the Catafalque Storage Room, but the
hallways connects the senate to the house meeting rooms. This encounter which
occurred 7hrs before the bombing of Pearl Harbor began, and so knowing the legend
of how the Demon Cat is said to appear before a national disaster, as well as the
fact that this guard died in one of the creature's major path that the guard
had suffered a heart attack after this creature's traditional manifestation
behavior. This sighting was almost forgotten about assumedly in part because of
how soon the national tragedy occurred but was put together after another
sighting that occurred in 1981.
In the 1975 book Ghosts: Washington’s
Most Famous Ghost Stories by John Alexander, there is a reference to what
at the time was an increasingly fresh encounter with the Demon Cat, which the
author claimed took place in January, sometime before the publication of the
book. This encounter which echoed many of the older sightings involved a
policeman who, upon prowling the area, sighted the small black cat that
appeared to be made of shadows in the lower halls of the capitol building. The
officer rubbed his eyes as he could not believe what he was seeing as not only
was this cat seemingly formed from shadow but also that it seemed to be
swelling. Upon relooking at the animal, he could tell that it truly was
swelling in size and that now he felt seemingly paralyzed by the creature’s
glistening eyes. The animal in this encounter proceeded to walk steadily toward
the officer, and the creature had begun to purr. As the creature continued to
grow larger, however, the purring began to change as well; it deepened and
bellowed and became almost like the roar of a lion. The creature, which now
grew to the size of a large tiger, began to get into a crouching position, and
as the paralyzed officer looked on in horror, the animal pounced with its claws
extended. He watched as the animal got within a mere couple of inches of him,
and just as he uncurled a scream, the creature disappeared right in front of
him. The officer then, having looked around the area, refused to finish his
rounds of searching and inspecting the halls and went straight to his desk and
did not leave it until daybreak.
Another sighting of the Demon Cat would
show up in one of the most unassuming pieces of literature out there, an
edition of Boy’s Life Magazine. In the July 1982nd issue of
the magazine, there was an article discussing the idea of the Capitol
Building's haunted reputation and, surprisingly enough, featured the only named
witness to the Demon Cat in any media. The sighting, which occurred in the
Spring of 1977, was witnessed by a Fred Twoby, who during the time of the
encounter was a guard at the Capitol Building. Twoby was walking along an upper
corridor and had just entered a side hallway when he noticed a dark figure
peering at him from the end of the hallway. Fred stopped dead in his tracks as
the glinting yellow eyes of this would-be trespasser caught his attention, yet
as he looked, he saw a small black cat leave the surrounding darkness and
slowly begin to approach him. He watched certainly more curious than anything
else at the cat, but as he watched the animal, he soon noted that with each
thudding footstep, the creature seemed to get bigger. The animal proceeded to
then pick up its pace, almost sprinting as it kept growing, and with each
motion, the growth also increased till the creature was the size of a tiger,
some 10ft long. Once the creature got relatively close to him, the creature
proceeded to spring at the now petrified night guard, and Twoby, in a
terror-induced sense of flinching, lifted his arms up above his head as though
his arms would protect him from the creature's assault. Yet as he waited, arms
overhead, eyes closed, an eerie quiet and stillness rung out throughout the
halls, and time seemed to drag on as he waited for some sort of blow, yet it
never came. Mustering up the courage, he opened his eyes and put down his arms
and, looking around the halls, noticed that the colossal phantom was nowhere to
be found.
A sighting I had mentioned earlier was the
next documented sighting, and it appeared in the October 29, 1999 issue of the
South Idaho Press. This encounter was written by Idaho senator Larry Craig for
Halloween and discussed the classic legend of the Demon Cat. Yet instead of
doing just a classic rehash as other newspapers had done going back to 1898, he
added an encounter he had heard about from a friend who was told by the police
officer who witnessed the apparition. This officer was patrolling the capitol
building and was beginning to head to the second floor. As soon as he had
wandered up the staircase to the floor, a large black cat proceeded to wander
out of a room on the same floor. The cat proceeded to approach the officer, who
was so perplexed as to how it got there that he barely noticed that the animal
was growing in size. Once the creature was within 3ft of the officer, the
officer realized that the creature was the size of a tiger with burning red
eyes. The creature then proceeded to run and jump at the officer, which
disappeared a mere 2-3" from the officer's chest. The man looked and
realized where he was at, for this was the same hallway that bore the spectral
pawprints that appeared in the concrete when the building was under
construction in 1814. The officer proceeded to leave the area screaming and
began to run out of the building and ran to the Police headquarters, where he
reported what he had encountered to the police chief. He half expected the
Chief to laugh him out, but that is not what happened. The officer looked as
the Chief turned to a safe nearby and, upon opening it, pulled out a black
leather-bound book that was covered in dust. He opened it up, and taking a pen,
he began to write down the bare bones of the officer's encounter, stating that
he was the 58th encounter to be included in the book. The police
chief then, upon placing the book down, proceeded to reach over and grab the
phone on his desk and began to call both the White House and the Pentagon and
told both of those who answered the phone about the encounter with the Demon
Cat and that they needed to be on high alert. Yet no one believed him, but
within the next couple of hours, they would. This encounter which occurred on
March 30, 1981, at 6 in the morning, was a precursor then to the assassination
attempt of Ronald Reagan, which occurred precisely 8hrs after the officer had
his sighting with the entity. The officers involved in this sighting, both the
police chief and the officer who witnessed the entity, then proceeded to look
through the black book of sightings and, out of a morbid sense of curiosity,
proceeded to search for sightings of the cat in other historical events. They
found that sightings occurred during Kennedy's assassination, the night before
we first sent men to Vietnam, yet curiously they found no sighting before Pearl
Harbor, but upon investigating, they found that 7hrs before pearl harbor was
bombed, an officer died of a heart attack in the same area as where the demon
cat had frequented. They found this to be a smoking gun and the only time the
creature seemed to of been responsible for the death of a person.
Now there have been no Demon Cat sightings
since, but the legend was so prominent that in 2018 and 2020, both Atlas
Obscura and the Washingtonian wrote articles wondering as to whether
the spectral feline might return due to both the incoming election at the time
as well as the rise of Covid. Yet officially, nothing has been reported. It is
claimed, though, that in-between the 1981 sighting and now that other members
of the staff of the Capitol Building and members of Congress having seen a
glowing red-eyed shadow cat in the corridors and hallways, few have chosen to
come public with their story due to the possibility of public ridicule at best
and a chance of losing their job at worst. Yet unfortunately, further details
on these encounters are nonexistent and so too ends any further encounters at
least documented of the Demon Cat.
Now the Demon Cat is one of the most
beloved paranormal entities in regard to Washington D.C., and in doing so, it
has garnered a love/hate relationship with many who work within the Capitol
building. Its from this, when trying to rationalize the encounter, a lot of
interesting bits of information in regard to the history of the building can be
found through these individuals. Going skeptically first, Steve Livengood of
the U.S. Capitol Historical Society was one of the first to bring forward the
idea that the Demon Cat was nothing more than an optical illusion caused by a
drunken worker. Livengood feels that during the original 1800s encounters that
the witnesses of the entity were relatives of more important political figures
who, in turn, because of their relative's status, did not take the job as
seriously as they should have. They resulted to drinking on the job, and it is
from here where the legend he feels begins. Livengood proposes that on one such
occasion, one of these early witnesses was drunk, lying on their back, and was
awoken by one of the still-functioning mouser cats who was licking his face.
Upon waking, the drunkard would not see a small tabby but a colossal cat, and
in the state, he was in would still believe he was standing. It's from this
point that once this account came out that other less willing workers would utilize
the story in the same or similar way to get out of working. Then the story
simply exploded from there with the idea of the cat being involved with
misfortune. Another possibility in regard to the creature’s changing voice from
a meow to a roar came from the March 02, 1913th issue of the Washington
Herald, which hypothesized that during the winter, cats from the city would
find a way into the basement or lower halls of the Capitol and would when
yowling or meowing have these sounds be amplified by the overall acoustics of
the building. Thus, creating the illusion that they are from a much larger
beast than a small cat.
Another possibility for the answer to the
Demon Cat is unsurprisingly natural cats and shadows. According to the History,
Art, and Archives: The United States House of Representatives article “The
Haunting of Capitol Hill's House, Debunked," cats, aside from being
brought in specifically for mousers, were allowed in and welcomed all the way
till the late 1920s. The article stated that "At one point, guards
reported bands of cats roaming the Capitol in 1892. "At about 10 o'clock
every night, they begin a mad racing through the empty corridors,” and that “The
acoustic effects produced (by the cats) are astonishing…Let a single grimalkin
lift up his voice in statuary hall, famous for its echoes, and the silence of
the night is broken by a yell like that of a damned soul, as loud as a
locomotive whistle.”. In 1927 two of the last remaining cats, known as Dirty
and Mary, were written about in an article due to their incredible skill at
depopulating the mice in the building. Yet by the 40s such cats were long gone,
and they were instead replaced by dogs and B.B. Guns. It's from this that, much
like Livengood's hypothesis of a cat licking a drunkard's face, that theory
arose that drunkards hearing the cats and seeing the shadows of the cats rose
to the idea of a more spectral shapeshifting apparition.
Now for those of a more skeptical mindset,
that would be the nail in the coffin for the Demon Cat and added that over the
200 years since the cat footprints appeared in the concrete on the second floor
that there’s only been one witness who came forward with a name whereas all the
other witnesses were anonymous or told from a friend who knew the individual
who encountered the creature that is enough for firmly place the Demon Cat as a
piece of folklore, but I think there's enough to it to warrant not only an
official investigation but also a possibility of something more real. I say
this because of primarily the encounters which took place in the 70s and 80s,
as this is the first time we do have someone coming forward without being
anonymous, as well as the strange set of tracks forever apart of the Capitol
Building. Another piece that supports the existence slightly of the entity
comes from Captain Allen P. Powers, a night supervisor at the Capitol who worked
there for more than a decade, said "We have men on the force who are so
uptight about the Demon Cat that they won't patrol the building alone at night.
The more superstitious ones consider the cat an evil force that desperately
stalks its victim, making sure they are alone. No one, however, has ever been
harmed; nevertheless, many of the Capitol force are certain the building is
haunted".
Now clearly based on the nature of this
entity, it is not a cryptid or alien. It does not fit in the physical Fortean
category at all, and Id have to argue that the main if not only possibility is
some sort of paranormal entity, either a demonic apparition or the
transmogrified spectral apparition of a cat. The demonic identity of the entity
clearly is the one that most would point to with this being, and obviously,
earlier witnesses felt the same. Yet if this is a demon, then the origin story
of a dead mouser cat does not make much sense, but that opens up another
possibility that is involved with the creation of the Capitol Building itself. Engineer
John Lenthall, who worked on the construction of the capitol building, was
crushed under a collapsed archway in September 1808. He ended up in this
scenario after he pulled out a support arch to show to the supervising
architect that the arch was unnecessary; this proved to be his undoing,
however, and as the structure collapsed on him, it ultimately cost him his
life. Yet before he took in his last breath as he was slowly crushed to death,
he cursed the Capitol Building, and it is possible that in doing so unleashed
the demonic feline into the walls of the home. In many ways, this could also
explain why there seem to be at least 14 other apparitions said to be in the
building; some of these apparitions include John Quincy Adams, a wounded Union
soldier, and William Preston Taulbee, who was shot to death by a reporter for The
Louisville Times as well as the general arguments and general negativity
that seems to emanate from that location.
Now another possibility is the
transmogrified cat spirit. There have been several cases over the years of
ghosts of humans and animals that seem to change form. There's a famous case of
a spectral white tiger that behaves much in the same way as the Demon Cat,
including with lunging at victims before disappearing, except that the White
Tiger was, if the legend is to be believed, a human who upon death came back to
seek in revenge as a leprosy carrying spectral white tiger. This account
occurred in Elliot O’Donnell’s Animal Ghosts, so there are legends or at
least a history of spirits becoming super-powered or super-charged after death.
Now, as stated earlier, I've loved this
case since I was a child; it was one of the first paranormal cases I ever heard
of, and so it holds a special place in my heart. Now in many ways, I wish there
were more sightings and more information on this case since, to me, this is the
political representative of the "American Monster" since almost every
state has a state cryptid or monster, it would seem only fitting that while
there’s plenty of human monsters in D.C. that there would have to be some
supernatural one that even still would not be so terrible as the human ones.
The Demon Cat mystery is one that will not go away; its something that is
ingrained in the local lore and history, and I'm sure for years down the line,
whenever its an election year or in the middle of some skirmish that people
won't look towards the Capitol Building and wonder if D.C. was seen or will be
seen during this time.
Quick Facts:
Species/Potential Species: Supernatural
Entity
Location: Capitol Building, Capitol Hill,
Washington D.C.
Sighted: 1862-at least the 1980s.
Works Cited:
America’s Very Own Monsters By Daniel
Cohen
Ghosts: Washington’s Most Famous Ghost
Stories By John Alexander
Monsters of Virginia: Mysterious Creatures
in the Old Dominion By L. B. Taylor Jr.
Phantom Animals By Daniel Cohen
Weird Virginia: Your Travel Guide to
Virginia's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets By Jeff Bahr, Troy Taylor, Loren
Coleman, Mark Moran, Mark Sceurman
Boy’s Life Magazine July 1982
Grundhauser, Eric “Why the U.S. Capitol’s
‘Demon Cat’ Legend Is So Persistent” Atlas Obscura. March 13, 2018. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/is-there-a-demon-cat-in-the-us-capitol.
Accessed June 24, 2021.
History “The Haunting of Capitol Hill's
House, Debunked” History, Art, and Archives: United States House of
Representatives. October 29, 2019, https://history.house.gov/Blog/2019/October/10-29-Haunting-Debunked/.
Accessed March 24, 2021.
Buffalo Courier December 04, 1898
The Akron Beacon Journal January 11, 1899
The Washington Post March 24, 1908
The Boston Globe July 04, 1909
The Washington Herald March 02, 1913
Home Talk the Star August 10, 1928
The Dispatch October 31, 1981
The Times October 31, 1989
South Idaho Press October 29, 1999
