Everyone in Washington has a skeleton in his closet, or at least that is what everyone likes to believe. As it turns out, that belief may turn out to be true, at least if that skeleton can be a ghost.

Washington DC has a lot of history, and a lot of ghost stories. If you could get inside the White House, the George and Laura Bush may not be the only occupants you'd find. In fact, Washington's most famous ghosts -- those of former presidents and first ladies -- are said to appear periodically in the mansion. Apparently, so are spirits of other local historical figures said to inhabit some famous buildings around the area. We have collected some of the more famous ones and put them together in this little collage in honor of the Halloween season. So keep your eyes and imaginations open if your trick-or-treating or other meanderings take you past any of the following sites. Here's hoping that you don't hear any strange bumps in the night, knocks at your door, or see any strange lights at night.

Abraham Lincoln probably bears the honor of Washington's most famous ghost. Lincoln supposedly appears in the White House from time to time to offer counsel to later presidents, or to finish the work he had hoped to do in his second term. He had just begun his second term when a bullet from John Wilkes Booth ended his life at Ford's Theater, in a desperate last-minute attempt to save the Confederacy on April 14, 1865.

Grace Coolidge, first lady between 1923 and 1929, was the first lady to report seeing Lincoln's ghost staring out of an Oval Office window. Later, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands stayed at the White House during a state visit. The queen reported that one night, she heard a knock on the door. It was Lincoln, who stared at her, then walked away. And though Lincoln never slept in the bedroom named after him, a secretary to Franklin Roosevelt swore she saw him in there on the bed putting his boots on. She screamed and ran. Later, President Harry Truman heard a strange knock on his door at 3 a.m. He figured it was Lincoln becauseTruman's daughter Margaret had said she heard thumps in the middle of the night in that part of the house, and said it was Lincoln.

A ghost of a lesser-known person also victimized by the same assassin as Lincoln supposedly appears near the White House. If you walk past Lafayette Square, check out 8 Jackson Pl., built at the same time as the White House. Maj. Henry Rathbone was viewing the play with Lincoln when Booth stabbed him in the head and neck while making his getaway. While Rathbone recovered physically, he never fully regained his mental faculties lost because of the head wound. Eighteen years later, he shot his wife to death, then shot himself. But again, he recovered, though he spent the rest of his life in an asylum. From time to time, people have reported hearing him cry in the house, longing to return to the happy years before the stabbing. (If you want to catch a glimpse of Booth, however, you'll have to frequent a Southern Maryland swamp. Fishermen have said they've seen him in the waters of the escape route he used to Virginia.)

A few female ghosts also supposedly appear from time to time in the White House. The first First Lady of the house, Abagail Adams (George and Martha Washington didn't live there), did her own laundry. The mansion originally didn't receive much heat. John Adams' spouse determined that the East Room, driest in the house, was the best place to wash. Every now and then, she's seen entering the room as if to clean clothes.

A few terms later, Dolley Madison planted the Rose Garden -- the same arrangement as today. Woodrow Wilson's wife Edith ordered it replanted to suit her tastes. But Dolley's ghost appeared and warned the gardeners not to disturb her arrangement. The frightened crew fled and never touched the plants.

Walk west just a few blocks from the White House to the Octagon, a contemporary of the president's home, built in 1798, designed by William Thornton, architect of the Capitol and Tudor Place. The building, now a museum, is reportedly haunted. The daughter of Col. John Tayloe, a Maryland farmer, fell in love with a British officer during the War of 1812. Her father, naturally, disapproved of the romance. Father and daughter often fought over the matter. Though the father wouldn't let the man in the house, she continued to see him. After returning one night, the two argued. Then she lit a candle and climbed the oval staircase to the third floor. For unexplained reasons, she subsequently screamed and fell down the stairs to her death. No one knows why.

History repeated itself. After the war, her sister eloped after Col. Tayloe disapproved of the man she was seeing. When the relationship didn't work out, she returned home and begged forgiveness. Tayloe refused and shoved her down the same staircase to her death. And from time to time over nearly two centuries, people report seeing a candle upstairs, then hearing a scream and a thump. If you visit the house, don't linger long at the bottom of the stairs. You could get hit with a falling body. Sometimes a shadow appears there for no apparent reason. Sometimes people hear footsteps pacing back and forth on the third floor when no one's there. Perhaps it's the colonel.

The Tayloes aren't the only former Octagon inhabitants you may find there. Strange thumping used to emanate from a wall. So a construction crew tore open the facade and found a young servant's skeleton with her fists clenched as though she had been knocking. Her British officer boyfriend had murdered her after a quarrel. He had hidden the body there. She had been knocking to demand a decent burial.

People also swear they see a gambler who had been shot to death in an upstairs bedroom. Upon entering the room, they see him reaching for his gun to shoot his attacker. But he never draws on time.

The Madisons also stayed in the Octagon after the British burned the White House. When she's not doing her laundry at the White House, Dolley has reportedly appeared in the Octagon and visitors can smell her perfume. During the Civil War, the Octagon became a home for runaway slaves. Ever since, inhabitants of the house could hear the slave ghosts pining.

Walk over the M Street bridge connecting Georgetown with the West End. A stagecoach once fell off it in a thunderstorm, killing all passengers. On stormy nights, legend says you can still hear the horses braying from Rock Creek below.

South of the Potomac, the rich history of Virginia has proved fertile ground -- or air -- for ghost tales. Old Town Alexandria is full of such stories. The most famous one involves the female stranger. One night in 1816, a man and wife checked into Gadsby's Tavern at 134 N. Royal St. (now a museum). The woman shortly thereafter became deathly ill. Realizing her hours were numbered, she gathered around her everyone in the tavern. In her deathbed, she made them all swear they would never reveal her identity. A few days later, she died in the tavern and a few days later wound up six feet under in what was supposed to be her final resting place, New St. Paul's Graveyard, a mile and a half west of the tavern outside city limits. (Now it's called Old St. Paul's Graveyard.)

Her epitaph, inscribed by her husband, reads "In memory of the female stranger whose mortal suffering terminated Oct. 14, 1816, age 23 years, 8 months, the stone was placed here by her disconsolate husband, in whose arms she sighed out her last breath...."

After the service, the widower left, never to be seen again. He didn't pay the $500 bill for the funeral and related expenses. Nor did he pay the tavern or medical personnel who attended his wife. But despite getting stiffed, none of these people ever revealed her identity. When they died, the secret of the female stranger died with them. Alexandrians ever since have been seeking clues to her identity. One theory maintains she was the daughter of Aaron Burr, the vice president who killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. Others say she was one of four orphaned children separated at an early age who later unknowingly married her brother and didn't want that known.
But ever since, some people have claimed to have seen her at the graveside or in her bedroom window at Gadsby's, holding a candle. One evening, someone supposedly saw her attending an 18th Century costume dance at the tavern. She looked out of place in her 19th Century garb.

Further south along I-95 to Fredericksburg, you'll find a town full of ghost stories. Check Federal Hill, an 18th Century Georgian mansion in the 500 block of Hanover Street, home to several Virginia governors. The ghost of the first owner, colonial Gov. Alexander Spotswood, supposedly returns often in his pink coat and hunting breeches climbing the stairs to the outside porch or fixing drinks in the kitchen. A preschooler who had never heard of Spotswood once said he saw a man there fitting that description. And Kenmore, now a museum at 1201 Washington Ave. downtown, went up during the Revolutionary War as a home for Col. Fielding Lewis, an arms manufacturer and brother-in-law of George Washington, who often visited there. Though Lewis died in 1781, subsequent residents and caretakers of the building have said they've heard footsteps in the halls and stairways, the wiping of boots and turning of doorknobs. They suspected Lewis' ghost had returned. But he's only been spotted a few times in Colonial garb in his bedroom upstairs, reading or attending to business.

Or stop off at Chatham, another Georgian mansion built around 1770 on Chatham Lane, across the Rappahannock River from downtown. The marble steps to the terrace is called the ghost walk. Every seven years on the summer solstice, the "white lady" appears sometime between noon and midnight.

Further west, in downtown Warrenton, VA, the Old Gaol Museum stands across from Courthouse Square. It housed prisoners for 158 years, longer than any other structure in American history. One of its residents, however, is said to return occasionally. In 1925, a farmer called McG landed in a cell for allegedly setting fire to his house. He died shortly thereafter. But a woman later confined to the same cell said in sworn testimony that a man fitting McG's description often visited her in the cell. She had never heard of McG.

Another strange visitor makes regular calls to the grave of Edgar Allan Poe at Westminster Churchyard at Fayette and Green streets in Baltimore. Every year since 1949, a man dressed in black with his face hidden has visited Poe's grave at 3:30 a.m. on the scribe's birthday, Jan. 19. He leaves a bottle of cognac and three red roses. No one has asked who Poe's admirer is, as no one who has seen him wants to disturb a mourner. And another Baltimore area burial ground became the site of more frequent night visitors. Gen. Felix Angus was buried in Druid Ridge Cemetery outside town in 1924. Black Aggie, an angel, stood over his tombstone. Supposedly her eyes would glow at midnight, attracting other ghosts from the burial ground. Someone tried to spend the night next to her and died of fright. When the story got out, the cemetery attracted throngs of curious visitors, who ransacked the place. So Black Aggie was removed in 1926. In 1967, she was donated to the Smithsonian Institution. The museum is too frightened to put her on display, so she gathers dust -- or maybe glows -- in a storeroom.

And you certainly can't escape ghosts if you go to West Virginia. Ironically, the first man killed in abolitionist John Brown's famous 1859 raid at Harpers Ferry, was a free black man, Dangerfield Newby. A spike in his throat ended his life. He had joined Brown's band in an effort to free his family, in bondage in Virginia. "Some night, if you are walking down Hog Alley and see a man dressed in baggy trousers and an old slouched hat with a terrible scar across his throat, you will know you have met Dangerfield Newby. He is still roaming our streets, trying to free his family," according to Ghosts of Harpers Ferry by Stephen Brown.