The Democratic Fund-Raising Flap

Follow The Coffee For $27 Million -- Feb. 10, 1997

Tips For Guests To The Lincoln Bedroom

By Bruce Morton/CNN

WASHINGTON (Feb. 12) -- We've all been reading about how people got to spend the night in the White House's Lincoln Bedroom if they gave a lot of money to the president's re-election campaign. But did they know what they were getting?

If you're planning a stay at the Lincoln Bedroom, the first thing you should know is that Lincoln never slept here. During the Civil War, the room was his office. It's where he signed the Emancipation Proclamation, and did a lot of other work.

It's true that Mary Todd Lincoln bought the eight-foot-long rosewood bed, in 1861. But as far as we know only two presidents, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, ever slept in it.

It's a good location, on the south side of the White House, with a nice view of the Ellipse and all that. But there are problems. Some folks say it's haunted. The Reagans' dog Rex wouldn't go in.

"Every once in a while our little dog Rex will start down that long hall toward that room, just glaring as if he's seeing something, and barking, and he stops in front of Lincoln's door, the bedroom door," Reagan told reporters.

It isn't just dogs. President Reagan's daughter Maureen and her husband spent a night there, and they said they saw a transparent figure in a red coat. And to go much further back, Winston Churchill refused to stay in the room when he visited Franklin Roosevelt during World War II. And Churchill didn't frighten easily; just ask the Nazis.

Still, it is a fine house, and most of us never get asked to sleep-overs there. "So," you may think, "never mind the ghost, or the barking dog, if they ask me, I'm going."

Bring money.

This story originally appeared on CNN's "Inside Politics."