The lost and untold history of Washington, DC. New and old content regularly tweeted automagically for your scrolling pleasure.
Washington, D.C.
Joined January 2012
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On March 1, 1976, a Foreign Service officer saw a promotion list in a Main State hallway, left work early, and bought a hammer, a shovel and a gas can. By midnight, five people at 8103 Lilly Stone Drive were dead.
ghostsofdc.org/2026/07/09/bi…
Hains Point isn't named for someone who lived there or fought there. It's named for the Army engineer who literally made the land, dredging it out of the Potomac starting in 1882.
ghostsofdc.org/2022/04/08/wh…
In 1899, a reporter called the ride "too dizzy to count." In 1960, the trolleys stopped. In 2026, the Park Service signed the papers to tear down DC's last streetcar bridge.
ghostsofdc.org/2026/10/20/fo…
In 1961, JFK rode down Pennsylvania Avenue and called it "a disgrace." The secret plan that followed would have buried E Street, built a 800x900 ft National Square, and given DC its own Place de la Concorde.
ghostsofdc.org/2014/04/22/ne…
In 1886, President Grover Cleveland secretly bought a stone farmhouse above Rock Creek to escape the White House. He only owned it three years, but the name stuck to the whole neighborhood. Here's how it happened:
ghostsofdc.org/2015/03/03/wh…
You've seen the photo: a Black woman, a broom, an American flag. But where did Ella Watson go home at night? We tracked down the narrow rowhouse behind Gordon Parks's American Gothic.
ghostsofdc.org/2026/10/19/el…
April 2, 1880: a messenger for the AP walked to the gallows in the yard of the DC jail. The rope did its job. Then it kept going. The headline wrote itself, but the real story is who stood beside him.
ghostsofdc.org/2012/06/12/de…
Zoomed into a 1917 photo of E Street NW and found a WWI poster, an opera singer's flyer, and what was then the smallest store in all of Washington. Here's what else was hiding in plain sight:
ghostsofdc.org/2014/08/04/wh…
Georgetown, 1 a.m. He was supposed to get married that night. Instead, Detective Scrivener was found dead in an alley, a bullet in his heart and a torn necktie clenched in his fist. Murder or suicide?
ghostsofdc.org/2026/10/18/ar…
Frank couldn't read or write. Ashby had just four terms of school. Lewis Hine photographed both boys on the night shift at an Alexandria glass factory in the 1910s, and their stories will stop you cold.
ghostsofdc.org/2023/02/28/am…
