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One would expect to find rare books among the special collections at the McLennan Library at McGill University. But you might be surprised to learn that the collection also houses artifacts of a more macabre nature, such as a bloody cloth … and at least one spectre sneaking around the stacks.

The fourth floor of the McLennan Library houses the Rare Books Collection as well as Lincoln North, the Joseph N. Nathanson collection of Lincolniana. This collection of more than four thousand items relating to Abraham Lincoln is the largest in the world outside of the United States. Dr. Joseph Nathanson (1895–1989), an alumnus of McGill, amassed items for almost fifty years and donated his unique collection to the university in 1986.

Among the many fascinating items that brilliantly document the life and times of the sixteenth president of the United States, two stand out for their spookiness.

The first is surgeon Charles Sabin Taft’s diary. Though this special collection contains thousands of documents, prints, medals, sculptures, and other Lincoln memorabilia that might be found elsewhere, its prized possession is the surgeon’s original diary. Taft recorded, in this small notebook, his personal account of the assassination of Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth at the Ford Theatre on April 14, 1865. It recounts the events in the theatre and the efforts, stretching into the wee hours of the next day, of medical staff as they tried to save Lincoln. Finally, it describes the sad moment when President Lincoln succumbed to his injuries.

Taft recorded, in this small notebook, his personal account of Lincoln’s mortal gunshot wound from John Wilkes Booth at the Ford Theatre.

Taft, who was twenty-three at the time, was the surgeon in charge of the Signal Corps Camp of Instruction at Red Hill in Washington’s Georgetown neighbourhood. Though Taft’s recollections have been published in many different places and on multiple occurrences, this diary seems to be the only version of Taft’s unabridged notes concerning that fateful night and morning.

The fascinating eyewitness account of the shooting and its aftermath appears in a book titled Abraham Lincoln’s Last Hour; From the Note-Book of Charles Sabin Taft, M.D. An Army Surgeon Present at the Assassination, Death, and Autopsy, published in 1934 and limited to forty copies. Below is an excerpt.

All went on pleasantly until half-past ten o’clock, when, during the second scene of the third act, the sharp report of a pistol rang through the house. The report seemed to proceed from behind the scenes on the right of the stage, and behind the President’s box. While it startled every one in the audience, it was evidently accepted by all as an introductory effect preceding some new situation in the play, several of which had been introduced in the earlier part of the performance. A moment afterward a hatless and white-faced man leaped from the front of the President’s box down, twelve feet, to the stage. As he jumped, one of the spurs of his riding-boots caught in the folds of the flag draped over the front, and caused him to fall partly on his hands and knees as he struck the stage. Springing quickly to his feet with the suppleness of an athlete, he faced the audience for a moment as he brandished in his right hand a long knife, and shouted, “Sic semper tyrannis!” Then, with a rapid stage stride, he crossed the stage, and disappeared from view. A piercing shriek from the President’s box, a repeated call for “Water! water!” and “A surgeon!” in quick succession, conveyed the truth to the almost paralyzed audience. A most terrible scene of excitement followed. With loud shouts of “Kill him!” “Lynch him!” part of the audience stampeded toward the entrance and some to the stage.

I leaped from the top of the orchestra railing in front of me upon the stage, and, announcing myself as an army surgeon, was immediately lifted up to the President’s box by several gentlemen who had collected beneath. I happened to be in uniform, having passed the entire day in attending to my duties at the Signal Camp of Instruction in Georgetown, and not having had an opportunity to change my dress. The cape of a military overcoat fastened around my neck became detached in clambering into the box, and fell upon the stage. It was taken to police head-quarters, together with the assassin’s cap, spur, and derringer, which had also been picked up, under the supposition that it belonged to him. It was recovered weeks afterward, with much difficulty.

When I entered the box, the President was lying upon the floor surrounded by his wailing wife and several gentlemen who had entered from the private stairway and dress-circle. Assistant Surgeon Charles A. Leale, U.S.V., was in the box, and had caused the coat and waistcoat to be cut off in searching for the wound. Dr. A.F.A. King of Washington was also present, and assisted in the examination. The carriage had been ordered to remove the President to the White House, but the surgeons countermanded the order, and he was removed to a bed in a house opposite the theater. The wound in the head had been found before leaving the box, but at that time there was no blood oozing from it. When the dying President was laid upon the bed in a small but neatly furnished room opposite the theater, it was found necessary to arrange his great length diagonally upon it.

The room having become speedily filled to suffocation, the officer in command of the provost guard at the theater was directed to clear it of all except the surgeons. This officer guarded the door until relieved later in the evening by General M.C. Meigs, who took charge of it the rest of the night, by direction of Mr. Stanton.

A hospital steward from Lincoln Hospital did efficient service in speedily procuring the stimulants and sinapisms ordered.

The wound was then examined. A tablespoonful of diluted brandy was placed between the President’s lips, but it was swallowed with much difficulty. The respiration now became labored; pulse 44, feeble; the left pupil much contracted, the right widely dilated; total insensibility to light in both. Mr. Lincoln was divested of all clothing, and mustard-plasters were placed on every inch of the anterior surface of the body from the neck to the toes. At this time the President’s eyes were closed, and the lids and surrounding parts so injected with blood as to present the appearance of having been bruised. He was totally unconscious, and was breathing regularly but heavily, an occasional sigh escaping with the breath. There was scarcely a dry eye in the room, and it was the saddest and most pathetic death-bed scene I ever witnessed. Captain Robert Lincoln, of General Grant’s staff, entered the room and stood at the headboard, leaning over his dying father. At first his terrible grief overpowered him, but, soon recovering himself, he leaned his head on the shoulder of Senator Charles Sumner, and remained in silent grief during the long, terrible night.

About twenty-five minutes after the President was laid upon the bed, Surgeon-General Barnes and Dr. Robert King Stone, the family physician, arrived and took charge of the case. It was owing to Dr. Leale’s quick judgment in instantly placing the almost moribund President in a recumbent position the moment he saw him in the box, that Mr. Lincoln did not expire in the theater within ten minutes from fatal syncope. At Dr. Stone’s suggestion, I placed another teaspoonful of diluted brandy between the President’s lips, to determine whether it could be swallowed; but as it was not, no further attempt was made.

Some difference of opinion existed as to the exact position of the ball, but the autopsy confirmed the correctness of the diagnosis upon first exploration. No further attempt was made to explore the wound. The injury was pronounced mortal. After the cessation of the bleeding, the respiration was stertorous up to the last breath, which was drawn at twenty-one minutes and fifty-five seconds past seven; the heart did not cease to beat until twenty-two minutes and ten seconds after seven. My hand was upon the President’s heart, and my eye on the watch of the surgeon-general, who was standing by my side, with his finger upon the carotid. The respiration during the last thirty minutes was characterized by occasional intermissions; no respiration being made for nearly a minute, but by a convulsive effort air would gain admission to the lungs, when regular, though stertorous, respiration would go on for some seconds, followed by another period of perfect repose. The cabinet ministers and others were surrounding the death-bed, watching with suspended breath the last feeble inspiration; and as the unbroken quiet would seem to prove that life had fled, they would turn their eyes to their watches; then, as the struggling life within would force another fluttering respiration, they would heave deep sighs of relief, and fix their eyes once more upon the face of their dying chief.

The vitality exhibited by Mr. Lincoln was remarkable. It was the opinion of the surgeons in attendance that most patients would have died within two hours from the reception of such an injury; yet Mr. Lincoln lingered from 10:30 p.m. until 7:22 a.m.

This small excerpt of Taft’s diary, on display at the library, has captured the last hours of Abraham Lincoln in significant detail, but it is, believe it or not, far from the most macabre item in the collection.

That honour belongs to a piece of cloth, no larger than the size of a business card, that is stained with Lincoln’s blood. (The towel it was cut from was placed under the President’s head after he was shot.)

This has led many to speculate on whether an item so closely tied to the president’s assassination (and perhaps also the many artifacts that brilliantly document the man’s legacy) might inspire Lincoln’s spirit to visit the library. Does he, perhaps, sit among the items and reflect on his life and those last fateful moments as the haunted echoes of a gunshot reverberates through the stacks?

Then there’s the assassin, John Wilkes Booth, who himself had a morbid link to Montreal. Booth made regular visits to Montreal prior to the incident and had planned, after murdering the president, to flee to Canada in order to seek political refuge. Booth never made it to Canada — he was shot in the neck by Sergeant Boston Corbett inside a tobacco barn that had been set on fire in Virginia and died several hours later. One of the items found on Booth’s body was a bank receipt from Montreal’s Ontario Bank, dated October 27, 1864. (The Ontario Bank was acquired by the Bank of Montreal in 1906.)

* * *

If, after spending time with the ephemera of Lincoln’s life and death and, perhaps, his spirit, you ascend two more staircases, you may encounter an eerie old man who, when addressed, turns to stare at you before vanishing into thin air.

According to a blog post on the Haunted Montreal website, the sixth floor of the McLennan library is haunted by an elderly man in an old-fashioned coat. People who have encountered the old man claim to have seen him floating above the floor or gliding up quietly behind an unsuspecting victim. There he lurks, staring intently at them until he is noticed. After the man’s target has leapt from their seat, startled, and perhaps let out a scream of terror, he immediately fades from view, leaving his chosen victim embarrassed and confused.

Research conducted by the Haunted Montreal group into the potential source of this mysterious old man uncovered the nineteenth-century tale of a beautiful home that stood on the same grounds as the library and the bachelor named Jesse Joseph who lived there.

Joseph, who died in 1904 at the age of eighty-six, is said to have rolled over in his grave when his beautiful home and the magnificent gardens he used to take such pride in tending to were used as a headquarters for the McGill chapter of the Canadian Officer Training Corps. Later, in 1955, the house was demolished due to structural issues. An empty lot overrun with weeds stood for a dozen years where his gardens once flourished.

Haunted Montreal also uncovered a photo of Jesse Joseph wearing an old coat that seems to match the eyewitness accounts of the “strange, old coat” that the spectre on the library’s sixth floor wears.

These eerie and morbid experiences dispute the claim made by many that a library is a boring and uninteresting place. If anyone tries to tell you this, you can share what you now know about the fascinating and decidedly hair-raising collection found in McGill’s library.