The Demon Cat of Washington DC: Stories of the Phantom Feline that has Haunted the US Capitol Building and the White House since 1862

There are purported to be miles of tunnels, and even an unused burial crypt, deep beneath the United States Capitol Building in Washington D.C..  After Congress passed something called the Residence Act in July of 1790, which decreed that an inauspicious sixty square miles, or so, of swampland on the border between Maryland and Virginia would be rechristened as the District of Columbia and chosen as the Capital city of the brand new United States of America, our founding fathers--congressmen all themselves---set to work and designed this subterranean world.

Throughout history many fringe theorists have asserted that the miles of tunnels and rooms beneath our nation’s capital are somehow linked with the mysterious rites of freemasonry and other secret societies for the rich, powerful and well-to-do who hope to keep their activities hidden from the prying eyes of the American public.  But one fact about this underground world is known, and that is that when work began on the burial crypt beneath the United States Capitol building in 1793 it was intended to be the final resting place for the body of none other than George Washington himself.  However, remaining modest even in death just as he had his whole life, Washington, not wishing to be worshipped as a demigod, chose a more simple burial for himself at his home in Mount Vernon, Virginia, and the burial crypt beneath the Capitol building went unused.

Washington’s would-be tomb was converted into a storage space for the  Capitol kitchen because it made a nice and cool temperate cellar for fruits, vegetables, meats and other perishable food items in an era prior to refrigeration.  Though the tunnels, rooms and tombs built beneath our nation’s capital may, even to this day, be used primarily for the storage of groceries, supplies and other mundane materials history tells us that the District of Columbia’s subterranean world may also be home to one other quite paranormal resident--the Demon Cat of Washington D.C..

Though our government may shut down without warning, and congress may not do much of anything even when it’s open for business, the so-called Demon Cat of Washington DC always seems to be hard at work and has been appearing everywhere below, and sometimes even above ground, in America’s federal buildings since at least 1862 during the height of the American Civil War.  The Demon Cat is the beltway’s most well known apparition and bit of folklore.

In 1862 as the armies of the North and the South slaughtered one another on bloody fields of battle only a matter of mere miles from Washington DC, and the city itself became an armed encampment for the Army of the Potomac, the Capitol Building which was, as yet unfinished, became the site of frenzied American military activity.  The unused crypt that had been intended to be George Washington’s burial chamber was converted into a makeshift bakery to produce bread and hardtack by the ton to help feed America’s ever growing army.

Obviously, during the American Civil War when an attack on the capital by Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia was considered imminent; all federal buildings in Washington were protected by heavily armed contingents of Union soldiers and the United States Capitol was no exception.

It was reported that one night in September of 1862, only days prior to the climactic battle of Antietam in Maryland, as Union soldiers marched through the basement of the Capitol Building, and past the crypt/bakery, that an enormous black and red-eyed cat leapt out at them and hissed and howled.  The soldiers reported firing at the cat but all to no effect because the cat with the red devil’s eyes--after the acrid gunpowder smoke had cleared--was said to have simply vanished without a trace.  This incident, documented in the official records of the Army of the Potomac, is the first reported sighting in history of Washington’s infamous  Demon Cat.

Furtive sightings of the Demon Cat of Washington DC would continue with regularity for the duration of the American Civil War.  Once again, near the close of the 19th century, reports of the Demon Cat would increase in frequency, and each time, the supposed supernatural powers of the cat, would grow in stature and in credibility.

US Capitol in 1862

In fact, by the year 1898 on the eve of the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, the city’s most respected newspaper The Washington Post ran a front page article on the existence of the Demon Cat.  In the article the Post reported that the Demon Cat, “Initially appears as a regular sized housecat, but then quickly expands to the size of an elephant before the eyes of terrified observers.”  The article also went on to point out that appearances of the Demon Cat seemed to be a sort of harbinger of impending disaster, tragedy or war--a belief regarding sightings of the Demon Cat of Washington DC that has persisted among those who work in America’s federal buildings in the capital city to the present day.

During the late 1930’s amidst the poverty and trauma of the Great Depression and during the years leading up to World War Two, sightings of the Demon Cat--this time not in the Capitol Building’s basement only but also in the White House by visitors and members of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s staff--once again began to proliferate, so much so, that the Washington Post once again reported on the phantom Cat’s existence and this time interviewed eyewitnesses who stated that the eyes of the Demon Cat, “Glowed red like the brightest fire engine.”

However, during the 20th century newspaper reports and skeptics have sought to produce practical explanations for sightings of the so-called Demon Cat of Washington DC.  Some have pointed out that cats have long been employed both in the White House and at the United States Capitol Building as mice catchers and to control the vermin which proliferate in our nation’s capital’s subterranean world that was designed and built so long ago at the end of the eighteenth century.  Apparently, these tunnels beneath the city were home to rats--with red beady and demonic looking eyes--that could grow to enormous sizes and give, even the cats that were recruited to exterminate them, a real run for their money.

In fact, Congressmen John Dingell a Democrat from Michigan who holds the record as America’s longest serving member of Congress having served in the House of Representatives for an astounding fifty years from 1955 until 2015, is on record as having stated that during the 1940’s when he worked as a page boy in the United States Capitol Building that he, “(R)ecalled having hunted rats beneath that Capitol that had grown as big as housecats.”

If Dingler’s statement is to be believed, and why shouldn’t it be, then this would directly correspond with the years of World War Two when sightings of the Demon Cat of Washington DC reached a fever pitch.  Perhaps, all of those people who thought that they were seeing a demonic or supernatural cat with extremely large red eyes were, in fact, seeing only rats that had grown to the size of housecats in basements and tunnels beneath the streets of Washington DC..  Anyone stumbling across a rat that is several feet long in the middle of the night can definitely be excused for not stopping to investigate what they actually saw more closely.

John Dingell being sworn into Congress 1955

The last reported sightings of the Demon Cat occurred in mid 1945 just after the end of World War Two and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  It would seem as if the calamity of the Second World War put the Demon Cat of Washington DC to rest once and for all.  The official historian of the United States Capitol has said that the Demon Cat was merely the result of Civil War soldiers charged with  guarding the Capitol Building who got so drunk out of boredom one night that they hallucinated and reported having seen a cat with demonic eyes, when in reality, all they actually saw was a big rat.  The official Congressional history also goes on to state that the Demon Cat is simply a quaint bit of folklore, spread by rumor and word of mouth through the years, like a mythical story.

Maybe this is so.  Maybe the Demon Cat of Washington DC is nothing more than an oversized rat or the drunken hallucination of some Civil War soldiers…or maybe the Demon Cat is simply waiting for another tragedy to occur before he appears yet again beneath our nation’s capital.