Rose Garden

The Rose Garden is one of the commonly used sites for presidential announcements. It is also the site of a particularly creepy haunting. The garden was originally planted by First Lady Dolley Madison in the early 1800s. A century later, when First Lady Ellen Wilson requested that the garden be dug up, garden workers reported that Madison's ghost appeared and prevented them from destroying her garden. Since that time, other White House insiders have reported an occasional and inexplicable smell of roses in the White House. These instances are often credited to Madison's ghost.