Lincoln's Tomb

Abraham Lincoln's body arrived in Springfield for burial on May 3, 1865, and ghost sightings around his tomb at Oak Ridge Cemetery have been reported ever since. In 1876, a group of counterfeiters broke into the tomb in a failed attempt to steal Lincoln's body and hold it for ransom, an incident that only deepened the site's eerie reputation. Visitors and staff describe sightings of a figure resembling Lincoln near the tomb, and some report a phantom funeral train heard along the route his real funeral train once traveled, on certain nights each April. Today around 200,000 visitors a year also take part in a separate, non-paranormal tradition: rubbing the nose of Lincoln's bronze bust at the tomb's entrance for good luck, worn shiny by generations of hands.